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| Republican Congressman Paul Gosar [Photo AP] |
My last blog about this peculiar poster boy for delusional Tea Party ideology was back on October 26, 2017 when he made headlines for comments in an interview with Vice in which he made the asinine suggestion that the organizer of the Charlottesville, VA neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally, Jason Kessler, was "an Obama sympathizer."
As some of you may recall, in that same Vice interview with Elspeth Reeve, Congressman Gosar also suggested that the Virginia rally was some kind of vast liberal conspiracy backed financially by the progressive activist billionaire George Soros, a Holocaust survivor.
On Tuesday Gosar made national media headlines yet again after he contacted both the Capitol Police and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to suggest that 24 young undocumented immigrant Dreamers who accompanied some Democratic members of congress to Trump's State of the Union address be arrested when they entered the chamber. MAGA!
That's actually a pretty interesting stance considering Gosar's own maternal grandparents were Basque immigrants from Banca, France and his paternal grandparents were from Slovenia.
Two days ago I was both flattered and honored to get a shout-out on Twitter from J'aime Morgaine.
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| One of J'aime Morgaine's homemade blocks |
In an era when a measly 60.2 percent of eligible American voters bothered to cast a vote in the 2016 presidential election, Morgaine represents the kind of grassroots energy progressives will need to swing the 2018 elections.
A resident of Arizona's 4th congressional district, Morgaine helped draw national attention to Gosar's efforts to block his own constituents from posting comments on the Facebook page he uses as an official communication portal for his congressional office by driving two hours from her home to Gosar's regional congressional office to deliver actual bricks with the message "Please stop blocking your constituents" written on them.
Take a few minutes to check out both Morgaine and Gosar being interviewed for Vice on the issue - to me this is what civic engagement and democracy in action is all about.
Few people are an open book, but it's hard to figure out exactly what goes on inside the mind of a four-term Congressman like Gosar, who was initially elected to represent Arizona's 1st congressional district in 2010, then won election to the state's 4th congressional district in 2012 after it was gerrymandered to make it more Republican-friendly. MAGA!
Don't get me wrong, the First Amendment right to freedom of expression applies to everyone lucky enough to live in this nation equally.
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| Pope Francis addressing Congress in 2015 |
For example as Elsie Viebeck reported for the Washington Post back on September 21, 2015, Gosar announced his intention to boycott Pope Francis's address to Congress because of his views on climate change and man's role in causing irreparable damage to the environment.
As Viebeck noted, in an op-ed posted in the conservative-leaning Website Townhall, Gosar said:
"[Pope Francis 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."
Was Gosar was on some kind of crazy right-wing ideological bender that month?
Because six days before announcing that he was boycotting an address by the leader of the Catholic Church, Devin Henry of The Hill reported that Gosar was "circulating a resolution calling for the impeachment of EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, accusing her of perjury while testifying before congress [in 2015]"
Gosar's outrage was triggered over McCarthy's congressional testimony arguing in favor of the EPA expanding its authority to regulate America's waterways.
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| Former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy |
Why? Because of obscure overlapping differences between McCarthy's justification of the expanding of the EPA's authority and the wording used by the two federal agencies that drafted the original rules governing oversight of waterways (the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers).
For that Gosar accused her of being guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors", which is actually laughable.
Especially considering the shady dealings of the current occupant of the White House, members of his immediate family and his advisors - both current and former.
Gosar's preachy brand of self-righteous indignation is also laughable in light of the release of Republican Congressman David Nunes' "memo" on Friday as some kind of phony excuse for Trump to fire Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein so the White House can replace him with an ideological lackey Trump sycophant.
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| Journalist Garrett Graff |
Regardless of whether you think Robert Mueller is politically biased, you should take a few minutes to listen to journalist Garrett Graff's interview with Terri Gross on NPR's Fresh Air on Tuesday - no wonder Trump is desperate to discredit this man.
When all is said and done, I don't have anything against Congressman Paul Gosar personally.
If he wants to exist in a sphere of far right-wing extremism, or perpetuate baseless half-truths and concocted innuendo to fire up Trump's base, hey that's his right and his business.
But when he attempts to use his office as a platform to espouse those kinds of beliefs, trumpet kooky conspiracy theories and block residents of a congressional district that he won because it was intentionally gerrymandered to make it easier for him to win - then he's the one who is guilty of actions that are "an affront to the fundamental principles of our republic and the rule of law".
And frankly, if you're a grandchild of immigrants to this country and have the temerity to ask the Capitol Police and the Attorney General to arrest young people who were brought to this country at an early age and raised here, people who were invited by members of Congress to a State of the Union address - you're not demonstrating the true Spirit of America.
You're demonstrating a contempt for the very principles on which this country was founded.
And there's nothing American about that.
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