ContributorNetwork - COMMENTARY | Amazingly enough, the Constitution of the United States had never been read before the House of Representatives prior to January 6, 2010, an act of omission that seems counterintuitive in and of itself. Hundreds of members of the House over the years have been accused of not knowing the contents of the document which they were sworn to uphold, and quite a few made a career of paying lip service to the master framework of the nation's laws while attempting to circumvent it to promote their own ideologies or personal agendas. In an effort to push the idea of closer adherence to the tenets of the Constitution (a bow to the recently elected back-to-the-Constitution Tea Party Republican members), soon-to-be Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) had arranged for one of the first orders of business of the 112th Congress to be the reading of the Constitution of the United States before the House chamber and entered into the minutes of the House records. It seemed a straightforward and historic moment, ripe with symbolism and promise.

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