When Rep. Betty Brown, R-Athens, told Ramey Ko of the Organization of Chinese Americans that "you and your citizens" should adopt more English-sounding names to make life easier for election officials, it made them both instantly famous: Brown for inadvertently revealing some ugly assumptions about race, Ko for his cool and reasoned response. The chub was less than instant: day after day of laborious debate on the smallest of bills, just to keep big issues such as voter ID and children's health insurance off the House floor. Guess it's not what you pass, it's how you don't pass it.
