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Friday, March 05, 2010
Are We Reconciled To This?
Contrary to what some persons believe, the requirement that six-tenths of sitting Senators vote to close debate on a contested bill before the United States Senate isn't a Constitutional requirement. It's a Senate operating rule, adopted long ago to favor vigorous debate of contentious issues and to ensure that the minority's voice will be heard even when the majority is substantial.
That having been said, the exploitation of that rule to prevent a vote on a contested bill, a procedure colloquially known as the filibuster, has been frequent in American history. More, other Senate operating rules make it plain that this method for defeating a bill cannot lightly be shoved aside. To eliminate the rule would require a supermajority concurrence. The sole exception to the rule, reconciliation, is supposed to be reserved to the passage of bills that resolve budgetary differences between House and Senate bills.
Barack Hussein Obama and his Congressional henchmen know all that. It doesn't seem to trouble them; their intention to ram the federalization of health care down our throats using reconciliation is now undisguised. Even the overwhelming likelihood that the Democrats will lose both their Congressional majorities as the price of that maneuver no longer deters them, in witness whereof we have Nancy Pelosi's "take one for the team" rhetoric of a few days ago.
Mind you, the filibuster was quite all right with the Democrats when it could be used to block bills favored by Republican majorities, during the Clinton and Bush II Administrations. The insincerity of their stance is beyond dispute. But like the prospect of shattering defeats in November, having their power lust on egregious display hasn't inhibited them.
Numerous analysts have opined that the federalization of health care is a critical stepping stone on the way to a completely unbounded federal government. The Democrats, who favor exactly that, see themselves as its inevitable and permanent ruling cadre, unbound at last by any Constitutional constraint. If that's an accurate assessment, then the Democrats' ejection from power in November would be purely temporary.
Your Curmudgeon believes we are witnessing mass criminal malfeasance on Capitol Hill. Congressmen and Senators take an oath much like that taken by a newly inaugurated president:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Under such an oath, the operating rules of the Senate, and the dictates of the Constitution, for the Democrats to use reconciliation as the gateway through which to slip a health-care federalization bill, itself unConstitutional ab initio, is malfeasance: a public official's deliberate perversion of the powers of his office. But Senate Democrats won't indict themselves, nor is any court likely to do so.
What, then, must we do?
Criminal complaints against sitting Senators, sworn before the appropriate federal district court, have not yet been tried. Yet it would seem the logical course: the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land, and the sovereign American people its sole enforcement agency. Under the common law, a criminal complaint filed before a court with the proper jurisdiction compels responsible peace officers to arrest the subject of the complaint and bind him over for trial. But the United States Code does not define a crime of malfeasance as perpetrated by a federal legislator. The legal ground appears unfavorable.
Claire Wolfe's saying that "it's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards" has long been one of your Curmudgeon's favorites. But it might not hold true much longer. The time to shoot the bastards is drawing ever nearer.
Apropos of which, we have these sentiments:
But when a long train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
The style is archaic, but the conception still rings true.
When will the bugle sound? Who will sound it? And who will rally to his banner?
Our time is growing short.
Comments
One of my favorite sayings: When the government angers you, and moves you to violence, get your gun and step out on your porch. If you’re the only one on your porch, go back in side and put down the gun. Lately I’ve seen a lot more people standing out on their porches. If this passes via such chicanery, we might see the whole neighborhood out there.
Posted by Jeff Medcalf on 03/05/2010 at 02:36 PMReconciliation is mis-direction Once the House approves the Senate bill Obamacare is the law of the land when the president signs it. The reconciliation threat is a promise to get through the corrections the House members need to vote yes in the future much like the promise of no more amnesties in ‘86.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/05/2010 at 04:52 PMThis comment from a forum I’ve long forgotten, “to Hell with Washington, we should form our own government,” has long been one of my favorites. I used to think it a clever way to beg the question, of late I think it a concise opinion of our duty as citizens.
Posted by Ol' Remus on 03/05/2010 at 10:40 PM“Your Curmudgeon believes we are witnessing mass criminal malfeasance on Capitol Hill”
Once again, the parallels with the early Nazi acquisition of power are there: all spuriously legal, and part of a death-by-a-thousand-cuts policy.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/07/2010 at 10:05 PM
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