Talk about a consti-tuuuutionnnn: The Connie, as always, doing a fine job in boiling down a highly complex issue into understandable snippets. I'm talking about the EU Constitution of course. The basic concept is easy enough to grasp: replace each EU member-country with the original 13 colony/states, and 2003 with 1787, and you get the picture. However, it was, I dare say, a bit easier to federalize 13 nascent states than it is to unify under an umbrella document, 15 (currently) long-established nations, who, not that long ago, were shelling one another. Nonetheless, if one is to make a go of the EU, then a constitution is essential. Some telling points are worth mentioning:

On the other hand, in some respects the constitution is creating the form of state institutions without providing the substance. Thus the so-called foreign minister has no power to make policy over the heads of national governments, who retain vetoes over the making of EU foreign policy and control of their own armed forces. The EU will not be able to raise taxes nor, probably, harmonise them either. Thus two of the central features of a state—the power to raise taxes and to go to war—remain outside the grip of “Brussels”.

So, from the get-go one wonders if this document is worth its ink, but reading on, one can appreciate the complexity of the issue at stake. It's not just taxes and defense. It's economic union, legal precedence, and even whether a president will govern the whole mess. Of singular importance is the EU version of the Bill of Rights, called, in typical bureaucratese "The Charter of Fundamental Rights." Hmmm, what kind of rights might a European be interested in?

The charter mentions wide-sounding social rights—the right to strike, the right to a job, the right of workers to be informed and consulted, even “the right to a free [job] placement service”.

Aha! Now the dirt is being pulled away from the root. As much as the Euros want to show their progress with this modified Bill of Rights, they can't help themselves with all this economic tinkering in what ought to be about basic human rights. But there's the rub. To a European, the right to strike is as essential to them as the right to free speech is to us. Vive la Revolution!