The closed-door meetings, the obfuscation of the text of the bills until the eleventh hour, the byzantine length and verbiage of the bills, the exclusion of the minority party from the crafting of legislation, the severe limitation of the amendment process, and the Saturday evening votes when nobody was paying attention all showed that Democrats were prepared to violate rule and custom to get President Obama's health care-welfare bill passed. Waiving the Senate rules to allow for a simple majority, as if the Senate (which tellingly represents the states and not the people) were merely another House of Representatives, to pass the bill demonstrated this rule or ruin mentality had been taken to a whole new level. More farcical still for our republican form of government is the plan to pass the Senate bill without taking an actual recorded vote in the House of Representatives on the Senate bill. The so-called "deem and pass" would be another extraordinary breakage with precedent. Do you recall Social Security, Medicare, or the Reagan tax cuts passing in such an obscene manner? What's amazing is that there are, presumably, House Democrats who actually believe that "deem and pass," and the symbolic amending of the Senate bill, would free them from owning the unpopular aspects of the Senate bill. A vote for "deem and pass" is a vote for the Senate bill. This reeks of the I-voted-for-the-bill-before-I voted-against-it verbal legerdemain that makes decent people find politicians indecent. Any campaign season weasel language by "yea" voting Democrats in competitive districts will merely show their imprudence to be matched by their dishonesty. Own it.
It's incredible how quickly since the election of Obama this country has devolved into a near banana republic like pseudo dictatorship.
There are just NO stieeenking rules that the Corruptocrats chose to follow! Procedural, legal, what have you, does not seem to matter.
This is certainly the 'Change' that Barry promised and had in mind. Not the change the electorate thought would follow.
From the Kuhner of the Washington Post...
"Mr. Obama is imposing a leftist revolution. Since coming to office, he has behaved without any constitutional restraints. The power of the federal government has exploded. He has de facto nationalized key sectors of American life - the big banks, financial institutions, the automakers, large tracts of energy-rich land from Montana to New Mexico. His cap-and-trade proposal, along with a newly empowered Environmental Protection Agency, seeks to impose massive new taxes and regulations upon industry. It is a form of green socialism: Much of the economy would fall under a command-and-control bureaucratic corporatist state. Mr. Obama even wants the government to take over student loans."
'Bout says it all.
That would be Washington Times.
