NOVEMBER 2023 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Ohio Republicans.  Ohio voted 56% to 43.4% to put the right to abortion in its state constitution. The very next day, Republicans were vowing to overturn that election. Overturning elections is a growing Republican Party trend, but it’s possible that even Donald Trump would hesitate to try it with a 13 percentage point margin of victory where the top election official was a Republican.

Ohio Republicans are in the “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” phase of trying to undo what their state’s voters did, as a press release from the Ohio House of Representatives Republican newsroom clearly shows.

There’s the “ignore the margin, the election was stolen anyway” argument, which state Rep. Jennifer Gross made. “Foreign billionaires don't get to make Ohio laws,” she said, adding, “This is foreign election interference, and it will not stand.” She’s talking about money from the George Soros-backed Open Society Policy Center. Soros was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1961, the expenditures were made according to U.S. law, and if a few million dollars could reliably swing elections toward progressive issues or candidates in Ohio, it’s safe to say the past few elections would have gone very differently. Ohio voters made this Ohio law. They’re adults who made up their own minds.

Then there are some Republicans gearing up to pretend that this amendment doesn’t mean what it says and that it needs the legislature to step in and say what it really means. “Issue 1 doesn't repeal a single Ohio law, in fact, it doesn't even mention one,” according to state Rep. Bill Dean. And that’s the opening he hopes to exploit, or, as he put it, “The amendment’s language is dangerously vague and unconstrained, and can be weaponized to attack parental rights or defend rapists, pedophiles, and human traffickers.”

While there are significant issues left to litigate, with the courts needing to decide which current abortion restrictions are allowed following the Issue 1 vote and which ones to strike down, state House Republicans are clearly very nervous about how that will go in the courts. According to their press release:

To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative. The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.

How’s that for an announcement of a planned power grab? They lost big in August on the vote attempting to make it more difficult to pass abortion rights. They lost big in November. Now, they’re looking ahead to losing in the courts—so they’re laying the groundwork to steal this election by stealing power from the courts.

OCTOBER 2023 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Sen. Tommy Tuberville. The Tub strikes again. He’s now accusing Air Force general and former Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden of “calling for a politically motivated assassination.” Tuberville seemed to insinuate that certain GOP senators would be targeted. While the CIA has a rich history of assassinations as well as some laughable attempts against foreign leaders out of American favor (see Church Committee report), senators have not been in the cross hairs--- at least not until now according to Tommy T.

As Tuberville continues his blockade on military promotions, Hayden responded to a tweet asking if Tuberville should be removed from his committee assignments with a suggestion of his own: “How about the human race?”

Tuberville did not take this as the glib statement about his own worthiness to be considered human as Hayden obviously intended. No, the Alabama Republican decided to read it as an assassination threat and reported it to the Capitol Police, saying, in a statement, “If we still have a nonpolitical justice system in this country, then General Hayden will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Gosh, what a sneaky setup for insisting it was politically motivated when Hayden does not get prosecuted.

"This morning, my office was made aware of a statement made by General Michael Hayden calling for a politically motivated assassination. This statement is disgusting, and it is repugnant to everything we believe in as Americans," Tuberville said in the statement. "Given General Hayden’s long career in Washington, he must have known that, by making such a statement, he was committing a serious crime. His own efforts today to reinterpret what he said are only a tacit admission of guilt.”

Here’s Hayden’s alleged effort to “reinterpret” what he said:

Hayden spent four years as a vocal critic of Donald Trump, with Trump threatening to revoke his security clearance. Tuberville and his followers are extremely small potatoes by contrast, and Hayden is doubtless fully aware of what actual death threats look like and what constitutes protected speech.

This isn’t the first time Hayden has publicly criticized Tuberville for his military promotion blockade, which Tuberville is waging in a temper tantrum over Defense Department policy covering travel for service members or their families to obtain reproductive health care, including abortion. And the previous time, he did have to explain his meaning: Hayden initially answered “Absolutely” to the question “Is it wrong to call Sen. Tommy Tuberville a racist?” He then clarified: “I have aphasia. Sometimes my meaning isn’t clear. What I meant to say is Tuberville absolutely is a racist. Or, in other words, it is not wrong to say he is a racist.” By contrast, saying “I stand by” the “suggestion that ‘Coach’ Tuberville not be considered a member of the human race” is repeating the insult, which was never a threat.

The humorless Tuberville sure is working hard to make himself a victim in a week when he’s under increased pressure to allow military promotions to pass amid the war in Israel.