Once upon a time, some brilliant souls conceived the idea to hire many photographers and memoirists who would, all on the same day, all across the country, make photographs and gather vignettes of the people… working, playing, debating, sorrowing, enjoying, challenging. I liked the subsequent books called, One Day in the Life of America; One Day in the Life of Russia….
On a much smaller scale, analyzing a set of terms of American Congressional bills, in the life of our Federal Congress could reveal the zeitgeist, the spirit of our times, giving us an insight into, not necessarily the guiding principles and concerns of our current culture, but what and who and which groups have meat enough to be taken seriously by this congress… over the last few terms.
Congress is like an intelligent body implanted with many, and more and more embryos. Many bills start out with more or less equal imbedding and nourishment, but somewhere along the line, only the strongest bills survive…
… some with bed rest (left in committee til they mature more), some with powerful interventions via medicines (bargains made, amendments added, field surgery even), and some languish on the way (withdrawn from consideration), some survive all the way to the end of their very long and perilous Congressional gestations because they were accompanied by retinues or vigilantes all throughout, and some few leap out into the world because they were strong in thought and bone and blood to begin with…
The Senate :
Bennett Amdt No. 20; To strike a provision
relating to paid efforts to stimulate
grassroots lobbying.
Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act
Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Enhancement Act
Repealing the Death Tax Permanently-
Cloture vote
Marriage Protection Amendment-Cloture
vote
Confirmation of Samuel A. Alito, Jr. as an
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of
the United States
Confirmation of John G. Roberts, Jr. as
Chief Justice of the United States
House of Representatives:
Public Expression of Religion Act
Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act
Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act
Pledge of Allegiance Protection Act
Pledge of Allegiance -Watt Hostile
Amendment
Marriage Protection Amendment
Multilingual Ballots
“Hate Crime” Amendment
Eminent Domain
Henry J. Hyde United Nations Reform Act
United Nations Population Fund
Ten Commandments Amendment
Abortion at Military Facilities
Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act
Repeal of Faith-Based Provisions in Job
Training Improvement Act
***this list from Traditional Values Coalition
“American Zeitgeist: Bills Before House & Senate” © 2007, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved, is printed here under Creative Commons License by which author grants permission to copy, distribute and transmit this particular work under the conditions that the use be non-commercial, that the work be used in its entirety and not altered, added to, or subtracted from, and that it be attributed with author’s name and this full copyright notice. For other uses, contact copyright holder.