There’s a big question on the minds of many these days. The question: Is there one rule of law for citizens and another for elected officials? Consider what the average taxpaying adult has been watching playing out. Senators getting sweetheart deals on their mortgages from a company they voted to give business. A Treasury Secretary failing to pay his income tax for more than two years. Congress members voting on issues to give their private concerns bailout money, sending out private fundraising letters on Congressional stationery, using rent-subsidized apartments as private offices, failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income, vacationing with lobbyists and then voting in favor of the lobbyists’ in Congress. The list goes on.

If any private citizen failed to pay income tax for years, he or she would be heavily fined. If a private worker took money from a business and put it toward his own, he’d be charged with malfeasance, fired, and taken to court. Yet we’re watching the former head of the Ways and Means Committee – the Committee charged with overseeing tax laws – saying he merely forgot to report $500,000.00. We’ve seen federal government official, a former lobbyist, forgetting about the $90,000.00 check he received after joining the administration from the company he had lobbied for.

Is there a rule of law for citizens and another for members of Congress and the administration?

We are supposed to be living in a Republic with a government of the people, by the people and for the people – with elected officials to represent the will of the people. The people said, loud and clear, that they were against the gigantic health care program. Elected officials passed it. The people said they agreed with Arizona that the border should be closed. The Administration moved to sue Arizona for its efforts to stop illegals from crossing at the rate of nearly 500,000 a year. The people said they didn’t want any more massive spending, yet Congress returned for a special session and approved spending billions of dollars more – which they said were for teachers, police, and health care workers. Opponents said the money was really to go to unions so unions can support administration candidates in the upcoming elections. They were branded as uncaring.

So what’s the public to think? Does Congress represent the people? Is this a government of the people, by the people and for the people?

In California, 7 million people voted to keep marriage a rite between a man and a woman. Their votes were cancelled by an appointed and self-admitted gay Judge — who probably should have recused himself – who ruled that a ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. It was the latest in a long list of rulings that contort the Constitution. Now the case is probably headed to the Supreme Court.

But where does the voice of the people come in? Do Judges now make the law?

Do votes no longer count?

We have a constitution that was created to make America different from any other nation. Three separate and co-equal powers were established to serve as a checks and balance on each others excesses. There was to be a Senate and House to represent the people and vote on laws, hold hearings on all proposed cabinet members, investigations, issues, and oversee revenues and expenditures. The President would have the power to sign or veto the laws, but could not usurp the powers of congress. The Judiciary’s power was to uphold the laws. Now we have an administration that skirts Congress by appointing dozens of “Czars” to oversee programs and report only to the President. We have Judges who presume the power to make laws. And we have Congress turning a deaf ear to the people it is supposed to represent. Not only that, we have Congressional members – facing allegations of violating the law — holding themselves to be above the law and claiming that punishment for their actions is unfair or racist.

It is time we reminded Washington that this is a Republic. It is time we awaken them from the Potomac fever that seems to have advanced into the disease called Power.

It is time we remember the words of caution spoken by President Abraham Lincoln in July of 1858 – “Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it.”

It is time for the people of this great nation to demand this and nothing less.

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Mary Laney is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer