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PrintJanuary 5, 2011
The Liberal Press Meets the Law That Governs Government
MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell asked her "favorite wonk," liberal Washington Post child writer Ezra Klein, whether the GOP's opening the 112th Congress by reading the Constitution aloud is a gimmick.
Klein said that of course it was a gimmick because reading the Constitution aloud "has no binding effect on anything." I suppose the same could be said of the daily prayer to open each day Congress is in session -- not binding.
Besides, Klein told O'Donnell, "the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago."
Maybe liberals would have been happier had the Constitution had an expiration date. "Best used by 1930," or something like that.
And, maybe someone will text the Constitution in a series of tweets to help those who didn't study it, like graduates of Harvard and Yale law schools. 1st Am: u r free 2 speak.
Thus, before the Constitution was read aloud on the floor of the House for the first time in history, Mr. Klein said aloud what many of us had long suspected what the left thinks about the Constitution.
To them, it's hot air like so much of what is said on the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
In the twisted political world of Washington, the law that governs government -- the Constitution -- is malleable and negotiable like everything else that takes place in that town.
That is why it is important for constitutional conservatives to emphasize one point over and over. The Constitution isn't just a compact or a set of guiding principles.
The Constitution is the law that governs government.
Those in government who seek to evade the Constitution seek to evade the law that binds them. Call them what you will: statists, ruling-class elites, bureaucrats, politicians. In a sense, however, they are every bit the miscreant lawbreakers as low-level hoodlums and high-level con artists, except they are lawbreakers who have been rewarded, not punished, for their lawbreaking.
The anti-constitutional left is in a quandary because the Constitution is now being forced on them. They are resorting to demagoguery against constitutional proponents. They may as well be attacking motherhood and apple pie, which they would if motherhood and apple pie threatened their political belief system.
In that regard, the Tea Party is like the new sheriff in town. Like a town run too long by the wrong element and gone bad, it's going to take some cleaning up, but the law that governs government will be enforced.
And how will the liberal press handle all this, which is a threat to its own power base? As they say, stay tuned.
