This We Will Defend: "Slaughter Strategy" Is An Affront To The Constitution
By Steve Schippert
March 11, 2010
Lose sight of what you are defending and defense isn't all that important, is it?
This simple reminder compels us to shift focus for the moment from our combative enemies and onto that which we defend. We do not engage in such rigorous defense - in its many forms - simply to preserve soil or borders or lives. We engage in rigorous defense of ideas. Ideas embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. We do not defend simply the shores and borders and people of America. We defend - rigorously - so much more than that. We defend what it means to be American. We defend what it is that inspires so many countless others to risk life, limb and treasure to get to America even still.
And, to put it plainly, there is tyranny afoot and it must be confronted and defeated with confidence, determination and passion. The confrontation is not about health care or any other piece of legislation. It is not about politicians, politics or parties.
The confrontation is about process. The confrontation is about fidelity to the Constitution.
House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter says she is "prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill." She continued, explaining how House passage of a separate bill containing "changes" to the Senate version would lead House leadership to "deem" the actual Senate HealthCare Bill passed - without a direct vote.
This is not simply tyrannical in nature, it is absolute political cowardice.
Whether any American likes or dislikes any bill - any bill - none of us are governed under a Constitution nor any Congress within a Constitution that affords for an individual in an elected body to "deem" anything. We elected you, for better or worse, to vote on legislation, whether we like the specific outcome or not. There is a process within both the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
The notion of anyone "deeming" anything "passed" without going through the actual voting process of real passage is the kind of governance seen in Saddam Hussein's Iraq or Bashar Assad's Syria or Castro's Cuba.
Few things in this lifetime have inspired such furious rage as this brazen attempt to undermine the legislative process as set forth within the Constitution of the United States...
Read the moving rest: http://threatswatch.org/commentary/2010/03/this-we-will-defend/
Heyworth? Grew up in Gibson City. Still call it home, even after having left 25 years ago.
ReplyDeleteNice to 'meet' and thanks for the kind words. Teeter between sorrow and rage every day watching what's being done to our Constitution. Brazen is a kind descriptor.