Next come the airbrushes. They're already playing with language.
In defense of the GOP leadership's eerie disfigurement of the "House Education and Labor Committee" to "House Education and the Workforce Committee," a spokeswoman excessively protests that the name change merely reflects the committee's "broad jurisdiction over policies that affect American students, workers and retirees."
Do workers not labor?
"From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned," wrote George Orwell in his 1946 essay, "The Prevention of Literature." And one of the slicker ways to re-create history is to reinvent "traditional" language: from estate to "death" taxes, from civil defense to "homeland security," from labor to "workforce."
If they had only asked, I would have recommended to the GOP that they go right to the intended heart of things with the "House Voucher and Servitude Committee." But, maybe they're right. I suppose there's time.