MARCH 2024 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Alabama Supreme Court. The Alabama Supreme Court, in its ultimate wisdom, ruled this month that frozen embryos are the legal equivalent of children. This has caused Alabama’s largest hospital to pause in vitro fertilization treatments for fear of criminal prosecution. Other fertility treatment providers in the state were continuing to provide IVF as lawyers explored the impact of the ruling.

“Unborn children are ‘children’ ... without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in Friday’s majority ruling by the all-Republican court.

The ruling prompted a wave of concern about the future of IVF treatments in the state and the potential unintended consequences of extreme anti-abortion laws in Republican-controlled states. Patients called clinics to see if scheduled IVF treatments would continue. And providers consulted with attorneys.

Justices — citing language in the Alabama Constitution that the state recognizes the “rights of the unborn child” — said couples could sue for wrongful death when their frozen embryos were destroyed in a accident at a storage facility.

Mitchell said the court had previously ruled that a fetus killed when a woman is pregnant is covered under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act and nothing excludes “extrauterine children from the Act’s coverage.”

The ruling brought a rush of warnings about the potential impact on fertility treatments and the freezing of embryos, which had previously been considered property by the courts. Groups representing both IVF treatment providers and patients seeking fertility treatments raises questions for providers and patients, including if they can freeze future embryos created during fertility treatment or if patients could ever donate or destroy unused embryos.

The Alabama Supreme Court decision partly hinged on anti-abortion language added to the Alabama Constitution in 2018, stating it is the “policy of this state to ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child,” an amendment that its opponents warned was essentially a personhood measure that could give rights to fertilized eggs. Well, that time has come.

FEBRUARY 2024 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Marjorie Taylor Green R-Georgia). Green gave a doozy of an interview with right-wing podcast host Charlie Kirk to commiserate about House Republicans’ failed initial attempt vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Greene has been big mad about the failed vote and, like many of her pro-impeachment colleagues, is looking for someone—anyone—to blame, including Democrats for trying “to throw us off on the numbers.”

But Greene has plenty of disdain for the Republicans who voted against the bill too. When Kirk asked why Ken Buck of Colorado, Tom McClintock of California, and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin voted against impeachment, Greene seemed flabbergasted—but didn’t rule out the possibility that “they’re being bribed.”

Kirk fed the Georgia congresswoman the utterly baseless idea, asking, “Do you think these people are being blackmailed by the intel agencies? They might have had relations with certain people and pictures and compromised. Do you think that they're currently being blackmailed?”

And Greene took the bait.

“You know, I have no proof of that, but again, I can't understand the vote. So, nothing surprises me in Washington, D.C. anymore, Charlie. Literally, nothing surprises me because—it doesn't make sense to anyone, right? Why would anyone vote no? Why would anyone protect Mayorkas unless they're being bribed, unless there's something going on, unless they're making a deal. You know, because you can't understand it. It makes no sense. And it's completely wrong to vote no on impeachment.

Greene also speculated that Buck, who is retiring, is “trying to get a job working for CNN like Adam Kinzinger.” She insisted that McClintock is clearly not a real “constitutionalist.” And after listing off all of Gallagher’s military intelligence and military bonafides, she concluded, “I can't understand why he made that vote. But he did.”

Greene might not understand it, but that doesn’t mean these Republican congressmen haven’t been clear and open about their reasons for voting against the impeachment stunt.

Gallagher explained his opposition in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Why I Voted Against the Alejandro Mayorkas Impeachment.”

“Creating a new, lower standard for impeachment, one without any clear limiting principle, wouldn’t secure the border or hold Mr. Biden accountable,” he wrote. “It would only pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment.”

McClintock also explained his opposition in a speech on the House floor before Tuesday’s vote.

“Cabinet secretaries can't serve two masters. They can be impeached for committing a crime related to their office but not for carrying out presidential policy,” he said. “I'm afraid that stunts like this don't help."

On Wednesday, McClintock appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” to again defend his vote and responded to Greene saying McClintock needs to “read the room.

“I suggest she read the Constitution that she took an oath to support and defend,” he said. “That Constitution very clearly lays out the grounds for impeachment,” he said. “This dumbs down those grounds dramatically and would set a precedent that could be turned against the conservatives on the Supreme Court or a future Republican administration the moment the Democrats take control of the Congress.”

Nevertheless, Greene “can’t understand” why her Republican colleagues weren’t on board with her impeachment aspirations. It must be a conspiracy.

JANUARY 2024 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.  Hawley should know better than anyone how dangerous radical right-wing domestic terrorists are, and how corrosive online propaganda can be to democracy and the public order. They’re the reason no one can watch him walk—or run—anywhere these days without getting the “Benny Hill” theme stuck in their heads.

But even though Hawley ran from Donald Trump’s conspiracy-besotted mob on Jan. 6, 2021, much like a stoned ostrich chasing an ice cream truck, he’s faux-outraged that our government would ever do anything to combat the kind of homegrown misinformation that could have got him killed.

Hawley has introduced a bill—titled The Ending DHS Funding for Liberal Propaganda Act—that aims to make the world safe for conservative viewpoints, so long as they’re suitably bonkers.

Here’s the text of the bill:

The Secretary of Homeland Security may not issue any grant funding to any entity that will use the funds for the development of—

(1) any programming that engages in partisan political advocacy or promotes discrimination on the basis of political affiliation; or

(2) any programming relating to countering narratives or views on political topics, including6 COVID-19, vaccination, media bias, immigration, and crime.

Among the evidence justifying the bill, Fox News mentioned a federal grant to the University of Rhode island’s Media Education lab which it alleged was to create “counter-propaganda” against conservative viewpoints. In its words:

The $700,000 grant was used to address “propaganda and misinformation concerning topics including immigration, racial justice, the coronavirus, and vaccination” and “build on top of concerns about so-called ‘fake news’ and ‘cancel culture.’”

Well, Hawley may have a point here. Without propaganda, misinformation, and fake news, all Republicans have left is hours of b-roll of Donald Trump humping flags and praising dictators. Clearly, the effort to stop deadly propaganda is now an existential threat to the GOP.

Hawley, who runs to the right of most of his Senate colleagues—and to the left … and down the stairs … and possibly to the bathroom, where he tucks his feet up onto the toilet lid so his bear spray-wielding MAGA admirers can’t find him—is incensed by the University of Rhode Island grant, and he’s emphatically saying so.

“This is an outrageous use of federal funds and abuse of power,” Hawley wrote in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “All these funds should be clawed back by the federal government immediately, and anyone involved in making this grant should be fired.”

Of course, Hawley, who’s happily endorsed confirmed rapist and proud authoritarian Trump, isn’t concerned about any of Trump’s overtly political proposals—such as vowing to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” No, as far as that goes, Hawley clearly won’t be happy until he’s the senior senator from the Show-Me-Your-Papers State.

But instead of showing appropriate alarm over Trump’s running roughshod over sacrosanct American values and the plain truth, Hawley is targeting immunologists and demonstrably provable facts on topics ranging from immigration to crime.

He might as well introduce a bill preventing NASA from funding woke spherical-Earth radicals and moon-landing-conspiracy debunkers.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: Don’t give him any ideas.

DECEMBER 2023 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. House Oversight Committee Chair, James Comer (R-Ky). The double-talking dirtbag dropped what was supposed to be a big bombshell on Monday. This one may be his worst yet. As he put is, “Hunter Biden's business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden.” Wow, sounds like evidence of corruption to me!” The response he got was: “Uh, that was car payments Hunter was making after his father got him a vehicle at a time when his credit was in the toilet. And it was three monthly payments of $1,380. And Joe Biden was not in office at the time.”

The Washington Post, apparently having lost all patience for Comer’s misleading claims, told readers that as House Republicans move toward a floor vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry against President Biden, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has again mischaracterized evidence of payments from Hunter Biden to his father.

It goes on like that, tying Comer’s claims on this story to his broader pattern: “Comer has consistently oversold or misrepresented the committee’s investigative findings as he has argued to initiate impeachment proceedings.

Even the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal headlined: “GOP Sees Skulduggery in Hunter Biden Paying His Father Back for Truck.”

As House Republicans move toward a floor vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry … this is probably not the kind of coverage they want that effort to be getting. What’s more, as Rep. Jamie Raskin noted, it’s not even new. The Murdoch-owned New York Post reported those car payments in 2022.

Nonetheless, Comer got himself in front of a Newsmax camera Monday evening to try to make fetch happen. He was determined to make those car loan repayments look like evidence of corruption, no matter how extremely foolish it made him look.

“You can loan people money,” Comer said. “If they pay you back, then you benefited directly.” I mean, you benefited in the sense that you did not lose the money, but you did not profit. That would be quite the redefinition of corruption: avoiding losing money on loans to family members.

Comer also said, “when my son needs help, or my daughter who’s in college needs it, I just give her money. Nobody ever pays me back.” And as we all know, if you personally do not expect your children in their teens or early 20's to repay you for a car, then no one could possibly expect their nearly 50-year-old son to repay them for a car loan. This stuff really shows the degree to which Comer is just blurting out nonsense without thinking things through.

The president must be thrilled at this latest evidence of “corruption.” Comer looks like such a lying partisan hack, the media is losing patience, and this is the story Republicans launched to propel themselves into a vote on an impeachment inquiry.

The lingering question remains: are Republicans simply trying to fan the flames of Biden discontent, or are they actually so stupid as to see relevance is such an absurd claim> You be the judge.

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.

SEPTEMBER 2023 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Arizona Rep. Paul Goaar. Gosar continues to spew hate-filled, misinformed invective out into the public sphere. On his official government website, Gosar unspooled a conspiracy theory in which former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen.Mark Milley knew there would be trouble at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and teamed up against Donald Trump to let it happen. Then he added, “In a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung.”

According to Gosar, “General Milley, the homosexual-promoting-BLM-activist Chairman of the military joint chiefs,” is a “traitor” who has been “also secretly coordinating and sharing intelligence with the Chinese military.” It’s a lot of hooey to take in at once. Much of this is predicated on long debunked claims made by Donald Trump Jr. that Pelosi was the person who rejected the National Guard’s presence at the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6.

Gosar’s statements come shortly after disgraced former President Trump screamed a similar attack by way of his failing Truth social platform. He claimed that a purported call Milley had with Chinese officials on Jan. 6—in which the general reportedly reassured the Chinese government that the United States wasn’t being thrown into chaos—was ”an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling told CNN that Gosar’s and Trump’s statements concerning Milley were “disgusting,” and it showed how “deeply disturbed” the two men are. At the same time, Gosar being a disgusting and disturbed person is not new information. In fact, his own family has campaigned against him. Calling him a “trairor” and publicly demanded he be investigated for his part in facilitating the attempted coup on Jan. 6.

In contrast to traditional GOP support for the military, today’s party extremists with their racist slurs and seeming indifference to how a government shutdown (not to mention Tuberville’s bigoted war on military readiness) would harm our troops, demonstrates how much they’ve abandoned long-standing conservative principles. They’ve become the party of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, hate, intolerance, autocracy and. revenge. I shutter at where this might lead. Gosar for President in 2028?