One of the things I'm more than a little tired of is the taint of hypocrisy that permeates our public discourse.  The most recent example involved the reading of the Constitution in the House to kick off the first session of the 112th Congress.  I guess the Republicans wanted to make a statement in their return to the majority by reading the Constitution and implying that the Democrats, okay capital "L" liberals, had veered away from a strict adherence to the Constitution and were taking our country to hell in a hand basket by taking an interpretive approach to the document that is the bedrock of our government.

Here comes the hypocrisy: the Republicans decided to read a version of the Constitution that doesn't include some of the original language that was later amended. Check this out:

Even before the reading could begin, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., was on his feet trying to determine why the reading would not include the original language of the document. After a moment of parliamentary debate, Inslee asked Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.—who was overseeing the reading—to clarify why language was being "deleted" from the reading. Goodlatte replied that he'd consulted with the Congressional Research Service and the Library of Congress which "actually maintains a copy of the Constitution which includes those sections that have been superseded by amendment, and so we are not reading those sections that have been superseded by amendment."

Hmmm…here's the problem with that explanation:

There is only one official, canonical version of the Constitution—and most of the folks who read today, Republicans and Democrats alike, have a copy in their offices, if not their breast pockets. The suggestion that there is some other, agreed-upon, document, whose "portions [were] superseded by amendment" is simply untrue. As CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent Bob Fuss pointed out, the "redacted" version as read this morning had no coherent logic. They skipped over the three-fifths compromise but included the constitutional clause referring to the preservation of voting rights only for males over the age of 21—a provision superseded by the 26^th Amendment. They skipped the 18^th Amendment (Prohibition) then read the 21^st(repealing Prohibition). Andrea Stone at AOL News picked up on the fact that they "read 14 words from Article I, Section 9 about taxation. Under a strict reading of the ground rules, though, it likely should have been excised because of the later passage of the 16^thAmendment that legalized the federal income tax."

Believe me, I know that this type of crap isn't unique to the Republicans, but it's an inauspicious start for leaders who want us to believe that they're going to adhere to some strict adherence to the Constitution as our Founding Fathers meant them to.  Actually that's another pet peeve: people who argue for strict adherence to the Constitution and belittle those who disagree with them as taking an "interpretative" approach as if they themselves aren't interpreting the Constitution. By definition you have to interpret the Constitution, or any other document, if you are to understand it and take action based on it, and reasonable people can always interpret something differently. This stunt by the Republican leaders of the House makes that abundantly clear.