Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Violating not Just Norms, but Laws

It's long been known that the GOP has been violating governmental norms, but today's stunt, in which a bunch of dimwitted GOP reps barged into a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility in order to disrupt a deposition related to impeachment hearings, is actual lawbreaking. To compound matters, these idiots brought their phones into the facility. Poking around the t00bz, I found a series of posts by a national security expert detailing just how bad this assholery was:



Who the hell knows how this stunt compromised national security? Now I find myself looking up the role of the Sergeant at Arms of the House of Representatives, and the possible actions that the Capitol Police could take against these scrotes. It's a bizarre state of affairs, a worrisome state of affairs, and my civics education, obtained when I lived in a functional society, isn't quite up to the new complexities of this lawless era. What is Nancy Pelosi's scope for punishing these malfeasors? Can their security clearances be yanked? Can the Capitol Police put them in the hoosegow? Can Matt Gaetz get a mace to the face? It's a strange feeling, that of being in uncharted waters, a feeling that the country is on the brink of some Really Bad Mojo. The fact that I'm stuck in a particularly busy time at work, with more parochial concerns at the fore, is a bit maddening... I know that things are not normal, but I don't have that much time to contemplate just how not normal they can get.

1 comment:

Ali Redford said...

Well, as Charles Pierce pointed out, the Capitol police have been more than capable of zip-tying and arresting or ejecting peaceful attendees of *public* hearings in our House-including elderly, Christian and other ministers (pointing out Christian because Republicans tend to ID as such,) and differently abled people-under the color of "disruption" or some stuff. So, I am definitely curious how this was allowed to take place with no penalty...