|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Crime & Police : Elections & Legislation : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Iran : Right Wing |
|
Tim Johnson Uses His "Paperclip" on the Constitution |
Current rating: 0 |
by See the Craziness?
(No verified email address) |
25 Jun 2006
Modified: 09:52:57 PM |
|
Voting with the majority, U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson deployed his famous "paperclip" voting rationale to deal with the potential for war with Iran. |
Voting with the majority, U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson deployed his famous "paperclip" voting rationale last week to deal with a thorny international problem, the potential for war with Iran.
The US Constitution's Article 1. Section 8 provides that "The Congress shall have Power To...To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water..."
Tim Johnson infamously used a paperclip jammed into his voting button in 1980 to represent the citizens of his district with a party line vote while he was out of the room serving in the Illinois House. Johnson's vote to essentially cede to the president the power to declare war that the Constitution placed in the hands of Congress amounts to a disturbing repetition of it going with the flow of granting the executive branch carte blanche on important matters relegated to it by the Constitution.By failing to question and investigate, and merely rubber-stamping a decision made by his leadership -- Johnson again jammed a metaphorical paperclip into the machinery of democracy.
Holding to the Republican Party line of supporting the super-rich at the expense of the rest of us, last week Johnson also voted for an "estate-tax reform" bill that was nothing but another giveaway of some $60 billion to people who have no need for it, while the Treasury is running record deficits.
Thanks, Tim, for being on auto-pilot, controlled by the scandal-driven Republican Party, with a president fiddling while the Middle East burns. Maybe Dennis Hastert will have you a job at the Quickie Mart on the offramp from the new freeway to his farm? Assuming y'all aren't all breaking rocks by this time next year, that is. |
This work is in the public domain |
|
Re: Tim Johnson Uses His "Paperclip" on the Constitution |
by 5
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jun 2006
|
|
Johnson is a Representative and their terms are only 2 years in length. |
