Lame duck session plans

What Congress couldn’t get done in the light of day, they’re planning to do when it doesn’t matter if we’re watching.

The failure to pass the recent military appropriations bill laden with controversial provisions turns out to have been merely a temporary setback. It will get done when doing it doesn’t matter anymore, politically.

U.S. Congressional Democrats have planned out an ambitious lame-duck session for November and December, with a repeal of both the 1993 law barring homosexuals from military service and another prohibiting abortions from being performed on U.S. military bases.

The Hill, a Congressional newspaper, reports that those items are on the table with 20 other measures that Democrat leaders plan to ram through Congress in 6 weeks – that is, if they also take off the usual week for Thanksgiving.

But there’s a wrinkle in this plan. Though winners of the November elections won’t be seated until January, three key seats will be filled right away, those of former Illinois senator Barack Obama, former Delaware senator Joe Biden, and former West Virginia senator Robert Byrd. All three races are close and getting closer.

But pulling off this plan should not teeter on whether three seats go to the party not currently in power. There should be enough members of Congress who still hold ethical principles that mirror the republic they represent…that would hold in check such politically calculated moves. Then again, if they did, they wouldn’t be voted out in November in the first place…

Just saying.