When Legislators Don't Legislate

Now, here we are at the end of this week. And I was talking to a friend yesterday, and I said, you know what, I think that if Obama wanted to dissolve the Congress and dissolve the Senate because they just weren’t getting the job done, and he needed more power to deal with BP, then he would just sign an executive order and send them all home, declare some kind of a rebellion or martial law or whatever, you people would take it. We’d take it.

That’s basically what happened yesterday. The Senate voted itself out of a job, decided that it does not have the plenary authority, the legislative authority to pass the laws that tell the EPA what it is supposed to do, and instead that EPA, which is not elected, does not have to answer to voters in any of the 50 states, doesn’t have anyone that has a nameplate, you can’t look them up on the Internet and start a complaint line or anything, that the Environmental Protection Agency is its own super legislature. You don’t think that if they can get away with this, that they couldn’t get away with just dissolving the Senate and the House and just going home and appointing Obama king? What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it?

I have the answer to that question. You’re not going to do anything about it. None of us are going to do anything about it. We’re going to sit out here, we’re going to play Scrabble with our friends, we’re going to cook hotdogs and hamburgers and go about our merry way and not worry about it any longer because, “Chris, Chris there’s nothing really we can do about it. We’re powerless.” I mean, this is really what it’s coming down to here.

Now, I know that there are elections in November, and a lot of people are pinning their hopes, thinking, “Oh, we’re going to get them back. We’re going to fix this thing. We’re going to – you wait and see, Mr. Church. Stop with your negativity.” Why don’t you call me up and give me something to be positive over, as it applies to our federal Leviathan out there. Because if it exists, I do not see it. Maybe my eyes are closed. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t good things happening outside of government because there always are. We are, after all, Americans. Well, we were when we woke up this morning. I don’t know how much longer that will hold true. But we shall press on.

Now, I have this story here. There’s 53 Senators that voted yesterday to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to – did you here Schumer? Well did you? Blah blah blah blah blah. Yes, 53 members of the United States Senate basically decided yesterday that they don’t care to actually cast votes on things that their constituents have sent them there to cast votes on, that it is not a worthy endeavor anymore. Well, we can just hand this off to an agency. Now, this has been one of the – how do I want to say this? – one of the causes célèbres that we have talked about here on this show for the last three years solid, which is the separation of powers and the enumeration of powers. Nowhere in the federal compact can you divine a power that would give any agency, no matter who created it or when it was created, the authority to regulate the air you exhale. Yet that is exactly what the EPA is going to do.

You have Democrats that are elected in states that produce coal, Robert Byrd from West Virginia being one, Bob Casey from Pennsylvania being another. What do you people in Pennsylvania produce? Do you have coal mines? Or did I read that wrong in the encyclopedia when I was a little boy? You remember how when you’re a little kid, you look at the encyclopedia of the states, and it would show you little icon symbols like the nondescript androgynous Olympic symbols for running, track, field, swimming and what have you? Well, they’d have the coal mine symbol in the western part of Pennsylvania; right? Don’t I have that right? There’s coal in Pennsylvania; right? Your senator, Bob Casey, threw you under the bus yesterday, backed it up, beep beep beep, and then put it in forward and ran you over again. How does this happen? What is produced when Pennsylvania coal is burned? What gas is produced? Carbon dioxide. What is produced when West Virginia coal is burned? Carbon dioxide. Does it matter? Nope.

So the Senate votes yesterday against the Murkowski resolution. What was the Murkowski resolution? That was from a senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, who said that we have to stop the EPA from enforcing this endangerment finding that a Supreme Court said the EPA must enforce. You may recall in 2008 there was a lawsuit that was filed. It made its way all the way to the Supreme Court. In a five-to-four act of tyranny, five justices who will never face a reelection campaign decided that the Environmental Protection Agency must unilaterally act to protect Americans, using the Clean Air Act, from the horrors of carbon dioxide. In other words, from the horrors of what the person sitting next to you is exhaling right now. In other words, from the horrors – if you go outside, look at your lawn, look at a tree in your front yard – from the horrors of what your tree is eating, from the horrors of what the bushes are eating, from the horrors of what the pepper plants in my backyard are digesting. It’s called carbon dioxide.

And so the EPA has been rattling its saber, saying, yeah, we kind of like that Supreme Court ruling, even though it’s totally unconstitutional, even though we have no authority to write laws whatsoever. We’re just going to go ahead and do it anyways. And so now they have moved to do this. And the United States Senate could have reasserted its authority to pass these laws. It is the Congress’s job, if such a determination is to be made, that there should be regulation of carbon dioxide, and that you are a threat to the planet by your simple existence. Hell, think of it like this. Mammals, if you go through the fossil record, what, you have the rise and fall of the dinosaurs. And then after the dinosaurs get cleared out, what happens? It’s the rise of the mammals. Right? Mammals exhale carbon dioxide. I’m not breaking any news here. Maybe to the Senate I am. Maybe to Obama I am, who is ordering his EPA director, that little midget, that little tyrannical tinhorn dictator midget, Lisa Jackson, to start implementing these rules.

And so yesterday the Senate had a chance to vote to stop this, and they did not do so. This is why I bring this up with sadness. This is an absolute horrible day. I can scream and holler from now till the end of time. I don’t think it’ll matter. Most people are going to cook out this weekend, not going to worry about it. Most of your friends and neighbors don’t even know that it happened. And life will proceed. It’ll become more difficult for life to proceed. But as a great Virginian once wrote, once acts of tyranny and slavery are passed, and you kind of get used to them, you pass them on to the next generation, and the next generation doesn’t know that they’re slaves. And so they’re pretty happy with them. They don’t mind. That’s what’s happening in this republic today. So I ask you again, what are you going to do about it?
Answer: Not a G-damn thing.
But “Chris, we’re going to vote this November.” That’s just not good enough anymore. Like I say all the time, you’re not radical enough, and this country is not polorized enough for me!