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Remember how TV’s classic rumpled detective, Lieutenant Columbo, is always saying to hapless murder suspects “Oh just one more thing!”? He’s never really that absentminded. All the forgetful fumbling is just a way to trip up the suspect and get at the truth.

What’s all this got to do with the Congressional Record? Hey, glad you asked. Well, it’s always “one more thing” there, too. Except the goal is not to uncover the truth, but to bury it. The record is not a real record at all. For more than a century ever since its birth in its present form in 1873 the Congressional Record has borne only a scant resemblance to the actual events in the House and Senate.

While it is supposed to be the verbatim transcript of congressional doings, congressmen are free to “extend” their remarks at will, prior to publication. And that’s a very liberal understanding of the word “extend.” As historian Daniel Boorstin notes in his book The Image, “Despite occasional feeble protests, our Record has remained a gargantuan miscellany in which actual proceedings are buried beneath undelivered speeches, and mountains of the unread and unreadable.” This kind of legislative page-​packing does a disservice to historians and to the voters. Sure, we have C‑SPAN now.

So if you want to find out what really happened on a particular day there’s probably a box of videotapes in some closet somewhere that you could try to dredge up. Most of us don’t have the time for that. And yet we’d sure like to know what those rascals are really up to.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

You can never be too safe, right? Well, that all depends.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the case of Gail Atwater, recently decided by the Supreme Court. Atwater was driving along when one of her kids’ toys flew out the window. She turned the car around to find it. Neither she nor her kids had their seat belts fastened. The kids had undone their seatbelts so they could look around more easily for the toy.

Dangerous, right? Sure. Anyway, Gail Atwater got pulled over, got arrested, got handcuffed, got dragged into the police station. She pled no-​contest and paid the hundred-​dollar fine. The officer was “just being safe” here, right? After all, anyone who fails to wear a seatbelt deserves to be traumatized, just to make sure she gets the message. Otherwise she might turn into a dangerous axe-​murderer. Right? Well, who knows why the police officer acted as he did. Nobody claims that Atwater was violent or in any way abusive toward the officer. But the issue here is not one officer’s bad judgment, but whether that judgment can be allowed to stand as permissible procedure by legislators, by the police themselves, by the courts.

Atwater felt that her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure had been violated. She sued. And now the court of last resort, the Supreme Court has ruled, 5 – 4, that although the officer may have acted with lousy judgment, he acted within his appropriate discretion.

So the same thing could happen to you the next time you violate some minor traffic rule. Feel safer now?

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

One of the little-​known facts about congressmen who voluntarily limit their terms in office is that most of them keep their word. Even state and local political leaders who usually don’t have a national spotlight shining on them also voluntarily limit their terms and also keep their word.

Yes, it’s been known to happen. And we’ve just found another. His name is Brent Steele, and he’s an Indiana representative who has announced that he won’t seek a fifth term. Why? Because in 1994, term limits was a major theme of his campaign. He advocated them, and now he’s going to live by them.

Steele didn’t succeed in bringing term limits to the whole Indiana legislature. But he knows one way he can make term limits a reality. As Steele puts it, “I was for [term limits] then and after eight years [in the legislature], I’m even more convinced I was right. People get too concerned with politics and not policy. It’s a pretty polluted process, and the only way I see changes is term limits. I believe people should get out every so often and let the process begin fresh.”

Steele, who has achieved the rank of House minority whip, says he has accomplished many of his goals as a legislator, though he is disappointed that the budget process is still ridden with favoritism and pork. But he’s ready to let somebody else tilt at that particular windmill.

“I served the right amount of time, in my mind,” he says. “I rose in leadership. I didn’t leave anything on the table.” Good for you, Brent Steele.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There they go again. Foes of term limits in Michigan complaining that they are just too dumb to do their job, which these days requires some diligent budget-​cutting. Only if they were allowed to stay in training wheels for more than a decade could they possibly have any idea.

“We don’t know how previous legislators addressed the same challenges because we weren’t there,” whines Representative Doug Hart. So Hart wants a constitutional amendment to extend the House and Senate’s six and eight-​year limits to 12 years.

Hart’s helplessness here is more than a little maddening. After all, we’ve had the tool of the written word available for thousands of years now. Surely there must be some documentation of Michigan’s recent legislative past? Transcripts or something?

But if reading through all that is too much to ask, perhaps Mr. Hart can pick up the phone and talk to some of the former legislators. Those who really want to get things done are, of course, not so helpless.

Representative Mickey Mortimer points out that many members of the House Appropriations Committee have business experience. Mortimer says: “We were working in the ’80s in Michigan when we were in the rust belt environment and we had to have tight budgets and business constraints. If you have to tighten your belt, you have to tighten your belt. You run it like you would a business. You run it like you would your home.”

Representative Mortimer is right and Representative Hart is wrong. So have a heart, Hart. Instead of trying to gut democracy, how about just earning your paycheck?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Thank you Congressman Dick Armey of Texas for battling the Big Brotherism of the federal government. You know, that organization you’ve worked for these past 17 years.

Mr. Armey has criticized the National Park Service’s use of surveillance cameras to ticket speeders. He wrote to the Interior Department, “I am concerned that this may be seen as a step toward a Big Brother surveillance state, where the government monitors the comings and goings of its citizens.”

There’s only one problem with Armey’s position: He voted to put those cameras right where they are. Yes he did. He voted for that very legislation.

Of course, he doesn’t remember that because like most congressmen he didn’t read the bill. If he had read the bill, surely his “philosophical objections” would have caused him to reject it.

This is Washington’s dirty little secret. It’s called the ignorance defense and it’s quite popular on Capitol Hill. These “experts” don’t have a clue what they are even voting on. They have all that wonderful experience they keep telling us about … but it doesn’t matter how much experience you have if you don’t even read the legislation.

And who does? Ask YOUR congressman if he’s read every word of every bill he has ever cast a vote on. This will test his honesty, too, because he hasn’t.

If our congressmen don’t read the bills they vote on, who does? And who’s running the government? Boy, these are tough questions … maybe our experienced congressmen can tell us the answers. But don’t bet on it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.