For years many a politician has based his or her career on being a champion of various rights, whether it be “defending”, “protecting”, or just “standing up for” the interests of some group or another. And who could blame them? Conventional wisdom says that rights are good things and the mere mention of rights always works in a soundbite.

But today legislators are nearly tripping over themselves in a rush to shower us with new rights – in bill form. Within the last few years alone, Congress has proposed new protections for everyone from taxpayers and students to patients and airline passengers. Since chances are good that each one of us falls under one or more of these categories, we should rejoice and be thankful that new rights are coming our way soon.

Or so our elected representatives would have us believe.

In the House of Representatives, HR.1303 is touted as the airline “Passengers Bill of Rights.” Now for the record, I don’t mind flying. But I do hate waiting. A lot. Those horror stories about planes being stuck on the tarmac for ten hours are my worst nightmare. I’m not sure I would want to do something fun for ten hours straight, much less be stuck on a plane with clogged lavatories and 65 irritable people.

That said, a review of HR.1303 shows that it is high on bravado and short on practicality. Among the bill’s provisions is the right for a pilot to return his plane to the terminal and not lose his position in the takeoff sequence – one of the main reasons that pilots are so reluctant to leave their place in line under the current system. I’ll defer to air traffic controllers on this one, but it would seem that having to restack 20 airplanes during a blizzard is not the way to clear out a delay: if #9 for takeoff gets tired of waiting and rolls back to the terminal, then 10-20 can’t move until that same plane reloads and taxis back into line.

What queue can work that way? That would be like taking a number at the deli counter, but being able to finish the rest of the shopping before circling back to order that half pound of pimento loaf.

When it comes to higher education, the Senate is just as eager to bestow new protections on the nation’s helpless college students. Sponsored by Hillary Clinton, S.511 “urges” the Department of Education to enforce “vigorously” rules requiring lenders to complete verification certificates in a “timely” manner for borrowers seeking to consolidate their loans.

Since when did such subjective terms become compatible with the concept of rights? Did the Founding Fathers “urge” Congress not to pass laws abridging free speech or freedom of the press?

Once it gets to the meat of the matter, S.511 is no more decisive in its language, which includes the rights “not to be exploited” and to “make affordable loan payments”. For the latter this means:

Such amount shall be an amount that is the quotient of the sum of 10 percent of the borrower's annual adjusted gross income between 100 percent and 200 percent of the poverty line for the previous year and 20 percent of the borrower's annual adjusted gross income above 200 percent of the poverty line for the previous year divided by 12.

As painful as that is to read, the tacit bureaucracy involved sounds even more excruciating. Hordes of data clerks would be required to update records and account for changing salaries and poverty lines – all for the sake of knowing whether one’s monthly college loan bill should be $175 or $190.

And what does the fluffy “right to not be exploited” entail? It is the right to know how an institution’s students fare, statistically speaking, as they graduate and transition to the job market. S.511 mandates that colleges post “the percentage of students entering the institution who graduated within 150 percent of their expected graduation date.”

I’m no mathematician, but did finagle my way up through 10^th grade trig and am pretty sure there’s no way to solve for the equation: “150% x May 17^th.” Giving the senators the benefit of the doubt, I’m guessing that it means one has to graduate within six years for a four-year program. (And that’s not an impressive performance – John “Bluto” Blutarsky barely beat that in Animal House.)

The brilliance behind the original Bill of Rights is that it says what government may not do to infringe upon the natural, inalienable rights of the people. The excessive use of the term – by applying it to any list of wishes or desires – turns rights into a cheap party favor, bequeathed by Congress rather than the divine. The “adequate ventilation, and comfortable cabin temperatures” mandated by HR.1303 may be desirable, or even ideal, but are not rights in the traditional sense.

This reduces the concept of a bill of rights to a political gimmick, slightly less tacky than the furniture store that “declares independence from high prices” for its July 4^th inventory blowout.

But, like a good sale, it appears that neither Congress nor the voting public can say “no” to new rights. So, if you’re a college student, head on down to “Crazy” Hillary’s Voter Appreciation Sale.

Where no deal will be turned down.