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A Senate run by only women? That (sort of) happened this week

"We came in this morning, looked around and thought, something is different this morning," Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Tuesday.
The U.S. Capitol rises above a large mound of snow cleared from the East Front on Jan. 25, 2016 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty)
The U.S. Capitol rises above a large mound of snow cleared from the East Front on Jan. 25, 2016 in Washington, D.C.

On Tuesday morning, a few days following the blizzard that all but paralyzed the nation's capital, Sen. Lisa Murkowski looked around the Senate floor and made quite the observation.

"We came in this morning, looked around and thought, something is different this morning. Different in a good way, I might add," Murkowski said Tuesday. "But something is genuinely different."

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What was unusual was there were only women present, according to the Republican senator from Alaska. Along with her was Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, another state equipped to deal with wintry weather. They had "braved the elements," Murkowski said proudly. 

"As we convene this morning, you look around the chamber and the presiding officer is female, all of our parliamentarians are female, our floor managers are female, all of our pages our female,” she said, adding that this wasn't at all "orchestrated."

Murkowski, who noted she had been shoveling most of the weekend, said she was "ready to be back to work." 

"So perhaps it just speaks to the heartiness of women, that you put on your boots and put your hat on and get out, slog through the mess that is out there," she said, possibly hoping to reach a man somewhere in another room.