Congress May Take Class on Law It Passed

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- More than a year after Congress passed a new campaign finance law, it's considering holding a class to educate itself about the law's effects.

House Administration Committee Chairman Bob Ney on Thursday suggested that the panel sponsor a seminar for lawmakers to make sure they understand the new campaign finance rules, and other members quickly agreed.

Congress passed the law in early 2002 and it took effect that November. Still, many lawmakers probably don't understand it, including the broader liability and tougher criminal penalties it imposes on candidates, Ney said at a hearing on Federal Election Commission enforcement of campaign laws.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-campaign-finance,0,4668459.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

*this is an actual new item

[LifeDuringWartime]

1. wow

that is so stupid. they should have learned about its effects BEFORE they passed it. :wtf:

[DUreader]

2. I Wonder how much that seminar will cost.

[baby_bear]

3. They should take a class on the USA PATRIOT Act

...since none of them read it before they clambered over each other to vote for it (Feingold excepted).

<snip from Feingold's address given October 12, 2001, to the Associated Press Managing Editors Conference at the Milwaukee Art Museum, explaining why he voted against the Act>

Even as America addresses the demanding security challenges before us, we must strive mightily also to guard our values and basic rights. We must guard against racism and ethnic discrimination against people of Arab and South Asian origin and those who are Muslim.

We who don’t have Arabic names or don’t wear turbans or headscarves may not feel the weight of these times as much as Americans from the Middle East and South Asia do. But as the great jurist Learned Hand said in a speech in New York’s Central Park during World War II: “he spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias . . . .”

</snip>
The entire address can be found at http://www.archipelago.org/vol6-2/feingold.htm.

s_m

P.S. I realize this is off-topic, but I just happened to be reading it when I saw this post about taking a class to educate the Senators. Yes! It's about time they became educated about the matters on which they cast critical votes! What an idea! (It will never fly. *sigh*)

[Rose Siding]

4. Both articles raise the same question

Who's flying this plane?!

[baby_bear]

7. ouch!

good one, party_line.

s_m

[Feanorcurufinwe]

5. If they took a class on the U.S. Constitution they wouldn't have to.

[burrowowl]

8. Not off topic

Congress is going to take classes.
May they take them on the so-called Patriot Act and the Constitution, etc. and aborogate the damn thing!
IDIOTS!

[Solly Mack]

6. uh..uh..well, the obvious question this beggars

is so, well, obvious that my mind reels...

lawmakers are passing laws they don't understand...now that I think this is a first but damn...