Dana Milbank casts aspersions on the TV image of Congressmembers on thumbboards during the presidential speech tonight. I disagree. The preference is a “polite” Congress who spends the entire time pantomiming rapt attention to the president?

Please. We’ve had eight years of a Congress who rolled over for the president and kept their mouths shut, in both parties. Enough with the theater and the actuality of that. I’d rather have Republicans twittering:

Then there was Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), in whose name this text message was sent at about the time the president spoke of the need to pull the country together: “Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren’t going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour.” A few minutes later, another message came through: “Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer.”

And I’d rather have his constituents accordingly think of him as a real human being with bad opinions of Pelosi, or a rude lout, or both.

Would also be nice to establish the rule that if your name is on it, it wasn’t written by a staffer—even if it was. And for politicians to learn that you can’t take back everything you say, and that our discourse will be improved with some off the cuff humanity anyway.