From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's on the media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

This has been a day of political drama and brinksmanship over legislation giving the government

broad powers to eavesdrop. House Republicans walked off the floor and out of the capital today.

Left the House chamber to protest the Democrats' refusal to renew the foreign intelligence

surveillance law.

On Thursday, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives staged quite the media moment, a dramatic walkout from the floor of the House in protest of an impending vote to hold

two White House officials in contempt of Congress.

To Republican Minority Leader John Boehner, this was no more than a stunt,

cheap theatrics, two-bit political grandstanding. Not the walkout, mind you, in which the GOP

caucus stalked out like the frat boys in Animal House, but the contempt resolution itself. Here's

Boehner. If the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were to expire,

Americans will be at risk.

Americans want us to protect them.

They want us to go after the terrorists.

But we have to give our intelligence officials the tools to be able to do it.

America at risk, well, that's for sure, not only from bearded Islamists cowering in caves,

but also by white men in red neckties who, in the name of national security for six and a half

years, have eroded the civil liberties at the heart of our Constitution.

In that way, Thursday's walkout was a paradox within a photo-op within a civics lesson.

The pretext was the Democratic leadership's refusal to vote on the extension of broad eavesdropping

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