The 111th Congress Saga Begins

Well, Congress is back in Session and it looks like Pelosi is setting up a dictatorship. It's little surprise that the Speakership was a straight party line but not one member of The Party stepped out of line. She has them firmly under her control and the most any of them would do is not vote at all and not many of them even dared that means of resisting her whip.

Not really much has happened. They passed the new rules for the House, defeating the minority party's instructions, again, along straight party lines. While the record of what The Party prevented from being admitted to the record is not yet in the record, the revision to the rules are on the record.

Our "Representative" was there and voted The Party line and the revision to the rules not only give "The Speaker" greater powers, and make expanding the National Debt easier but also made the rules "politically correct" right down to the statement saying that one gender means both genders. No more the "use of the masculine pronoun also means feminine."

Why does that matter? Who cares if it says his, hers, or "of the Sergeant-at-Arms?" Sure, it lengthens the rules document and hence means using more paper, but does it really change anything legally? In the manner that they did it, yes. There exists a significant difference, legally, between "a designee" and "his designee."

Possessive pronouns (his, her, their, its) have a distinctive definition that is cumbersome to replace in a politically correct "gender neutral" form such as "of the Representative" or "of the Chairman," make that "of the Chair." But the authors of the new rules were lazy and didn't always use that cumbersome language.

This is not simply nit-picking. It is the kind of thing that lawyers, (most of which our "Representatives" are) are paid to notice and exploit. I don't know for sure why the minority party voted against the new rules in unison, but I do know that the laziness of the authors of The Speaker's new found political correctness rules and power has significantly changed in a negative way.

Nor are the bills associated with House Vote 5 & 6 out yet, though again we find The Party voting lock step while the minority party seems to have voted on their opinions of the merit of the bills. The Republicans voted both for and against the later bills.

Tennessee Taylor©2009, TNT, all rights reserved