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Dan Rackley

Dan Rackley is a US Naval veteran living in Philadelphia and a contributor to "Will They Ever Trust Us Again?"

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January 8th, 2011 12:50 PM

Republicans Miss Swearing In

By Dan Rackley

Whenever I started a new job, there was one thing that was always told to me after employee orientation and given my start date. One tiny little sentence that served as a potential tone setter for my entire time at whatever place of employment I was going to be at. Don’t show up late on your first day. Boy, do bosses hate that when you show up late. Whether it be working for some mom and pop hardware store or a stock broker, the boss does not take kindly to it when the new guy doesn’t show up on time. For lots of reasons. For starters, they have to spend most of the day showing you where the restrooms and coffee pots are; then they have to get to the far less important work of actually showing you what you are going to be doing.

Earlier this week recently rehired Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick pulled the legislative equivalent of standing outside the video store having a cigarette by missing his swearing in on his first day of work. He missed the swearing in entirely. Well, not exactly. He swore in on television. When he and Pete Sessions of Texas were milling around The Capitol essentially panhandling for the Republican Party, they eventually came to the realization that they were still in the break room at the start of the shift. So they did the only thing they could do. They ran to the nearest set, raised their right hand and presumably took the oath on a copy of TV Guide. Even though they had signed a copy of the oath, this was not considered that good enough by everyone else. So they had to go and redo their oath. Their votes up until that point were then considered invalid and did not count. Good. Aren’t they from a party that prides itself on accountability? On any first day anywhere that I worked if instead of actually showing up I told the boss I watched security camera footage of the shop floor; I doubt highly I would have been paid. Fitzy and Sessions should have realized that absentee voting has only worked well for one Republican in the last few decades. We all know what happened with him.

So if we are going to have any sort of trust in our elected representatives, maybe they should actually read the rulebook before they try to make any changes. If we can’t trust them to slide the punch card into the time clock correctly; what should give anyone reason to believe they are going to do anything in our best interest? Let’s just hope that when something important comes up to vote, they don’t try to text it to CSPAN’s 1-800 number. I just hope Mike Fitzpatrick caught the reading of the Constitution on his Blackberry while he was out getting a pretzel.