I've been published! It's only a 200-word Letter to the Editor, but it is in the Washington Post, which I'm pretty sure still has high journalistic standards, so that has to count for something right? :-)
Every so often, I read an article in the Washington Post that makes me upset enough to say, "I really should write a letter to the editor about this!" Only about 1 time in 5 do I actually do so, and even less frequently do they even consider publishing it. This is at least partially due to the fact that trying to compress whatever it is I'm trying to say into just under 200 words is difficult for me. This means that writing a letter to the editor isn't just a matter of sitting down and firing off a screed - there's lots of editing involved.
Either way, the other night, I read an article about how the Virginia Senate was resorting to arcane parliamentary maneuvering and lawsuits as one party attempted to claim majority control of the chamber from the other. This was due to the fact that there was a perfect 20/20 split between seats held by Democrats and Republicans, due to some key gains by Republicans in the last election. I'm so deeply frustrated with partisan politics right now that this letter was somehow easier to write, and evidently at least someone on the Washington Post's editorial staff thinks I had something useful to say. You'll have to read the letter itself here because the Post has some rules about reproducing Letters to the Editor in other formats and locations such that I didn't think it wise to simply block quote it here, but I wanted to share it with anyone who actually reads this poor, neglected blog.
An editorial note - as you read my letter, please replace "wrest" with "gain." This was a victim of poor editing, where the Post dropped a part of the phrase such that the sentence doesn't make good grammatical sense, I suggested a change in wording, and they apparently only fixed it in the print edition.
So once again, we're seeing an example of how broken politics is -- instead of coalition and cooperation and compromise, we have parties girding for battle on legislation that is seemingly so distasteful to the other side that it virtually requires a majority in one party to break the inevitable logjam resulting from a vote that splits straight down party lines. And while this tiebreaker vote technically falls to the Lt. Governor, he has already said that he doesn't get to vote in procedural matters (rules making) as well as some of the more likely controversial measures like taxes and spending, so it's not really a tiebreaker in a lot of cases. Therefore, unless we want total gridlock in the Senate this year, there's going to have to be compromise. I'm still wondering when that became a dirty word for lawmakers?
