The Hill News

Mitch McConnell bowed to reality with his statement on earmarks yesterday. It couldn’t have been easy, and it shouldn’t have been.

Earmarks are an essential part of our constitutional process. For any member of Congress (House or Senate) to willingly give power away to the executive branch in such a haphazard way is troubling.

In 1215, a bunch of Anglo-Saxons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, which required him to proclaim certain liberties and accept that his will was not arbitrary, for example by explicitly accepting that no "freeman" (in the sense of non-serf) could be punished except through the law of the land, a right that is still in existence today in England.

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