Anarchy

On this day - my birthday - in 1605, English revolutionary Guy Fawkes's attempt to blow up Parliament was foiled, and the day is now celebrated in the United Kingdom as a triumph against terrorism. (Imagine a similar celebration in America every September 11 if the suicide hijackings that destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon had been stopped.) Today, lawless revolutionaries descended on the Capitol in calling for a plot against Congress. This act was not just against the government - it was led by people who are the government!

Angry right-wingers were whipped up against the House of Representatives's health care reform bill by Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a Republican known for making Sarah Palin look like Margaret Chase Smith. Bachmann declared that there should be an insurrection against the growth of government. Egging her on was John Boehner, the House Republican leader, complaining that there was a "government takeover" of health care afoot that was an attack on the Constitution, and he quoted the passage from the Constitution about the self-evidence of the truth of all men being created equal, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . ..

Oops! Correction: Boehner was quoting from the Declaration of Independence. Who said it was a quote from the Constitution? John Boehner.

Even as elected officials were encouraging violent revolution against Congress, a psychiatrist in the United States Army Medical Corps, unhappy with being sent to Iraq, shot and killed twelve people and wounded 31 more at Fort Hood in Texas before being shot to death himself.

Anarchy in the U.S.A. This is disgusting.