Those were the words with which, following a few sharp raps of the gavel, I opened each day’s session of the Montana House of Representatives during my tenure as Speaker 40 years ago.  Those days (and those words) came back to me last week as I watched the House gain its 15 minutes of fame on the national news over the Zooey Zephyr incident.  I thought if I had been Speaker when Representative Zephyr’s “blood on your hands” comment first roused the Freedom Caucus to demand discipline, I might have tried to arrange a meeting in the Speaker’s office between Zephyr and a caucus leader to settle what in those days would have been an eminently adjustable conflict.  My remembering the way things once were is just one more way of measuring how far our democratic institutions have crept toward terminal dysfunction.