Reading Comprehension

National Review. ^ | 07/28 | Mark Steyn]

[Leisler]

Rep. John Conyers can't see why lawmakers should read the laws they make. What's the point? They wouldn't understand 'em anyway:

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

As Betsy Newmark comments:

At least some representative's aides somewhere have read some part of the bill so that should be enough, right? Who says that when you're rejiggering over one-sixth of the US economy and incurring massive future debt that you need to know what it is you're voting on.

Thousand-page bills, unread and indeed unwritten at the time of passage, are the death of representative government. They also provide a clue as to why, in a country this large, national government should be minimal and constrained. Even if you doubled or trebled the size of the legislature, the Conyers conundrum would still hold: No individual can read these bills and understand what he's voting on. That's why the bulk of these responsibilities should be left to states and subsidiary jurisdictions, which can legislate on such matters at readable length and in comprehensible language.

As for optimum bill size, the 1773 Tea Act, which provoked the Boston Tea Party, was 2,263 words. That sounds about right.

[Leisler]

Kabuki (歌舞伎, kabuki?) is the highly stylized classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing (歌), dance (舞), and skill (伎). Kabuki is therefore sometimes translated as "the art of singing and dancing." These are, however, ateji characters which do not reflect actual etymology. The kanji of 'skill', however, generally refers to a performer in kabuki theatre. Since the word kabuki is believed to derive from the verb kabuku, meaning "to lean" or "to be out of the ordinary", kabuki can be interpreted as "avant-garde" or "bizarre" theatre.[1] The expression kabukimono (歌舞伎者) referred originally to those who were bizarrely dressed and swaggered on a street.

[Oldpuppymax]

Reading, legislating, corruption, thuggery...no big deal. RE-ELECTION—now THAT’S important!!!

[taxtruth]

If you can't understand the bills then you have “NO BUSINESS” being in the congress nor the senate.You could at least get an expert group/lawyers/people with PhD's in government together which can explain the bills in detail to you before you vote.There is no need to rush through any bill without everyone having a clear understanding of what they are voting for.If you are unsure you should not vote at all on a bill,thats better than a "BAD" vote.

[TexasRepublic]

Today I heard a recording made 5 years ago of freshman senator Obama, criticizing that huge bills [stacked] “a foot high” were being passed unread. You can’t be any more hypocritical than that.