Wednesday Mashup (12/29/10)

Kind of a "Turbo" version coming up here…

With the departure of the 111th Congress, it looks like it’s time for the wingnuts to begin their umbrage festival over how much further this latest session allegedly ended up sinking our country into debt (here).

I’m not going to waste any more time trying to dissect this, since I’m sure a week or so later someone who knows more about these matters than I do will end up pointing out how such a conclusion is wrong (For example, how is it the fault of this Congress that it has spent funds for wars Iraq and Afghanistan that did not originate on its watch? Or for Dubya’s useless stinking tax cuts for the “pay no price, bear no burden” crowd, which deprived our government of needed revenue?).

Instead, I’ll merely point out (speaking of Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History) that this shows how much he added to the debt versus other presidents in the last 50 or so years, and wonder how the right-wing echo chamber can carry reality avoidance to yet another whole new level.

Also (speaking again of Number 43), the book he allegedly authored, “Decision Points,” has sold 2 million copies, as noted here.

Considering the voluminous instances of plagiarism, as noted here, I’m sure that, in another dimension somewhere, P.T. Barnum is having one great big laugh after another, both over the author and the poor suckers who shelled out hard-earned money to read a tome that Dubya was too lazy to actually write himself.

Finally, there was much rejoicing at the Daily Tucker here over the upcoming return of the U.S. House from the “iron-fisted” Nancy Pelosi (too damn funny – some reality-based commentary on the former speaker is here) to “show Republicans are listening to Americans frustrated with Washington’s ways of doing business”…

One of the most significant changes — and a favorite of Tea Party activists — will require members of Congress who introduce legislation to cite the powers in the Constitution to enact it. To emphasize the importance of the U.S. Constitution, Boehner will have it read aloud on Jan. 6.

As dday tells us here…

This is fairly anodyne stuff, and if it’s the worst by-product of the Tea Party’s newfound prominence in national politics, we’ll have all dodged a very large bullet. But this just seems needlessly silly to me. If legislation is unconstitutional that will come out somewhere down the line. Entire court cases are devoted to this question, I’m told. And a line inside the legislation, which “proves” the Constitutionality, just isn’t going to be good enough for the judicial branch, I can safely assume.

There’s an Office of Legislative Counsel which already provides advice on Constitutional matters to lawmakers. So this mechanism already exists. Spelling it out in the legislation may make a few tea party activists happy (although I doubt it), but it does nothing to actually address matters of constitutionality.

And given how thoroughly those newly-minted Repug reps elected to Capitol Hill are likely to be absorbed into the corporatist wing of their party (as noted here), a recitation of the Constitution is all the teabaggers are likely to get for their trouble.

Tee hee hee…

Update 1/3/11: I thought this was a terrific post by David Waldman concerning the whole "reading of the Constitution" thing, particularly the stuff on John Lewis.