Capitol Fear
Taking the what-if game too far.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
December 10, 2001 5:05 p.m.

f 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?