Missouri’s House Republicansheld a super-secret ceremony yesterday to unveil the bust of Famous Missourian Rush Limbaugh, in which armed police (at taxpayer expense, one would assume) guarded locked House chamber doors to keep out theriff-raff Democrats:

The unveiling of Limbaugh’s bust was kept secret from all but invited guests until less than an hour before the ceremony.

While Republican lawmakers were invited, Democrats were not and visitors were blocked from entering. All but one of the doors to the House chamber were locked with armed Highway Patrol and Capitol Police patrolling the hallways outside the chamber.

House Speaker Steve Tilley — who selected Limbaugh for the honor — defended the use of armed police to block access.”With the controversy involved surrounding, I thought it was acceptable to do an invitation-only event.”

Oh yes indeedy. Which begs the question: if the guy is so damned controversial that you need armed police patrolling the halls while you honor him, then … why the hell are you honoring him? Methinks something else is going on here, something articulated beautifully by the Democratic Representative from St. Louis:

“It is quite clear from their handling of the Limbaugh ceremony thatRepublicans were ashamed of what they were doing and wanted as few people as possible to witness it. When you take great steps to hide what you’re doing, it usually means thatyou know what you’re doing is wrong,” said House Assistant Democratic Leader Tishaura Jones, D-St. Louis.

Indeed. Also, there was no doubt concern that Limbaugh would say something stupid and embarrassing and make a bad situation even worse. True to form, Rush stayed classy (cough*cough) and used the ceremony to call Democrats “deranged.”