| The following column appeared in The River Reporter on November 6, 1998. |
By Bert S. Feldman
The Recusant Reporter
Thursday, November 6, 1998
Congressmen do dastardly deeds that seldom are made public.
One of the most common bits of hanky-panky that should require an immediate constitutional amendment is the common practice of adding unrelated "riders" to larger and more important legislative bills.
These pipsqueak additions are usually inserted on major pieces of legislation in order to placate the congressperson’s constituents. They seldom bear any relation to the matters that make up the proposed legislation.
For example, a multi-million dollar bill proposing needed highway repairs payment may have a rider that will allow Uncle Luigi to bring Tanta Olga over from the Old Country. This is pretty harmless stuff and probably won’t hurt anyone except, possibly, Uncle Luigi.
When it gets nasty it can involve important issues and mucho big bucks. Such a rider is presently raising Holy Hannah down along the shores of the Potomac.
Regardless of what you may think of the United Nations (UN) per se, its program of public health care must be fully regarded as a stepping out of darkness. The UN brings nursing and medical care to families living cheek-by-jowl in ramshackle housing with mud floors.
Diseases are rampant — typhus, Ebola, tuberculosis, perpetual disorders and measles, to name just a few. Needed lectures are given on birth control and abortion. Such information is needed in many of these countries where female circumcision is still practiced and where female children are sold off as trainees into prostitution.
Back to business. Largely because of conservative members of Congress, all attempts to make the bill pass for paying its membership dues in the UN have ended with our north end of south-bound horses that seem to proliferate in Congress.
Finally a bill to OK the U.S. government to pay it’s nearly one-billion in past dues has passed both houses and has gone to the White House for presidential signature. Bill Clinton, with correct position, has decided not to put his signature on this bill because of a rider.
A prize south-bound horse, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) has decided that his religious beliefs are more important than the good and needs of the rest of the world’s right to live.
Smith’s rider says that aid should NOT be given to any country that teaches birth control and/or practices abortion.
Does NESBH Smith approve of an Orthodox Jewish rider that would prohibit the sale of pork? Would a fight result with the Moslems’ rider that would make it compulsory to wear a veil if you were a female American? Would he approve of a Baptist rider that would prohibit the showing of Walt Disney movies? Poor Dopey and his six brothers!
Even more important, doesn’t the First Amendment of the Constitution say, in part, that "Congress shall make no law respecting any establishment of religion and the free exercise hereof?’
America has a poor history of tolerating different religions. The Massachusetts Pilgrims and Puritans had laws on the books that stated that Quakers, Baptists, Catholics and Jews could be lashed, stoned or burned at the stake. And several were. The Mormons, seeking tolerant neighbors, were driven out of their homes in Illinois, in a snowstorm while only partially clad, to seek new homes, forced by their Methodist neighbors.
Organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, ("Kompany of Kowards in Knighties," Mark Twain called them) and the German American Nazi Band flourished in our own country.
Laws are laws and you must either obey them or work to have them repealed — peacefully and legally. Carry Nations are good for laughs, but they can turn vicious. Look at the physician shot to death in Buffalo by a religious nut case only two weeks ago. The doctor, GYN specialist, allegedly performed abortions.
We cannot continue to support these Congressional Looney Tunes. Congress must cleanse itself. All riders on bills should flat be disallowed, even if it involves a constitutional amendment.
Our Congress in Washington must become a congregation of men and women to whom we can look for guidance. Loose cannon NESBITS and other of this ilk should obey the laws of decorum.
Instead of baying like a pack of Chihuahuas, trying to imitate a pack of wolves, yipping at the President’s heels, whining about impeachment, let them get their kennels in order.
