A Democratic congresswoman fed up with the anti-food-stamp rhetoric of her Republican colleagues took those lawmakers to task today using some high quality props.

The House Republicans' top anti-abortion guy, Rep. Chris Smith of the lovely No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act fame, was reading some graphic details of abortion cases in the chamber last night. This is America's National Bedtime Story routine, now that Republicans are back in power, and it should continue even after they've defunded Planned Parenthood.

Tom Lantos, who has represented northern San Mateo county and southwest San Francisco in the House of Representatives since 1981 as the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, has esophageal cancer and will step down after completing his 14th term this year. The Examiner has a tidy recap of Lantos's career. As a young man, he twice escaped from Nazi camps. In 2006, the then-77-year-old Congressman was arrested along with other genocide protestors in front of the Sudanese embassy in Washington. Wonkette says local politico Jackie Speier is likely to replace him.