The Republican railroad: squelching Democratic voices on the Hill. (Dispaches).

IN JULY OF 1994, JUST FOUR, MONTHS before Republicans swept the elections and won control of Congress, then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga,) blasted the Democratic leadership trying to ram health-care reform legislation through Congress without giving the minority party a chance to be heard. "It is fundamentally wrong for America," he said, "for people who are supposed to be elected every two years, who are supposed to be sensitive to the ,concerns and the needs of the American people, to deliberately and ruthlessly run roughshod over the American people."

But in ...