Mob Rule In D.C.

Mob Rule In D.C.

The Law: Of all the alarming things going on in Washington these days nothing is as shocking, or disheartening, as the collapse in respect for the rule of law and the Constitution. Just look at the flap over AIG's bonuses.

---

---

Like most Americans, we found ourselves angry and perplexed that a company that took $173 billion in bailout aid because it had failed to run its affairs competently would hand out $165 million in "bonuses" to its top employees.

Yet, as with many things, the tale is a bit more complex than the sound bite. For one, Congress authorized the bonuses to be paid — at the direct instigation of Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who took $103,100 from AIG during the 2008 political cycle.

And while letting AIG pay some employees retention bonuses might seem wrong or even immoral to some, it wasn't illegal.

Yet Congress, which created the problem in the first place, acted with consummate cowardice by trying to "claw back" the money through a punitive, 90% retroactive tax, one specially levied on those who work at AIG. It wants to do the same thing with recipients of TARP money, too.

Why the big change? Public anger. Welcome to mob rule.

A measure to impose the 90% tax passed by more than a two-thirds majority, 328 to 93, in the House. Only problem is, it's almost certainly unconstitutional.

Our Founding Fathers, those towering thinkers who today get little but scorn from our elites for their brilliance, foresaw such shenanigans and warned against it. They knew the law could be used for political purposes, and wanted to make sure it couldn't.

That's why they put into the Constitution a provision against "bills of attainder" — attempts to legislate punishment for a specific group or person for past actions without benefit of a trial.

As James Madison wrote in the Federalist No. 44, "Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws and laws impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the first principles of the social compact and to every principle of sound legislation." They were explicitly made illegal by the Constitution, with Article I, Section 9 saying, "No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed."

The AIG tax is an ex post facto law, it is a bill of attainder and it definitely impairs the obligation of contracts. Three strikes.

We wish this was all, but it isn't. Democrats who routinely bashed President Bush for his supposed breaches of the law now show shockingly little respect for it themselves.

One sees it in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent comment that enforcing U.S. immigration laws is "un-American," one of the most astonishing utterances from a politician's mouth in decades.

One sees it too in the unilateral abrogation of the North American Free Trade Agreement by the White House, working in cahoots with Democrats in Congress and unions. The decision to ignore our treaty obligations by ending a NAFTA program that let a small number of Mexican trucks haul freight on U.S. roads has led Mexico to slap tariffs of up to 45% on U.S. goods, costing us 40,000 jobs.

And one sees it in the plan to take away workers' right to a secret union ballot in the Democrats' card-check legislation.

All these measures show the rest of the world that America, once a beacon of respect for the rule of law and a global leader in jurisprudence, is capable of extraordinary hypocrisy when it comes to the law.

You don't have to like or agree with the AIG bonuses to understand that Congress is doing something it shouldn't under the Constitution. Once a precedent is set, Congress will be able to go after anyone or any group, at any time, for any reason.

This bill is bad and unconstitutional. It was passed — let's face it — because Congress fears the people's wrath. The bill doesn't stand up to legal scrutiny. But then, neither does this Congress.