So I only have the time left in a playground outing of the hubby and kids to write, but there are a few stories that bear discussion this week...
1. R.I.P. Warren Rudman -
Warren Rudman was a
Republican Senator from New Hampshire, one who earnestly sought progress and bipartisan governance. He resigned from the Senate after two terms because he said it was too partisan and fractious.
He was well-known for his work in
Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, which established some bipartisan (Hollings was a Democrat from South Carolina, Gramm a Republican from Texas) budget processes to try to tame budget deficits in the mid-1980s. Those processes were about... raising the debt limit. They would have created mandatory sequestrations by the Comptroller General, but they were found unconstitutional (as was the Line Item Veto - which was not in GRH but was also supposedly a method for achieving budget sanity, though at the same time a large grant of presidential power). Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL) also penned budget control measures in the same era.
Rudman later served in a Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President Clinton. And he helped steer the Iran/Contra Hearings with Senator Inouye (D-HI), producing a bipartisan document that said Reagan officials knowingly violated the law (hence the Bush Pardons). Rudman supported aid to the Contras, but
famously said (and here you will hear echoes of C.J. Roberts
from the Affordable Care Act decision - "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."):
Why are Americans, out of all the countries in the world, one of the fattest? One of the most common answers is that Americans are fat because individuals are making bad food choices, and are thus willing themselves to be fat. People routinely cite obese people with a ton of junk food in their carts at grocery stores, or the “super-sizing” at fast food places as reasons why Americans are fat. 
