In the news, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia has died at age 92. He had been in Congress since 1952, and was the longest-serving Senator in American history. He was perhaps best known for bringing home the pork to West Virginia, no doubt a major reason for his continuing to be re-elected.
It will be interesting to see who replaces him in the Senate. I'm sure that President Obama and his cronies are worried that the "Byrd seat" might go the same way as the "Kennedy seat" in Massachusetts, also held by a superannuated Democrat politician who died in office; shockingly, a Republican was elected in a statewide race in the deep-blue Bay State. That scenario is not beyond the realm of possibility, given the current unpopularity of Obama and congressional Democrats.
And let me say, right here and now, that this is a good example of the need for term limits in both the Senate and the House, as well as the Supreme Court. We have term limits for presidents, after all. We figure that eight years is enough, and after that amount of time, we're usually tired of them anyway.
Unfortunately, the ones who would need to write the legislation to limit the number of terms that members of Congress can serve are also the ones who would be affected by it. Power and the perks that come along with it are sweet. Senators and Congressmen tell themselves that they are doing important things, and should be allowed to stay on as long as they can persuade their constituents to keep re-electing them. They feel that they are irreplaceable. Well, there are no irreplaceable people in this country. Not them, not me, not you, and certainly not members of our government. When the time comes for you to retire, your company will continue on just fine without you. When Presidents, members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices retire or die in office, the country also goes on just fine without them as well.
And if we can't term limit people like Sen. Byrd, Sen. Kennedy or Chief Justice Rehnquist, well, the Grim Reaper can -- and will.
