While the House is out on a five-week break, the Senate is technically still in session, meeting every few days in what are known as "pro-forma" sessions. They take about thirty seconds for a Senator to gavel the Senate in and out of session.

Last Friday, there was a problem. The Senator that was supposed to be here, was not. And there was no other Senator around to step in. (It is the August recess, after all.)

So, for the first time since January 3, 1947, the Secretary of the Senate stepped in to preside over the Senate.

The history making event puts Senate Secretary Nancy Erickson in the books for something other than being the 32nd Senate Secretary.

The last time it happened, the Senate was embroiled in controversy over race and the seating of a Democratic Senator.

Then Senate Secretary Leslie Biffle had to preside because there was no Vice President at the time - Harry Truman had become President in 1945, but there was no Constitutional provision as yet that allowed for the selection of a replacement.

Because the Republicans had just won the Senate in the 1946 elections, there was now no official President Pro Tem - the senior member - to sit in the chair either.

So that job fell to Biffle.

His first order of business was to preside while the two parties battled for two days over how to deal with the re-election of Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS.)

Bilbo was an unapologetic segregationist, who had helped lead a lengthy filibuster in 1938 against an anti-lynching bill in the Senate.

Allegations that Bilbo had taken bribes and questions about his efforts to keep blacks from voting led Republicans to block his swearing-in. Democrats fought bitterly to preserve his seat.

Two days of parliamentary maneuvering and feisty speeches were what Senate Secretary Biffle had to deal with before a deal was engineered to delay Bilbo's swearing-in. He immediately returned to Mississippi where he died several months later.

So, there is your history lesson.

The current Secretary of the Senate sure had it a lot easier.

Now why wasn't there a Senator available?

Sen. Blance Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas was heading for the floor. Her watch was slow. Five minutes slow. She got there a few minutes after the quick session was over.

Bet that doesn't happen on Tuesday, the next time the Senate is in a pro forma session.