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terrorists were to launch an attack that killed the president, the
vice president, the Cabinet, and almost all congressmen, the government
could be destabilized. That's the apparent point of a scary front-page
story in today's Washington Post by Dana Milbank. It opens
by having readers "[i]magine the unimaginable" (i.e.,
the scenario just described) and then asks, "What happens to
the Republic? At the moment, the answer is alarming: chaos."
Well, duh.
We venture
to guess that the answer would be chaos even if we were to adopt
"a constitutional amendment allowing governors to appoint new
representatives if a large number of lawmakers were killed or incapacitated"-a
proposal being floated by Democratic congressman Brian Baird of
Washington state. We suspect the governors would have more pressing
business than forming a new Congress if Washington, D.C., were obliterated.
(Maybe we could run the country by military tribunal?)
Norm Ornstein
of the American Enterprise Institute says the current contingency
plans of the federal government are "utterly irresponsible."
It's possible that some of the reforms he advocates are worth implementing.
But it will always be possible to imagine circumstances under which
any plan would fail. (What if the governors were assassinated too?)
Newsweek, by
the way, is reporting that a planned terrorist attack on a "major
target" in Washington was averted, and speculates that the
FBI sweeps of Arabs who have violated immigration law disrupted
the planned attack. Perhaps this will cause some critics of those
sweeps to reconsider their position? Think of the chaos that could
have occurred without them.
Farm Filibuster
We hear that Senators Frank Murkowski and Richard Lugar, Republicans
from Alaska and Indiana respectively, are considering mounting a
filibuster against the agriculture bill: the former because he wants
to force Tom Daschle to allow a vote on his (and the president's)
energy bill, the latter because he correctly regards the agriculture
bill as a monstrosity. The energy bill would probably pass the full
Senate. That's also true of trade promotion authority and a ban
on human cloning, which is no doubt why Daschle isn't allowing votes
on any of them.
Republicans
are complaining about Daschle's obstructionism. Last week, he said
that two-thirds of his caucus would have to agree to a stimulus
bill before he would let it through. As Republicans have pointed
out, that gives the eighteen most left-leaning Democrats in the
Senate a veto. This is a clear overreach. And when the majority
party in the Senate overreaches, the minority party has a powerful
weapon to push it back: the filibuster. If it ends up killing a
bloated agriculture bill, that's okay too.
Hyperbole
Watch
Former senator Thomas Eagleton writes in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
"Yes, we are in a war. Yes, there are circumstances when aliens
can be treated in a different (but still constitutionally protected)
manner. Ashcroft, however, wants to throw out the Bill of Rights
in toto." In toto? Does that mean British soldiers are going
to be quartering in our homes?
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