Hard(ly) at Work

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Yesterday's narrow defeat (by one vote) of a proposal to amend the Constitution to ban flag desecration marks the second time in a month that Senate Republicans have lost bids to mangle the Constitution in an obvious attempt to appeal to social conservatives on the cusp of the midterm elections.

Earlier this month, a proposed amendment to ban gay marriage suffered a more decisive defeat, killed on a test vote.

Let's see--proposing amendments to limit free speech, the very patriotic values that they claim to have in mind when insisting that soldiers are dying overseas for a flag that should never be used as a symbol of dissent and a ban on the unions of homosexuals because that in some way invalidates their own unions, joined, I thought, in the eyes of God much more than the eyes of the State--yep, it sure sounds like the Republican-controlled Congress is doing the people's work at this dark, tumultuous and pressing time in our nation's history.

But they're not done yet.

Sporting fancy names like the "American Values Agenda," Republicans are about to launch a pre-election blitzkrieg on abortion, guns, religion and, of course, massive tax cuts during a debilitating occupational quagmire in Iraq. What they don't tout is that the "American Values Agenda" also seems to include smothering congressional dissent on Iraq, endorsing torture, obliterating civil rights, pandering to the Religious Right and ignoring a crippling energy crisis.

Mom, apple pie and shredding the Constitution--it's enough to make me wish I was a Republican again.