Friday, May 23, 2008 :::
 

Apparently, Bush gets to veto the farm bill twice - the first time he vetoed it, Congress forgot to send him a few dozen pages of the bill. As White House spokesman Dana Perino notes, "they've proved that they can even screw up spending the taxpayers' money unwisely."

::: posted by Steven at 8:02 AM

Comments:

When you or I print out the wrong version of a document and pass it 'round the office--or even worse, to an outsider--it's an embarrassment to us and to our organizations. When the U.S. government mishandles the text of legislation it is an embarrassment to every American in the eyes of a world that must get a great laugh at our offers of "technical assistance" to other nations struggling to implement democracy.

Of course mistakes can happen and this one was caught while it was yet an embarrassment and not yet a legal crisis. Nevertheless, I have to connect the dots. For years congress has been passing, and presidents signing, laws without reading them. Editorialists and opinion writers at respected journals routinely make authoritative statements about bills they haven't read. Perhaps it was just a matter of time until beltway rhetoric about a bill and the text of a bill compete their lamentable journey from legal separation to divorce. And as always in divorce, the kids--the next generation of Americans--are the ones who will suffer from the failure of leadership in Washington today.

# posted by  Anonymous : 10:38 AM

 

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Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.