Bad for the Goose

No, this isn't another bird decapitation item. It's about our country's elected legislators, actually.

If the goal of members of Congress is to try to drive their approval ratings ever lower, I have to say they are doing a remarkable job. The latest case in point is the push by a group of House Democrats to engineer a resolution condemning Rush Limbaugh for allegedly insinuating military service members who speak out against the war in Iraq are "phony soldiers." This, of course, is payback for Republicans maneuvering Democrats into voting for a measure that criticized the group MoveOn.org for running a newspaper ad referring to Gen. David H. Petraeus as “General Betray Us.”

I'm not even going to bother trying to sort out who might be in the right or in the wrong here. The broader point is this: Nobody cares. Whatever your position on the war, or Gen. Petraeus, or Rush Limbaugh, one thing is certain: It's a trivial waste of time for Congress to take ceremonial votes of outrage purely for the purposes of scoring political points.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” says House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md. No it isn't. It's bad for the goose, the gander and the country.