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Tag: safety laws
McCarthy Fills Oversight Panel With Conspiracy Kooks, Bigots And Election Deniers

McCarthy Fills Oversight Panel With Conspiracy Kooks, Bigots And Election Deniers

House Republicans have reportedly selected four of their most extreme members to serve on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability in the new session of Congress. Two of them had been stripped of all committee assignments in the last Congress for inappropriate conduct.

Punchbowl News and the Washington Post are reporting that the new GOP majority will place Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Scott Perry (R-PA) on the panel. The committee's stated mission is "to ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies."

In February 2021, Greene was removed from her committee assignments via resolution "in light of conduct she has exhibited" after she embraced antisemitic, Islamophobic, racist, and QAnon-related conspiracy theories; endorsed the execution of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and falsely claimed mass school shootings were hoaxes intended to boost support for gun safety laws.

Gosar, who, like Greene, spoke at a March 2022 white nationalist event, lost his committee assignments in November 2021 and was formally censured for posting an animated video on social media that depicted a fictionalized version of himself assassinating his colleague, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and assaulting President Joe Biden.

Most of the Republican caucus opposed both moves, with then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy claiming that it was unprecedented and "authoritarian" for the majority party to overrule the minority party from deciding committee assignments for their own party members. He vowed in November 2022 that when his party regained control, he would restore Greene's and Gosar's committee appointments. "They'll have committees," the California Republican told reporters. "They may have better ones."

Boebert has also made antisemitic comments and pushed QAnon conspiracy theories. She has a history of failing to comply with ethics and campaign finance disclosure laws. Both she and Greene were fined by the House Ethics Committee during the last Congress for refusing to comply with mask requirements issued at the direction of the Capitol's attending physician to curb the spread of COVID-19.

In December, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol issued a report that mentioned Perry's role in a scheme to overturn Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election and urged the Ethics Committee to sanction Perry for failing to comply with a subpoena.

The move to put all four on the powerful Oversight committee comes as the Republican majority seeks to block Democratic appointments to certain committees.

McCarthy has promised not to allow California Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff or Eric Swalwell to serve on the Intelligence committee, which Schiff previously chaired, or to let Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar serve on the Foreign Affairs panel.

On January 12, according to Mediaite, McCarthy told reporters: "You will find the fundamental difference of me being a speaker and Nancy Pelosi: The other side will get to name their members on the committee. It won't be handpicked by me and denying the Democrats their voice."

When a reporter reminded McCarthy of his plans to block Democratic appointments, he responded by smearing Swalwell and Schiff with what Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler called "specious attacks" earning "four Pinocchios." He claimed that he heard negative things about Swalwell in a classified FBI briefing and accused Schiff of lying to the public.

On Saturday, Boebert told Fox News that she believes Schiff and Swalwell should be excluded from the Intelligence Committee because they and other Democrats are "conspiracy theorists" and "a bunch of Blue Anons."

On Wednesday, White House spokesperson Ian Sams blasted the GOP appointments, telling Axios: "It appears that House Republicans may be setting the stage for divorced-from-reality political stunts, instead of engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people.

"Chairman [James] Comer once said his goal was to ensure the Committee's work is 'credible,' yet Republicans are handing the keys of oversight to the most extreme MAGA members of the Republican caucus who promote violent rhetoric and dangerous conspiracy theories."

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Don Jr. Mindless Tweet

Twitter Derides Mindless Don Jr. Comments On School Safety

The eldest son of the former president is calling for the firing of “critical race theory” teachers in public schools and to use those funds to pay for armed guards. He also wants all “gender studies” teachers fired, and is calling for putting the hiring and firing of those teachers on state and local ballots.

Donald Trump, Jr., who, it appears, has no teaching degree, training in early childhood education (ECE), early child development, or any other education training, has a B.S. in economics.

Trump appeared to be specifically referring to elementary schools, after last week’s mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. 19 children and two teachers were shot and killed, and another 17 were wounded.

Most elementary schools, and in fact most public schools at the elementary, middle school, or high school level, do not have teachers dedicated to teaching gender studies classes, although some teachers may touch on the subject in conjunction with their regular classes.

A search by NCRM could find no critical race theory classes at the elementary, middle, and high school level public schools. Like many Americans, Trump Jr. appears to be misunderstanding what critical race theory (CRT) is.

Critical Race Theory, according to the law professor who coined the term, “is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced,” Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a law professor at the U.C.L.A. School of Law and Columbia Law School told The New York Times last year, “the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”

“It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced,” she said, “the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”

As many know, it is a college-level method of investigating, not an elementary school class.

Donald Trump, Jr. appeared to disagree, and was widely mocked Sunday night:
























Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Obama Meets With Gabrielle Giffords As Administration Looks To Tighten Gun Laws

Obama Meets With Gabrielle Giffords As Administration Looks To Tighten Gun Laws

By Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — As the White House seeks ways that President Barack Obama could legally tighten restrictions on gun ownership, including closure of the so-called gun show loophole, he met Friday with Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman severely wounded in a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011 in which six people were killed.

The meeting with Giffords and her husband, NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, who advocate for tougher gun safety laws, was part of the Obama administration’s ongoing dialogue “with those who share the president’s passion for taking some common-sense steps to make it harder for those with bad intentions to get their hands on guns,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

“The administration has worked closely with some of these outside groups to amplify the call of people across the country, so that members of Congress can be responsive to those public priorities,” Earnest added.

Obama renewed his push for tighter gun control after the mass shooting at a community college in Oregon in October that killed nine, as well as the gunman. Earnest said Friday that administration officials “have cast a wide net” in exploring possible actions the president could take in using executive authority to limit access to guns, but he declined to specify what was being considered and how soon Obama might announce any plan.

The leading proposal under consideration, according to White House officials, is a reinterpretation of existing law to require all or most people trying to buy guns to submit to background checks. Licensed firearms dealers must conduct background checks, but those who make “occasional sales” are exempt from the requirement, including sales at gun shows.

Such background checks might not have altered the path taken by the shooters behind Wednesday’s massacre in San Bernardino, Calif. Federal officials have concluded that Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two assailants, legally bought two of the weapons, and two others were likewise legally purchased and given to him by a friend.

The idea for tighter background checks was one of several suggested by gun safety advocates in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn., three years ago this month, though it wasn’t part of final recommendations by Vice President Joe Biden, who led the White House effort to restrict access to guns.

“I don’t know if they felt they didn’t want to do it or couldn’t do it for legal reasons,” said Jim Kessler of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, who was in regular consultations with the administration during the deliberations. “It just didn’t happen.”

A bill to strengthen the background check system died in the Senate a few months after the Newtown rampage.

On Friday, Earnest blasted Senate Republicans who voted a day earlier to block several gun-related measures that Democrats had offered as amendments to a health care bill, including the bipartisan background check proposal that also failed to pass in 2013.

With their votes, Republicans “stood up once again with the (National Rifle Association) and in the face of common sense,” Earnest said.

Obama’s meeting with Americans for Responsible Solutions, which was not on his publicly released schedule, came on a day when he otherwise stayed out of the public eye.

The FBI announced Friday that it was investigating the shooting rampage in San Bernardino as an act of terrorism.

In comments to reporters before the FBI announcement, Earnest declined to comment on reports that Tashfeen Malik, who died in a police shootout after she and Farook, her husband, killed 14 at a holiday party for the San Bernardino County Health Department, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on Facebook.

©2015 Tribune Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

File photo: Chesterfield County Sheriff’s lieutenant David Lee removes rifles from a shipping container as he and other officers sort through thousands of guns found in the home and garage of Brent Nicholson, in Pageland, South Carolina, November 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jason Miczek