If you're a regular TMCnet reader, you'll know rather a lot about the pending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a rather ponderous bit of proposed Congressional legislation that will make Hollywood and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) – the group that sued a small child for downloading, “If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands – very happy. So happy, they'll probably fill re-election coffers all over Washington (in the same manner that Colombian drug lords would if they were able to send expensive lobbyists to our nation's capital).

The only people SOPA won't make happy is...pretty much everyone else. Everyone who values free speech. Everyone who doesn't wish to stifle innovation in Web services, the only bright spot in our nation's economy. Everyone who understands the law. Everyone who understands the Internet. Everyone who understands that you can't try and stifle competition by stifling people's rights.

Still, members of Congress took up this piece of legislation yesterday, attempting to debate its ramifications. (Hopefully, there was at least one person who understands how the Internet works invited to the gathering.) Alas, the meeting had to break mid-way through. Not because, as CNET's Declan McCullagh pointed out, because it was derailed by questions about SOPA's substance, even though legal scholars and technologists have said it could suppress free speech by virtually deleting Web sites accused of copyright infringement. 

No, because Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, sent a Tweet that someone else found offensive. Midway through the hearings, King Tweeted, “We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson [sic] has so bored me that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet.” The “Sheila” in question is Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) who took major exception to King's Tweet, objected and declared she was “offended,” at which time proceedings were stopped.

Seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. Perhaps we need to hire a couple of kindergarten teachers to keep order in the House's legislative chamber.

“It's inappropriate to have a member of the Judiciary committee be so offensive,” Jackson Lee said. 

The exchange proceeded in a manner similar to this:

Rep King's Friend: You shouldn't talk to my friend like that!
Rep: Jackson Lee: I will! I will!
Committee Chair: You called him “offensive”!
Rep. Jackson Lee: He called me “boring”!
Committee Chair: “Offensive is worse than boring!”
Rep. Jackson Lee: “Nuh-uh!”
Committee Chair: Take it back! Take it back!
Rep. Jackson Lee: I will not! He's got to say sorry first!

But Representative King had already stomped out of the chamber, taking his ball and threatening to go home. Representative Jackson sulked. Committee Chair Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) pouted.

Jackson Lee ultimately became the grown-up of the day and relented, agreeing to have “offensive” struck from the record, instead calling King's tweet “impolitic and unkind.” (Can the rest of us add “immature,” please?)

In the meantime, the committee resumed its plans to eviscerate online free speech, stifle Web services innovation, tank the only part of the U.S. economy that's doing well and stroke the tender parts of Hollywood and the RIAA...for fun and profit.