WANTED: A THIRD LEG

If you're Bill Frist, the Senate's one-stop bigotry shop, what do you do? Last week, you watched the Gay Hate Amendment go down in flames (60 votes were needed to bring the measure to a floor vote and the Repugs could only scrounge up 49. I can just picture the White House spin now. "The people who voted against hate are activist lawmakers who ignore the will of the people and are legislating from the legislature." Or some shit like that.) And then, a day later, June 8th, the Senate proposition to repeal the estate tax (remember, Senator Byrd's Sunset Provision is still in place) came up for cloture. Only 57 votes were scrounged up; the proposition was filibustered, leaving Frist to whine like the cat-killing, cadaverous, mewling baby that he is, "This death tax is unfair!" It is. Not to the people who die - they don't have to pay it. Not to family farms - not one in recorded modern history has suffered the ignominious financial consequences Republicans claimed they have on account of having to pay the tax. It is unfair to the rest of the country. The tax has been around for roughly 100 years. It is now at its lowest level ever, just as taxation of the wealthiest in America is more or less at its lowest level since the income tax was instituted. But, because we are engaged in a war in which we cannot afford, and are running up the national debt to an extent that would make Ronald Raygun blush if he could retain the power of memory for a few seconds, it's unfair, you see, that the richest of the rich be made to pay taxes like everyone else does. Never mind that the estate tax, as it stands now, is at its lowest level in modern history, and is only imposed on estates of significant wealth, and that the elimination of the tax would destroy incentives for charitable giving (Republicans claim that charitable giving makes government programs doing such work unneecssary). No - we must repeal this tax in its entirety - because the upward redistribution of wealth, which this gang sees as rewarding moral virtue - as opposed to seeing as leading to creation of wealth for all - must be encouraged.

So - two down - the gay hate amendment and the estate tax repeal - and one to go. We all know what that one is: flag burning! Ever read the preamble to a piece of legislation? The preamble almost always states something along the lines of "Congress has found that (say, in the case of a federal anti-discrimination law) employees have been victims of discrimination based on race," or (on the case of an antitrust law), "Congress has found that the joining together of large corporate enterprises in recent years has been injurious to the public welfate." The preambles, in other words, set a factual predicate for the legislation to follow, by telling us that specific facts/instances indicative of a problem warrant a legislative response. The flag-burning legislation preamble - what I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall to be at the drafters' conference for that one! ANYONE can draft it, because there have been precisely ZERO instances of the so-called problem - flag-burning - that warrant outlawing this type of activity, despite, let's face it, the government all but cajoling and stopping short of paying citizens to burn flags by dint of its actions in the past six years. I, like most sane people, believe that legislation, as a general matter, should not be passed unless such passage is in response to a particular public need. Usually, such need derives from human activity that, if left unchecked or unregulated, can be injurious in some way. Sure, sometimes "pre-emptive" legislation is passed - legislation that attempts to anticipate wrongdoing before it has started so as to provide, say, for an efficient system of administration of a certain type of administrative scheme - such as a motor vehicle code. Such codes, though, are needed to protect public safety. A flag-burning amendment is not proper pre-emptive legislation - it does not attempt to anticipate wrongdoing in an effort to provide for an efficient system of administration; it does not attempt to predict the future of criminal wrongdoing in an attempt to stay one step ahead of it; it does not even attempt to stay "on the cutting edge" of morals legislation by predicting what alleged activities human flotsam are likely to engage in. No, such an amendment is designed for one purpose only: to make a point - to say "those who support this legislation are patriots and those who don't are scum." Criminal laws are not enacted so as to give sanction to such purposes. Fristula and company know that this third leg of their wedge trifecta will fail, and I can't wait until it does.

It's soon time for triple turd score, guys. Karl Rove, go back to the barn, and roll in some shit some more until you find some better wedge issues.