With lawmakers still at an impasse over increasing the debt ceiling, a special team of 40 eighth-grade civics teachers was air-dropped into Washington earlier today in a last-ditch effort to teach congressional leaders how the governments legislative process works. We started them off with the basics, like the difference between a senator and a representative, and then moved on to more complex concepts, like what a resolution is, Bozeman, MT social studies teacher Heidi Rossmiller told reporters as all 535 members of Congress copied down the definition of checks and balances from a whiteboard in the House chamber. Its been a bit of an uphill battle, since most of them seemed to have no real sense of how or why a bill is passed, and Sen. [Harry] Reid [D-NV] had to come up to me during a break and ask, Ms. Rossmiller, what happens if Congress cant reach a compromise? But hopefully it will all start to sink in soon. At press time, an unruly House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) had noisily stormed out of a lecture on bipartisan cooperation, claiming it was too hard. 