Napoleon was right, about this, anyway...

"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap."
--- Attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte

Check out these two videos of a knucklehead politician (sorry for the redundancy).

Many of America's problems would decrease, if not go away, if only federal politicians of both major parties and all three branches had even a clue what the Constitution says, or what it means that they are obliged to obey it.

Am I being unreasonable here?

I mean, a fifth grader ought to know that the Constitution does not say: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (this is a quote from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, written eleven years before the Constitution). I am reminded of the time I had a bust of Thomas Jefferson on display at a street fair, and I was joking around with a popular U.S. congressman from Pennsylvania by asking him if he knew who it was. His lackey immediately ("desperately" is a more accurate word) whispered "Thomas Jefferson!" into his ear, as if I couldn't hear him tipping off the congress-person-place-or-thingy. It was a hilarious (and yet pathetic) tableau right out of a Simpsons cartoon.

But what's worse is the complete lack of care this fellow has to the document to which he is not only bound by oath, but restricted to by law. Ignorance can be fixed, but indifference is harder to correct. There is nothing unreasonable about asking any bureaucrat at any level of government to cite the portion of the charter that permits him to propose, vote for, sign off on, or enforce any law or legislation. That is how republican governance works. Only tyrannies have unchecked and unlimited power. This is especially true at the federal level, as the Constitution is written so as to only allow the federal government strictly enumerated, delegated, and limited powers - the vast majority of the authority being reserved by the states and the people.

I'm not sure which is worse, the fact that this politician doesn't know his history or doesn't care what that history is!

And it that were not enough juggling to make a circus, look at how he continues to ignore the question posed to him in the first place - even in his own video that his P.R. handlers no doubt told him to put on The Interwebs. He simply brushes off his own responsibility to act within the boundaries of the Constitution to Someone Else. But it isn't Someone Else's job, but his. He still doesn't get it. And look at the arrogance! My goodness! He has obviously forgotten for whom he works. Maybe it's time to revoke the country club status these jokers get. They expect to be fawned over like demigods. They expect to be exempt from their own laws. They expect us to shut up and hang on their every word.

And there is no way this guy read the bill in its entirety. It's a simple matter of mathematics. I would respect him at least a smidgen if he came clean on that one. But then again, the old humorous adage that you can tell if a politician is lying by the fact that his lips are moving is so often vindicated by the real world.

And even after all the rigmarole, this elected genius still can't (or won't) answer the simple question posed to him by a constituent.

If the people in this man's district themselves knew the Constitution (or cared), their Congress-critter would be recalled within the month. But government is no longer about obeying the Constitution, it's about bringing home the bacon - even as the American appetite for pork fat is busting our ramen noodles budget - and clogging the national arteries to boot. That is the real American health-care crisis. The body politic is moribund, if not dead-on-arrival.

And frankly, when a "prole" breaks the law, he goes to jail. With rare exceptions, when a politician breaks the law of the land, he climbs the political ladder all the way to the rotting capital of the pillars of the ruins of the Republic, like the Napoleon of the dung heap, decked out in ostrich feathers and gewgaws. But one day, the little emperor will swagger one step too far and place his feet on a rung that doesn't exist. The bad news is that he and those like him will drag the rest of us with them when they come tumbling down. "All the king's horses and all the king's men..."

I believe we are getting the government we deserve. With rare exceptions, every member of the three branches, from the left to the right, wants the federal government to do its bidding - no matter the cost, no matter what the Constitution says. And this is exactly the will of the electorate and the party syndicates. And thus, we have an entire Congress full of game-show rejects who quite literally are not smarter than a fifth grade history or civics student. Amid all the marbled pomp and circumstance of Capitol Hill, these putative aristocrats are basically self-important slack-jawed jesters, who produce nothing, and yet strut about in material grandeur and enjoy a pension and health care plan like no other in America.

And they squeal like stuck pigs when a constituent asks a simple question.

I would say that they deserve to be walking behind circus animals carrying shovels, but I see no reason to insult hard-working carnies who at least admit they are shoveling it (and who may well understand the Constitution better than the rubes in Congress).