Taibbi, Matt. “Four amendments & a funeral.” Rolling stone, August 10, 2005.

Summary: A slice-of-life story about my favorite Congressman, Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Taibbi followed him around for a few days to get the inside story of his success as a legislator -- Sanders, who is an extremely astute and forceful politician, has passed more roll-call amendments through Congress since the Republicans took control of the House in 1995 than any other member of Congress. Having selected four of Sanders's amendments-in-progress, Taibbi tells the story of Sanders's initially successful efforts to get them passed by the House of Representatives. (Three of them pass, but the Senate rejects two of them, and the nine-member majority of the Rules Committee in the House squelches the other two before the final enactment of the bills to which they were attached.)

I particularly enjoyed the contrast between Taibbi's breathless incredulity at the brazen tactics of the Republican gatekeepers and Sanders's resigned acceptance of his colleagues' fatuity, corruption, and malevolence. Remarkably, Sanders just keeps at it, constantly inventing new ways of making common cause with these imbeciles in order to give useful, progressive legislation the best possible chance of adoption. It's clear that Taibbi, like most decent people, would have thrown up our hands and walked out in disgust. Somehow Sanders manages to take it all in stride.