Rollins Honored By Congress

Aaron Schock has nothing to be worried about but do Darrell Issa & Steve King still fear this woman?

What does Alan Grayson have in common with right-wing fanatics John Mica, Jeff Miller, Allen Boyd, Vern Buchanan, the Diaz-Balart Brothers, Bill Posey and Howdy Doody Nimrod? Well, sure they're all members of Congress from Florida-- as are Corrine Brown, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Kendrick Meek, Alcee Hastings, Suzanne Kosmas, Cathy Castor, Ted Deutch, and Ron Klein. All of them were co-sponsors of Grayson's resolution today to honor Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida as it celebrated it's 125th anniversary, the top liberal arts Master's degree-granting educational institution in the South. And perhaps if Liz Cheney-- or even Mary Cheney-- had graduated from there, instead of professional tennis player Dorothy Cheney, Congress would have voted unanimously to pass the resolution. Instead 132 Republicans joined all 239 Democrats voting YES, passing H Res 1169 371-36. In the end, every single Florida Republican voted for it, even the ones who didn't co-sponsor it.

These kinds of pro-forma resolutions... well, it's just a harmless form of congressional courtesy. Ten minutes earlier there had been a unanimous vote to pass Mike Honda's resolution celebrating Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month and a few minutes before that another unanimous vote for Ike Skelton's resolution "recognizing and honoring the courage and sacrifice of the members of the Armed Forces and veterans." Charlie Melancon's resolution honoring "the workers who perished on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, extending condolences to their families, and recognizing the valiant efforts of emergency response workers at the disaster site" also passed without a single dissent. As did Don Young's resolution Tuesday "commending Lance Mackey on winning a record 4th straight Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race." It passed 411-0 (although three dog lovers voted "present").

Now I first heard about this when a friend called me and said "Grayson introduced a bill to honor Rollins." My immediate reaction, knowing Grayson is, first and foremost, a Joni Mitchell devotee, was to wonder if the former Black Flag singer was born in Orlando. I even looked it up. He wasn't; he was born in D.C. And then I figured out it was Rollins College, which is in Grayson's district. The whole GOP leadership voted for it: Boehner, Cantor, McCotter, even a gratuitous asshole like Pence. So who didn't? Well, let's scrape the bottom of the GOP barrel and see what we come up with.

Car thief and prime suspect in the Toyota boondoggle, Darrell Issa (R-CA), Mean Jean Schmidt, three pathetic Republican closet queens, Aaron Schock (R-IL), Dana Rohrabacher and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) (whose lover was involved in a triple gay murder/suicide not far from the campus a couple of years ago), Paul Broun (R-GA), almost universally considered the least pleasant, least effect and most obnoxious member of the House, Dan Burton (R-IN), the guy who painted President Clinton's head on a pumpkin and shot at it while demanding the Navy station a ship "off the coast of Bolivia," Steve King (R-IA), sex predator John Shadegg, Lynn Westmoreland and your regular bunch of Texas secessionists and cutthroats.

Maybe they're all just pissed off because Deborah Jeane Palfrey ("the D.C. Madam") graduated from Rollins and the discovery of her escort service's client list led to the end of the careers of countless close Cheney associates, although one infamous diaper-wearing senator is still representing wealthy special interests and family values conservatives in Louisiana. Many people who have looked into the case realize that Cheney had Palfrey (as well as Brandy Britton, one of the escorts) murdered in a way to make them appear vaguely like suicides. Still... is that any reason to snub one of the South's best colleges?



UPDATE: OK, So Broun's A Pathetic Nutbag. Grayson Won't Lower Himself To His Level

After making himself ridiculous yesterday be joining 35 other GOP sociopaths to oppose the bipartisan bill to honor Rollins College, probably because he just hates or fears Alan Grayson, Georgia kook Paul Broun proposed an identical bill today to honor the University of Georgia Graduate School in Athens. Broun is best known not only as a demented birther but for comparing President Obama to Hitler, something that even caused Georgia's two extreme right-wing senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson to recoil in horror and publicly rebuke him. He's been on an anti-Muslim jihad so vicious and bigoted that sober and judicious Glenn Greenwald called one of the sickening stunts by him and Sue Myrick possibly "the most despicable domestic political event of the year."

Ironically, the county he invariably loses-- and loses big-- when running for election is Clark County, some of Athens and the University of Georgia, where he is almost universally considered an embarrassment and a tragedy inflicted on them from the less enlightened parts of the district. In any case, his resolution passed today, unanimously, of course, Grayson magnanimously joining all 244 other Democrats to vote in favor.