NY: New Ethics Law is Unethical, Unconstitutional, for Exclusion of Independents

From the Wall Street Journal:

The new ethics law being touted by Gov. Andrew Cuomo parcels equal roles to Democrats and Republicans in investigating lawmakers of both parties suspected of questionable conduct. What about independents?

"They don't exist," Mr. Cuomo said at a recent news conference, at which point he and legislative leaders standing beside him broke into a hearty laugh. But constitutional scholars aren't taking the matter so lightly.

They're warning that the state's new ethics body may be destined for legal challenges in federal court. By enshrining into law the perpetual dominance of Republicans and Democrats in overseeing ethics codes, Mr. Cuomo and lawmakers could be infringing on the rights of unaffiliated and minor-party citizens . . .

For more on the new law, see Poli-Tea.

Democrat-Republican Political Derangement Syndrome

The argument for the lesser of two evils is one of the primary means by which the ideologues of the Democratic and Republican parties maintain support for the political status quo.  Among the major supports for this argument, on both sides of the duopoly divide, is the claim that the other side is a well-oiled machine, and to stop them the opposing major party needs all the help it can get.  James Joyner takes this argument apart in a post on "Political Derangement Syndrome" at Outside the Beltway:

The idea that the other party is a well-oiled propaganda machine while one’s own is its own worst enemy because of internal strife ranks right up there with the notion that the other side is willing to be utterly ruthless while ours is hurt by being so principled. Both are emotionally satisfying and easily verifiable with examples from within the echo chamber. They’re both utterly ridiculous when one steps back and examines the situation. . . .

The Fruit of Democrat-Republican Party Government

From Darrell Castle a the Constitution Party of Tennessee:

With the lame ducks out of the way, what else can Congress be proud of? Here’s just a few:

• Allowing the president to wage trillion dollar wars of aggression all over the world;
• Bankrupting the richest nation on earth;
• Destroying two-thirds of the manufacturing base of the greatest manufacturing nation on earth;
• Plunging future generations of Americans into debt peonage;
• Obamacare with its health mandates that deny the right to exit the system – a system, by the way, to which Congress is not subject;
• Return of death panels despite the assurances that they would not return;
• The Food Safety Bill, or the bill to make Monsanto our food controller;
• Genetically modified foods; irradiated foods; imported and uninspected foods;
• Net neutrality talks well under way;
• A controlled press,
• and destruction of the best education system in the world.

I could go on with this for pages and pages but I think you get the idea.