Mad Minerva notes the absolute contempt the European Parliament has for even its own members of parliament who resist the leadership of the Euros (from the Telegraph):
Before Christmas, almost entirely unreported here in Britain, the proceedings of the European Parliament were brought to a halt by an unprecedented uproar. Just after the EU's leaders had flown back from signing their new treaty in Lisbon, the Portuguese prime minister Jose Socrates, as the EU's acting "president", was in Strasbourg for a ceremony to celebrate the signing of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, part of the Constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.
During his speech, some 50 MEPs of both Left and Right and from several countries, following a plan made by the Nordic Green Left group and supported by several British Conservative and UK Independence Party MEPs, unfurled banners emblazoned with the word "Referendum". The protest was intended to bear dignified, silent witness on behalf of all those countries, including Britain, that are now to be denied referendums on the treaty. But when ushers were ordered to remove the placards and other MEPs began shouting abuse, some of the demonstrators began shouting back.
The scene became so unedifying that the television coverage of the proceedings was cut off. Several group leaders made pompous speeches deploring the "football hooligan" behaviour of those MEPs who, as one put it, "had shown contempt for the dignity of Parliament". The ceremony concluded with the majority of MEPs standing reverentially to attention for the "European anthem" - which is one of the very few items dropped from the rejected Constitution to justify the pretence that the virtually identical new treaty is somehow a completely different document.
Nothing like this had ever happened in the Parliament, but never before has the EU's ruling elite shown such contempt for those they govern - all those voters who were promised referendums and have been denied them. Beginning with the decision of the European Council last June that there could be no further debate on the wording of the treaty which it alone had decided - itself an unprecedented flouting of the rules - it has been an astonishing coup d'etat.
There are many European states whose surrender does not surprise me. But Britain? The Great Charter of Liberty, first wrestled from a British monarch in 1215, is to be Euthanized with nary a peep from Parliament--or any other legislative body in Europe.
And freedom in Europe begins its slow death at the hands of bureaucrats sitting in grand offices in Brussels. And the Europeans hardly seem to care. Or even notice, really.
What is that about the banality of evil? I'm starting to thoroughly depress myself.
