OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Seriously, is there anything more sickening than Congress?
You know what’s better than Congress. Lice. Brussels sprouts. Colonoscopies. Root canals.
Wait, there’s more. According to a poll from Public Policy Polling, traffic jams are more popular than Congress. So are carnies (including that weird White House carny with the small hands, Jay Carney). Genghis Khan is more popular; so are cockroaches. Even Nickelback rates higher than Congress (and if you’ve ever heard “Photograph,” you know they might just be the worst band in the history of music).
There’s an easy-to-see reason why: They’re liars (yes, even used-car salesmen rate higher). Our elected lawmakers are liars. Worse, they don’t think for themselves, ever. In The World Of Washington The Way It Is Now, a member of Congress is nothing more than a mindless rat, pushing the little bar to get a feed pellet. If a Republican proposed a bill praising all puppies, Democrats would oppose it. If a Democrat wanted to proclaim the moms of America “superawesome,” Republicans would take to the floor to shred Motherhood.
Consider these two horrible things: Partial-birth abortion and high-powered assault weapons. A hundred years from now, humans in America will say, “Wait, we used to do what to unborn babies?” and “Hold on, people used to be able to buy guns that fired 800 rounds per minute?”
Partial-birth abortion first. Now, this is one gruesome procedure. A fully-formed fetus, likely able to survive outside the mother, is delivered part way down the birth canal, then literally killed. Proponents called it “intact dilation and extraction.” Those people a hundred years from now will call it murder: And they’ll be right.
How does it work? “The fetus is turned to a breech position, if necessary, and the doctor pulls one or both legs out of the womb,” is, well, let’s just go to a Wikipedia summary, already in progress: “The doctor subsequently extracts the rest of the fetus, leaving only the head still inside the uterus. An incision is made at the base of the skull, a blunt dissector (such as a Kelly clamp) is inserted into the incision and opened to widen the opening, and then a suction catheter is inserted into the opening. The brain is suctioned out, which causes the skull to collapse and allows the fetus to pass more easily through the cervix.”
Yeah. We used to do that, not all that long ago. Now, when Republicans sought to outlaw the murder of babies, Democrats howled. In fact, 137 Democrats in the House voted to continue the procedure; 30 Democrats in the Senate saw nothing wrong with sucking the brain out of a baby.
The ban did pass, but during the debate, Democrats pulled out the oldest card in the book. If you outlaw partial-birth abortion, they said, it won’t be long until women will be in dark alleys performing abortions with coat hangers. Slippery slope! Where does it stop?! Mayday! Mayday!
Of course, it was a ridiculous argument, absurd, surreal. No man in his right mind could possibly make a case for suctioning the brain out of a partially delivered fetus, could they? But men had done just that: Women, and women alone, should make all such decisions, the cowed Democratic lawmakers in Congress declared. Who are we to decide?
Well, we’re human beings. And that’s just wrong. Democrats = wrong. Case closed. Wiser men and women prevailed, and the practice was outlawed.
The same farcical canard has come up just this month, with the shoe on the other foot. A mentally ill boy, Adam Lanza, killed dozens of small children in an elementary school. Awful. He used an AR-15. So, according to authorities, did James Holmes, the “Joker” who killed a dozen in a Colorado theater.
The AR-15 is designed for war. Perfectly designed. It’s the civilian version of the M-16, the go-to-war weapon for decades. The home-version, semi-automatic weapon fires fast and lots: Clips hold 20 or 30 rounds (Mr. Holmes is accused of having used a 100-round drum magazine, like Sylvester Stallone in … well, any movie). They are literally killer machines, weapons of mass destruction.
So, Democrats howled again — but this time, they were right. We’ve got to outlaw those war weapons, they said. Republicans, predictably, played the slippery-slope card. “If they ban high-powered assault weapons, you can bet it won’t be long before they come for our coon-hunting rifles.”
Uh, probably not (don’t tell Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity). Like partial-birth abortion, people a hundred years from now will say, “There were 30,000 gun deaths in America in 2012? And you sold anyone an assault weapon?!”
Make no mistake: The Democrats do want your guns — every last one of them. Like Rahm “Godfather” Emanuel said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Democrats like Sen. Diane Feinstein will demand all the handguns, and others will come forward to say we should just register every weapon — so we can track them all when we want to (see Hilter, Adolf).
But here, the Democrats are right: No one needs an AR-15 to, say, hunt rabbits, and their potential danger, in the wrong hands, clearly outweighs any so-called “right” to bear arms. Americans can still possess just about any weapon they want, without government intervention, just not those. Do Americans have a right to a shoulder-fired missile? Of course not. Same thing.
Yet there’s what’s right and what’s political expedient, and never the twain shall meet. Both parties fail the common-sense test when pressed on their core “beliefs,” and both should be ashamed.
Guess it makes sense now that Congress rates lower than even Nickelback.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at jcurl@washingtontimes.com.
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