"The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment," says Jonathan Turley, a noted constitutional scholar and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington Law School. "I think that if the Framers went to Capitol Hill today, it would shake their confidence in the system they created. Congress has become an exercise of raw power with no principles -- and in that environment corruption has flourished. The Republicans in Congress decided from the outset that their future would be inextricably tied to George Bush and his policies. It has become this sad session of members sitting down and drinking Kool-Aid delivered by Karl Rove. Congress became a mere extension of the White House."
So says Rolling Stone, in an eight-page article subtitled "How our national legislature has become a stable of thieves and perverts -- in five easy steps". It's full of choice tidbits like this one:
The GOP's "take that, bitch" approach to governing has been taken to the greatest heights by the House Judiciary Committee. The committee is chaired by the legendary Republican monster James Sensenbrenner Jr., an ever-sweating, fat-fingered beast who wields his gavel in a way that makes you think he might have used one before in some other arena, perhaps to beat prostitutes to death. Last year, Sensenbrenner became apoplectic when Democrats who wanted to hold a hearing on the Patriot Act invoked a little-known rule that required him to let them have one.
"Naturally, he scheduled it for something like 9 a.m. on a Friday when Congress wasn't in session, hoping that no one would show," recalls a Democratic staffer who attended the hearing. "But we got a pretty good turnout anyway."
Sensenbrenner kept trying to gavel the hearing to a close, but Democrats again pointed to the rules, which said they had a certain amount of time to examine their witnesses. When they refused to stop the proceedings, the chairman did something unprecedented: He simply picked up his gavel and walked out.
"He was like a kid at the playground," the staffer says. And just in case anyone missed the point, Sensenbrenner shut off the lights and cut the microphones on his way out of the room.
OK, granted, the author's outrage runs away with him in his choice of word at times. (Just wait, he gets even more furious later.) But this, we call a government? This is right up there with the worst stories of comic-opera banana republics. You can't get too much beyond this before you're having minority-party representatives taken out back of the building and executed.
I believe it was Mark Twain who said that those with weak stomachs should watch the making neither of sausage, nor of law.
Well, Mark Twain had seen Congress, but he hadn't seen the 109th Congress. Weak stomach or not, if you believe that the government of these United States should be of, by and for the people, then you need to go read this article. It needs to be on the front page of every newspaper in the country; it needs to be the top story on every nightly news show and the headliner on every current-events magazine show. The long and the short of it is, our government is not doing its job; it's goofing off, it has abdicated its responsibilities and is doing little but shovel money out of the till and into its members' pockets as fast as it can before the public catches on. The 109th Congress has cut its work hours to almost nothing, has schemed to arrange single-party votes on crucial bills, has totally rewritten bills after committee approval, has refused to allow discussion on bills before voting on them, has excluded Democrats from the conference process on major bills, has openly sold its influence not just to the highest bidder but to ANY bidder with an open wallet or checkbook in hand; has even called the House police to eject its Democratic members from the building before a vote.
We've all heard bits and pieces of this before. I have never seen so much of it collected together in one place until now. It is clear this cannot go on. The only question is how it will end.