The Iraqi parliament has now taken off for their August recess. But that’s not the real story. It was, after all, already known that’s that what they were going to do (despite all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men).

Here’s the AP report on the subject, hot off the press:

Iraq’s parliament adjourned Monday for an August recess without receiving from the government a series of U.S.-backed draft laws designed to promote national unity and stem support for the Sunni-led insurgency.

Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani closed the three-hour session without a quorum present and declared it would not resume work until Sept. 4.

Legislators blamed the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for failing to construct compromise versions of the key pieces of legislation such as the so-called oil law, intended to ensure a fair distribution of Iraq’s considerable oil wealth.

“We were supposed to discuss important issues in the month of July, but we did not. Sitting in August is unconstitutional and even if we sit next month, that’s no guarantee that the important business will be done,” said Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kurdish lawmaker.

“There are Iraqi-Iraqi and Iraqi-American differences that have not been resolved. The government throws the ball in our court, but we say that it is in the government’s court and that of the politicians. They sent us nothing,” he said.

Not only are they gone for the summer but, like undergraduates taking off for spring break, most of them left early. They couldn’t even muster up a quorum on the last day. But that’s not the real story, either. This is: “Sitting in August is unconstitutional“!

Clearly Tony Snow didn’t have the faintest hint of a clue about that the day he got into deep doo-doo
for his flippant responses on the topic on July 13.

Isn’t it his ruddy job to know stuff like this? So that he can do his duty to the President by nipping controversies in the bud, instead of aiding and abetting controversies by adding fuel to the fire?

And it isn’t like the question about the Iraqi Congress taking August off came out of left-field. The awkward ones that you know are coming sooner or later are the ones you prepare for. If you take your job seriously.

I guess Tony Snow no longer does?