21 Pages

The Constitution of the United States is one of the most important documents in human history. Its 7 articles and 27 amendments created our government, its checks and balances, and even restricts the powers of the government it created. The entire document, including all 27 amendments is about 21 pages long.

The founding fathers understood that brevity is not only the sole of wit, it's the essence of wisdom. The knew that large, bloated legislation creates the opportunities for mismanagement and corruption.

Last Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives - under the cover of nationalized health care and the demise of Michael Jackson - debated and passed one of the most dangerous bills to come out of the House in recent memory. Dangerous because of it's size and negative impact on our economy and our lives. The bill often referred to as cap and trade, cap and tax, choke and steal, or more disingenuously entitled "The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009" creates government boards, inspectors, regulators, national building codes, and transfers an incredible amount of power to the Secretary of Energy, just for starters. This document including its 300 plus page early morning amendment totals 1201 pages. That's 1180 pages more than the document that is the foundation of our republic.

All three of New Mexico's representatives to the House voted for this massive increase in government bureaucracy. Heinrich and Lujan voted for the measure like a couple of party line toting bobble-heads. Meanwhile, their colleague and fellow freshman congressman Harry Teague cut a deal to exempt the evil carbon producing refineries in his district from the rigors of this misguided attempt to regulate carbon production.

Our question for Mr. Teague is if it's good to exempt your carbon producers how is it not good not to exempt others? We hope the true believers in choke and steal legislation can see through Teague's subterfuge and that the beneficiaries of Teague's deal understand how tenuous their situation truly is should this Obamination of a bill pass the Senate.

Today we were treated to Congressman Junior, uh... Ben Ray Lujan, Jr. trying to answer a simple question from KKOB-AM's Craig Kennedy about whether or not he had read the bill he had so enthusiastically supported. After prattling on about knowing the "major" points and other non-sense, he didn't answer - which of course means no.

Congressman Heinrich will be holding his "open house" at 4:15pm on the carbon belching diesel train commonly known as the Rail Runner. Perhaps someone from KOB could catch up with him in order to find out exactly how many of the 1201 pages he had actually read. Our bet that his answer will be no more satisfying than Bennie Jr's.

It's become a habit of the 111th Congress - passing bills without taking the time to read them, particularly when they're passing thousand page legislation that chokes our economy and steals our money and liberty.

You know, It's not surprising they haven't read the bills they're voting on. If they did, they'd probably be as horrified as the rest of us. Might we suggest however, that they take the time to read the 21 pages of the United States Constitution. By comparison it's light reading and utimately more important. At least it'd be a start.