The Commerce Department reports that first quarter GDP contracted by one percent. The Wall Street Journal notes that a contraction of GDP during a time not in recession is rare.

So we continue in the slowest economic recovery since the end of World War II, with unemployment, in the 6th year of the Obama regime, at 6.3 percent, still well above its historic average.

According to a recent Gallup poll, the economy is the number issue on the minds of Americans. Ninety one percent of Republicans and 87 percent of Democrats say it is the most important issue facing the nation.

So how is Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and 49 of his Democrat colleagues spending their time?

Writing to National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell asking that the NFL pressure Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder to change the name of his team.

According to Reid, the Redskins name is a “racial slur,” with his letter drawing a parallel to the recent incident of racially charged remarks made, in private, by Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.

The NBA is forcing Sterling to divest his ownership of the Clippers.

“We urge you and the National Football League to send the same clear message as the NBA did: that racism and bigotry have no place in professional sports,” wrote the Senators to Commissioner Goodell.

Reid has attacked Snyder before, saying that changing the name of the Redskins team is the “morally right” thing to do.

Reid is certainly the man to provide moral leadership regarding Native American affairs.

Several years ago he accepted a reported $68,000 in political contributions from Indian tribes who were clients of criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff – who subsequently served time for convictions of conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion.

Abramoff represented the interest of casinos owned by Indian tribes, and Reid did their bidding on various matters, including discouraging Interior Department approval for potentially competing casinos.

As I thumb through the US Constitution and review the responsibilities of the Congress, I see nothing about making sure that the names of sports teams do not offend racial sensibilities.

Nor is it easy for me to see the constitutional rationale for forcing a private citizen to divest his private property for something he may personally think or say in private conversation.

Our Democrat politicians have a hard time grasping that American citizens are adults and that adults in a free country decide what they buy and whom they work for.

You break the law by what you do, not by what you think or say in private. If your customers don’t want to buy your product or your employees don’t want to work for you because of who they think you are, that’s their business.

The most fundamental tenets freedom are violated when private ownership can be disturbed by politicians who don’t like you, how you look, how you think, or what you say in private.

Thought police have no place in a free society, but they are now active in positions of power, such as majority leader of the US Senate, in our supposedly free nation.

What exactly is Reid’s notion of “morally right” when he thinks it is moral to take a man’s property because of a private conversation, recorded surreptitiously? But he is not bothered that the man, Donald Sterling, is an open adulterer, and that his remarks were recorded by the young tart who sells her services to him.

Private property is the oxygen of freedom and of capitalism. It’s the job of our government to protect property, not invade it.

It’s no accident that we are tottering economically and morally when politicos like Harry Reid have and wield the power they do.

It’s really time to make some changes.