There were those of us who thought that when Eric Cantor was defeated in his primary for re-election that he would leave office without ever telling John Boehner the location of the Mason Jar in which Cantor had buried the Speaker's balls. There were those of us who thought that this would be like one of those adventure novels in which the last man who knows the secret dies unexpectedly without ever having passed it along. There were those of us who thought maybe Dan Brown could one day get a novel out of the search for Boehner's balls. But we needn't have been so concerned. Cantor did his duty to posterity. He passed along the secret of where the Mason Jar is buried. He passed it along to Ted Cruz.

I'm sure that better legislative historians than I can come up with an example from history in which a first-term senator was so easily able to cross the Capitol and undermine a sitting Speaker of the House the way Cruz has for the last couple of years. I can't recall anything like it, though. Working to demonstrate that the House can do something besides provide a home for the mentally infirm, Boehner attempted to put together a bill that would address the situation along our Southern border, at least cosmetically. So he got a bill drafted that was dramatically less than what the president had proposed, and woefully short of what actually is needed, and it looked like it might even pass. And then Ted Cruz came rap-tap-tapping on the chamber door. And quoth the Raver, "Nevermore."...

Faced with yet another Cruz-inspired mutiny, Boehner pulled his bill. So now the Congress has no bill to deal with a burgeoning humanitarian crisis at the border. He then gave us a completely pathetic reason why he garroted his own measure. It was the president's fault that Ted Cruz has the Mason Jar now and that Boehner continues to chirp away in a 'nad-less soprano....

Holy mother of god, what a eunuch. Somewhere in the Speaker's Lobby of Purgatory, Uncle Joe Cannon is pounding his head against the wall, Sam Rayburn is reaching for the bourbon again, and Henry Clay is vomiting into a potted plant. The idea that Boehner has any political power at all beyond that which a Texas crackpot allows him to have has now been rendered ludicrous. The Democratic members of the House see it, and so do people on Boehner's side of the aisle who look at him and wonder what day it will be when the Speaker simply turns into a pillar of fine powder and blows away on the breeze.