This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, January 6, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Today, the U.S. House begins its work with a reading of the U.S. Constitution.

It's a first for the chamber, but is it a gimmick or a harbinger of a new fealty to our nation's

governing document?

Roger Pallone, Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Cato Institute, says it depends.

The reading of the Constitution in the first day of the House of Representatives Session is symbolic to be sure, but it's more than symbolic.

The symbolism is that we hope for the first time in a long time Congress or at least the House is going to be

taking the Constitution seriously. We have lived under the Constitution for over two centuries now, but for the past 75 years or so,

we've lived under something called constitutional government

because what the New Deal court did

was essentially turn the Constitution on its head.

It turned in from a document that authorized limited government

into a document that authorized all but unlimited government.

In other words, James Madison and Federalist 45 promised us the government whose powers would be few and defined.

Under the influence of the progressives during the progressive era,

we fundamentally rethought our conception of government,

or at least the progressives did, but it was not until the new deal that they were able

to institutionalize this after Roosevelt's infamous court packing scheme was unveiled and the court now cowed did that essentially

by allowing the federal government to regulate and redistribute virtually at will,

first of all.

Secondly, by bifurcating the Bill of Rights

...