There's a lot of absurdity circling around congressional Republicans' ongoing, pro-drilling stunt on Capitol Hill.

Yesterday, I noted that numerous GOP members from Illinois had joined the effort to bring Democrats back from August recess to vote on legislation to expand off-shore drilling. At his new blog Prairie State 2.0, Curt Mercadante responded by accusing the Democratic leadership of squelching "open government":

What the PI post avoids, of course, is the issue of open government and debate. [...]

It’s about the fact that they [the Democrats] tried to shut down debate in the U.S. House of Representatives.

They turned off the microphones, shut off the lights, darkened the House video feed (and, thus, C-SPAN) … all to prevent the GOP debate from being heard.

It’s about open government. It’s about transparency.

When a chamber of Congress adjourns, as the House did on August 1, the microphones, lights, and cameras are turned off. It happened when Republicans were in power. It happens now that Democrats are in power.

This effort to cast the adjournment as some sort of devious, anti-democratic maneuver is a clever election year ploy -- and nothing more.

In fact, folks like Mercadante seem to have forgetten that in the months before Congress departed for their August recess, the Republicans repeatedly attempted to force the House to adjourn, as the Washington Post's Dana Milbank recently noted:

Eighteen times over the past 90 days, the minority tried, unsuccessfully, to force the House to adjourn. Now the House has finally adjourned -- for a five-week recess, no less -- and Republicans are demanding that the chamber be called back into session.

Of course, if those earlier demands for adjournment had been met, guess what would have happened? The lights and mics would have been turned off and the C-SPAN coverage would have ceased. Would Mercadante have raised a ruckus then?

His characterization of the pro-drilling efforts as a "grassroots movement" also deserves some attention:

So, kudos to Rep. Biggert - and the rest of our Illinois Congressional delegation who have spent time in DC to participate in the #dontgo movement.

In addition to demonstrating to the GOP base that its party still has some fight left in it … it really is demonstrating the power of social media to build grassroots movements.

Let's be clear. This is a "movement" that originated at the highest level of powers in Washington. It's a movement that, if successful, would benefit large oil companies and their rich executives far more than the average American consumer. It's a movement with protests populated by paid staffers from industry-funded organizations. In short, there is nothing "grassroots" about it.