Barney Frank is my new hero

If you'd told me a week ago that I was going to write that I'd have asked you what you were smoking.

Tuesday, during debate over the Agriculture appropriations bill, Republicans proposed amendments that would subsidize and protect a number of agricultural commodities. They also opposed amendments that would cut existing subsidies.   Rep. Frank took the House floor and lectured conservatives on free markets:

"Mr. Chairman, I am here to confess my reading incomprehension. I have listened to many of my conservative friends talk about the wonders of the free market, of the importance of letting the consumers make their best choices, of keeping government out of economic activity, of the virtues of free trade, but then I look at various agricultural programs like this one. Now, it violates every principle of free market economics known to man and two or three not yet discovered.

So I have been forced to conclude that in all of those great free market texts by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and all the others that there is a footnote that says, by the way, none of this applies to agriculture. Now, it may be written in high German, and that may be why I have not been able to discern it, but there is no greater contrast in America today than between the free enterprise rhetoric of so many conservatives and the statist, subsidized, inflationary, protectionist, anti-consumer agricultural policies, and this is one of them.

In particular, I have listened to people, and some of us have said let us protect workers and the environment in trade; let us not have unrestricted free trade; but let us have trade that respects worker rights and environmental rights. And we have been excoriated for our lack of concern for poor countries.

There is no greater obstacle, as it is now clear in the Doha round, to the completion of a comprehensive trade policy than the American agricultural policy, with one exception, European agricultural policy, which is much worse and just as phony.

Sugar is an example. This program is an interference with the legitimate efforts at economic self-help in many foreign nations. So I appreciate the leadership of the gentleman from Arizona and the gentleman from Oregon. Here is a chance for some of my free-enterprise-professing friends to get honest with themselves, and now maybe we will see some born-again free enterprisers in the agricultural field."

As the Club for Growth said the next day, "Brilliant!"  Libertarian bloggers had multiple orgasms.

Then yesterday, during morning 1-minute speeches, Rep. Frank again took the floor to defend the FBI's search of Rep. Jefferson's office:

"Madam Speaker, I disagree with the bipartisan House leadership criticism of the FBI’s search of a Member’s office. I know nothing specifically about the case, except that the uncontroverted public evidence did seem to justify the issuance of a warrant.

What we now have is a Congressional leadership, the Republican part of which has said it is okay for law enforcement to engage in warrantless searches of the average citizen, now objecting when a search, pursuant to a validly issued warrant, is conducted of a Member of Congress.

I understand that the speech and debate clause is in the Constitution. It is there because Queen Elizabeth I and King James I were disrespectful of Parliament. It ought to be, in my judgment, construed narrowly. It should not be in any way interpreted as meaning
that we as Members of Congress have legal protections superior to those of the average citizen.

So I think it was a grave error to have criticized the FBI. I think what they did, they ought to be able to do in every case where they can get a warrant from a judge. I think, in particular, for the leadership of this House, which has stood idly by while this administration has ignored the rights of citizens, to then say we have special rights as Members of Congress is wholly inappropriate."

I was watching C-SPAN at the time (yes, I'm a politics geek) and I couldn't help but think that since Tuesday I've been living in a bizzaro universe.  I like it.

Comments

[Margaret]

BARNEY FRANK? He sounds like an actual reasonable, rational person, unlike so many politicians. He'll never make president though because he's gay. (who knows--he might TURN the rest of us, maybe the whole world gay!!) HA HA