Tuesday, May 30, 2006

A Bad Case of the Stupids

The U.S. House and Senate are having bad cases of the stupids right now and if the party in power doesn't wise up, they'll be the party out of power. The first case of the stupids comes from their reaction to William Jefferson (D - Louisiana) having all that cold hard cash. There has been a long-standing unwritten rule that congressional offices are sacrosanct. The reason given for it is separation of powers. But if followed slavishly with no exceptions, it would allow representatives to have an untouchable base from which to conduct all manner of criminal activity. Theoretically, under this gentleman's agreement, as long as the representative kept the body in a file cabinet, he could commit and get away with murder without impunity. To people out here in the real world, this is patently absurd. And yet, rather than be happy that the FBI has possibly rooted out corruption in what is supposed to be an honorable body, they're in a flap because William Jefferson's office was searched. With a subpoena. Congress, which issues subpoenas of their own like candy, wants the right to be able to ignore one. How out of touch you must be to not realize how out of touch you appear taking a stance like that. Comity of the branches be damned, it looks like you think you have the right to be better than I. Nobody else gets to ignore lawful subpoenas and neither should the offices of a representative.

The Senate is just as tone deaf with the illegal immigration bill. They're so worried about turning off a potential voter base that they are fomenting revulsion an actual voter base: law abiding citizens. Americans (including Hispanics) want the border controlled. Then and only then should the question of what to do about all the illegals in here should be addressed. Offering illegals a smorgasbord of goodies (whether or not you call it amnesty) will just motivate more illegal immigration. This is not rocket science. That is, unless you're one of the one hundred men and women trying to curry political favor instead of do the right thing.

Republicans are running scared they're going to lose in the fall elections. If they keep ignoring the regular people they will.

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