The contemptible spectacle presented by the U.S. Senate — it BS censured Elizabeth Warren

© 2017 Peter Free

 

09 February 2017

 

 

Evil Turtle Man strikes again

 

In a body filled with far more than its share of arguable slime — now illustriously led by Beelzebub McConnell — Republicans felt it necessary to rebuke Senator Elizabeth Warren.

 

She had displayed the gall to oppose President Trump's attorney general nominee, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, based on (of all things!) the historical record:

 

 

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) interrupted Warren’s speech . . . and said that she had breached Senate rules by reading past statements against Sessions from figures such as the late senator Edward M. [Ted] Kennedy . . . and the late Coretta Scott King [Martin Luther King Jr's widow].

 

McConnell specifically cited portions of a letter that [Coretta] King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to Sessions’s 1986 nomination to be a federal judge.

 

“Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his [U.S Attorney for Alabama] office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens,” King wrote . . . .

 

Earlier, Warren [had] read from the 1986 statement of [then Senator Ted] Kennedy, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee . . . including the . . . Democrat’s concluding line:

 

“He is, I believe, a disgrace to the Justice Department and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his position.”

 

The Senate voted, 49 to 43, strictly on party lines, to uphold the ruling that Warren violated Rule 19 of the Senate that says senators are not allowed to “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.”

 

© 2017 Paul Kane and Ed O'Keefe, Republicans vote to rebuke Elizabeth Warren, saying she impugned Sessions’s character, Washington Post (08 February 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

Senators do like to preen without rude interruption

 

Since when are allegations of bigotry not fair game in a confirmation hearing?

 

Isn't that part of what a debate about a potential Attorney General is supposed to be about? It is not as if Coretta Scott King and Senator Ted Kennedy were disreputable non-entities.

 

If Senator Sessions is too thin-skinned to take flak about his past, he certainly does not belong as head of American federal law enforcement.

 

 

Senator McConnell's devious use of Rule 19

 

Derek Hawkins, writing for the Washington Post, explained that Rule 19 originated after a 1902 Senate fistfight between Senators Tillman and McLaurin.

 

However, with regard to Senator Warren's conduct, there was no danger that anyone was going to slap her down. And none that she was going to physical assault anyone, either.

 

Furthermore, in today's Culture of Avarice and Deception, the idea that one should not — "impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator" — defines almost no behavior as being out of bounds.

 

The American Congress today is almost exclusively about gaining access to power for selfish and often predatory reasons.

 

Honor and honestly undertaken public service are so long gone that the "unbecoming a Senator" concept is completely laughable.

 

Look, for example, at who is President.

 

So now, Evil Turtle Man, you are telling us that Senator Warren's behavior in reciting the historical record was out of bounds?

 

 

The moral? — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — and his band of brown-shirt butt-lickers — trot happily on

 

Ain't America great?

 

No perversion of Truth and democratic process is too large for us to ignore.

 

Senator McConnell, I salute you. Uncontested genius for turd-i-tude, you certainly have.