US laws: NOT politics as usual UPDATE

[ UPDATE: The insanity continues. Be sure and read a piece Michelle Malkin has up called, appropriately, Shhhhhhh! My favourite quote?:

...

From the House GOP Conference Secretary’s office:

Democrats Gag Debate on Failure to Follow House Rules

(WASHINGTON, DC) – In an astonishing acceleration of the stifling of debate and transparency in the House, Democrats tonight voted to adjourn and gag the planned special orders speeches of U.S. Representatives John Carter (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA).

Carter and King had announced they would discuss Democrat Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D-MD) statement that the upcoming health care reform effort would fail if Members were required to read the legislation. House Democrats accordingly silenced floor debate on the issue by voting to close early. (yes, that is my emphasis)

Mind-boggling. Be sure to go read the rest. Transparency at work? NOT!!! ]


Found the above cartoon at my friend Mary*Ann's site here. In the US, bills of a gazillion pages are voted on, passed into law, even though NOBODY has read the entire documents. Not one of the political representatives seems to have any shame about voting "aye" on millions of pages of documents that put the US millions (make that trillions as of yesterday) of dollars further into debt.

In the early days of BO's reign, he promised at least two things:

One, the most transparent government ever,

Two, that every bill would be posted for 5 days before it would be signed into law. This supposedly to allow that transparency he touted ad nauseum.

Neither of those promises have come to fruition, as the pols ram through bills within hours, that they admit they have not read.

Many Americans are fed up with such cavalier antics, and are doing something about it:

The promise of giving the American people time to read bills before they are voted on in congress has been abandoned. The American people are a frustrated people, as those that have the duty of representing us appear only to be representing themselves. Representatives are tasked to govern in responsible, and limited fashion by the Constitution. Needless to say, they are failing on all counts.

This particular type of failure has prompted the group, Let Freedom Ring to start a petition of sorts. Let Freedom Ring proposes something simple, the idea that our legislators should read the upcoming health care bill in it's entirety before casting a vote. The group is urging Americans to pressure their representatives into signing a pledge in which that representatives promise to their constituents in writing, that they will not vote on any healthcare reform bill if not having 1) read the bill in it's entirety, and 2) if the bill has not been available to the American people in it's entirety for at least 72 hours. http://www.letfreedomringusa.com/pledge-to-read...

Read more here. While this may relate specifically to the health care reform, the demand is that state representatives READ any bills before they sign them..(there's a novel concept.) This is a rumble across America that is swelling to a roar. Americans are beginning to demand that the politicians - who are the public's employees - act responsibly. With 2010 and 2012 the next opportunity to hold politicians accountable, Americans are demanding the career politicians remember that THEY serve the people, not vice versa.

Dwayne Horner has an interesting piece up:

Friday, July 10, 2009

The Audacity of Reading The Bill

Posted by: Dwayne Horner at 10:27 AM

Is it too much to ask our lawmakers to actually read the bill? I posted on this earlier, Let Freedom Ring has a petition for members of Congress to pledge to READ the healthcare bill BEFORE they vote on it. Colin Hanna of Let Freedom Ring recently spent time with Megyn Kelly on Fox News:..

Go watch the video on Townhall here.


The Washington Times also carried a piece:

EDITORIAL: Passing unread laws

Congress hides policy from the people

By | Monday, July 6, 2009

This weekend's Fourth of July festivities celebrated the birth of representative government in America. As the Declaration of Independence set forth 233 years ago, our government derives its power from the consent of the governed. Such consent does not exist when legislation is purposely rammed through Congress so quickly that congressmen -- let alone citizens -- do not have time even to read it.

Welcome to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's House of Representatives. The "people's House" is now a place where bills are voted on not only before legislators or the public have read them, but also before parts of the bills even have been written. Such was the case with a 300-page amendment to the cap-and-trade bill the House passed on June 26. The House leadership could not even produce this amendment on paper, in final form, before it was voted on.

In response to that and other recent outrageous infringements of real representative democracy, a group called Let Freedom Ring is pushing all 435 members of Congress and 100 senators to sign a pledge against such shenanigans on any health care reform bill Congress considers.

All 535 of them ought to do so....(read the rest of common sense here)

Yes, they should. On every single bill. Never mind if a bill exceeds 1300+ pages; maybe if every politician was held to a pledge to read everything, each bill would be in clear, concise prose. What a concept. It is my guess that if every politician was committed to reading every word of what they sign, we would see the advent of coherent, transparent NON-pork bills.

That is "change" we could all believe in.

America is in grave danger right now, and every American who believes in the Constitution the founding fathers moulded, needs to assure their representatives that come the next election, their actions will determine if they get re-elected to the trough that is DC.

Now is not the time to ask "what your country can do for you," but "what you can do for your country."