Conservatives In Congress-- From Both Parties-- Decide To Beat Up On Disabled People

James Langevin (D-RI)

Jim Langevin (D-RI) is kind of a middle of the road Democrat. Generally speaking, he's not a progressive but he's certainly not a Blue Dog. When he was a 16 year old boy scout he was injured in a gun accident which left him paralyzed. He was elected to Congress in 2000, the first quadriplegic to ever serve in Congress. Far right Texas Congressman Ted Poe offered a bill that puts the Disability Rights Section of the Department of Justice in jeopardy. So Langevin offered an amendment to remove the requirement that a person who claims discrimination must first provide written notice that allows 60 days for an owner to acknowledge receipt of the complaint and 120 days to demonstrate substantial progress in removing the barrier before legal action may be pursued. Basically he was trying to keep the feasibility of law suits for people with disabilities who get illegally discriminated against by businesses.

And sure, the greedy asinine Republicans were almost all gung-ho to pass Poe's bill without Langevin's amendment. So they voted Langevin's amendment down Thursday before heading off for another nice vacation. It failed 188-226. I was happy to see 15 Republicans get in touch with their souls and vote against what Ryan and McCarthy were demanding of them. Most of them are vulnerable Republicans in swing districts or Republicans who have decided to just abandon the whole fucked up Trump-enabling Congress--

• Barbara Comstock (VA)
• Ryan Costello (PA)
• Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)
• Rodney Frelinghuysen (PA)
• Gregg Harper (MS)
• John Katko (NY)
• Peter King (NY)
• Leonard Lance (NJ)
• Dave Reichert (WA)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL)
• Chris Smith (NJ)
• Fred Upton (MI)
• Kevin Yoder (KS)

The only Republicans who don't fit either category but who voted NO were Jim Sensenbrenner (WI) and Glenn Thompson (PA). Nice-- whatever the motivation. But it didn't help because, as usual, Ryan and McCarthy know exactly which Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to go to when they need to find some sellouts. These were the Blue Dog and New Dem sell-outs this time, mostly the usual suspects:

• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog), who Schumer picked to be the next senator from Arizona
• Norma Torres (New Dem-CA)

Maybe you don't get why this is a big deal-- and why we need to make sure Blue Dog and New Dem nominees don't get the Democratic nominations anywhere-- so let's turn to... Teen Vogue. They get it. "The bill," wrote S.E. Smith, "which has been introduced and went nowhere before, would change the way that access to public accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is enforced. Disabled people argue this legislation will introduce substantial barriers to accommodations. Proponents say the legislation is necessary to curb so-called 'drive-by' lawsuits that spuriously target businesses for purported ADA violations. Disability rights have been under threat from the Trump administration: Last year’s attacks on health care put disabled people in the crosshairs; proposed changes to Medicaid would radically limit access to needed health care; the Department of Education has rescinded certain guidance on disability and civil rights; and Jeff Sessions suggested, in reference to the opioid crisis, that people can take aspirin."

The ADA is a landmark piece of bipartisan legislation that affirms and protects the civil rights of disabled people. H.R. 620 specifically takes on Title III, a section that gives disabled people the right to sue public accommodations (like restaurants, hotels, and movie theaters) that don’t comply with the ADA’s accessibility requirements. When you hear “ADA,” you may think of wheelchair users who need ramps, lifts, and accessible bathrooms. But it applies to other disabilities too, as in the case of the complaint against Netflix by the D/deaf and hard of hearing community because the service wasn’t fully captioning its content.

“It's largely up to disabled folks to enforce the ADA by filing lawsuits when businesses violate our civil rights,” disabled attorney Matt Cortland tells Teen Vogue. Historically, the Department of Justice has also mounted suits under the ADA when doing so could expand access for a broad class of people.

Though businesses have been required to provide accommodations for nearly 30 years, they don’t always comply, as social worker Vilissa Thompson tells Teen Vogue. During a layover last year, Thompson entered a supposedly accessible bathroom stall with a door that couldn’t close around her chair. “The attendant who was with me had to stand in front of the door to be a cover of sorts while I had to do my business.”

Disabled people sometimes have to sue for the right to go to the movies, go grocery shopping, or have a fun night out with friends. Some people claim businesses are being plagued by bogus lawsuits filed by disabled people who are greedy for cash. This ignores a couple of things: Filing suit is expensive, and furthermore, ADA suits only entitle disabled people to legal fees and injunctive relief-- addressing the accessibility failure in question. And the legal system already has measures in place to address frivolous lawsuits, up to and including bar action against attorneys who engage in bad faith litigation.

So which shithead candidates are running this year as New Dems and Blue Dogs? Most candidates try to hide it but if you go to the Blue Dog and New Dem websites you get lists of their endorsees. I'm sure if you ask them if they would support the rights of disabled people, 100% of them would say they do. But I guarantee you, if they get into Congress, they'll be leaned on by their corrupt corporate campaign contributors and they'll soon be looking for rationales for living the rest of their professional lives on the Dark Side. That's what being a Blue Dog or a New Dem is all about. Unless you want to sink America into a Trumpazoid swamp, don't support or even vote for any of these:

And below are the New Dems who the Blue Dogs haven't formally endorsed, at least not yet. These days there are basically no substantive differences between the Blue Dogs and the New Dems. Most New Dems are also Blue Dogs and most Blue Dogs also join the New Dems. They should just formally merge and call themselves what they are: the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, bought and paid for by Wall Street.

• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)
• Greg Stanton (AZ)
• Dave Min (CA)
• Harley Rouda (CA)
• Hans Keirstead (CA)
• Lauren Baer (FL)
• Jason Crow (CO)
• Elissa Slotkin (MI)
• Angie Craig (MN)
• Dean Phillips (MN)
• Mikie Sherrill (NJ)
• Susie Lee (NV)
• Chrissy Houlahan (PA)
• Jana Lynne Sanchez (TX)
• Dan Kohl (WI)

Another House Republican Sees The Writing On The Wall: LoBiondo Calls It Quits

My sister just moved to southern New Jersey, to the large swing district that takes up the bottom 5th of the state, NJ-02, the seat the Democrats always shoulda/coulda/woulda won-- but never do. It stretches from Little Egg Harbor Township south through Atlantic City down to Cape May and west through Millville to the Wilmington suburbs and Philly exurbs along the Delaware River. There are 8 counties in the district but most of the votes come from Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Gloucester counties. Obama beat McCain 53-45% and beat Romney 54-46%. But Frank LoBiondo, a mainstream conservative, has held the district since 1994. He just announced he's not running for reelection. This is an interesting and unexpected development since he's already raised $367,141 this cycle and doesn't have any strong competition. The 2 Democrats who have declared ate Tanzie Youngblood and Sean Thom. He beat last year's Democratic candidate, Dave Cole, 176,338 (59.2%) to 110,838 (37.2%). LoBiondo spent $1,627,038 to Cole's $127,386. The DCCC refused to help Cole-- par for the course.

Trump won the district last year, beating the establishment Democrat who was perceived as having nothing to offer working families but more of the same 50.6% to 46.0%, a gigantic drop-off from Obama's performance. In 2015 the district's PVI was D+1 but it slipped this year into slight red territory (R+1). Most prognosticators viewed LoBiondo as pretty safe, even in a wave year. In announcing his impending retirement he told that media that "I always looked for solutions that produce real world results built upon cooperation and partnerships. Regrettably, our nation is now consumed by increasing political polarization; there is no longer middle ground to honestly debate issues and put forward solutions. Furthermore, as some of my closest colleagues have also come to realize, those of us who came to Congress to change Washington for the better through good governance are now the outliers. A vocal and obstinate minority within both parties has hijacked good legislation in pursuit of no legislation." Trump and Bannon and the increasingly dominant neo-fascist wing of the GOP will be happy to see him go.

Last year, LoBiondo, 71, crossed party lines and voted with a majority of Democrats against a majority of Republicans 16.9 percent of the time, putting him ninth among all House GOP lawmakers, according to Congressional Quarterly.

This year, he was one of only nine House Republicans to oppose repealing regulations on coal companies in order to protect streams and drinking water supplies.

He also fought President Donald Trump's proposals that could lead to offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean and was one of 24 House Republicans who introduced a resolution in March calling for actions to combat climate change, which the president has called a Chinese hoax.

"With LoBiondo retiring, New Jersey is losing one of the last of our moderate-on-the-environment Republicans," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "Pro-environment and climate-change-protection Republicans have become an endangered species."

LoBiondo also was a strong supporter of organized labor.

He received $335,000 in contributions from unions in 2016, more than any other House member running for re-election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group.

He was one of only three House Republicans who earlier this year opposed repealing a regulation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration making it easier to track workplace injuries.

With the popular LoBiondo out, the DCCC is being handed this seat on a silver platter. I wonder if they manage to blow it again like they always do. Losing NJ-02 is part of their muscle memory.

And Ted Poe-- Another One Bites The Dust

Tuesday evening Ted Poe, first elected to a Houston area district in 2004, is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, announced he'll be the third senior Texas Republican this week to be calling it quits. He won't be running for another term. He's a religionist nut and far right crackpot. Even before he announced he would be retiring after the current term, there were at least half a dozen Democrats vying got the nomination. His district is pretty red but Hillary did a lot better than Obama and Trumpanzee did a lot worse than Romney. In 2012, Romney beat Obama 62.9% to 35.6%. Last year, Trump beat Hillary 52.4% to 43.1%. The district still has a PVI of R+11 but if we had a good DCCC-- we don't-- they would run a strong candidate this cycle with the idea of bring the district home in 2020. But the DCCC doesn't think in terms of anything beyond the next meal time.

Some Republicans Are Trying To Deny They Were Backing The TrumpCare Catastrophe

Sunday, Texas conservative Ted Poe resigned from the Freedom Caucus because of TrumpCare. He was for it. The Caucus was, by and large, against it. Maybe Poe was afraid of Trump's wrath but that is odd in a Houston area district that wasn't especially pro-Trump. Romney won Poe's district with 63%, around the same that McCain won it with. Trump only managed 52.4%. And had Trumpcare been enacted into law-- and Poe never made any bones about voting for it-- 26,054 of his constituents would have found themselves without health insurance. His district includes Montrose, one of the biggest and most vibrant LGBT communities in America, but the DCCC has never once given Poe a serious challenge to reelection. So he knows he can behave like a dirt-bag with alacrity. So far he has no opponent for 2018.

Over the weekend, conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan speculated that Trump has-- finally-- had it... or rather the American public has had it with Trump and his vile kakistocracy. "Trump still shows alarming potential as a would-be tyrant, contemptuous of constitutional proprieties, and prone to trashing every last norm of liberal democracy," he warned. "But he is also beginning to appear simultaneously as a rather weak chief executive, uninterested in competent management or follow-through, bedeviled by divisions within his own party, transfixed by cable news, and swiftly discrediting himself by an endless stream of lies, delusions, and conspiracy theories." And with no credibility left, at least not, according to Sullivan, "among sane people." Sullivan also warned the Republicans that the midterms aren't going to be kind to them in 2018.

A president hobbled domestically by his own party’s divisions and the opposition’s new energy may be tempted-- Putin-like-- to change the subject in a way that vaults him back to popularity. A foreign altercation from which he will not back down? A trade war? A smidge likelier, I’d say, is an over-the-top response to an inevitable jihadist terror attack in a major American city. A demagogue loses much of his power when he tries to wrestle complicated legislation through various political factions, in the way our gloriously inefficient Constitution requires. He regains it with rank fear, polarization, and a raw show of force. Heaven knows what the Constitution will look like once he’s finished.

The other possibility is that Trump really does at some point realize he’s sinking fast and decides on a hard pivot. He wants to win and be loved, and if he keeps losing and becomes more widely loathed with his current strategy, it’s by no means out of character for him to recalibrate. He could use the possible failure of Trumpcare to feed Paul Ryan to the Breitbartians, and reach out to Democrats on a tweaked Obamacare and infrastructure package. He could dump Bannon the way he dumped Manafort and bullshit his way through all the inconsistencies (the one thing he remains rather good at). He could wrest himself like Kong on Skull Island from the giant lizards and become the tribune of the forgotten men and women he wants to be, and combine nationalism and protectionism with, er, socialism, like his heroine Marine Le Pen. He could finally realize the potential he has thrown away so far, and become an American Perón.

The only snag with this strategy, of course, is that he could hard-pivot only to find himself a Kong who’s alienated from the GOP and obstructed by the emboldened Dems, a rogue, bleeding president without a party, marooned on his own island of polarized irrelevance.

The Times' Alexander Burns reported over the weekend that the ignominious collapse of TrumpCare amidst disastrous polling numbers and internal Republican Party in-fighting is leaving the bill's supporters "in a political jam back home". He mentioned, as examples, two very vulnerable Republicans. "John Faso of New York negotiated a side deal for his state in exchange for backing it. Mike Coffman was the lone Colorado lawmaker to endorse the bill, while his Republican neighbors agonized and stalled."

But with the collapse of the legislation on Friday, such Republican representatives now have nothing to show for their trouble. They ventured far out on a political limb, only to watch it disintegrate behind them. And when they run for re-election next year, they may have to defend their support for a politically explosive bill that many Republicans backed only reluctantly, and that never came close to reaching the president’s desk.

The fiasco in Washington is already rippling at home: Back in their districts, there are early signs of backlash against these lawmakers, including from constituents who voted Republican last November.

...National Republicans, still reeling from their unexpected defeat, expressed hope that health care might fade as an issue before the congressional elections in 2018. With more than a year and a half until voters next pass judgment on the Republican-controlled Congress, party leaders say they have plenty of time to record victories on issues like a tax code overhaul and infrastructure spending. Mr. Trump and Speaker Paul D. Ryan indicated on Friday that they did not intend to revisit health care in the near future.

But Republican strategists also acknowledged that they would probably have to give extra help to vulnerable members of Congress who supported the health care bill. Corry Bliss, the chief strategist for the Congressional Leadership Fund, a “super PAC” backed by Mr. Ryan, said the group would go out of its way to protect lawmakers who backed the bill. “We are committed to helping advance the legislative agenda of House leadership,” Mr. Bliss said on Saturday. “Of course we are going to give preferential treatment to friends and allies.”

By contrast, Mr. Bliss noted that the group had cut off funding to Representative David Young of Iowa, a Republican who opposed the health care bill.

It is unclear whether voters’ anger over health care will be enough help Democrats win a majority in the House next year.

The Democratic candidates we talked to since the bill imploded last week don't seem unclear at all. Katie Hill, for example, is running against a wishy-washy, scared-of-his-own-shadow Republican, Steve Knight. Last cycle, the DCCC forced some guy from outside the district on local Democrats and while Hillary won the blue-leaning district 50.3% to 43.6%, Knight won reelection over the hapless DCCC shill, 112,768 (54.2%) to 95,296 (45.8%). Katie is working on doing a lot better. We asked her how to characterize the differences between herself and Knight on Ryan's health care plan. "From my perspective, it was a terrible plan right from the start," she told us. "Out of party loyalty and an apparent lack of concern for his constituents who would lose coverage, Knight acted like the proposal had merit. He refused to take a real public stand one way or the other, so the fact that he didn't have to actually vote on it must have been a huge relief to him. Nonetheless, we know that he has not been standing up to say that all of his constituents deserve and need affordable health care. I promise to do that if I'm elected to replace him. Even though the ACA is still intact, we have a long way to go to really fix our health care system. I'm ready to fight for that in Congress. True leaders are more than just people who vote for or against what their party leadership tells them to. Unfortunately, Congressman Knight has not demonstrated his own core values that are not dependent on party lines. Folks in the Antelope Valley, Simi Valley and Santa Clarita expect and deserve real leadership, not someone who is afraid of standing up to the party establishment and special interests that back them. I will make the district I grew up in proud that they sent a local woman to Congress to make real change happen for the people in our communities and our country."

Darrell Issa and his most important constituent

Doug Applegate nearly beat Darrell Issa in the San Diego area last year. He's determined to finish the job in 2018. It didn't help Issa any that he kept wavering on the bill every time he got tugged in one direction or another. "It was an embarrassing week for Congressional Republicans," Applegate told us, "but it was even more embarrassing for Darrell Issa. When TrumpCare was first written, protests erupted at Issa’s office and Issa said he would vote no. But when Donald Trump sat down with Issa and asked him to support a bill that would cause 24 million Americans to lose health insurance, Issa flip flopped and supported it. I guess we know where Darrell’s true loyalty lies."

Voters on the South Shore of Long Island are trying to persuade DuWayne Gregory to run against Peter King again this year. King's dilly-dallying around the whole healthcare issue didn't endear him to anyone on either side of the contentious issue. DuWayne, who's the Presiding Officer of the Suffolk County Legislature told us that "King did the politically cowardly thing in regard TrumpCare; he tried to conceal his position from his own constituents. He instructed his staff to tell any callers that he was leaning no then after hundreds of calls, he changed that to "undecided." And yet, it was reported that during President Trump's visit to Capitol Hill to meet with GOP lawmakers he pointed out King saying they had grown up near each other in Queens. King was quoted afterwards as saying that "it would be difficult to vote no" after being singled out like that. Peter King's district was slated to be one of the worse affected by the AHCA with nearly 82,000 constituents to have lost insurance. Trumpcare was a disaster for those on Medicaid, also allowing insurers off the hook for providing maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health and more egregious provisions. Look at this; it's what they wanted to deny coverage for:

"Peter King and the New York State Republican delegation had negotiated an added bonus for New York State county governments by attempting to shift the cost of Medicaid to the state. This provision was labeled an attack on New York by Governor Cuomo. Worse yet, preliminary estimates of this, New York only, provision would have cost Suffolk County over $100 million. To think Peter King would have voted against the interests of millions of Americans and thousands of his own constituents simply because Trump recognized him is embarrassing and failure as a leader."

We introduced you to Dr. Jason Westin early in the month. He's a progressive candidate-- and a cancer specialist-- running against John Culberson in a district Hillary won 48.5% to 47.1% (after Romney beat Obama there 59.9% to 38.6%. He told me today that "Congressman Culberson knows that his district (TX-07) will be targeted by the DCCC and other groups as a pickup opportunity if the right candidate emerges for 2018. As a savvy career politician, he recognized that taking a position on the TrumpCare bill would open him up to criticism from his left or his right. He showed his true colors by taking no public position, despite his having co-sponsored H.R. 277 on January 4th, 2017, a much harsher 'root and branch' repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Surprising no one, he told local press after the bill was withdrawn that he 'absolutely' was supporting TrumpCare. The voters of TX-07 deserve a representative who will be honest, explain and not hide their vote, and be open to feedback. As my team says, we will 'Repeal and Replace' Culberson on 11/06/18."

You want to be sure a Republican was sincere about not supporting Ryan's horrific TrumpCare mess, look at the records. For example, mainstream, libertarian-leaning North Carolina conservative Walter Jones wrote a long piece for his constituents on his official house website where he explains why he would vote against TrumpCare. "Over the past two and half weeks," he wrote, "over 1,000 Eastern North Carolinians of all political stripes have contacted my office. Well over 90 percent are opposed to the bill. I asked for this job to represent the people of Eastern North Carolina, and they have spoken clearly. Furthermore, there are many aspects of the bill that deeply trouble me because of their potential effects on Eastern North Carolina and rural America. For example, the bill discriminates against as many as 7 million American veterans by making them ineligible to receive tax credits provided in the bill. It would also result in low-to-middle income seniors paying dramatically higher premiums. For instance, a 64-year old making $26,500 a year would see their annual premium jump from $1,700 to $14,600. It’s time to scrap this flawed bill and start over. Go out across the country, gather people’s input, and use an open, public process to thoughtfully craft a bill that delivers the relief the American people need." 

Compare Jones' clear, forthright, well-reasoned statement of opposition to the deceitful mumbo-jumbo that spewed out of crooks like Issa, King, Culberson and Knight.

It's Not Fair To Call Politicians Morons Just Because They Disagree With You... Unless They ARE Morons

Most politicians are too cagey to submit to the kind of standardized testing they've forced on students and are trying to force on teachers. So is there any objective way to measure a politician's intelligence (beyond just his or her record of accomplishment)? Probably not. BUT the Sunlight Foundation just conducted an interesting experiment that is somewhat helpful in measuring politicians' intelligence-- at least as much as intelligence can be correlated to the ability to communicate in formal speech. It may not be definitive in helping explain, for example, why Paul Ryan is as fixated as an adolescent fan boy on tawdry, low-grade novelist Ayn Rand, or why he keeps coming up with deranged proposals, couched in "serious" Madison Avenue-speak, to wreck America's social fabric, but the test shows him at a 9th grade level, which... well, make a lot of sense to anyone who has followed Paul Ryan's politics. He's been able to hoodwink the Beltway media-- much of which is at a 6th grade level-- but Ryan is a clown and has always been a clown. He sounds "intelligent" to the same kind of people who buy into the hype that Newt Gingrich and Rich Nixon are legitimate intellectuals. They're not and neither is Ryan.

Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol Words.

Of course, what some might interpret as a dumbing down of Congress, others will see as more effective communications. And lawmakers of both parties still speak above the heads of the average American, who reads at between an 8th and 9th grade level.

Today’s Congress speaks at about a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005. By comparison, the U.S. Constitution is written at a 17.8 grade level, the Federalist Papers at a 17.1 grade level, and the Declaration of Independence at a 15.1 grade level. The Gettysburg Address comes in at an 11.2 grade level and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is at a 9.4 grade level. Most major newspapers are written at between an 11th and 14th grade level.

All these analyses use the Flesch-Kincaid test, which produces the 'reads at a n-th grade level' terminology that is likely familiar to many readers. At its core, Flesch-Kincaid equates higher grade levels with longer words and longer sentences. It is important to understand the limitations of this metric: it tells us nothing about the clarity or correctness of a passage of text. But although an admittedly crude tool, Flesch-Kincaid can nonetheless provide insights into how different legislators speak, and how Congressional speech has been changing. ...Overall, the complexity of speech in the Congressional Record has declined steadily since 2005, with the drop among Republicans slightly outpacing that for Democrats.

You can look at the entire chart here but here are the 10 worst performing Members of Congress.


As you can see, all of them are Republicans and most of them are teabaggers and freshmen. The only senior congressmember in the lot is Todd Akin of Missouri who has a well-earned reputation as one of Congress' dimmest bulbs. The GOP is running him for Senate this year. Ryan performed at a 9.66 level, the 55th worst of the entire 530 people analyzed in Congress. He was fractionally better than Ted Poe, a lunatic fringe Texas backbencher and birther who has been asked to keep quiet and not embarrass the party with any more rambling quotations from his idol, KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, and to stop trying to force Christian prayers on all military casualties regardless of their own religion or their families' preferences. So, Ryan's a tiny fraction smarter than that.

Amanda Terkel wrote up the study for HuffPo Monday and concludes that members of Congress are now talking, on average, at the level of high school sophomores, a precipitous decline due almost entirely to the GOP teabagger freshman class. The lowest score, of course, went to South Carolina teabagger Mick Mulvaney, considered a joke even among Republican staffers, who is the only Member of Congress who speaks on a level below an average 8th grader. Mulvaney is more of a doofus than Michele Bachmann (9.52), Aaron Schock's boyfriend Adam Kinzinger (8.99), John Bircher Paul Broun (9.30), Lynn "Mr. 10 Commandments" Westmoreland (9.54), dog-lover Steve King (10.14) or Congress' dumbest closet case, Patrick McHenry (10.21). Even raging homophobic imbecile Virginia Foxx beat him with a 10.68!

Anyway, back to Amanda at HuffPo. After examining the data, she came to the same conclusion I did-- and anyone would have to: "The members speaking at the lowest grade levels tend to be freshmen Republicans."

Before 2005, Republicans spoke, on average, at a slightly higher grade level than Democrats. Since then, Democrats have been slightly higher.

Sunlight did not reach a definitive conclusion on why lawmakers' speech patterns have become simpler over time, although Drutman wrote in a blog post, "Perhaps it reflects lawmakers speaking more in talking points, and increasingly packaging their floor speeches for YouTube. Gone, perhaps, are the golden days when legislators spoke to persuade each other, thoughtfully wrestled with complex policy trade-offs, and regularly quoted Shakespeare."

So now we get a freak show like Ted Poe quoting the founder of the KKK instead. Wouldn't you rather hear Paul Ryan coming out with something this based on his understanding of Hamlet:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry... As my mentor Ayn has explained This above all: to thine own self be true.

Post-Partisan Day In The House... Almost

Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX), Paul Broun (R-GA) & Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)

A few days ago we were trying to determine who were the absolute worse asshats in Congress-- you know, not the bottom of the barrel, underneath the barrel. Georgia imbeciles Lynn Westmoreland and Paul Broun figured prominently in the proceedings. Yesterday we saw some further proof of the toxic puddin'.

The real action was over on the Senate side yesterday; slow day in the House-- other than Hoyer's powerplay in using his vile, contemptible Blue Dog kennel to go after poor Nancy. But there were three votes, each exactly the kind of post-partisan pap that Obama wishes the whole world was made of. At 6:55 pm they voted on raising awareness and encouraging prevention of stalking by establishing January 2009 as “National Stalking Awareness Month.” 247 Democrats and 170 Republicans voted for it. It passed 417-0. Didn't January, 2009 just pass, though? Whatever. At 7:06 pm they voted to support the goals and ideals of National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Week. This time 248 Democrats and 171 Republicans voted for it and 419 members of Congress are on record supporting those lofty goals (with none opposing). You're on record, Patrick McHenry. and we know what you do with all those teenage boys... so watch out because we are watching you. Then at 7:19 pm they voted on HR 559, a bill sponsored by Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and cosponsored by Peter King (R-NY), Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS) that amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to establish an appeal and redress process for individuals wrongly delayed or prohibited from boarding a flight. This time 245 Democrats were joined by 168 Republicans to give this one 413 votes. But it wasn't 413-0. There were 3 members of Congress who opposed the bill: Paul Broun (R-GA), Ted Poe (R-TX) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA). Hard to imagine why these three voted no, except that they are all virulent racists and never vote for bills proposed by African-Americans. Other than that, it was a perfect post-partisan day in the U.S. House of Representatives.