Tom Carper: “The elections are behind us now and we are looking forward to the next Congress which will be seated on January 4--the…”

“The elections are behind us now and we are looking forward to the next Congress which will be seated on January 4--the 110th Congress. We have in town a number of newly elected Senators and their spouses. A number of us--Senator Alexander, Senator Voinovich, Senator Pryor, and myself--have been involved, along with the Secretary of the Senate, in holding orientation for new Senators and their spouses. On Tuesday night we were over at the National Archives and we had the opportunity to have a reception there and a dinner. The reception turned out to be a tour of the National Archives and the opportunity to see firsthand original copies of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, handwritten letters from George Washington to all kinds of people, and from Abraham Lincoln to all kinds of people. We actually looked at the original Bill of Rights where we found that there were actually 12 amendments proposed to the Constitution, not 10. Two were not actually adopted. It was interesting to see and to go back over 200 years to the history and formation of our country, to focus on it and to think about it and reflect on it. When the Constitutional Convention was held, just up the Delaware River from where I live in Wilmington, DE, and up in Philadelphia, whenever the Founding Fathers were getting into a tough time trying to come to consensus or agreement on one issue or the other that they were grappling with, a lot of times they would take a break and pray about it.”