Amendment to every gun control bill

[VMI77]

As you might expect, amendments are tightly controlled. You can't just make any old amendment you dream up. Moreover, doing that over and over will get you earmarked [pardon me!] as eccentric, and when it comes time to vote on that new dam for your district, or the newer courthouse, or funding the air force base you have been fighting for for twenty years, you may get only one vote.... yours. When you ask for unanimous consent for something, all of a sudden you don't get it.

The way to get along is to go along. Your party leaders can make life easier or harder. Of course, if they make things too hard, a bunch of the followers will get together and throw them out.

If you are lucky, you have no bad habits you don't want your constituents or colleagues to find out about, or a Lyndon Johnson type operator will own you.

It's not easy being a Congressman.

I realize that you are speaking about the Federal House. I watched the debates over the Campus Carry last session in Texas and can tell you from my uneducated perspective that that was EXACTLY what the opponents to that bill were doing - making up any old amendment that they thought up on the spur of the moment. The procedure called for an immediate vote on the amendment and, because there was a Republican majority, all of the stupid amendments were defeated. Ultimately, the legislation failed and not for lack of public support through our elected representatives. In deference to the request to tone down our rhetoric, I'm not going to take this any further.

To my view point, the Texas session was a good thing. It put the individual Representatives on record with their votes rather than the clandestine, behind the scenes wrangling as it is done in Congress today. The local newspaper in Minnesota directly asked Alan Franken's representative whether the senator supported the Obama proposed gun ban legislation. The response was "I don't have an answer for you." HOGWASH. Franken knows darn well that if he publicly comes out in support of the legislation, the voters will take him out at the next election. But he will not go on record as opposing it. Too bad, so sad. He may be asked to vote on a bill and he owes his constituents an answer. From a voter perspective, transparency is a good thing. Cowardice is not.

It is time that we started holding politicians accountable for what they are doing, not letting them do it in the dark in the back rooms where they can later disavow their actions.

with A-R's proposed amendment.

But a staffer later was quoted as saying Franken supports an AWB, so he's not fooling anyone.

[K.Mooneyham]

Then perhaps we should stop electing people with things in their background that can be used against them...

That's a great solution! With no one in office at all, there will be no one at all to oppress the citizenry.

I am certain there are people with a clean record in this nation who have the "chops"' to run for President...they just aren't the ones getting nominated or elected.

[bagman45]

That's because they are making plenty of money as successful business people, and don't need the stress/mess of the political circus. Look at the mess we're in; run for office, have your family and life torn apart. Oh, and they are not insecure, narcissistic meglomaniacs who need to be worshipped by others hoping to gain from their association. Unfortunately, public service has become about power and ill-gotten riches, rather than patriotism and service to country.....