Reading The Rule Book

One reason why I lean towards the GOP is that they attempt to maintain the pretense of have read and understood our Constitution at some point in the recent past.

Each member of the House has had to attach a Constitutional Authority Statement (CAS) to every proposed bill since Jan. 5, 2011.

However, one group of Republicans is unimpressed by the offered justifications for constitutionality.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) analyzes each statement—3,865 in the first year alone—and in response to some of the more questionable justifications began emailing every congressional office a “Questionable Constitutional Authority Statement of the Week.”

“We started highlighting horrible Constitutional Authority Statements because there were so many of them,” said Brian Straessle, RSC spokesman. “Think of it as a shaming mechanism to get people to think seriously and carefully about the intended limits of the federal government’s power.”

Newt Gingrich, for all of his flaws, had at least one redeeming quality.  He thought that members of Congress should read the Constitution as well as the works of the founders so that they would have some sort of familiarity with what the words in the Constitution mean.

The Democratic leadership abandoned that idea a long, long time ago.