This goodbye piece, from a long time congressional worker, should be mandatory reading.
James Fallows provides an interesting follow up.
In a related piece, Joe Nocera has a fawning profile of Jim Cooper as “The Last Moderate”. It reinforces one of my perennial themes, the perfidy of Newt Gingrich. “To Cooper, the true villain is not the Tea Party; it’s Newt Gingrich.” Absolutely true. It was Gingrich who put politics before policy, party before country, and set in motion all the forces that have destroyed the institution of Congress.