Speaker John Boehner, who appeared stoic throughout much of the morning’s proceedings, had an emotional moment after embracing a departing Gabby Giffords.

Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake took time this morning to share a few thoughts on his friend and colleague, Rep. Gabby Giffords, and to voice support for her border security bill.

Texas’ Rep. Ted Poe took to the floor today to sing the praises of Rep. Gabby Giffords as she prepares to officially resign from her role in order to focus on her continued recovery.

C-SPAN is not, typically, a place where one can expect to find the sort of gaffes, fights, and general shenanigans running rampant on other politically-minded networks. But, lately, it has had to contend with a couple of prank callers (or, perhaps, one caller with a couple of personalities) who would rather the channel be a little less serious and a little more zany. Cue slide whistle!

Rep. Ron Paul‘s detractors have raised many concerns about the longtime Congressman, but inconsistency has never been one of them. In fact, in old videos it sometimes appears that the Congressman raised issues that didn’t even exist yet– but would become a central part of his campaign. Take this short House speech from 1984, for example, in which Rep. Paul rails against “computer surveillance”– hardly an issue for most Americans at the time but, in a post-PATRIOT Act world, as important a theme as ever.

C-SPAN microphones caught a group of Pentagon reporters chatting as they waited for President Barack Obama to take the podium and discuss military budget cuts. Among their topics of discussion? What a Ron Paul presidency might mean for their jobs.

In this 2012 presidential campaign cycle, no one is safe– not even Big Bird. Everyone’s favorite avian neighbor came under siege today in a campaign stop in Iowa, somehow, from none other than Mitt Romney, who, in explaining at a public event the importance of reducing spending in Washington, cited the need for PBS to generate its own revenue, and used the beloved bird as an example.

Yesterday, we told you about C-SPAN going silent following an awkward interaction between Rep. Steny Hoyer and his Republican colleagues who walked out of the chamber as he tried to call for a vote to extend the payroll tax. RELATED: C-SPAN Says Speaker Boehner’s Office Is To Blame For Channel Going Silent After Call For [...]

Political video wiz kid Andrew Kaczynksi has dug up archival video of Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul in 1995 discussing his controversial newsletters at length in a C-SPAN interview despite his assertion yesterday to Gloria Borger that “I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it ten years after it was written.”

This morning, as Maryland’s Rep. Steny Hoyer (D) tried to call for a vote to extend the payroll tax, his Republican colleagues adjourned the House and proceeded to walk out of the chamber one by one. Then, as Hoyer chastised them for leaving, C-SPAN unceremoniously went silent and cut its coverage. C-SPAN later explained that [...]

“You take a young Bill Maher and you take a young Ann Coulter, what really happens if they live together?” Doron Ofir, the casting directory behind Jersey Shore, wants to know the answer to this question. Ofir is currently casting for a reality show tentatively titled Party Politics, the premise of which is to gather a group of attractive young people to live in a house and… talk about politics?

President Barack Obama used today’s Labor Day address to preview Thursday’s jobs speech and to ask the Republicans in Congress to put country before party. He did not, to the dismay of many, address Teamster head Jimmy Hoffa Jr.‘s remarks from earlier in the day wherein he rallied union workers to war with the Tea Party.

Rep. Michele Bachmann is very, very proud to be Iowan. Her roots in the state made up the skeleton of her speech to the crowd at the Ames Straw Poll today, telling the story of her family, praising Iowans for the great agriculture of the state, and being unrepentant abotu social issues and the role of God in the creation of America.

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West continued their media tour on C-Span this morning, and expressed frustration with President Obama over a much more personal issue than merely not talking about poverty. Smiley noticed that Obama invited Bill O’Reilly to the White House, but he himself has yet to receive an invitation from the President, who regularly appeared on his show before being elected President.

Senator John McCain, the former GOP presidential nominee who selected current Tea Party darling Sarah Palin as his running mate, addressed his fellow senators today, quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial that stated “Republicans who oppose Boehner’s debt deal are playing into Obama’s hands.” The article also offers a fun look at what’s going on in The Shire these days.

Earlier today, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) took to the House floor and openly wondered why Congress is challenging President Obama over raising the debt ceiling, especially compared to the many administrations that came before him. “Why is he different?” Jackson Lee asked, before adding, “and in my community, that is the question that we raise. In the minority community that is question that is being raised. Why is this president being treated so disrespectfully?”

Sources close to her confirmed late last night that First Lady Betty Ford, widow of President Gerald Ford, passed away at age 93 in Palm Springs, California. Ford rose to become one of the most popular modern first ladies in part due to her support of women’s rights causes at the time and her work towards acceptance of substance abuse as an illness and the world of the Betty Ford Center.

Rep. Louie Gohmert has made a splash or two during his tenure in Congress, between his “terror babies” claims to questionable Nazi references on the House floor to, well, this. Last week he was at it again, this time noting that there were 57 members in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, suspiciously the same number of states President Obama had claimed existed, and that American public officials took their oaths “in this body… not to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Oh, my. Perhaps it’s best not to know whether or not our Supreme Court justices are aware of–or actively engaged in–the use of social media, including, of course, “the Twitter.” Judging exclusively on a discussion captured on tape by C-SPAN, it’s a topic best left off the table, much in the same way you wouldn’t ask your grandmother for her impressions of the virtues of running a mobile meth lab a la Breaking Bad. “I actually have a tweeting thing,” begins Justice Stephen Breyer in the hearing on the Supreme Court’s budget (that got terribly off track). “I was very interested in this Iranian revolution, remember when they just had this uprising…I sat there fascinated, because you actually could look through the tweeting and you could see what was going on.”

“The only way you could do it was to go through the tweet, or the tweeter,” he explained. Justice Breyer says it’s flattering to be asked to be followed, and it’s the same with “the Facebook.”

Republican Congressman Dan Burton finished his prepared remarks on the floor of the House of Representatives and was ready to yield to the next speaker, but there was only one problem: Congressman Louie Gohmert was scheduled next and was nowhere to be found. Burton was then forced to engage in a ten minute monologue as he was advised to “keep talking.”

Former Speaker of the House Democrat Nancy Pelosi took to the floor of the House and declared her strong opposition to proposed cuts to the Federal budget. Regarding certain Republican proposals, Pelosi declared “when it comes to health and education, Republicans put women and children last.”

During this weekend’s celebration of President Ronald Reagan‘s 100th Birthday, former Vice-President Dick Cheney participated in an interview where he was asked whether the Bush administration did enough to control government spending, and he admitted “I think we could have done a better job on spending.”

Former President George W. Bush told C-Span this weekend that he has no plans to play any role in politics in the coming years. The refreshingly frank and candid interview drew a stark contrast from other former presidents (cough..Clinton) who seemed eager to stay in the public eye after serving two terms in office. “I don’t want to go out and campaign for candidates,” adding “I don’t want to be viewed as a perpetual money-raiser.”

With this repeal, the process is set in motion to, for the first time in U.S. history, allow gays to serve openly in the military without having to hide their sexual orientation. Under President Bill Clinton‘s “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, men and women in service were required to stay silent about their sexuality, and [...]

It seems like not many in Washington are embracing the holiday spirits, though in the most disturbing ways. To wit: the effort to paint Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the Grinch who will steal Christmas did not sit well with Reid, and earlier today he hurled a few verbal lumps of coal in the direction of his Republican colleagues.