Revisions and extensions
Alright, so, what was that all about. Kevin described it pretty well. Last week was Congress's last week in town before adjourning for a month, until after the Labor Day holiday (if you think that's a long vacation (technically "district work period"), look at Britain: they're off until October). On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD
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It's not a big deal that you don't have the same kind of time that I have to do this, I would in fact be sort of concerned if you did. Once we get into September and October, and the fight over the newly vetoed budget begins (this is pure speculation, by the way; you didn't miss anything), I won't have any time to be watching this happen (though I'll still try to have time to write stuff about it), either. So, onto your questions.
The motion to recommit is a procedural motion that, if passed, takes the bill under consideration off of the House floor, and puts it back in the committee that it came from for further debate. Motions to recommit can be made either with or without "instructions", a bit that instructs the committee to add an amendment to the bill before bringing it back to the floor (the great majority are with instructions; the motion is usually seen as a last-ditch effort to amend the bill). Depending on how the motion is worded, the bill will either actually go back to the committee, in effect postponing final action on the bill, or it will only go back to the committee in a pro forma way, and "come back" to the floor immediately, with the amendment added. In the first case, the phrase "(insert congressman) moves to recommit the bill, H.R. (blank), to the Committee on (blank) with instructions to report the same back to the House promptly with an amendment..." appears to start the motion, while in the second case, the word "promptly" is replaced with "forthwith".
So, to sum up, it's a motion that that the minority uses to throw the bill back to committee to amend the bill one last time, and, in some cases, derail the bill for a short time.
The whips on either side are charged with knowing what members are going to vote with their side, and which members they need to persuade (the act of going through and figuring how many votes you can count on is usually referred to as "taking a whip count"). They are usually thought of as the 3rd highest ranking member of the majority, only outranked by the Speaker of the House and Majority Leader, and the 2nd highest ranking member of the minority (only the Minority Leader outranks them). To use an example of what the job of the whip comes down to, Tom DeLay was one of the best whips that the Republican party has seen in recent history because, when it came down to it, he could be counted on to get the votes he needed, by any means necessary. Now, some may object to the methods that he used, but in the end, that's the job of the whip: make sure that you get your members in line so that you have enough votes to do what your party wants to do.
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