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September 16, 2009

The House rebukes Barack Obama--unintentionally

By William Tate

When House Democrats voted to escalate partisanship to unprecedented levels and rebuke congressman Joe Wilson, they also, effectively, voted to rebuke Barack Obama. They did so, confident that their comrades in Big Media would never report it.

Showing the pettiness of high-schoolers voting the socially awkward kid as Least Likely to Succeed, The House voted 240-179 Tuesday to admonish Wilson for a breach of decorum during Barack Obama's nationally-televised healthcare lecture last week. Wilson committed the, apparently, unforgivable sin of interrupting Obama's carefully staged performance by blurting out the obvious* and shouting, "You lie," at Obama.

* Q:How do you know when a Washington politician is lying?

   A: When his lips are moving.

Democrats have already established a precedent that heckling a sitting president during a joint session of Congress is not breach of decorum. It has been widely noted that Dems booed George W. Bush, but is you listen closely, you'll also hear a cacophony of "No!" and other catcalls.




So, Wilson was not not censured for a verbal outburst as such, but for what he said.

Rules published by the House state:  "it has been held that a member could not: call the President a 'liar.' "

Technically, it could be argued that Wilson did not call Obama a 'liar'; he only said, "You lied," not 'You're a liar.' A picayune point? Perhaps, but Democrats famously stood by Bill Clinton when his primary defense was, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XT-l-_3y0 "It depends on what the meaning of the word, is, is." A Clintonian parsing would have cleared Wilson from this Democrat inquisition.

But Wilson wasn't the first person in the House chambers to accuse someone of lying Tuesday night. In the sentence immediately preceding Wilson's comment, Barack Obama said of people concerned about 'death panels' under Obamacare, "It is a lie, plain and simple."

Obama's name-calling is never shown in the clips preceding Wilson's response on any of the networks--even FNC, but it's there, at 1:26 in this video.



If Wilson was guilty of breaching House decorum, so was Obama. And if the vote to admonish Joe Wilson was really about a breach of protocol, then the House should move immediately to rebuke Obama.
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