Exactly 474 years ago to this day, Thomas More was put on trial for treason. In exchange for being made Solicitor General of Wales, Richard Rich perjured himself to offer damning testimony against More, who was found guilty of treason and subsequently beheaded. According to legend, More responded “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?”

In the present case, the location is not Wales but Ohio and the price tag in 2009 currency is $3.5 billion - courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

When House Democratic leaders were rounding up votes Friday for the massive climate-change bill, they paid special attention to their colleagues from Ohio who remained stubbornly undecided.

Words mean things. To say one is “stubbornly undecided” is to say one has firmly decided not to decide, which really means that one has already made a decision everyone else pretty much knows, but is withholding assent until properly induced - in this case, with a substantial bribe.

They finally secured the vote of one Ohioan, veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the old-fashioned way. They gave her what she wanted - a new federal power authority, similar to Washington state’s Bonneville Power Administration, stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states.

Well isn’t that special? Congresscritter Kaptur now has at her disposal a re-election slush fund that will go a long way to securing the comfortable retirement of corrupt officials, shiftless bureaucrats, goldbricking employees, crooked contractors and legions of leeches - not to mention life-long tenure in Congress if the voters in her district aren’t aroused from their comas. In the words of the Pretenders’ Chrissy Hynde: “A, O, way to go, O-HI-O!”

And how, precisely, did this old-fashioned inducement find its way into the Waxman-Markey Bill? The old-fashioned way, of course: in the middle of the night.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, included the Kaptur project in a 310-page amendment to the legislation unveiled at 3 a.m. Friday, just hours before the bill was to be debated on the House floor. The amendment was packed with other vote-getting provisions, both large and small, that had been sought by dozens of wavering Democrats.

The wheeling and dealing proved successful. Mr. Waxman and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, backed by the personal lobbying of President Obama, won over enough lawmakers to pass the bill narrowly Friday evening, 219-212.

Breathtaking. The arrogant presumption is simply, gloriously, breathtaking. Actually, it’s mind-boggling when you consider we no longer live in the mid-19th Century when news traveled by word of mouth, newspaper or telegraph and chicanery such as this would be largely unknown by the general electorate. Then again, in the mid-19th Century, people in general still had scruples and virtues that appear singularly lacking in most legislators and a good portion of the electorate today.

Don’t any of these idiots realize this is the age of instantaneous, world-wide communication? This is the age of cable and satellite television, of the Internet which offers the blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook. It’s the age of cell phones and cell phone cameras. We live at a time when pranksters can use cell phones, Blackberries and Twitter to organize “flash mobs” in minutes. As I write this, news of Congresscritter Kaptur’s participation in what amounts to grand larceny is spreading throughout the land, broadcast for all to read on blogs such as this and then subsequently Twittered to countless others - including Patriots in Ohio, who now have a $3.5 billion mountain of ammo for the next TEA party.

Miss Kaptur trumpeted her handiwork on her congressional Web site. She said the new federal authority would bring new economic development to Ohio and the struggling Great Lakes region and would also ensure “regional equity” with other parts of the country that already have such programs.

“The federal government has been subsidizing infrastructure and economic development in other parts of the country since the New Deal. Now, it’s our turn,” she said. “With the Midwest taking the brunt of the economic crisis, my priority was to bring our region additional tools to create jobs and promote energy independence.”

Pretty much sums up the current, sorry, state of affairs of this once great republic, no? I’ve observed that even Republican Congressman now trumpet their larceny on their web sites. And why not? The prevailing attitude, it seems, is: screw you…I’m gettin’ mine and that’s all I care about. Nevermind the fact that “mine” comes, in large part, from everyone else’s pockets.

It’s an attitude that cynical Congresscritters and Senators use to reinforce a kind of isolationist parochialism among the constituents of their state. If you read my letter to Leonard Lance (my own RINO Congresscritter who, from the look of things, will be concluding his first and only term in 2010) , you saw that one of his main arguments for supporting Waxman-Markey was that New Jersey stood to benefit from the cap-and-trade bill, despite the fact that a majority of the other states would get screwed heavily by it.

In the comment section, one of Mr. Lance’s lackeys made a feeble and feckless attempt to point this out - only to be smacked down and rightfully so.

Thus my response:

[T]he attitude that says, in effect, “I don’t care about the other states because my state will benefit” is precisely the piss-poor kind of parochial selfishness that is decaying this republic like a festering canker. It would have appalled the Founders of this nation.

After the Battle of Bunker Hill, John Adams asked George Washington why he was wearing a black arm band. Washington replied that he was in mourning for the patriots who perished in Boston, saying “An attack on one of our sister colonies is an attack made on all of us.”

THAT is what it means to be an American. In those days, states treasured their sovereignty but likewise respected the sovereignty of other states and no one would dream of lining their coffers with federal funds looted from other states. Nevertheless, the states considered themselves united and an attack on one was considered an attack on all the others.

Today the whole arrangement is a political and moral perversion of what was crafted by the Founders, with states literally attacking each other through Congressional appropriations - sucking the blood from one other in an insane Ponzi scheme of pork and circuses.

Although the program would benefit his home state, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, also of Ohio, criticized the provision during a more-than-hour long speech Friday evening. He said an Ohio-based power authority was unneeded because electricity already flows well through Ohio without a new federal power authority.

Boehner is correct, but not for the reasons he enumerated. A new federal power authority for Ohio is not needed because the Constitution does not authorize Congress to create one. If Ohio wants electricity, let Ohio provide it - don’t pick the pockets of citizens in Nevada, Texas, Vermont or Wyoming to fund it.

This is what people need to start understanding: it is not only fundamentally unfair but fundamentally unconstitutional to take from those in one state and give to those in another for the benefit of those in the recipient state. The era of pork and circuses must come to an end if this republic is to have any future. We must be willing to have the courage and the fortitude to stand up and say ‘NO’ to federal largess. Then and only then will we be able to return the federal government to its proper, constitutionally-defined role.

I urge all Patriots in Ohio to spread the word of this outrage. In 21st Century America each one of us is a Paul Revere and our Internet connection the trusted steed that carries us from town to town. In those days, households were armed with muskets and when Revere made his famous ride he cried out “To arms, to arms…the British are coming!”

We have not reached the point where we need to lock and load our actual firearms - not yet, anyway. For now our muskets are our e-mail accounts. Use them, my friends. Send out the word to everyone. All in Ohio must know of this and must express their outrage.

The time to ride forth is now. The message is a simple one: “To arms! The despots are coming!”