Wake Me, I’m Dreaming

Thinking about the upcoming 114^th Congress has given me some strange dreams. • I dreamt that Utah Senator Mike Lee sponsored a retroactive amendment to the Defense of Marriage Act, exempting Mormon founder Joseph Smith from the provision that “the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” This followed the church’s recent revelation that Smith had 40 wives, some of whom were already married to his close friends.

• Then there was Senate Bill 2 (SB1, of course, repeals Obamacare). Known as the “One-Man’s-Trash-is-Another-Man’s-Treasure” bill, #2 removes all “Leave No Trace” signs from federal lands, whose presence, said a sponsor, “impeded natural views” and were "a tremendous waste” of taxpayers’ money. “The government has no business legislating personal behavior outside of sex and marriage,” he said, adding that the bill will enable private carting companies to “create thousands of good jobs,” getting people off welfare and “out into a healthy environment” – a much more effective environmental policy than the burdensome restrictions imposed by the recently abolished EPA.

• The weirdest dream of all was that, with oil prices at a four-year low, gas production booming, and the U.N. having issued its most comprehensive report yet on the threats from climate change, the centerpiece of the new senate majority’s 21^st-century energy plan is, um, coal.

“Thirty years ago," wrote the Union of Concerned Scientists, "coal was seen as a fuel of the past.” That's when I realized I wasn’t dreaming any more.