Congress of Goons

I'm on just about everybody's email list, which is why I don't understand all the hissin' and dissin' of spam. Everything I get is spam. One recent spam-mail pressed me to visit ProtectYourVote.org. (The real Spam, after all, is pressed ham.) And since this particular spam post was from The Liberty Committee, I visited.

The Liberty Committee includes The Liberty Caucus which is headed by TX Rep Ron Paul, the only sitting (or standing or leaning or just hanging about) member of Congress who ever ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket. Therefore, wisely or otherwisely, he's the only politician I believe. And he wants me to believe that a coalition of connivers intends to convert our Constitution so that reps get appointed rather than elected in case of a national emergency. The coalition is called COG, which stands for Continuity of Government. COG is a solution to a conjured up catastrophe that will likely never happen:

Suppose, back on that day forever identified simply as 911, United Flight 93 had plowed into the US Capitol instead of plowing up a field in Pennsylvania. And suppose that Congress had been in session, packed full of reps sitting or standing or leaning or just hanging about. Can you imagine the implications?

I certainly can. I'd really miss that grand old building. It's not that I'm waxing sentimental over governmental symbolism, I just think that particular piece of architecture would make a really great museum someday. Sort of a Hall of Horrors where future generations of emancipated schoolchildren can go on field trips to ooh and aah over displays of political corruption and greed and constitutional abuses back in the dark old pre-libertarian days. But others see a different kind of calamity. All of our leaders would die and there would be no Continuity of Government! Nobody to tell us what to do! Nobody to think for us! Nobody to force us to be sensitive and diverse and compassionate. Nobody to tell us to crawl out from under our beds and go back to our jobs where the real work of this country gets done every day!

There's an article on this Vote/Blog/Committee/Caucus web site by Phyllis Schlafly, borrowed from townhall.com, called "COG stands for surprising assault on democracy". Personally, I think COG stands for Congress of Goons. Because that's what we would get.

The COG Committee is distressed that it would take several months for special elections to vote up a second string of US congresscrooks, leaving us lowbrows leaderless. That's a problem? Months of no new taxes, no new regulations, no new unfunded mandates, no new rights violations, no new interns inaugurated by incumbents. What a horrifying happenstance for the Big Government class. People might actually discover that they don't need to be led!

The plan, then, is to implement an amendment whereby all elected House hang-abouts offer up a wish list of their own replacements. Then, the sitting (or standing or leaning or just hanging about) Governor of each state gets to appoint a proxy from these roll calls of replacement representatives should the original elected ones perish in a terrorist tragedy. As Schlafly herself shudders, "Gov. Gray Davis could appoint 53 representatives from California."

So let's see how this works. Rep Rob Rezidentz (R-RI) jots down his optional officeholders. Eldest son. Brother-in-law. Law partner. Mom. Mistress. Local political boss. Biggest campaign contributor. He also gets to change his lineup whenever he wants. "That damned brother-in-law voted for a Democrat. He's off the list and Uncle Guido is on." Wanna bet these lists will eventually be declared national secrets, even though the amendment doesn't spell that out as currently written? Wanna bet the wording will be so vague that some future gov lovin' Supreme Court will rule that "the intent" of the amendment was to make this change permanent? That's the ticket, all right. A ticket we'll never get to vote for.

What we need is an amendment that makes it easier to rid ourselves of our legislative louts, not easier to make them permanent.

This Congress of Goons Committee is backed by heavy-hitting Institutes Brookings and American Enterprise, and funded by Carnegie and the likes of the Hewlett and Packard Foundations. Waitaminnit. Hewlett and Packard Foundations? Everything on my desktop is Hewlett Packard. My computer, my printer, my scanner, my fax, my CD reader-writer, my cheap little promo pen with the lower case hp logo.

I feel a boycott coming on. What's the phone number for Dell?