Our Congress - Friday Villainy 1/7/2005

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, while lamenting that he couldn't see the Hamilton/Jefferson debate at the New York Historical Society, decided to watch a little C-Span last night. Actually, the wee Villain was a little cranky and had decided that he had to be held by either his mother or father to be contented. Mrs. Villain had some other stuff to do (on the computer no less) and it fell to your Maximum Leader to comfort his offspring.

And when one is holding a 21 lb, squirmy, six month old villain you are pretty much relegated to watching some TV and playing with teething toys.

So, your Maximum Leader couldn't find anything good on the TV and decided to watch some C-Span. He caught the counting of Electoral College votes, and the subsequent protest of the acceptance of Ohio's electoral votes.

Your Maximum Leader watched the counting, then the protest, then the House debate on the protest. He decided he couldn't stomach the Senate debate of the protest. So he got up and put on "The Taming of the Shrew."

Allow your Maximum Leader to award his Friday Villainy accolade jointly to Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) for bringing all legislative business in our national legislature to a halt for a whole afternoon. Your Maximum Leader commends Rep. Jones and Sen. Boxer for causing Congress to do what your Maximum Leader likes Congress doing.

Namely do nothing but debate with no chance of passsing a law.

Yes, loyal minions while your Maximum Leader cannot abide by Senator Boxer (and had never heard of Representative Jones) and has generally wished she would fall into a great dark chasm in the earth ne'er to be heard of again (and he suspects he would wish the same fate to Representative Jones), he respects her accomplishment.

Did anyone actually watch some of that debate? It was a continuous stream of Democrats coming to the floor and decrying our voting systems. The Democrats would speak and speak about the (real and imagined) problems had by citizens trying to exercise their franchise.

But other than speaking what could they do? Nothing. Under the rules of the House, debate was limited to 2 hours. (Sadly it could not go on longer.) And at the end of the debate the only vote possible was a vote for or against certification of Ohio's Electoral Votes. No amendments, no changes, no setting up of commissions. Just an up or down vote on the Electoral Votes.

So, if you watched the debates, as did your Maximum Leader and the wee Villain, you would have been treated to hystrionics and lamentations from Democrats with a common theme. That theme was this: our voting system is messed up and Congress should do something about it.

Does anyone else see the delicious irony of all this?

Congress spent over 2 hours of legislative time talking about doing things that they cannot do. The Representatives talked about investigations and commissions and laws in a format where they couldn't take a vote on actually performing an investigation, or setting up a commission, or passing a law. They talked about how they need to reform the voting system nation-wide. But most voting laws are made and executed by the states, Congress has very little authority to do much to change the way localities conduct their elections.

Your Maximum Leader sat in front of his 46 inch widescreen HDTV and laughed and laughed. He also explained what was (and wasn't) going on to the wee Villain; who was much amused by events.

All in all it was pretty darned villainous.

Oh. By the way, Congress has, now, confirmed the Electoral College vote and certified Bush as the winner of the election.

Carry on.