One Republican Controls UnShuttingdown the Shutdown. No Checks, No Balances. Just GOP Abuse of Power. No, seriously.

It’s apparently, true. Democrat House Rep, Chris Van Hollen, was on the House floor yesterday, clarifying this for the American People:

What this means is that the USG is stymied utterly. Back on October 1, 2013 (just two weeks ago) at 1:10AM (!), the House voted on House Resolution 368. In it, there was something about amending the rules of the House so that the only person who could put forward a motion to open the United States Government is the House Majority Leader or one of his designees. The House Majority Leader, right now, is Republican, Eric Cantor.

Yep, the rules were changed in the middle of the night on the same day that the government shutdown began, giving a Republican ultimate power over whether the USG opens or not. This was a tactic by Republicans to make sure that their shutdown could not be undone by Democrats outvoting them. What this means is that one man has unchecked power to control the American government. Sure, he can’t do that much with this power, just keep the governing body of one of the most powerful countries on the planet in a coma.

Republicans seem to be a little fuzzy on this whole “democracy” thing. But then, that’s nothing new.

What kills me is this line coming from conservatives on how “if Obama would just negotiate” this government shutdown would end. Think of it this way, the Republicans “rendition” the government and hold it in an undisclosed location that only Eric Cantor knows the location of. They then turn to the President and say “let’s do a deal.” No one else in government can override this. No one else in government can vote this away. As House Rep Van Hollen says in the video above, “Democracy has been suspended.”

The thing is, there is a legal mechanism for undoing laws that you don’t think are just. This ain’t it.

To me this thing feels like a legislative coup. No one in government has this kind of power normally. No one.

I just trolled Google News, searching through their “US” section and also doing a search for “House Resolution 368″ and “Eric Cantor” and found no results from mainstream news sources. I did find a brief mention on today’s edition of Democracy Now and one article about the Republican rule change at IBTTimes.com, but that was it, as far as real news sites goes.

Please pass the video at the top of this blog post or this blog post on to everyone you know. This is a big deal and it needs to go viral. The Republicans have done something that is truly unAmerican and their supporters need to understand this. Conservatives need to ask themselves if the Democrats had done this for the 2000 election, would they have supported it?

Every American needs to understand what has happened here.

via thepete.com* http://thepete.com/one-republican-controls-unshuttingdown-the-shutdown-no-checks-no-balances-just-gop-abuse-of-power-no-seriously/