Once upon a time, mid-summer 2006, say, there was a college fraternity that held its 150th anniversary in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. During the festivities, a Congressional proclamation was read “recognizing and honoring the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.”

It was great and nice and fun to have the Senate of the United States officially recognize the organization I get paid to publicize – and it took care of the ‘you need some sort of political acknowledgment for this ceremony’ part of the equation – but the concurrent resolution (109th Congress, second session, S. Con. Res. 81, for those of you who care), was about as bland as it gets.

Read it here. ‘Whereas, for 150 years, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity has blah blah,’ and so on.

In any case, I had forgotten all about the resolution; its impact on my life had been negligible. Then there was all this discussion about a troop surge in Iraq and how Congress wasted weeks debating a non-binding, concurrent resolution decrying the idea. A friend sent me a link to this op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle that quite nicely ties those two elements together.

So … we have a new Democratic-led Congress that wastes time saying things that hold no weight, that are said in the same tone as ‘good job, college fraternity’ and ‘we should have a National Horticultural Therapy Week.’

I’m just saying. Not that I’m saying.