The U.S. House and it's silly punishments

Representative Charles B. Rangel was censured by The House because of some unethical conduct. He was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee which is heavily involved in writing tax law. His unethical behavior included things like, attending conferences in the Caribbean payed for by corporations, not paying taxes on $75,000 of income from rental properties, not paying mortgage interest for 10 years, and using his office for fundraising activities for the Charlie P. Rangel Center for Public Service including seeking donations from companies that had business before his ways and means committee. In total there were 11 charges he was found guilty on.

From the way he speaks in defense of himself it sounds like he thinks this is all an overreaction and nothing should happen to him, and that his service in the military should count for something. It is clear that he committed these crimes and should be punished for them.

So here's the houses punishment. A censure. A censure is a very serious punishment and is rarely used. It entails his charges being read by the speaker of the house in front of the entire house of representatives (Though from what I've heard she only read one charge). Can you believe the severity! Can you believe people are debating the death penalty and all the while something as horrific as censure is going on!

This is a joke. They could easily remove this guy from office and even put him in prison (I believe Wesley Snipes just got put in prison for not paying taxes). Instead the house basically decided not to do anything. He even got standing applause after he gave his defense.

Miller's Justice - Throw him out of office and put him in prison for 2 years. Throw anyone who applauded him out of office. Revoke voting rights from the people in New York that re-elected him despite the charges until they have taken some basic courses on ethics and how to do some research before casting a vote.

Legislative parenting

I heard on the radio the other day that they are working on a system that would make the texting function on phones not work while driving in a car. This is motivated by trying to keep young people from texting while driving. We see things like this more and more in our society. We are making a law to go after the symptom of a bigger problem rather than address that problem itself. I would say the big problem here is that young people don't care that they are putting themselves and others at serious risk. If asked why people shouldn't text while driving they could probably tell you that it is dangerous but I think it is difficult for them to personalize that danger. Whether this mentality is due to poor parenting or just the nature of being young I can't really say. But I will say this, if we have deemed talking on the cell phone or texting while driving to be too dangerous to allow then we could very easily put a stop to it. Just make the penalty a confiscation of the phone and a revocation of the license for a year or five and a $10,000 fine. If you ran the risk of not being able to drive for 1 to 5 years there is absolutely no way you would decide its worth it to text while driving. For those that did think it was worth it they would hopefully get caught and we could get those morons off the road, and the fines would generate a little revenue for the state.

Does this sound reasonable? If you decide it is too drastic please tell me why otherwise I might assume you enjoy texting while driving or something.