Kentucky Democrats are proud tonight of our freshman Congressman John Yarmuth KY3 (Louisville) who wore and distributed buttons among willing colleagues saying simply 'Article 1'. This was to express the Constitutional fact that Congress is the boss, not a 'unitary' exective. Yarmuth was immediately slapped down by the 'official parlimentarian' John Sullivan R-OK1, saying that the pins violate House Rules prohibiting the 'wearing of badges by members to communicate a message'. Yarmuth responded with a letter of multiple questions, foremost a demand to define the difference between wearing a symbol of the First Article of the Constitution and wearing a flag pin.
You can read the sordid details at WaPo and at Rep Yarmuth's website.
Compromise was reached at a prohibition whenever a Congressman is speaking, (who'da guessed that CSPAN cameras are so feared?). Anyhow, I hope that Rep Yarmuth and his pin-wearing colleagues will make a conspicuous ritual of removing their pins each time they speak and replacing them when yielding the floor.
Rant after fold:
Although the flag moves progressives to tears for symbolizing our grand experiment in democracy, Republicans have now reduced its meaning to little more than a battle flag, just as they and their christian hatemongers have reduced God to nothing more than a WAR-God who chooses sides...our side - 'Gott Mit Uns'.
The United States has always harbored enemies of the Constitution and especially against The Bill of Rights which the States had demanded in exchange for ratifying the Constitutional centralization of power. I have always puzzled over how Republicans can so darkly oppose the American Civil Liberties Union whose stated and only mission is to defend The Bill of Rights. Hell, the ACLU even defended traitor Ollie North against double jeopardy after he had testified, with immunity, before Congress. But then there are still aged Italians who feel that Il Duce would have been the savior of civilization if it had not been for Hitler's megalomania.
Well, we have always had, presently have, and will always have such partisans of authority in the United States of America. They are numerous, persistent and are never influenced by logical argument. They want authority and they want it to be theirs.