The Cutout Senator Town Hall

Lisa Bobay-Somers addresses Senators Lugar and Bayh as well as the crowd at Don Hall's Guesthouse on Tuesday night. OK, so Lugar and Bayh were no-shows except for their cardboard cutout selves. I guess they didn't want to face the standing room only crowd at the Guesthouse... several hundred people, I suppose... all there to speak their mind to the Senators who were brought in and protected all evening by super Secret Service folk from the local IPFW campus (see below):

It was nice to see people pulling together with humor and determination. Ms. Bobay-Somers received a standing ovation, as did several others, for pointing out the obvious problems with the current Health Care Bill. But I think the biggest cheer of the night was for State Senator Marlin Stutzman announcing he was going to run to unseat Senator Bayh. Good luck with that!

Driving home South on I-69, I saw a flock of geese flying low in the sky against the fading light. The birds, using instinct alone, change off their leader with one being in front and then another for the benefit of all. Many want to name the Health Care Reform Bill after Senator Kennedy now that he's passed away... but truly, a Term Limits Bill should be introduced in his name. Senators like Kennedy and Byrd and Spector and Lugar get into power.... get to be the lead bird... and they never give it up. They taste that power and find they like the feel of everyone they know coming to them for money or appointments or information or influence and they fly and fly and fly, leading the flock further and further off course as their strength and focus and purpose and sense of direction wane. How else to explain a person in their upper seventies, their eighties, their nineties, in failing and flagging health, being unwilling to move aside for others.

Term Limits... Something Congressman Souder believed in fifteen years ago when he pledged to limit himself if he got into office.... remember?