If you’ve been following this blog for the past few weeks, you know that I attended the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis Tennessee (Jan 12-14). The conference, sponsored by Free Press, drew more than 3,500 participants. Free Press offered a reduced admission fee to those who agreed to…
Back in September, 2006, I bemoaned the lack of a real plan by any Democratic leaders regarding Iraq. Things have not changed since September. It has not been easy to find any leader stepping up with anything other than a symbolic plan or a wish. That is the context of…
If you couldn't make it to Washington, DC, many local communities sponsored their own anti-war protests today. The one I attended was sponsored by the St. Louis Instead of War Coalition. The sponsors assembled the several hundred participants into groups to be photographed, those photos to be delivered to new Missouri…
Author Susan Jacoby has proposed the following as a "little campaign speech" she'd like to hear from candidates running for President. In proposing this speech, she notes that she is taking it for granted that "the 2008 Democratic nominee will be a believer in God and a member of some…
How often have you heard this phrase: “powerful members of Congress.” It gets under my skin. It sometimes makes me seethe. I saw it on the front page of yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch dealing with the President’s State of the Union address:
The prospects: Democrats in Congress have proposed raising the requirement to 60 billion gallons of 2030. Some experts say big reductions in gas usage won’t happen unless Bush orders much higher fuel economy standards, which powerful members of Congress would resist.
[By the way, I’m not trying to single out the Post-Dispatch. This is just an illustrtion. Almost every media publisher across America also uses this phrase]
So there it is. Some members of Congress are more “powerful” than others. What does that mean? Does it mean that they go to the gym more often so that they have big muscles? Or does it mean something more sinister? And if it’s a sinister thing, why is it so nonchalantly placed on the front page of the newspaper as though it’s not a scandalous thing?
There’s nothing in the Constitution that would give any clue to the mania of “powerful member of Congress.” To the extent that belonging to a particular political party makes one “powerful,” the Constitution is totally silent about political parties. The “power” of Congress should not be determined by reference to who belongs to what club. When it comes down to voting on issues, each member of Congress has the same number of …
