At a long table in the kitchen of one of the upstairs chambers, lunch was lobsters pulled from the sea that morning and beef delivered from the mainland.
But I did get an email the following day from the heckler apologising profusely, revealing he had drunk three bottles of wine and inviting me to his chambers for lunch.
If the president can decide when the Senate was in recess, then he can make appointments when the chamber is at lunch or when he is merely displeased with its inertia, reasoned the judges.
In the 19th century, senators ate at the Hole in the Wall, near the Old Senate chamber, where they lunched on oysters and wine.
All five of those senators were in McConnell's office Thursday afternoon, following a GOP conference meeting in the old Senate chamber and a members-only lunch.
During the first part of the half-hour lunch interval they play chamber music to aid the digestion; the rest of the period they play popular stuff.
Each Tuesday at 12 30 p.m., the Democrats of the Senate gather for a working lunch in an elegant chamber once occupied by the most powerful Senate Democrat of modern times, Lyndon B. Johnson.
Boehner and Mitch McConnell – the Kentucky senator who will take over as majority leader in January after the GOP gained eight seats in the chamber – will meet the president for lunch on Friday.
Today, the divisions over lunch are many: between chambers, parties and castes.
As he has campaigned across the city, speaking at centers for the elderly and at subway stops, addressing chamber of commerce breakfasts and Rotary lunches, no one has accused him of being a lightweight.
In June, Justice Sotomayor invited my husband and me to have a private lunch with her in her chambers.
