Liveblogging The Special Session (2006 5th) I
I’m here at the Utah Senate temporary gallery waiting for the session to start, watching Senator Arent charming the press.
One thing that strikes me about the temporary chamber (the Capitol is undergoing a seismic retrofit) is that the Democrats are sitting on the right. It’s been like this since the first general session in the temporary chamber in two years ago.
The more progressive caucus in popular assemblies has seated itself on the left and the more reactionary has been on the right for over two centuries. When I interned at the Illinois General Assembly it was so. When I traveled East to lobby Congress it was so. In our Utah Capitol building it was so. When I as a tourist visit the Colorado chambers or the Massachusetts chambers or any other chambers it is always so.
The first time it happened, the world changed. On the 20th of June in 1789 the Spirit of ‘76 spread to Europe and the various representatives of the different social classes of France declared the people’s sovereignty over the king. They had been run out of royal chambers by the king and convened in a tennis court. When they took an oath to stand against the king in the name of the people they organized themselves with the radical revolutionaries on the left and the less radical revolutionaries on the right.
But in 2005 for some reason we did it differently.
