It’s not often that Washington has a good day
What else can I say other than occasionally, just occasionally the people who work for us actually do what they’re told. Yesterday’s failure of the shamnesty bill in the Senate (and the associated waving of the white flag by the White House on the issue) marked a victory for we the people. Then later in the day we were treated with a landmark, by the book (in this case the Constitution), ruling from the Supreme Court declaring that race could not be used as a determining factor for student facility assignment by a school district.
Who’d a thunk that when Bush appointed Roberts and Alito to the bench that they would actually - really - be strict constructionists? Hallelujah!
Now I’m not going to hold my breath in thinking that this means the folks in DC will actually start doing what they’re told. Can you imagine if this was the real world - like say WalMart - and the employees seldom did what their boss told them to do? How long do you think that employee would keep its job? In Washington, there are folks who are entirely incompetent and never seem to represent their constituents’ interests, yet they routinely get re-elected. And then there is the case of the Supreme Court where justices are appointed for life (its not often that they turn out to be fair and honest adjudicators for those of us whom they judge - let’s see how they use a constructionist approach to Roe v. Wade), and are not beholden to the voters. It’s not very typical that DC stands for “Done Correctly”.
Nonetheless, yesterday actually showed how a representative democracy can work - too bad it takes an exerted effort on the part of the electorate to ensure that our employees do as they’re told.
