AZ Congressional Delegation

Paul Gosar embarrasses Arizona (again) with an insult to the Pope

by

The Washington Post recently asked, Can Congress behave itself when the pope visits?

I was with a group of friends the other day and we were speculating about which congressman would win the Joe Wilson “You lie!” Award for shouting at Pope Francis during his address to a joint session of Congress next week.

It turns out that Arizona’s “mad dentist” just couldn’t wait to insult the Pope. Congressman Paul Gosar wanted to make all of the late night comedy shows and keep Arizona’s poor reputation intact, despite the Governor’s silly #Rebrand Arizona campaign. Catholic Congressman Will Skip Papal Address To Congress, Cites Climate Change:

PaulGosarWhen Pope Francis addresses Congress in Washington, D.C. next week, at least one Republican representative won’t be in the audience.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wrote a letter in Town Hall this week outlining why he’s skipping out on the pope’s visit to Congress. The main reason? Climate change.

“Media reports indicate His Holiness instead intends to focus the brunt of his speech on climate change — a climate that has been changing since first created in Genesis,” Gosar writes. “More troubling is the fact that this climate change talk has adopted all of the socialist talking points, wrapped false science and ideology into “climate justice” and is being presented to guilt people into leftist policies.”

Read more

(Update) The GOP’s ‘Planned’ government shutdown

by

TrainCrashThere is a train wreck coming, and the GOP leadership in Congress is at a loss to know how to stop it.  Tea-Publicans are the anti-government party that has held the government hostage to their extortionate shutdown demands 11 previous times since taking back control of Congress. Steve Benen documents the impending government shutdown is the 12th time we’ve been through this just since April of 2011, and provides a helpful timeline of all the other 11 standoffs.

GOP leadership knows that the public will blame them for any government shutdown. House GOP leaders to members: We’ll be blamed for shutdown:

House GOP leaders are trying to convince their rank and file it would be a bad move to risk a government shutdown over blocking funding for Planned Parenthood.

At a closed-door conference meeting on Thursday morning, leadership presented their members with polling data from the House GOP’s campaign arm showing Republicans would be blamed for a government shutdown.

Read more

Why adding family leave to an anti-abortion bill is bogus

by

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Charles Camosy
Photo: Catholic Star Herald

Anti-choicers are egregious in general but they are most frustrating to deal when they pretend to be seeking common ground while in reality pushing for the same bad forced birth policies under a thin veneer of caring about women. Some, like Democrats For Life and Secular Pro-Life, pretend to be liberal, all the better to lull reporters and the general public into believing that it’s possible to want to deny women basic bodily autonomy for non-reactionary ends (hint: it’s not). I honestly prefer Trent Franks sobbing about holocausts and the candor of the people in my Twitter feed screaming how I’m a murdering whore because I’ve had an abortion because at least they make it clear where they’re coming from.

A relentlessly self-promoting author and academic, Charles Camosy, “associate professor of Christian ethics at Fordham University and board member of Democrats for Life, author of Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation” has joined this dubious cohort. The title of his book (on several occasions Camosy has, annoyingly, shilled said book to me in response to specific questions I’ve asked him about policy positions he has stated publicly rather than simply answering them) seems to describe a worthy, and benign, goal.

Camosy provides an example of what he considers a “way forward” in a recent oped in the LA Times:

Read more

Mutiny on the Boehner: Iran, Planned Parenthood, then government shutdown

by

FreedomWorksPhase one of the Mutiny on the Boehner is now complete.

On Wednesday, the mutinous GOP House Freedom Caucus took Captain Queeg the TanMan hostage and forced him to pull the scheduled vote on the resolution of disapproval of the Iran agreement. They then forced the nominal Weeper of the House to accede to their hair-brained “Tortilla coast gambit” based on a debunked conspiracy theory about IAEA “secret side deals” with Iran. The GOP House Freedom Caucus ‘Tortilla Coast gambit’ to delay the Iran deal is a fraud.

On Thursday, the House voted on two resolutions claiming that the President had not given them all the information required to be reviewed by Congress under the Iran review law passed by Congress.  Not true: As Max Fischer wrote:

You can read, for yourself, the law that Congress passed articulating its authority to disapprove the Iran deal. Section 135 describes the congressional review period, and specifically articulates the documents that the Obama administration is required to give Congress. There is nothing in there about the text of IAEA safeguards agreements with Iran.

These two resolutions from the GOP’s Gimmicks-R-Us Shoppe were approved on a straight party-line vote without a single Democrat in support. Roll Call Vote 491 243-186 (straight party-line vote); Roll Call Vote 492 245-186 (straight party-line vote). This demonstrates that the TanMan is not in command of his mutinous ship.

Read more

(Update) Mutiny on the Boehner

by

FreedomWorksI posted about Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and his “motion to vacate the chair” to unseat the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, back in July. Mutiny on the Boehner.

With Congress set to return after the August recess, Meadows’ motion is suddenly back in the news as the side-show to watch when Congress returns.

Arizona Congressman Matt Salmon, a co-founder of the farther-far-right “House Freedom Caucus,” Freedom is just another word for another wingnut group  — the caucus is made up of Reps. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), John Fleming (R-La.), Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho), Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) — that has been making the TanMan’s life a living hell since January, told the Arizona Republic that he is prepared to vote to remove the TanMan from his Speakership this fall. Matt Salmon predicts, backs effort to oust House Speaker Boehner:

Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., says he won’t vote for House Speaker John Boehner to remain leader of the GOP majority and believes a conservative insurrection to replace him this fall is inevitable.

The congressman drew applause Tuesday at a town hall of about 50 people in Queen Creek as he spoke about the potential for a leadership shakeup and another government shutdown.

Read more