More from the Floor
The House floor seats, usually reserved for members and staff only, are filled with out of town visitors. It's really neat to see people settling into the historic digs for a speech on drilling!
Blackburn knows how to work a crowd. At one point she held up the gas can and said "Do you know what this is? It's an empty gas can. And it's as empty as the Democratic party!" to an outburst of cheers and applause. There was some booing from the upper gallery. GOP staff suspects some of the liberally-leaning think tanks and groups and towns are deploying interns to the Hill to offset the GOP fun.
The GOP-ers are holding another presser at 1pm. I'm going to stay for that and then get back to the Townhall headquarters to prepare for a 3pm appearance on MSNBC.