After a few bumps, a solemn reading

Setting the tone for the 112th Congress — in which every House bill must cite the constitutional source of its authority — members of House of Representatives began to read the United States Constitution aloud from the floor of their chamber Thursday morning.

Like the Constitutional Convention itself, things did not begin auspiciously.

Before the reading began, Jay Inslee, a Democrat from Washington, asked Republicans to illuminate exactly what part of the Constitution would be read, what parts would be deleted and who would decide how things would unfold.

It was decided in advance that any portion of the Constitution that was superseded by amendments — including the amendments themselves — would not be read, preventing lawmakers from having to make references to slaves, referred to in article one section two as “three fifths of all other Persons” or things like prohibition.

These inquiries about parliamentary procedure were not well received, and for several minutes, before a word of the preamble could be uttered, Democrats and Republicans batted back and forth over the issue of language, perhaps presaging future partisan battles over the meaning, purpose and application of the document.

Once that was settled, just after 11 a.m., Representative John Boehner, the newly installed speaker of the House read the preamble (that magical “We the people”), before yielding to the woman who handed him the gavel Wednesday, Representative Nancy Pelosi, who picked up with Article one section one (“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives”), followed by Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader and other House leaders.

From there, members who wished to read were recognized from their seats, beginning with Representative Steve Rothman, a Democrat from New Jersey. So it was, sentence by sentence, in accents that reflect that the myriad districts that did not even exist when the document came to being, by women and African Americans whose full rights were not recognized at that time, the Constitutional language fluttered through the chamber.

Read the rest here.

Yes, it's political theater. But sometimes theater is useful.