Oh. Goodie:
When John Boehner takes over one of the most powerful jobs in Washington this week, he says his first order of business is to make himself less powerful.
On Wednesday the new speaker of the House of Representatives plans to offer a package of rule changes that, he says, will give minority-party members more of a say and decentralize power. […]
Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it?
But wait. There are hints that Boehner is playing the “comity” veneer just as surely as Obama is trying the same gambit:
His pledge to reshape Congressional practices isn’t aimed at Beltway wonks, but at voters who view Congress as the epitome of a dysfunctional government. A primary example cited by Republicans: President Barack Obama’s health overhaul, which they criticize as having been written by a small group of Democratic party leaders who traded favors with key lawmakers. Democrats reject that, saying the bill included many Republican ideas and played out in public for nearly a year.
Mr. Boehner has promised to give more power to committee chairmen, and to put cameras in meetings of the powerful Rules Committee, which sets guidelines for congressional debate.
“I’m going to run the House my way and work with members on both sides of the aisle to decide what should come to the floor and what shouldn’t come to the floor,” Mr. Boehner told reporters recently. He declined a request for an interview.
One of Wednesday’s first votes could be Mr. Boehner’s package of rule changes. Among them:
• Lawmakers will be required to vote on whether or not to raise the federal debt ceiling, a move sought by tea-party representatives. Current rules let the House automatically raise the limit when they pass a budget.
• All legislation must be posted online 72 hours before going to the House floor to prevent party leaders from changing bills the night before House votes, as has been the practice over the years.
GOP House members are expected to approve the changes at a meeting on Tuesday, making passage most likely a formality when the full House votes.
Boehner is tough to read.
Best bet? To focus on what these people do with their power, not what they say they’ll do.
There’s something cocked about this, if true, to the extent that it’s true. If the GOP is in fact different, in the sense that it intends to reconcile itself to the main theory of uniquely American politics, it doesn’t need to be in a hurry, it merely needs to do what is right by that theory at every turn. All that requires is constant questioning of itself by itself: “Are we adhering to the main idea or are we not?”
Which can be sufficient, I think, if the GOP can properly articulate that main idea in the first place: hence the cockedness of the thing. What, they don’t know the main idea?
I’d rather see power devolve to the caucus than to the committee chairmen.
“When word and deed conflict, believe the action. Every. Damn. Time.”
Since they can change the rules as they see fit whenever they want to, this doesn’t impress me all that much. I’m on board with the idea of waiting to see what they actually do. For all we know this is kabuki for the MFM.
They’ve already posted the Repeal Bill. That’s more than Nancy-cunt Pelosi-cunt ever did.
Or Hairy-cock Reed-cock, for that matter.
Did nancy give her jet back yet?
Given some of the shenanigans that have resulted in legislation passing over the last couple of years, some fundamental changes in the way business is done could be quite welcome. They could also be window dressing. We shall see.
This ain’t too bad:
That’s tomahawk style.
Well I don’t know about the rest of this procedural stuff but if Boehner just spends the next 2 years making statements like that to assholes like Durbin, Reid and Schumer, I’ll be quite happy with him.
John Mitchell’s Law: Don’t watch – sic – what we say; watch what we do.
progg comedy
“Yale Law School constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar said he supports the reading. “I like the Constitution,” said Mr. Amar, author of “America’s Constitution: A Biography.”
But he added: “My disagreement is when we actually read the Constitution as a whole, it doesn’t say what the tea party folks think it says.”
He argues that the Constitution charters a “very broad federal power,” and is not the narrow state’s rights document that tea party activists insist it is.”
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11002/1114750-84.stm?cmpid=nationworld.xml
remember that Akhil Reed Amar is effin’ old style dutch
East Indies perhaps.
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Mr. Akhil Reed Amar should go fuck himself with a barb-wire wrapped baseball bat and consider re-learning English.