Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Tea Party Patriots File Ethics Complaint Against Harry Reid

by JASmius

Well, as Loki once said of the tesseract, "This is worth a look":

A tea party group charges that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may have broken Senate rules with his repeated attacks on billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

The Tea Party Patriots filed a complaint Monday with the Senate Ethics Committee,
accusing the Nevada Democrat of "unlawfully and unethically targeting private citizens," alleging he's "misused Senate staff or resources to engage in partisan campaign activity in violation of federal laws and Senate rules."

Reid's action, the complaint says, "is a blatant example of a powerful Washington figure deciding that it is his prerogative to bring the full weight of his office against private citizens or organizations with whom he disagrees."

Partisan Tourettes Syndrome is unlawful and unethical?  Hey, Pencilneck, did you know about this?

<....KOCHKOCHKOCHKOCHKOCHKOCHKOCHKOCHKOCHKOCHKOCHKOCH....>

Oooh, I guess not.

Of course, I didn't either.  At least the unlawful part.  I just naturally assume that all Democrats are unethical, the same way I assume that most people's poop stinks.

Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin says federal-level targeting of conservatives has got to stop.

We wish.  How about the TPP stops attacking its own side and join forces with the GOP to win some more elections?  Democrats will still pee in our faces, but they'll be doing it from a significantly lower perch.

"After having been targeted by the IRS for several years and seeing the truly chilling effects the IRS has had on speech and the First Amendment, we're seeing the same thing happen with Senator Reid and [Rhode Island Democratic] Senator [Sheldon] Whitehouse," she told Business Insider.

I dunno.  Is Dirty Harry (G)Reid being a dick and a mouthy old bastard the same legal thing as the IRS using the police power of the state to crack down on Tea Party groups?  Sure, it's uncouth, bad form, whiney, impolite, obnoxious, and perhaps unethical for a United States senator, but does it rise to the threshold of unlawfulness?  Doesn't the First Amendment enter this discussion at some point?

Not that I don't appreciate the irony of pouring a dose of the Left's speech suppression medicine down their own foul gullets, you understand, but still.

"It's been generations since a member of the Senate has abused the power of his office to attack private citizens the way Harry Reid has sought to vilify Charles and David Koch," Martin told the Hill.

She called Reid's critiques "nothing more than a continuation of the thuggish intimidation campaign mounted by the Obama administration to target and silence people and organizations Democrats disagree with."

Yes, J.B., but I have to pose a couple of counter-points to you, if I may.  And actually, yes, I do may.

1) The operative term in your charge is "sought to".  Has the soon-to-be ex-Senate Majority Chisler attempted the vilification of Charles and David Koch?  Repeatedly.  Has he succeeded?  Doubtful.  At most he's given the nutroots a couple of new boogiemen as motivation for opening up their checkbooks for Donk campaigns and otherwise general mouth-frothing in PCP'd rabidity, but most Americans only even see the name "Koch" if they happen to tune in PBS to watch an episode of NOVA, much less have heard of them.  Heck, most Americans don't even know who Harry (G)Reid is, other perhaps than that senile old fossil they see rambling incoherently on the news in that high-pitched Grandpa Simpson-esque screech.  Going to show that even for the Left, there is a downside to a moronified electorate.

2) How is Dirty Harry spewing caustic fecality any different or distinctly worse than the caustic fecality elected Democrats have spewed at the Right for decades?  Yeah, it is a thuggish intimidation campaign - an attempted one.  But as long as name-calling is the extent of it, and is not accompanied by actual coercion, as with the IRS abuses, don't we still have the choice of whether or not to be intimidated and/or silenced?  Is not the answer, as we always say when the Regime tries to use its police power to suppress free speech, more speech, not less?

Jus' sayin'.

On the other hand, if the TPP was baiting Senator (G)Reid into upping the rhetorical ante so as to make it backfire even more spectacularly in November, I'd say it's an unqualified success:

"We are shocked — shocked! — that a publicity-seeking, extremist tea party group which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Koch brothers' secret bank would attempt a frivolous publicity stunt to distract from the Kochs' efforts to rig the system for billionaires like themselves," Adam Jentleson, Senator Reid's communication director, told the Hill.

"The shadowy, billionaire Koch brothers are pulling out all the stops to get Senator Reid to stop shining a light on their efforts to buy our democracy, but he will not be silenced."

C'mon, J.B., if this nonsensical prattle were any more comic book-esque, Stan Lee could have written it.  It sounds like Syndrome's monologueing.  If I could ask the hilariously ironically surnamed Mr. "Jentleson" a question, it would be when we can expect his boss to show up on the Senate floor in tights and a cape, and when he's going to announce the formation of the Injustice League of Obamerika.

I'm starting to get a bit of a kick out of it, to be honest.

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