Democrats – party of dictatorship

The Democratic Party has lately proved to want to become dictators. Democrats demonstrated this in two major House committee and subcommittee hearings last week. So the Republicans have no reason to cooperate with them, and voters have no good reason to vote for them.

Democrats don’t want to talk about it

The first hearing where Democrats revealed their true nature was in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Accountability. That Committee heard from two “whistleblowers” at the Internal Revenue Service. Their complaint: supervisors and higher managers refused to let them proceed against Hunter Biden, when they had evidence of tax evasion and other financial and other wrongdoing on his part. Among his wrongdoings:

• Extorting $10 million U.S. from a Ukrainian company executive in exchange for making a prosecution go away,
• Writing off sex workers, and transportation for them, as a business expense, and
• Transporting a woman, at his own expense, coast-to-coast, overflying several States, for an immoral purpose.

One can read about that tax write-off at a link in this tweet:

Add to it: failure to report income on a massive scale. Yet, he “copped a plea.” And the two whistleblowers were ready to say why.

Everyone remembers how Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) “spiced up” the proceedings by sharing some incriminating photographs. They included the flight ticket for the woman transported for sex, and salacious video that Hunter Biden himself recorded and stored on his infamous Laptop. The Democrats on the Committee tried frantically to exclude the evidence.

But one Democrat, when Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ohio) recognized him, let the truth out. Recall Darrell L. Castle observing that occasionally the truth escapes. He was talking about Vice-President Harris’ quip about population reduction. But this Democrat raised the stakes even higher.

Who is this teller of inconvenient truth?

His name is Kweisi Mfume (Kwye-EEH-see Um-FOO-meh). His birth name was Frizzel Gerald Gray; he changed it in the early 1970s. He seems to have had several brushes with the law, which he blamed on the alleged racism and anti-youth-ism of the police. But he might more properly blame his father, who abandoned the family while he was young. (So yes, fathers are important.)

This is his second stint in the House of Representatives; he served for nine years from 1987-1996. After that he became CEO of the NAACP and held that post until 2004. His reason for leaving is telling. Accusations of sexual harassment of female staff plagued him. This much his accusers established: he had an inter-office romance with a female employee.

He tried entering the Senate in 2006 after Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) retired – but lost the primary. After that he headed the National Medical Association until 2020. Then he ran for Congress again, following the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). So now he is once again in the House of Representatives, and appointed to the House Oversight Committee.

Given his history, one might half expect him to excuse Hunter Biden as a fellow “man of the world” who took the same liberty he took. This holds especially because Hunter Biden is the sun of a President whom Mfume considers an ally. That explains why Mfume denounced the House Oversight Committee proceedings as a waste of time.

Executive agencies provide checks and balances?

In fact, as witnesses Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler looked on, Rep. Mfume distracted from their reason for being there. First he indulged in a common practice among Democrats: Trumpus quoque. He made much of Trump’s indictment over his business records, and a civil judgment against him.

Then he started talking about the IRS and how Republicans moved to cut its budget. Clearly he resented the repeal of funding for 87,000 additional IRS agents. (In fact the House almost passed a bill to replace the income tax with Americans for Tax Reform’s “Fair Tax”.) Then he said the thing that set several social media platforms buzzing. He credited the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the IRS with providing the checks and balances for the United States government.

Now, here’s what galls me. I don’t like these attacks on the Department of Justice, the FBI, the IRS, as if they are somehow anti-U.S. agencies. Those agencies keep this democracy in check, and keep them in [unintelligible]. They provide the checks, and they provide the balances.

That brought a firestorm of criticism from Twitter.

But he wasn’t finished. Next he asked why the Committee (or maybe the full House) wasn’t discussing other issues. He mentioned crime, the economy, and “attacks on women’s health,” which he did not specify. Then, as this tweet shows, he concluded, completely out of temper.

And yet we are doing this all over again for “The Hunter Biden Show” to someone who has pleaded guilty and has taken responsibility for not filing taxes for two years. This is ludicrous. Beam me up, Scotty. There’s no intelligent life down here. None.

And as he said that word None, he tore his written notes across, before saying, “I yield.”

Democrats on another Committee put on a worse show

But the hearing on July 20 in the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Government was worse. Four witnesses testified at that hearing, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He got most of the attention, and it was most unwelcome. But that attention also illustrated the worst attributes of Democrats on that committee.

Del. Stacy Plaskett (D-U.S.V.I.), who earlier called for Donald Trump’s summary execution, opened with a vituperative and unhinged rant. As Ranking Member, she (along with Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.) tried to have House leadership rescind Kennedy’s invitation to testify. They used, as their excuse, Kennedy’s mention of a study suggesting racial tailoring of SARS-CoV-2.

Nothing doing, said the leadership, so Kennedy appeared. And Plaskett spent most of her time railing at the very notion of his presence.

Even that wasn’t the nadir (lowlight). Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) reached that when she tried to have Mr. Kennedy removed from the hearing. This tweet by Rep. Greene shows that exchange.

To accomplish the removal, Wasserman-Schultz moved to take the Committee into executive session. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) moved to table that motion. Wasserman-Schultz demanded a roll call – and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) asked,

Is it the custom of this committee to censor viewpoints that we disagree with, from witnesses?

After some more crosstalk, the clerk called the roll. The motion to table passed, 10-8, along Party lines. Several Democrats made spiteful references to “hate speech” and one ironic reference to “Soviet policy” in casting their “no” votes. Rep. Johnson, in casting his “Aye” vote, said, “Yes, against censorship.”

Defending censorship

Even apart from that, the Democrats at the Weaponization hearing sought to justify censorship. They did not call it that, and even tried to suggest that any takedowns, shadow bans, and whatnot, were on the initiative of the social media companies involved, not the government. CNAV has held that social media companies cannot excuse their decisions to comply, since many of them did not comply. (Among them: Gab Social, which Plaskett cited as keeping up content the government might have wanted taken down. Gab boasted of this on their Telegram channel – and they have the simplest Content Standards of all social media.) But a judge has already found that the government took the initiative, and that he will not excuse.

But the Democrats would excuse it. At least one of them quoted Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously said, as obiter dicta, that the First Amendment does not protect one who shouts “Fire” in a theater and causes a panic. Never mind that this saying is not an actual case holding and therefore has no value as precedent.

The big picture

So what are we to make of Democrats today? (Other than to say, “Congressman Mfume, you’re no James T. Kirk”?) Simply this. They will gladly excuse the worst sort of conduct by any officeholder, so long as said officeholder furthers their agenda. And they base that agenda on kleptomania – which is bad enough – and on total control – which is worse.

So now, Republicans have no grounds to compromise with those people. Any sense of collegiality must yield to the defense of the people’s rights under the Constitution. The Democrats do not stand for rights, but instead for allowances. And they divide the people into payers and receivers of allowances, and seek votes only from the second group.

Whatever reputation Kweisi Mfume allegedly had for compromise, he has utterly destroyed. So did this President when, on his first day, he issued an Executive Order for all border wall contractors to down tools and go home. And when he appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. A woman who knows not what a woman is, and has proved herself singularly unqualified.

Americans of all stripes must reflect – hard – on the values they hold, and whether those values are proper to a sound society. After all, men like Kweisi Mfume (and his predecessor, Elijah Cummings) do not get into the House of Representatives unless majorities put them there. This might provide more grounds for the Great Sortation.