Throwing all into confusion

Considering the mischief caused by Tea-Party Republican representatives, and the resulting confusion about how to end the shutdown, here is Rawlins Lowndes’s realistic view of the proposed US  constitution of 1787, as collected in the Anti-Federalist Papers (54):

Great stress was laid on the admirable checks which guarded us, under the new Constitution, from the encroachments of tyranny; but too many checks in a political machine must produce the same mischief as in a mechanical one – that of throwing all into confusion. [1]

Lowndes was trying to protect slavery in South Carolina against those in the Northern States, those who would try to do away with that peculiar institution: affirming that “whilst there remained one acre of swampland in South Carolina, he should raise his voice against restricting the importation of Negroes.” He was a pragmatist.

The government in Washington is not broken

I think Congressmen should wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers so we could identify their corporate sponsors
— a quote of the day

Previous and present legislative stalemates in Congress regarding the US debt limit and extension of revenues through taxation do not mean the US government is broken, it means the US government is working exactly as designed, exactly as socially engineered. The social engineers’ plan was made explicit in the Constitution of the United States of America, and, unfortunately, the design was always flawed – it is the US constitution that is broken.

Free speech, free agents, and societal agencies

In 2010, in a case concerning political speech (Citizens United v Federal Election Commission) the US Supreme Court decided by a large majority of 8-1 that “disclaimer and disclosure requirements are valid” for political communications. Clarence Thomas dissented in this portion of the opinion – he worried

I cannot endorse a view of the  First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging  in “core political speech, the ‘primary object of First Amend­ment protection.’” [Thomas is quoting from other opinions.]