Daily Archives: 10 February 2026

Sending a Message, Or…?

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford (R, AR) is worried about a proliferation of People’s Republic of China hidden biolabs throughout the US. One of his points of concern regarded the apparent occasionally sloppy setup and operation of the labs.

“Why would you have some illicit labs set up in an Airbnb, except for, maybe, you’re trying to create some sort of, you know, patient zero scenario, that you might infect someone, that you might create another COVID-like scenario.”
Crawford said the alleged handling of dangerous pathogens appeared careless at best, and possibly deliberate. “Why would you do it in such a slipshod way, if it wasn’t almost deliberately to try to maybe attract attention? Are they trying to send a message to us?”

Sending us a message about how easy it is for the PRC to reach out and infectiously touch us is certainly one possibility.

Another possibility, though, is that these are the biolabs we were supposed to find and to be distracted from noticing the other, more serious biolabs with the more serious and disruptive, if not lethal, pathogens.

Constitutionally Questionable

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The subheadline lays out the problem:

Refusal of older officeholders to cede stage to younger faces is prompting fresh calls for a limit on how long they can serve

Statutory limits on how long Congressmen and -women can serve in Congress are constitutionally highly questionable. Here’s what Article I, Sections 2 (on Representatives) and 3 (on Senators) of our Constitution says about eligibility to serve in Congress:

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

And

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

Our Constitution places a floor on age, but it places no ceiling on age, nor does it place any limit on the length of service or number of terms an individual may serve. In many venues, it’s possible for lower jurisdictions to tighten standards of higher jurisdictions, but with our Constitution, such efforts have been routinely disallowed under the Supremacy Clause, which unequivocally states, along with Marbury v Madison, that our Constitution is our supreme law, and Congressional statutes are subordinate to it. It’s most likely that imposing an upper age limit would require an Amendment to our Constitution.

In any event, limiting by age for how long a congressman might serve is a decidedly suboptimal solution to this perceived problem. A much better solution is the term limit that was used in our erstwhile Articles of Confederation. That document’s Article V limited a Congressional delegate to three terms out of six, with no bar on serving further in subsequent six term runs.

The Articles were written for a unicameral Congress, but it’s easily adaptable to our present bicameral Congress. This also would require an Amendment to our Constitution, but it would be a better one that makes medical improvements to the abilities of aging citizens irrelevant.