bills

I have been to a sausage factory in Milwaukee and watched them make my favorite German knockwurst. I have also been to Washington, DC, several times and watched Congress make laws. I’ve found that it’s best to watch Congress just before you are about to have a colonoscopy — when your digestive system is clear. 

That thought and others entered my mind last week as I watched deliberations on the Matthew Shepherd Act this week on my favorite porn channel, C-SPAN. Deliberations that included a consternating bid to ride the expansion of the national hate crimes bill out on a pork barrel fighter aircraft bill threatened with a presidential veto. Yes, the good news is that the attachment vote to the aircraft appropriations passed in the US Senate by a startling 63-28 vote. Hate Crimes legislation has already cleared the House.   But because of the threatened presidential veto against the aircraft, the passage might be in question. The White House, meanwhile, says it expects to sign the Matthew Shepherd Act into law sometime this year.

To understand how this works, you have to understand Congress as few people outside the DC beltway do.  It’s getting hot and humid in the nation’s capitol. They don’t call them Dog Day afternoons for nothing. The August recess approaches and our Congress has a lot on its supper dish. More than 50 million Americans await an opportunity to get health care, Trans folks — along with gays and lesbians — pray for an end to the reign of terror against them, and about 20 conservative Republican seek to stop the national scourge of man-animal hybrids.