Lawmakers voted 184-240 against Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) amendment to a GOP-led bill that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gases.
The amendment from Waxman — the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee — reflects Democratic efforts to cast the bill as an outrageous trampling of scientific consensus.
No sympathy for Waxman here. The only outrageous trampling going on here is the public trust. One wishes one could trust the government by default, but these ‘pariah dogs and wandering madmen‘ have completely exhausted their credibility.
Note to the Left: you’re going to have to focus on rebuilding that credibility first, or face increasing ridicule.
An exit question. Who is silliest, then: Waxman, Capps, or the state of California for afflicting us with them?
In fairness, she’s quoting from the Federalist Papers, which spoke eloquently of “passing some laws so we can find out what great shit’s in them, and stuff.” Pretty sure that was John Jay.
It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.
Federalist No. 1, October 27, 1787
If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
Federalist No. 33, January 3, 1788
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.
Alexander Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 62, 1788
Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
Federalist No. 62, 1788
If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last…. A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, Aug 28, 1794
Pelosi is consistently atrocious, if you recall her Are you serious? Are you serious? interrogative from last October.
Yes, Madame Speaker, we’re as serious as a
Update II:Dan Riehl, as is his wont, puts a ‘positive’ spin on matters:
I think I need a shower after watching the political news. And I’d really appreciate it if Rahm Emanuel left me alone long enough to scrub off the grime of the Democrats we’re getting to see in all their glory right now.
Heckuva job, Barry! Through incompetence and trying to foist your agenda on a nation that mostly rejects it, you are destroying the Democrat brand. He really is, you know. This all begins and ends with Obama. And at this rate, there may not be much of a party left by the time he’s finished. And he will be finished in 2012. Mark my words.
In defense of BHO, while the POTUS is nominally the head cheese of the party, the fact that he’s been national-level goods only since he Gave Good Speech in 2004 means that older, saner heads should be offering Rehoboam more forceful advice.