Bananas
And we thought all the wackos were in the House. The completely bizarre “Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” dated March 9th and signed by 47 Republican senators, should put that quaint notion to rest. The letter seeks to undermine ongoing nuclear negotiations by helping Iran’s unnamed leaders understand the American constitutional system, including the length and limits of presidential and senatorial terms. Such as: “Applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then – perhaps decades,” a truly terrifying thought. The condescending letter reads like a misguided middle-school social studies assignment. (“Write a letter to the leaders of a foreign country describing our system of government.”) Never mind that it describes our system incorrectly or that the senators' knowledge of Iran apparently doesn’t include who should actually get their letter. Bibi Netanyahu told them all they needed to know about the ayatollahs just last week.
In related news, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, wrote an op-ed piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader urging states to refuse to implement federal environmental regulations, which only goes to show that the Iranians aren't the only political leaders who don't understand our Constitutional separation of powers.
All their extracurricular writing assignments and lawsuits have left our legislators very little time to pass actual laws. But fear not, no matter how dysfunctional our government may seem, we still import bananas, so we aren't a “banana republic” yet.