Members of Congress defy their own shutdown!

The same people who engineered the government shutdown spent Tuesday trying to reopen parts of the government.

“To make sure that when the World War II veterans who are scheduled to come here tomorrow – to make sure that memorial is open so that they can enjoy it – that’s all this bill is trying to do,” declared Rep. Mike Simpson.

Somebody apparently forgot that since the World War II Memorial is a national park, shutting down the parks would spoil the daily visits of elderly WWII veterans.

Suddenly Republicans in Congress were proposing anti-shutdown bills, including one to reopen the national parks – fast track bills that needed a two-thirds vote to pass, all of which failed when most Democrats refused to go along.

But it didn’t matter because the veterans just moved the barricades and fell in behind the bagpipes.

The generation that took Normandy wasn’t going to let some little park ranger stop them and right alongside them were members of Congress. Like Michele Bachmann!

“We don’t like politics,” said Bachmann. “We like to solve problems. That’s why we’re here.”

Members of Congress celebrating a glorious victory over themselves.

And it occurs to me – if they can defy their own shutdown, why can’t we all?

Let’s push aside the barricades to the Lincoln Memorial, the Statue of Liberty. Push aside the barricades at Yellowstone and Glacier and Mount Rainier. We own them, after all. And we have Congress’s blessing.

In fact, since Congress is considering giving back pay to furloughed federal workers anyway – why don’t federal workers just defy the shutdown and show up to work? A defiant nationwide federal work-in. What could be more patriotic? Overnight, this whole tactic of using shutdowns as a threat would disappear!