Looking out on the RNC delegate assembly, I couldn't help but feel like something was missing.

Hm. Portly beflagged gentleman and elephant hat lady — check.

Politically incorrect symbols of past national disgraces worn defiantly — check

Oh, that's right.

Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago. Each night, the overwhelmingly white audience watches a series of white politicians step to the lectern — a visual reminder that no black Republican has served as a governor, U.S. senator or U.S. House member in the past six years.

No black people at the RNC? I guess, to be fair, it's hard to fit being proud of America into your schedule when you're running around all day doing secret Muslim stuff.

"It's hard to look around and not get frustrated," said Michael S. Steele, a black Republican and former lieutenant governor of Maryland. "You almost have to think, 'Wait. How did it come to this?'"

Far be it from me to be flip about the black Republican experience, Governor. But if I had to guess, I'd say it probably had something to do with your white friends' journey from here:

To here:

The City of Denver is taking all measures to silence the legions of doubters who predict the upcoming Democratic National Convention will be ransacked by piss and shit.

The City Council has passed an ordinance that…

…Prohibits the possession of noxious substances. Two of the most frequently used examples of a noxious substance are a bucket of urine and a "feces bomb."

The Council's feces bombing suspicions focus on an organization called Recreate 68, which takes its name from the riot-strewn 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The group was front and center during the 1999 WTO riots in Seattle, and now they have Denver in their sights.

But Denver has a double-agent! It seems that City Councilman Doug Linkhart has been corresponding with an unnamed source, who, Linkhart claims…

"…told me that he knew of a house where protestors were accumulating urine."

Now accumulating urine happens to be a time-honored tradition in politics. Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) was a proponent of a bag rigged in his pants, while Strom Thurmond (R-SC) preferred a plain old bucket.

But if either of them want to rise from the grave and try that stunt in Denver… well, they'll spend that night shitting themselves in the county jail!

Join former United States Senate Pages Dylan and Ethan Ris as they bring you the dish on not just the presidential race but all the exciting triumphs and disgraces inside, outside, and below the Beltway!

From The Grave! Today, June 26, is five years to the day since the death of Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC). Thurmond was a true legend in the Senate, renowned for his love of the military, hatred of "the nigger race", and refusal to let the smarty-pants Senate Parliamentarian tell him when he could and couldn’t nap on the floor of the chamber.

Thurmond was born in 19-ought-2 and attended Clemson University in his native South Carolina. He graduated in the fabled Class of ’23 with a degree in horticulture and showed his school pride by sporting orange hair and skin for the rest of his life. Dedicated to the cause of segregation, he served as a judge and governor of South Carolina before making a third-party bid for president as the nominee of the Senile Racist Party. Back then, old boy Strom was a visionary who saw beyond the tired model of red states and blue states. He saw a third kind of state (going with the flag motif, let’s call them white states) that would appeal to his segregationist platform. Although he lost badly in the 1948 election (erroneous Charleston Post and Courier headline: “Thurmond Defeats Dewey”), his candidacy was endorsed as recently as 2002 by Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS)!

Your blogging Senate Pages came to Capitol Hill in the late '90s — just in time to catch the tail end of Thurmond's record-setting filibuster against civil rights legislation. Thurmond's virulent racism was no longer evident by this point, possibly because he had taken to spending more time with his secret illegitimate black daughter. (Oh come on now. How could he not have had one?) Mostly, Thurmond would nap patriotically for prolonged intervals until one of his colleagues mentioned the military, at which point he would rouse with confusion and demand that more money be allocated to the Armed Forces.

But since a person can only be dead-for-five-years once, we'd like to share a particularly special account of an actual exchange between a nonagenarian Thurmond and legendary soul singer James Brown, who — despite his association with Augusta, Georgia — actually lived across the river in South Carolina, making him Thurmond's constituent. This conversation was not printed in any papers, but trust us, our source is legit. We are, after all, Washington Insiders.

Brown: Senator, I'm a resident of your state, and I'm hoping to talk with you about some problems I've been having with the IRS.

Thurmond (having no idea who this is): Yes, yes. What is it that you need?

Brown: You see they're forcing me to pay back-taxes and I just feel that I should be exempt. As you know, they call me the Godfather of Soul, but really… really, I'm more than just the Godfather. I'm an ambassador, is what I am. I'm an ambassador of this country and its music and I'm –

Thurmond: An ambassador? What? Oh my!

Thurmond's Aide: (alarmed, waves hands and shakes head no)

Thurmond: Why, ambassadors shouldn't have to pay taxes! Well we're going to have to do something about this!

Thurmond's Aide: (desperately gives the "throat slitting" gesture to Thurmond)

Thurmond: My staff is going to do something about this right away. Ambassadors shouldn't have to pay taxes!

Farewell, Senator. Whenever we see we see a 100-year-old man drooling on important legislation, we'll think of you.

Barack Obama has been closing the gap with Hillary in national polls, and part of the reason may be an influx of support from a group that he's referring to as "Obamacans"…

…disaffected Republicans who have drifted away from their party just as Eisenhower Democrats did and, more recently, Reagan Democrats in the 1980s. They include lifelong Republican Tricia Moseley, a former staffer for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, the one-time segregationist from South Carolina. Now a high-school teacher, Moseley says she was attracted to Obama's positions on education and the economy.

Do we even need to make a joke here?

No, I didn't think so either.

Dixiecrat is a combination of the words "Dixie" and "Democrat," meaning "racist skeetbag." It was on the Dixiecrat ticket that South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond launched his 1948 third-party campaign for President, with racial segregation, Jim Crow laws and "states' rights" as the main planks in his platform.

Thurmond and many other Southerners split from the Democratic Party when the organization decided to start treating black people like people. Although Thurmond took five states