Free Republic

Prostitution. Bribery. Blackmail. Thuggery. Hypocrisy. Those were just some of the incendiary words thrown around the U.S. Senate last week, and that doesn’t count what people said in private. The Senate may still have a reputation as a genteel club, but lawmakers seemed to abandon rules of decorum completely last week in arguments about whether Congress should be treated like the rest of the country when it comes to Obamacare. Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has demanded a floor vote on his bill to end an exemption that members of Congress and their staffs are slated to get that...

<p>To adapt H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the cynicism and self-dealing of the American political class. Witness their ad-libbed decision, at the 11th hour and on the basis of no legal authority, to create a special exemption for themselves from the ObamaCare health coverage that everybody else is mandated to buy.</p>

I myself attended a symposium that Rep. Tom Bliley, then chairman of the powerful House Commerce Committee, addressed via teleconference. Reading a prepared statement, he included the "stage instructions" -- such as "pause for emphasis" -- that his speechwriter had inserted. Where one line had accidentally been duplicated, Bliley read it a second time. Rep. John Salazar related this anecdote: "You know, when I was debating what became the 2008 Farm Bill, I had a member of the Ag Committee actually ask me if chocolate milk really comes from brown cows. I asked if he was joking, and he assured...