Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Caught My Eye

From David Corn:
“On Thursday, Capitol Hill Republicans, a day after taking control of the House, intend to read the U.S. Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives. This is, of course, a stunt designed to position the GOPers as the party that really, really, really cares about constitutional government. But the exercise is the showy equivalent of wearing a flag pin..."
They really hate them those flag pins. They just can't drop it. Just keeps leaking out.

3 comments:

jaed said...

The flag-pin allergy remains hilarious, in a sad kind of way. It's like garlic to a vampire.

What actually interests me more about all the handwringing over reading the Constitution at the start of a congressional session is the seeming obliviousness to the power of ritual to focus the mind.

Shouldn't they be proposing that Congress should do some other ritual at the start of sessions? If they don't like the Constitution, maybe just the Bill of Rights? The Declaration? MLK's "Dream" speech? Something that would focus Congress on what (they believe should be) its primary duty?

But no. The argument is that the whole idea of ritual is ridiculous and silly.

Texan99 said...

I'm reading a book about the Permian extinction. The author can't restrain himself from tossing in the occasional quip about George Bush or Texas, a state apparently stuffed full of knuckle-draggers who hate and fear science and communists. Ha ha, "Permian" is a name given to a geological stratum that's taken from a Russian tribe, ha ha, bet those Texas high school kids during the Cold War didn't realize that. All this when he's supposed to be mounting an argument about the possible causes for the Permian extinction 250 million years ago. Pathetic.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Texan99, I regard those as primitive signaling calls, similar to birds announcing their location. You drop a few of those into your writing and conversation to prove that you're one of the tribe.

Rabbits use smell, which I suspect is more efficient.