Datum 1--Massachusetts fills its Senate seat, come hell or high water:

Until 2004, Massachusetts law empowered the state's governor to fill an unexpected Senate vacancy. But the state had a Republican governor that year, and Sen. John Kerry won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
Worried that a Republican might be appointed to replace Sen. Kerry if he were elevated to the White House, Bay State Democrats, enjoying large legislative majorities, changed the rules to mandate that any vacancies be filled via special elections.
Fast forward five years. A Democrat now sits in the governor's office. Sen. Kennedy loses his life fighting brain cancer. It will be at least four months before Massachusetts can hold a special election, and Democrats are one vote short of a filibuster-proof 60 in the U.S. Senate as they race to pass a radical agenda.
Solution? Massachusetts Democrats rewrite the rules again.
On Tuesday, the state Senate voted 24-16 to allow Gov. Deval Patrick to select Mr. Kennedy's successor. The House passed the bill last week.
End of story? Nope.
Turns out that under the state constitution, laws passed by the legislature take effect 90 days after they're signed by the governor -- unless lawmakers attach a so-called "emergency pre-amble."
Such emergency measures must be approved by a two-thirds majority -- a benchmark lawmakers failed to achieve in ramming through changes in the succession process.
Not to worry.
The president of the Massachusetts Senate argues that the governor can get around the two-thirds problem by writing a letter to the secretary of state declaring his own "emergency." Presto--This has already been done and the seat is 'safely' and unconstitutionally filled so that the Democrats can maintain a 60 seat majority to pass through their agenda without Republican delays or even debate.

The lesson all this nonsense sends to schoolchildren is clear. Maintaining power is the primary purpose of political life. And if politicians don't like the rules or constitutional restrictions that stand in their way, they simply change them -- and if they can't change them, they ignore them.

Datum 2--Meanwhile, back in the Senate:

Senators are negotiating on Senator Max Baucus' health care proposal and it hasn't even been written yet. Of course, to state the obvious, the fact that they're negotiating on something that hasn't been written means no one has read it yet either. And, to add even more insult to injury, it's now clear they have no intention of letting you read it. You read that right. On an almost straight party-line vote, Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee squashed an amendment by Senator Jim Bunning that would have required Baucus' health care bill to be posted on the Internet – for all Americans to read – for 72 hours prior to the Committee voting on it.

Not only that. Bunning's amendment also called for requiring the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's official tally of how much Baucus' health care proposal will cost the American people and what the real impact will be on health costs to be released before the it was voted on.

So here is my question--What is going on in our constitutional process and government of, for, and by the people in the name of trying to get health care to the people?

What is your conclusion?

Jimmy Carter has been in the news again lately.

Not for hanging with his good bud, Kim Jong Il, dictator supreme of North Korea.

Not for decrying Israel's right to exist within its own sovereign borders.

This time he is calling critics of President Obama's policies racist.

Please. This is so tired. First critics were branded un-American, then a mob, then evilmongers, next Nazi's. Now racist.

But I want to thank our least favorite former President for sticking his nose in the nation's business once again. It gives me this opportunity to share my favorite recollection of his term in office.

It was election day, November 1980. I was in seminary in St. Paul at the time. But that day I was making a business trip for the family company that I worked for part-time while in school. So I was flying on election day--from Minnesota to Dallas and then on to Abilene in west Texas. My flight arrived at DFW airport about 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening. Interested in the election returns, I made my way to the first airport bar I could find to watch the results before heading for my connecting flight. What I saw I will never forget. To me it says all you need to know about Jimmy Carter's debacle administration.

At 5:00 in the evening, Central Standard Time--6:00 on the east coast, 3:00 on the west coast--the major networks had called the election for Ronald Reagan. Obviously the polls had not yet closed anywhere in the country, but the election was decided. Carter himself conceded just an hour or so later--again before the polls had closed in the west. (This was before federal law prevented the networks from calling an election before the polls had closed--indeed, it was this election that led to this law being passed.)

But here is what I remember that evening in the airport bar. The local stations in Dallas were showing lines out the door at polling places in and around Dallas. People were waiting in line to vote--many of them knowing the presidential race had already been decided.

The next day coming back through Dallas on my way back to Minnesota I picked up a Dallas paper and the long lines at the polls were front-page news. Many polling places had to stay open late because the people were still waiting to vote. Reporters were interviewing these persevering voters--"Why are you standing in line all this time? Don't you know the election has been decided and that President Carter has conceded defeat?"

Here is my remembered synopsis of the many replies quoted in the paper: "I've been waiting about 3 years to vote that S.O.B. out of office! I would stand here all night to cast my ballot against him and vote for Ronald Reagan."

Morning had indeed come to America! I am looking for another dawn about 3 years hence.

RM

Seriously, I wanted to take the week-end off. Was planning to enjoy a respite from the relentless onslaught on our constitutional liberties coming out of Washington.

Then comes a call from the president's website, going out to his supporters to make phone calls to all U.S. Senators on Friday, September 11 to support the president's health-care agenda: "All 50 states are coordinating in this--as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process. . ."

That's right--those Americans who have rallied, gone to town hall meetings, written letters, made phone calls to voice opposition to a government-run overhaul of their personal health care choices are being called by our president's website "Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists"!! The call to action is set for the day we commemorate the death of over 3000 Americans by real terrorists who flew planes into the twin towers. Language is being subverted to make people like myself and millions of other Americans who oppose a total government takeover of 1/6 of the American economy and their own say in their health-care decisions terrorists. This was not an off-hand remark or something said in an unguarded moment. It was consciously crafted and deliberately posted on the very website that bears our president's name.

We have already been labeled "un-American" by the Speaker of the House and likened to mobs, Nazis and Fascists by other Democrat officials. Now the president's own website is calling people who disagree with his plan and voice that oppostion to their elected representatives "terrorists."

I cannot overstate how grieved and outraged I am over this latest assault--and how fearful I have become of the agenda of this administration.

RM