Adding fuel to the fire

It's beginning to appear that everyone these days plays fast and loose with the Constitution.

WASHINGTON – For anyone who took fifth-grade social studies or sang “I’m Just a Bill,” how legislation turns to law always seemed pretty simple: The House passes a bill, the Senate passes the same bill, the president signs it.

“He signed ya, Bill – now you’re a law,” shouts the cartoon lawmaker on “Schoolhouse Rock” as Bill acknowledges the cheers.

But last month, Washington threw all that old-fashioned civics stuff into a tizzy, when President Bush signed into law a bill that never passed the House. Bill – in this case, a major budget-cutting measure that will affect millions of Americans – became a law because it was “certified” by the leaders of the House and Senate.

Certified?

After stewing for weeks, Public Citizen, a legislative watchdog group, sued Tuesday to block the budget-cutting law, charging that Bush and Republican leaders of Congress flagrantly violated the Constitution when the president signed it into law knowing that the version that cleared the House was substantively different from the Senate’s version.

The issue is bizarre, with even constitutional scholars saying they could not think of any precedent for the journey the budget bill took to becoming a law.

Republicans, who passed the budget cutting law, are citing an old 1890s precedent. Democrats are howling unconstitutionality, which only proves that even blind pigs find acorns once in awhile. Imagine, the party of the "living document" in defense of the text as written!

How can conservatives insist that we must be a nation of laws, not of human whim, when they would take an egregious shortcut even in a good cause? Stunts like this only heap fuel to the fire for the moonbats.

After witnessing what is being offered by the U.S. Senate as so-called immigration "reform", we're beginning to think there's barely a salvageable member of Congress from either party.

May God preserve the Republic. We certainly don't seem to be getting the job done.