Into the Light

I’ve been thinking about just how bad Obamacare is going to be, as well as what a travesty of justice its empowering Supreme Court decision was, and although I’m planning on venting in detail and at great length about the true meaning of the Commerce Clause, fear not kind reader, this is not the time nor the place. Well, actually, it IS the place, but it certainly ain’t the time. 

I’m tempted to rant about how Obama and Congress have betrayed our Constitution, but I don’t want to start sounding like a Ron Paul supporter, so let’s turn instead towards proposing solutions.  You see, whenever I think of Obamacare, it reminds me of those Tubifex worms found in that North Carolina Sewer.  You know, the ones that look like an alien life-form, or more appropriately, like a hideous self-animated malignant tumor clinging to the walls of someone’s large intestine, only much, much larger.  I’m sure you feel the same way.  The resemblance just screams for recognition.  I see something like that and my first thought is to wish for a laser while reaching for a flamethrower, and I found I feel much the same way about those hideous worm clusters.

So I asked myself: How can we shine the light of the Bill of Rights onto Congress? And I mean that literally. Well, I have an idea, and since I’m thinking that since in general the Left is willing to get behind gigantic government-funded construction projects, especially ones where there will be no discernible negative environmental impact at all, I bet that we can sell this idea to both sides of the aisle.  I’m also willing to predict that Liberals will have much the same reaction to sunlight filtered through the Bill of Rights as vampires do to unfiltered sunlight so, you know, “win-win”.

We need to build a monument to the Bill of Rights.

Here’s my proposal:

First, we BIF* everything in Washington DC, between 2nd and 3rd Streets, south of C Street NE and north of C Street SE. I know, I know, there will be many of you out there thinking “why didn’t I simply put a period after ‘DC’ instead of a comma?” but we have to be reasonable.  This area should be just large enough, and should let us get started quickly (although I admit we’ll have to pause for a brief national holiday when we demolish the “Office of Compliance”). This will give us a footprint of 2,700 feet North-to-South (hat tip: Google Earth), by 365.25 feet East-to-West (hat tip: those crazy Masons who designed DC), making our totally awesome monument “as deep as the year is long”.

Next we have to choose a shape and a height.  I say we stick to the celebrated “Golden Rectangle” for our dimensions. Yes, it is plain and boring, but it is artistically and mathematically classical, and we don’t want any ornateness to distract from the text.  That said, we still have to decide whether this monument will display the Ten Amendments written in “landscape” format (height: 1,668.6 feet), or “portrait” (height: 4,368.7 feet).  Yes, yes, I know we'll have to get around the "Heights of Buildings Act of 1910", but it's been done before and besides - we're building a monument to our founding principles! Don't bother me with trivia!

The text will be written in gigantically tall glass letters, each 365.25 feet deep, so that for the bulk of every morning the only sunlight to fall upon the Capitol will be that which shines through the Bill of Rights.

Landscape:

Portrait:

Yes, it would be an expensive use of taxpayer dollars, but consider this – it wouldn’t really be a “waste”. It wouldn't be a "shovel-ready" make-work project because it actually would have a purpose. Its construction would not impact the subways, we could tunnel the existing roads (or simply block them, I mean – hey – this is Washington DC after all), and we spend way, way, way more on stupid stuff every year on things which don’t actually benefit our society. This monument, on the other hand, would benefit us greatly! 

Needless to say, I’m going to be lobbying for the 4,368.7 foot “Portrait” orientation, but even the smaller 1,668.6 foot WALL OF “PAY ATTENTION!” should make the point clearly.  And if we’re still worried that Congress won’t listen, then we will engineer it so that upon a two-thirds "Aye!" vote from the entire voting population, along with ratification by two-thirds of the States, it would simply come crashing down Westwards. 

Problem solved!

*BIF: "Blast It Flat"