Back on March 7^th of this year, Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in the Washington Post:

"The House schedule for 2006, the second session of the 109th Congress, has a grand total of 71 days when votes are scheduled to take place, along with an additional 26 when no votes will occur before 6:30 p.m. The total of 97 calendar days, counted generously, is the smallest number in 60 years and the days of what Harry Truman derided as that "do-nothing 80th Congress."

Now that we are upon election season, some of Ornstein’s points present a startling contrast with the Congresses of our past:

"Of course, days in session and days voting don't give a full picture of Congress and its work. Committees and subcommittees hold hearings, do oversight and mark up bills. Still, the average Congress in the 1960s and '70s had 5,372 committee and subcommittee meetings; in the 1980s and 1990s, the average was 4,793. In the last Congress, the 108th, the number was 2,135. We do not have final figures yet for 2005, but they are likely to be lower yet, and with oversight practically nonexistent."

Among other reasons for this lower tolerance for the work ethic, Ornstein cited this mindset:

"Another is the visceral distaste of current members, especially the majority Republicans who set the schedule, for Washington. Service in Congress is not a privilege and an experience to be savored so much as it is like taking castor oil -- an unpleasant necessity, and one indulged in as little as possible."

Norman Ornstein concluded:

"A part-time Congress in a country with a $13 trillion economy and federal budget near $3 trillion, in a globalized, technologically sophisticated world, is itself a danger to the checks and balances built into American democracy, and to high-quality, careful policymaking and oversight. It's not too much to ask Congress to commit to spending at least half the year -- 26 weeks -- working full-time, five days a week, thus providing at least a measure of the deliberation and attention to detail that are so lacking now."

The serious purpose of popular representation is now reduced to a "Tuesday-to-Thursday Club" more worthy of a state legislature than the most influential and powerful nation on earth. And least the Republican majority should forget it; we are at war.

Obviously, we are now experiencing the resultant catastrophes that ensue when Republicans with fixed blinders deem government to be such an unpleasant necessity.

Harry S. Truman once said, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." Considering that the Republican tome of personal responsibility has been shattered and exposed by their continual non-adherence to accountability, Truman’s words now present as an innate form of common sense.