Why I Shouldn't Read Op-Ed Pieces

I had just come home from a wonderful evening at the Tuesday Teacup at Goodbye Blue Monday when what to my wandering eyes should appear but an op-ed piece in the New York Times by John R. Bolton and John Yoo. It contains the following statement:

Voters want government brought closer to the vision the framers outlined in the Constitution, and the first test could be the fate of the flawed New Start arms control treaty, which was signed by President Obama and President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia last spring but awaits ratification. The Senate should heed the will of the voters and either reject the treaty or amend it so that it doesn’t weaken our national defense.


Remember a few posts ago I warned you to beware of people claiming stuff about the will of the voters etc. etc. This certainly fits that category. But there is another aspect of this statement, which is so galling and upsetting to me-- namely the notion that somehow the vision of the Constitution is such that the Senate is supposed to heed the results of a single election in which only a third of its members are elected. The Senate under the Constitution is a continuous body with only a one third turnover every two years. By definition it is representing peoples views from different time periods as to which persons the voters of each state deem fit to represent them not some poll on a particuluar issue. That is the constitutional vision, and by the way it is not the vision of the framers since the framers' vision had the senate appointed by State Legislatures not the people of the State. It's maddening. Uggh. I need to calm down.


Here's another sentence from the same piece which is utterly meaningless and either intentionally or mistakenly deceptive:


The Constitution’s plain meaning, so prized by the voters in last week’s elections, requires no less.


How do these two guy divine what the "voters" prize? All voters? Every single voter? Or just the few that turned the elections for the handful of the one third of the seats that changed hands?


I wish I were back at Goodbye Blue Monday...