WASHINGTON — Rep. Howard "Judge" Smith of Virginia routinely frustrated the Washington establishment by leaving town when leaders tried to push legislation he didn't like through the Rules Committee he chaired for 12 years.
Once in 1957, he blocked a major civil rights bill from President Eisenhower by saying he needed to tend to a barn that had burned down on his farm.
At the time, Smith's antics were hardly out of place. Colorful Southern politicians ruled the roost on Capitol Hill, presiding with near-authoritarian control over panels that wrote the nation's tax laws, set federal spending, and steered subsidies to cotton and peanut farmers back home. Near the end of Smith's tenure in 1965, Southerners chaired about two-thirds of the committees in the House and Senate.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...31-south_N.htm
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