The excellent T.A. Frank reviews last night’s Reid-Angle debate and finds that the Senate Majority Leader has only a passing familiarity with English as it is spoken by his constituents. This is a chronic problem for Democrats, especially those who really care about the details of the legislation they are passing: they speak legislatese, a dialect of Lawyer (there really needs to be a Rosetta Stone for Lawyer).
Actually, the funniest example of legislatese language-impairment I’ve ever witnessed on the campaign trail involved a Republican, Bob Dole. When he was running for President in 1980, a New Hampshire elementary school student asked him what he was going to do about acid rain and Dole said, “That bill’s in markup.”