Historian Joseph Ellis needs to do a little history reading

Ellis claims Barack Obama’s call to rise above partisanship hales back to the true intention of the Founding Fathers.

Bullshit.

Our Founding Fathers crafted the body of our Constitution as a bulwark AGAINST too much democracy, per the excellent revisionist history of the Constitution’s creation, “Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution,” by Woody Holton.

(Page 273: “The Framers designed the Federal government to be much less accessible than it seems.”)

Yet, our idiotic American public puts the entire Constitution, a now-antiquated document, on a ridiculous pedestal. And, even the Bill of Rights is lacking things like an explicit right to privacy amendment like that found in post-WWII Western European constitutions. We don’t need a professional historian making things worse.

Beyond that, it’s arguable the Founders meant a party of debtors, if anything, when they spoke against “party” and “faction,” while they themselves represented the “investor party.” Joseph Ellis could stand to read Holton’s book.

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Tim Johnson, Your Country Needs You.

Can someone please explain to me why Senator Tim Johnson, D-S.D., is not voting on the most important issues the U.S. Senate has considered since, oh, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution?

Yes, I know he's recovering from a nearly-fatal brain aneurism, and as someone whose family history includes stroke victims, I emphathize strongly.

But really, they were propping up Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and faking his votes for years after he was, for all intents and purposes, you know, dead.

Johnson's not bed-ridden. There are photos on his Senate web site of him undergoing physical therapy, walking with a cane. His Newsroom page has more than a dozen press releases just this month announcing the millions of dollars in funding that he has secured for South Dakota.

So why does Harry Reid keep using the absence of Senator Johnson as an excuse for the Senate Democrats not having even a one-vote majority (Joe Lieberman notwithstanding?)

I understand and appreciate the importance of near-constant physical therapy for those who have suffered brain injuries. If it were me, I'd want to be home, as far away from the lethal miasmas of D.C. as I could get.

But these, dear Tim, are perilous times. The fate of this country and the entire planet are quite literally at stake. I don't believe that getting you onto the floor of the Senate, whether in a wheelchair or a hospital bed, to vote to preserve the Constitution of the United States, would kill you.

But even if it would kill you, I am still asking - nay, demanding - that you do it.

When the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence, they were signing their own death warrants. If they'd been caught by the British soldiers who patrolled every street, they'd have been hanged. No trial, no appeal, no delay.

Is your taking a break from physical therapy to cast a vote to preserve the nation they risked their lives to create so much to ask?

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