“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into”

Jonathan Swift
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"The Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital." - Bill Maher
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"The city is crowded my friends are away and I'm on my own
It's too hot to handle so I gotta get up and go

It's a cruel ... cruel summer"

Thursday, April 27, 2006

how you gonna stop the clock / when the well runs dry

Y'know, he reached his limit with me years ago.

But, in a Daily Kos diary, Kurt Kaletka reminds us that a vast majority of first-year congresspeople elected in the infamous "Contract On America" year of 1994 took a pledge to serve no more than 12 years.

They believed in term limits so strongly that they wanted to see it codified into the frickin' Constitution: Item 10 on the Contract read

This resolution provides for consideration of two joint resolutions which propose amendments to the constitution limiting the number of terms members of the Senate and the House of Representatives can serve. The first joint resolution (identical to H.J.Res. 38 as introduced in the 103rd Congress) limits the number of Senate terms to two and the number of House terms to six. The second joint resolution (identical to H.J.Res. 160 as introduced in the 103rd Congress) also limits Senators to two terms, but it limits members of the House to three terms. Under the terms of this resolution, the joint resolution with the text of H.J.Res. 38 will be debated first and the first amendment in order will be a substitute consisting of H.J.Res. 160.
The Representatives of the Class of 1994 have now served the six terms they swore they'd stop after. And most of them who are still in office are running for another term. And one of their number is quite familiar to us...









Rep. Mac Thornberry explains to a skeptical constituent why he will serve so many more years than he originally promised.








Rep. Mac Thornberry points to a bar chart. The long bar on the right represents how many more years he intends to serve. The short bar on the left shows how many years he originally promised to serve.










Rep. Mac Thornberry uses a graph to show how the number of years Republican reps are allowed to serve will steadily rise under the "Contract on America II"









Funny how term limits seemed like such a great idea to Republicans when Democrats were in power.

spacedark


UPDATE:

Inspired by blogarillo's comment, we are now able to show this hastily photoshopped picture of Rep. Mac Thornberry praying for guidance while an unidentified Republican donor shows him why God wants him to "continue his work." Note the divine glow around the wad of cash.