All of Congress, it turns out, is buzzing over this little book, one that promises to guide its decision-making for the foreseeable future.
It’s not a self-help or religious book. No, the tome that’s galvanizing the 112th is a 224-year-old page-turner known as the U.S. Constitution.
As the WSJ’s Janet Adamy chronicles in this story on Thursday, a growing number of lawmakers are carrying tiny copies of the Constitution suit jackets and in their cars, a response in part to tea-party complaints that Congress has lost sight of the country’s founding document.
But carrying the Constitution isn’t all the new Congress is doing. On Thursday, House Republicans will celebrate their first week back in power by reading the Constitution, amendments and all, on the House floor. We love the Constitution, but we pity anyone who has to listen to this. Try to read it from start to finish in one sitting and you’ll know what we mean.
Democrats say they were Constitution carriers long before the tea party made it cool. The late Democratic senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, elected to the Senate in 1958, was known for wielding his copy on the Senate floor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid keeps one at his side every day, an aide said, including a copy that bears the late senator’s signature.
But Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, doesn’t carry a copy. She called moments like Republicans’ planned reading “gimmicks and stage theater” that won’t tackle real problems, such as fixing the economy. You’ll find her copy of the Constitution in a drawer in her kitchen, she said.
We’d be curious to hear from you on this one, LBers. We think revisiting the Constitution from time to time is undoubtedly a good thing for every U.S. citizen to do, not just members of Congress. And the Constitution should never be too far away from our lawmakers’ minds while they go about our work. But is the new Congress taking things a bit too far, pushing the concept into gimmickry?
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