Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Cliff's Notes on my Federal Marriage Amendment

On Saturday, I posted my proposed wording for the Federal Marriage Amendment, designed to protect America from the most dire threats we face today: lesbians with cats and gay men with well-decorated living rooms. I'm a veteran of three years in the YMCA's Youth in Government model legislature program, but I realize that most of my readers probably went glassy-eyed in the first paragraph or two. I thus present you the "plain English" translation of my version of the Federal Marriage Amendment:

  1. "Equal protection of the laws" no longer applies to fags, dykes, or terror suspects.
  2. The Congress was given too many powers, so we're taking away a few; in particular, the power to declare war.
  3. Habeas corpus is a barrier to efficient law enforcement. The Secretary of Homeland Security can suspend it whenever the President's poll numbers dip.
  4. If the President is impeached, he should be able to pardon himself. Also, that "advice and consent of the Senate" stuff is inefficient, so Karl Rove can now appoint all federal judges and sub-cabinet officials.
  5. All those powers we took from Congress in #2, we'll just give them to the President.
  6. A sex scandal is now grounds for impeachment, but treason against the nation in the service of your political party isn't. Also, political expediency is now the only defense against impeachment; otherwise, you're presumed guilty.
  7. Karl Rove can restructure the court system at will. Any court case that is embarrassing to the party in power will be quashed. Treason is whatever we say it is.
  8. Officials of the government will no longer swear loyalty to the Constitution, but rather to the President's agenda. Oh, and only fundamentalist Christians can be in government.
  9. The White House can do whatever it wants, without asking Congress or the courts.
Oh, and for our next Supreme Court nomination, we'll toss a coin between John Bolton and Karl Rove.

Basically, I just wrote down what our government is moving towards. If we're going to do it anyway, we may as well say it openly.