Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader would like to make a few housekeeping items known before blogging. I’ve added another new link to the blog roll. It is Gregg Easterbrook over at the New Republic. If you do not know Gregg Easterbrook, he is the writer of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN’s Page 2. And he is a really intelligent guy. I can’t say I always agree with him. But I enjoy reading him, perhaps you will too. (Speaking of Page 2, also check out Stacey Pressman’s column on Metrosexuals. If you want take the test to find out if you are one… Your Maximum Leader scored 1 of 12 to discover that he was not a metrosexual.) Another change to the links is that I removed my Conservative Uberbabe link to Ann Coulter. While I do find Ann lovely, entertaining, and thought-provoking; your Maximum Leader grows tired of her. Not sure why that is. Please know, that your Maximum Leader still does have an inexplicable fondness for Jennifer Love Hewitt. He doesn’t understand it, Mrs. Villain doesn’t understand it, but one of the Villainettes mentioned that she can shake her booty (after seeing one of JLH’s videos).
Enough of this sillyness! Now on to some comments..
Is anyone else distressed about the Do Not Call List? The FTC is. The Congress is. The Courts are. Your Maximum Leader is not.
This is not to say that I enjoy being called during dinnertime by telemarketers. I do not. But what I enjoy even less than telemarketing calls is LAWMAKERS BEING STUPID!
From time to time if you follow politics you will hear a familar refrain. It contains some variation of the phrase, “I want to break the gridlock in Washington and get things done.” Allow your Maximum Leader to go on the record. I love gridlock. I like going slow. I like that nothing can ever seem to get done. In case you never read the Federalist Papers or studied the separation of powers in the US Constitution; allow your Maximum Leader to educate you. The whole bloody system was set up to create gridlock. This is not to say that nothing can ever get done. We have over 216 years of history that show that laws still get made and Congress, the President, and the Courts can accomplish things. But my contention is that nothing should get done quickly.
Who knew that if you wanted to speed the President’s $87 billion request for Iraq through Congress it should have been made a rider to the bill re-authorizing the Federal Do Not Call list? Your Maximum Leader is shocked and dismayed at how fast that bill made it through the House and Senate. The only bill I can think of passed recently that made it through Congress with equal speed was the much maligned Patriot Act.
What is wrong with both of these bills? They are ill-considered. There wasn’t time to debate, think over, or study the issues at hand. I would like to know if the House dispensed with all those mandatory readings bills have to go through? And how any legislation can move through the Senate in less than a 6 months is beyond me… Your Maximum Leader believes in that famous quotation from Thomas Jefferson (or perhaps John Adams or Thomas Paine - no one really seems to know) that “the government that governs least governs best.” And if a government is rushing to pass laws, it is not doing its best governance.
When the Patriot Act was passed, your Maximum Leader turned to Mrs. Villain and said “I don’t care what is in that law, it is a bad one.” Although your Maximum Leader does not belive that the Patriot Act is nearly as bad as the New York Times seems to think it is, I do believe it is a bad law. Congress can’t be expected to make good laws in the week after the nation has been attacked by Islamofascists. Your Maximum Leader would have encouraged, nay required, that Congress go home for a few days after the attacks. Calm down for a moment. Get your wits about you. Then come back and start legislating.
So, where does that leave us? Well it leaves us with the Patriot Act alive and well, but the Do Not Call List apparently dead. Frankly, neither of them should be laws.
Carry on.
