Rob Bishop last week held a press conference to announce he is not running for governor. If we’re going to hear from everyone who isn’t running, this could take a while.
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When the House managers carried the articles of impeachment to the Senate last week, the sergeant of arms announced, with great ceremony, “Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons are commanded to keep silent, on pain of imprisonment.” So … does the Capitol basement contain a stockade for all the chatty senators? Should we check to see if Sen. Blabbermouth is still there from the trial of Andrew Johnson?
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If we started imprisoning politicians for talking, things would be a lot quieter. We might even solve global warming.
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But soon inmates would begin to complain about cruel and unusual punishment. Not the political inmates, mind you, but the murderers, thieves and others who have to listen to them.
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I have to admit the ceremony of carrying articles from one chamber to another is an impressive piece of protocol. You would think something really important had happened, like someone stole signs at the World Series.
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Apparently, you can steal second, third or home, commit errors, sacrifice players or execute a premeditated hit and run, all with no punishment; but steal just one sign ...
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TurboTax has a set of commercials out right now that show humans doing extraordinary things, making the point that, therefore, we also can do our own taxes. So … the Internal Revenue Code contains about 2.4 million words, according to the Tax Foundation. In addition, the IRS has about 7.7 million words worth of tax regulations, and the courts have generated about 60,000 pages worth of tax-related case law. How is understanding all this is supposed to be easy compared to making an exploding model volcano or creating a sculpture with a chainsaw?