Was the OCE a Smokescreen?

I know it seems we pulled something major off this week with keeping the Office of Congressional Ethics from losing its independence, but looking at some of the things the Republicans are trying to do while we're distracted:

• Bills to defund the United Nations
• Two bills regarding the VA, one which appears to be anti-public-union; and one that Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN), incoming Chair of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, has been pushing since 2015. It appears to have to do with providing identifier codes for biological implants. It's being pushed by RTI Surgical, a penny-stock biotech firm in Florida. Someone might want to dig into that one...
• A rule to potentially cut government workers' pay to $1
• A quick push-through of the confirmation of Jeff Sessions
• Everything swirling about the ACA
• The potential restructuring of our intelligence agencies

This is not to say that none of these things are getting press coverage; it's just that all of this is happening so quickly and we can only focus on one or two of them at a time, and we also might get fatigued. It's kind of the governing equivalent of the Gish Gallop. Expect more of this....