For Father’s Day last Sunday, I asked for and was given Mark Levin’s book Liberty and Tyranny. It’s only 205 pages if you don’t count the footnotes, but it’s Wednesday and I’ve only read 47 pages and the Epilogue, and the type is big and pages only 6” x 9”.

I’m not a fast reader. Dennis Prager admits to reading lots of things out loud and I have a tendency to do the same thing, especially if I want to clearly understand what I’m reading. It took me forever to read Brothers Karamazov or as my daughter calls it, “Brothers K”. And I have plenty of things I’m half way through. I do have other stuff on my plate.

So it’s amazing to me that with all the hope and change being discussed and voted on in Congress these days, that the laws being proposed and voted on — laws, some of which we can down load in massive pdf files — have been read and inwardly digested by the elected representatives who will vote on our behalf. I’ve looked at some of them and spent some time trying to figure out all they portend. Energy, Bailouts, Banking Regulation, Healthcare, Union Elections.

I’m not a fast reader. But some of these proposed laws are over a thousand pages long. And some of these lawmakers sound like people who’ve never read a book, even out loud.

So I ask any of you to give me some help on this. The Waxman-Markey bill is over 800 pages. It contemplates jacuzzi settings and prohibits the illumination of art work. Notwithstanding the amount of time it takes to read the proposal, what kind of person would take the time to compose such a dictate? How many jacuzzis are there? More or less than illuminated paintings?

And how did the Founders manage to get a country going with a document we can still read over a cup of coffee — either silently or out loud?