To Plagiarize Shakespeare...

Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears:

I come to bury Congress, not to praise them.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Congress. The noble President

Hath told you Congress was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Congress answered it.

Here, under leave of the President and the rest –

For the President is an honorable man;

So are they all, all honorable men –

Come I to speak in Congress' funeral.

They were my friend, faithful and just to me:

But the President says they were liars;

And the President is an honorable man.

They brought many taxes upon the country,

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

Did this in Congress seem greedy?

When that the poor had cried, Congress hath wept.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet the President says they were out of touch;

And the President is an honorable man.

You all did see that on the Capital

We thrice presented them a demand for change,

Which they did thrice accept: was this ambitious?

Yet the President says they failed to change;

And, sure, he is an honorable man.

I speak not to disprove what the President spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love your representatives once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?

O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason! Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with Congress,

And I must pause till it come back to me.