The Hill Street Blahg

The Pittsburgh Tribune – Reviews says: “Let’s call this what it is – a cluster cluck molestation of the legislative process.”

Here’s a real dander-raiser on the eve of the 233rd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

Few if any members of the U.S. House of Representatives that last week narrowly voted to pass the outrageous and deceitfully titled American Clean Energy and Security Act actually read the bill.

That’s the hardly surprising — but still unacceptable — conclusion of Jonathan Adler, a Case Western Reserve University legal scholar writing in National Review Online. The legislation, commonly called the “cap-and-trade” bill, would impose an onerous, if not socialist, regimen on just about every aspect of American life at a cost ridiculously low-balled by the supposedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Hilariously billed as a “market-based” approach to dealing with “climate change,” a dubious concept to begin with, it is government command economics at its writ-large worst. Let’s call the Waxman-Markey bill, as it’s also known, what it is — the “Wackey” bill.

But just as bad as is the measure that the Senate will consider in the fall is the manner in which it passed the lower chamber. From NRO’s Adler:

“When Waxman-Markey finally hit the floor, there was no actual bill. Not one single copy of the full legislation that would, hours later, be subject to a final vote was available to members of the House. The text made available to some members of Congress still had ‘placeholders’ — blank provisions to be filled in by subsequent language — including one for the regulation of climate derivatives. … Even the House Clerk’s office lacked a complete copy of the legislation and was forced to place a copy of the 1,200-page draft side-by-side with the 300-page amendments.”

Let’s call this what it is — a cluster cluck molestation of the legislative process, a dereliction of duty that should land each and every of the 219 members of Congress who voted for this national albatross in the unemployment lines.

And our elected “leaders” wonder why the phrase “new American Revolution” is being uttered more and more with each passing day with each new government perversion?

On a tip from Steady Teddy