I really like the application of the collective noun “murder” to a collection of members of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the US.
However, there is a bit of a redundancy. Namely “congresscritter” already refers to both the House and the Senate together, so there’s no need to say “congresscritters and senators”.
Also, since “murder” is the collective noun for crows, it pains me to see the avians so maligned. Crows are crazy-smart and (at worst) opportunistic. Most congresscritters are not-so-bright and (actually) evil.
We do need a better collective noun for the legislative branch than “congresscritter” because that has overtones of cute which categorically do NOT apply.
At http://all-sorts.org/nouns there is a way to propose a collective noun for a group of nearly anything you can imagine.
I propose two:
- a miracle of honest congress persons
- a robbery of the more typical sort
A robbery! I support that!
Or if you want to stick to existing ones, the collective noun for sponges is a sleeze. I don’t think they quite deserve the comparison either, but the slimy fouling ones are at least a step in the right direction, and the syllable sounds applicable enough.
Collectivism! Glenn Beck says you guys are the devil!
Also, the anti-trust thing does not make me happy at all. The FTC does absolutely nothing to enforce the Sherman act, and suing big business is not always easy. Cf. Comcast X Time-Warner-AOL. Justice deferred is justice denied - just ask Kim Dotcom.
Why is this post (and almost every post in the last few days) truncated in RSS? I would start a new topic in “meta” to talk about this but cannot find a button to do so.
Might as well maintain the alliteration:
Sleeze of Senators
Robbery of Representatives
For congresscritter, perhaps a crony, a con, a corruption, ???
A Graft of Senators
An Obstruction of Representatives
This reads the birth certificate of a parallel constitution.
If individual politicians were able to enforce failed or made-up laws, you could end up with several governments, rights, obligations, courts, all co-habiting in a clusterfuck.
Even Kafka didn’t go that far. He would be proud of these politicians. Boy, have they gone far!
Well, there’s an easy chance for another branch of gov’t to trade a few seats then; at least, until the ejected members’ ploy to resell the Louisiana Purchase and North Mexico through ad representation comes to fruition. Of course, acknowledging any leaks Santa Ana may have made will still be treason.
citation? what source is this article's content based on? "Cory Doctorow claims it happened" isn't enough for me.Ah, look. I found it. Would it have been so hard to include the actual source link in the article?
These four politicians aren’t trying to enforce anything. They’re using their stature as politicians (as appointed representatives of US citizens) to request action from a group. Are you saying they are not allowed to take any role outside of their legislative one? I don’t see any problem with these individuals trying to reach their or their constituency’s goals outside of the legislative arena.
(I am not in any way arguing the anti-trust side of this issue. I think the EFF made a good argument for the implementation of the request falling under anti-trust laws and I’ll leave it at that.)
My name is DavidE405 and I approve this alliteration 
Cory Doctorow didn’t claim it happened
He said that EFF (through the person of Mitch Stoltz) claimed it happened, and linked that article. The very first link in Mitch’s article was to the source document, and there is another link further down.
You had to click two links to get the source document, the first of which was to the article Cory was re-blogging.
Was that really so hard?
Then what are you arguing?
It seems to me that you are defending the abstract notion that appointed elected {ftfy} representatives of US citizens need not restrict their representation to the legislative process. But nobody challenged that idea. Defending something that was never attacked in the first place is a clever variant on a straw man argument, but it’s still a logical fallacy.
What the article did was note that the “request” made by said politicians was tantamount to asking the addressees to violate anti-trust regulations. But then you carefully distanced yourself from that issue by agreeing it was in order.
I’m still left wondering. What part of the EFF article did you find objectionable? What part of the four politicians’ actions in this matter do you find defensible?
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