As January comes to a close, the GOP becomes even more bizarre. How low, how crazier, can they become?*

*Best answer wins a free, one-year subscription to Around the Block!

Commentary

The GOP is party of clowns. But, calling them clowns really gives clowns a bad name!

It’s only Tuesday and it’s already been a grand week for the Grand Old Party (GOP). Here are just three examples.

Please note, to illustrate my case I’ve reprinted articles from various news sources in the body of this post. Since the articles are long, you might not want to read each in its entirety. To facilitate a quick read, I’ve excerpted each story’s key takeaways: the story’s headline (bolded); a one-sentence story description (italicized); and my comments on each story along with a closing overall comment. (red):

QUICK READ

Republican senator censured by Oklahoma GOP for negotiating with Democrats on fragile border deal

On Monday, Republican senator James Lankford of Oklahoma was censured by the Sooner state’s Republican party for negotiating with Democrats on a potential border deal.

Despite the best efforts of Rodgers & Hammerstein, O-K-L-A-H-0-M-A is N-O-T-O-K!

House Republicans move closer to rare move of impeaching DHS Secretary Mayorkas

Today, House Republicans moved forward on their effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas despite an emerging consensus among legal scholars that they have produced no evidence that the secretary has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, the standard for impeachment.

If Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley AKA, GOP fanboy, doesn’t agree with Republicans, they’ve got to know there’s no there, there!

An Idaho plan to get rid of domestic terrorism doesn’t involve fighting it. The Idaho Senate’s view of our domestic threat defies logic.

Today, the GOP controlled Idaho State Senate advanced a bill that defines “domestic terrorism” as requiring the involvement of foreign groups. According to the bill, if there’s no foreign involvement, then there can be no domestic terrorism.

If there’s no foreign involvement, there’s no domestic terrorism?” Writing bills inspired by “Moms for Liberty?” No wonder Idaho’s nickname is “The Potato State.” I submit a better moniker would be “The Potato Head State!” Where is Mr. Potato Head when you need him?

Let me close with this: Yes, it’s only Tuesday. What will the rest of the week bring from the inaptly called GOP, but perhaps more properly named, the BWP (Bizarro World Party)?

As promised, the following is for those who really want to dig in and/or are gluttons for punishment from the Grand Old Party:

On Monday, Republican senator James Lankford of Oklahoma was censured by the Sooner state’s Republican party for negotiating with Democrats on a potential border deal.

From USA Today:

Republican senator censured by Oklahoma GOP for negotiating with Democrats on fragile border deal

WASHINGTON − The Oklahoma Republican Party approved a resolution censuring Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., and attacking the Republican lawmaker for negotiating with Democrats on a potential border deal.

The resolution, shared by Oklahoma State Sen. Dusty Deevers on X, formerly Twitter, accuses Lankford of “playing fast and loose with Democrats on our border policy.” Lawmakers for months have been struggling to reach an agreement to address the challenges on America’s southern border, and Lankford has been the lead GOP negotiator.

The resolution, approved Saturday, also calls on Lankford to “cease and desist jeopardizing the security and liberty” of Americans.

The immigration deal – which has not yet been finalized – would reportedly make it harder for migrants to claim asylum, make it easier for U.S. officials to deport migrants who have remained in the country illegally, expand detention capacity and add Border Patrol staff.

It also would bar additional migrants from entering the country if the system becomes overwhelmed, which Republican lawmakers said would mean a cap of 5,000 migrants a day.

Lankford, in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” defended his role in the border negotiations.

“It is interesting: Republicans, four months ago, would not give funding for Ukraine, for Israel and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy. So we actually locked arms together and said: ‘We’re not going to give money for this. We want a change in law.

“And now, it’s interesting: A few months later, when we’re finally getting to the end, they’re like, ‘Oh, just kidding, I actually don’t want a change in law because of presidential election year,’” he said.

The resolution comes as President Joe Biden has for months called on lawmakers to approve a spending package that would grant additional foreign aid to Ukraine – and include border measures to bring Republicans on board.

But negotiations have been thrown into confusion as Republican senators have started acknowledging any border deal’s impact on former President Donald Trump’s reelection bid as he remains the 2024 GOP front-runner.

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Trump’s presence as the likely Republican nominee has changed the political environment as the former president seeks to make immigration a campaign focal point. It’s not clear whether the deal is destined for the gallows as both Trump and Biden press lawmakers in Congress.

Despite the best efforts of Rodgers & Hammerstein, O-K-L-A-H-0-M-A is N-O-T-O-K!

Today, House Republicans moved forward on their effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas despite an emerging consensus among legal scholars that they have produced no evidence that the secretary has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, the standard for impeachment.

From CNN:

House Republicans move closer to rare move of impeaching DHS Secretary Mayorkas

House Republicans are holding a markup of their impeachment articles against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday, moving closer to taking the rare step of impeaching a Cabinet official.

The House Homeland Security Committee will mark up its resolution claiming Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors for his handling of the southern border, even though a number of constitutional experts have said the evidence does not reach that high bar.

The controversial move would make Mayorkas the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached in nearly 150 years.

The impeachment effort comes as House Republicans have faced building pressure from their base to hold the Biden administration accountable on a key campaign issue: the border.

A variety of legal scholars have poured cold water on the legal arguments Republicans are using to support their impeachment effort.

Ross Garber, a Tulane law professor who has represented many Republican officeholders as both the prosecution and defense in impeachment cases, told CNN that House Republicans have not presented evidence of impeachable offenses.

“I think that what the House Republicans are asserting is that Secretary Mayorkas is guilty of maladministration,” Garber said. “At least as framed right now, the charges don’t rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor.”

Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who served under Republican President George W. Bush, wrote in a recent op-ed, “as a former federal judge, U.S. attorney and assistant attorney general — I can say with confidence that, for all the investigating that the House Committee on Homeland Security has done, they have failed to put forth evidence that meets the bar.”

Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley, who has been called by Republicans to serve as a witness in hearings, said, “There is no current evidence he is corrupt or committed an impeachable offense,” and 25 law professors wrote in an open letter that impeaching Mayorkas would be “utterly unjustified as a matter of constitutional law.”

If Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley AKA, GOP fanboy, doesn’t agree with Republicans, they’ve got to know there’s no there, there!

And also today, the GOP controlled Idaho State Senate advanced a bill that defines “domestic terrorism” as requiring the involvement of foreign groups. According to the bill, if there’s no foreign involvement, then there can be no domestic terrorism.

From Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, where he served 25 years as a special agent and directed all espionage investigations across the government and currently national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC:

This Idaho plan to get rid of domestic terrorism doesn’t involve fighting it. The Idaho Senate’s view of our domestic threat defies logic.

I’ve got great news. Despite its notorious history of racist and anti-government violence carried out by militia groups, we may no longer need to worry about domestic terrorism in Idaho. The Idaho Senate voted Thursday 27-8 to advance a bill that defines “domestic terrorism” as requiring the involvement of foreign groups. According to the bill, if there’s no foreign involvement, then there can be no domestic terrorism.

If you think that sounds like it’s opposite the meaning of “domestic,” you’re right. The problem is not only that this contortionist’s view of our domestic threat defies logic, but also that it seems aimed at clouding any perception of fellow Americans as a threat.

Idaho Senate Bill 1220’s statement of purpose explains that it would codify this bizarre definition of domestic terrorism while simultaneously ensuring that no one in Idaho could be called a domestic terrorist, or a terrorist of any kind, unless they’ve been convicted of or pleaded guilty to activities connected to a foreign terrorist group.

Idaho Senate Majority Leader Kelly Anthon, the Republican who sponsored the bill, wraps himself in a “free speech” defense when he explains his proposal to essentially erase the notion of domestic terrorism as we know it. To hear him tell it, terrorists are simply people who speak their minds and hang out with their peers.

“You have the right to say things that people don’t like,” Anthon said. People “have a right to assemble and protest the government for their grievances, even when you don’t like the group. There’s a lot of these groups I don’t like, but they have a constitutional right to do it.”

Of course, Anthon’s idea of free speech has its limits. You apparently don’t have the right to call someone a domestic terrorist. “If you are called a domestic terrorist it is going to affect your name, it’s going to affect your business, it’s going to affect your family,” he said. “And it’s not fair if you’ve never had your due process and you’ve never had your day in court.”

Anthon says his inspiration to erase the idea that there’s domestic terrorism came from Moms for Liberty, an activist outfit that bills itself as a “parental rights group” that he claims was targeted by the government when its members protested at school board meetings during Covid-19 school shutdowns.

Anthon noted the dust-up in 2021 when the National School Boards Association asked President Joe Biden to look into threats and intimidation against school boards. The school boards group claimed such threats might be domestic terrorism, but Attorney General Merrick Garland said, in writing, that federal law enforcement would investigate only criminal behavior. Apparently, Anthon missed that memo.

Is he also forgetting his state’s history? In 1986, in Coeur d’Alene, the domestic terrorist neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, based in Idaho, bombed the residence of the Rev. Bill Wassmuth, a Catholic priest who led protests against white supremacists.

An Aryan Nations splinter group in Idaho later murdered a Jewish radio host in Denver and bombed a synagogue. In 1992, at Ruby Ridge in Boundary County, Idaho, Randy Weaver — believed to be associated with the Aryan Nations and indirectly linked to a terror group called The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, and his friend engaged in a deadly shootout with U.S. marshals and the FBI.

Months after the Coeur d’Alene bombing, in 1987, Idaho passed the Idaho Terrorist Control Act. Anthon’s bill would amend — essentially, neuter — that law. Groups like those named above wouldn’t face the same state penalties for criminal acts they commit if the bill were to become law. They might be charged with and convicted of crimes, but, absent proven foreign connections, they’d no longer be subject to the 10-year minimum penalty Idaho currently reserves for domestic terrorists.

If this bill were to succeed and more states were to follow Idaho’s legislative lunacy, the reality of the threat and risk posed by domestic terrorism wouldn’t vanish. But the threat some Americans pose to other Americans would become yet another thing we couldn’t agree on. It would become a problem that law enforcement and the courts would be constrained from fully addressing.

Taken to its illogical extreme, other crimes could be counted as free speech. How about bank robbery as a free speech expression against the tyranny of global bankers and the grip of usurious interest rates on the common man? Should we ban police from describing an arrestee as a “bank robbery suspect” until they plead guilty or are convicted? If we don’t, the suspect’s feelings and reputation might be damaged. If we use the bill in Idaho as our guide, we’d have to instruct the police to call a fleeing suspect a free speech activist who merely lost his way.

Senators in Idaho, at least the 27 who advanced this bill, have lost their way. They apparently don’t like it when folks who look like them and live near them get called domestic terrorists. So instead of dealing with the threat, they’d rather outlaw a label. Let’s hope the full Legislature puts them back on the path to sanity.

If there’s no foreign involvement, there’s no domestic terrorism?” Writing bills inspired by “Moms for Liberty?” No wonder Idaho’s nickname is “The Potato State.” I submit a better moniker would be “The Potato Head State!” Where is Mr. Potato Head when you need him?

Let me close with this: Yes, it’s only Tuesday. What will the rest of the week bring from the inaptly called GOP, but perhaps more properly named, the BWP (Bizarro World Party)?