We're Stuck With Gay-Obsessed Congressional Garbage Like John Fleming (R-LA) Because Of Steve Israel

John Fleming's wig is REALLY anti-gay

John Fleming represents the most backward district of Louisiana, CD-04, way up in the northwest where Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana meet. His two congressional neighbors are Texas psychopaths Louie Gohmert and Steve Stockman, an OK City bombing suspect. It's a large rural, desolate area with just one city, Shreveport-- and that's where Fleming does worst electorally. Not that any Democrat is going to win there any time soon. In 2012 no Democrat even ran and Fleming's opponent was a Libertarian. Once the home of now retired GOP closet case Jim McCrery, the 4th gave Romney a 59-39.7% win over Obama, slightly worse than the whole state, which gave Romney a 58-41% win. Caddo County (Shreveport), however, was one of only 10 Louisiana parishes Obama won.

Fleming couldn't always afford his expensive toupee. He's from a dirt-poor Mississippi family and worked his way through a Naval Medical School. He became wealthy as the owner of 33 Subway sandwich shops and by developing UPS stores in Louisiana, Texas and his native Mississippi (which helps explain his crusade to shut down the U.S. Post office). Before running for Congress, when McCrery retired, Fleming had only run for coronor of Webster Parish. Now a member of Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus, Fleming is best known for his flat tax mania and his virulent homophobia.

If the DCCC had a competent chairman instead of a congenital loser like Steve Israel, he would be working on a long term plan to win back LA-04 instead of just ignoring it in the current cycle. But Nancy Pelosi reappointed Steve Israel-- as reward for his disastrous performance in 2012, while the DSCC's Patty Murray was wiping the floor with the Republicans, despite having a much, much more difficult hand dealt her. She's smart. Israel isn't... he's just, in Pelosi's admiring words, "sufficiently reptilian."

Wednesday night, Ken delved a little into that virulent homophobia that helps define John Fleming. Fleming proposed an amendment that allows for "Christian" soldiers to harrass thier gay comrades without fear of reprisal. I know it doesn't sound real and it doesn't make any sense, but Fleming and his conservative colleagues who poassed that thing are very sick people. Buck McKeon's House Armed Services Committee passed it with a vote of 33-26. If this becomes law, the "conscience provision" would protect discriminatory speech and actions and leave commanders with no recourse against prejudicial conduct when it occurs in their units.

[I]f you're a right-wing warrior for Christian psychotic savagery, you understand that a law to require the military to dance to your puppet strings trumps some Kenyan socialist fake president burbling aout Pentagon assurances that it won't "permit or condone discriminatory actions that compromise good order and discipline or otherwise violate military codes of conduct."

...You'd like to think that a purposeless and dangerous bit of congressional chicanery like Fleming's can't survive the Congressional conference resolution process. But then, you never know. What price might saner legislators have to pay to make sure it stays out of any final bill? And in the end, who's to say it won't be judge worth the price required to suppress it. You know, the way a certain U.S. president looked the other way when he signed the original "conscience provision" into law.