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When your member of Congress introduces an important and historic bill to tackle one of the biggest government problems of the day, you are all: That’s cool! Here is my man! And then you go back to, you know, whatever – churning the compost heap – because you’ve better things to do than think about the government.
But when my congressman introduces a major bill, my man is Adam Schiff and damn it you know this little bundle of laws is going to be a winner.
Or at least I know it. In recent years, I’ve learned that there are a lot of Americans who for no reason don’t like Adam Schiff.
Which is so weird. Because almost everyone here in my neighborhood loves their congressman. We’ve all known him since he was a little boy over 20 years ago, a first candidate for a state Senate after a star as a federal prosecutor for which he became legally famous by successfully prosecuting an agent. from the FBI who had been seduced by a Russian spy.
My congressman nailed down the first FBI agent to be convicted of espionage.
And everything has been going well since. First, he’s a total Boy Scout, and second, he’s funny and easy going in person. The rare politician by whom it is an honor to be represented. You would have to be crazy to run against him, and that’s why every two years a crazy job gets up to do it, and gets around 20 percent of the vote.
Yet like I said you hear about these people disliking him, I guess because he flipped Donald Trump rocks and the predictable creepy bugs scampered under. Either way, their bad luck, not to have Adam Schiff as a member of Congress.
And then this week, Adam outdid himself by introducing the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a loud honk for those who would overturn free and fair elections, wonderfully timed just as bad monsters gathered in Washington to celebrate the betrayal at the Capitol on January 6. .
It aims to put new limits on the fleeing executive power in the White House, so I cannot for the life of myself understand why all of our representatives from both parties in both houses of Congress would not quite agree. . But don’t hold your breath while you wait.
The act would rule over a president’s power to bestow pardons, including for himself, when it stinks of corruption.
He tells presidents they cannot refuse to respond to subpoenas.
It reminds them in stronger language that they can either spend or secretly freeze federal funds, because appropriations are the business of Congress.
He forbids them to fire inspectors general and retaliate against whistleblowers, like the lieutenant colonel who emigrated from the Soviet Union as a child and was fired from the service he loved for having denounced the president.
It clarifies the language of the Constitution which prohibits presidents from receiving “emoluments” – payments – during their term in office, as no president should. Or has, for a long time. Except that you remember the transition period before Donald Trump became president, when he announced that he was not going to part with his companies? And how shocking it is that he is both president and then takes advantage of it when foreign officials stay at his hotel down the street from the White House, where the Signature Suites start at 1310 $ per night?
Yeah, we forgot about this con man pretty quickly when he drove even bigger garbage trucks through all the streets of America. It will therefore be nice to know that future presidents can no longer be at least this kind of chiseller when the law on the protection of our democracy is adopted.
Larry Wilson is a member of the editorial board of the Southern California News Group. [email protected].
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