Michael Ramirez Essay: Congressional Misbehaving 11-28-23
From America's Premier Editorial Cartoonist
TURKEYS
by Michael P. Ramirez, November 27, 2023
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I was watching the televised Turkey pardon by President Biden. He pardoned Liberty and Bell… Get it? Liberty Bell. I was half expecting Hunter to show up in a turkey costume, but then he would be pardoning Liberty, & Dumb Bell.
It’s amazing when I look at the spectrum of politics these days; there certainly is enough dumb to go around. It’s like the world has gone crazy.
Starting with Monday and Congressman George Santos. In the face of the House Ethics Committee recommending expulsion, the question arises whether or not Congress should expel him.
The expulsion clause in the Constitution reads:
Article I, Section 5, Clause 2: Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.
It is serious to remove an elected representative.
Only one member of Congress was removed before the Civil War. Senator William Blount from Tennessee was removed in 1797 for allegations of treason and a conspiracy to help the British take Louisiana and Florida.
Sixteen members of Congress were expelled after the South seceded from the Union.
Three were from the House. Rep. John Clark, Rep. John Reid from Missouri, and Rep. Henry Burnett from Kentucky were expelled for helping the Confederacy form a government and for joining the military and taking up arms against the Union.
Two more House members were expelled in recent history.
In 1980, Congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers from Pennsylvania was caught taking bribes in the FBI Abscam political corruption investigation. He was sentenced to three years in prison. According to the U.S. attorney’s office, he pled guilty to “conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, and conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election for orchestrating schemes to fraudulently stuff the ballot boxes for specific Democratic candidates in the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Pennsylvania elections.”
Ohio Representative Jim Traficant was expelled in 2002 after he was convicted on ten felony counts, including bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.
It’s a difficult precedent to expel a member who has not… yet… been convicted of an offense. Otherwise, they might have expelled Traficant just for his ridiculous toupee.
In the old days, Politicians demonstrated virtue, and they would resign before they were expelled.
Virtue seems almost non-existent today.
Don’t expect George Santos to resign. He will sit in his office clutching his volleyball championship trophies, his Horace Mann School, Baruch College, and NYU diplomas, his yarmulke, Hermes and Burberry scarfs, and Friends of Pets sweatshirt, Anthony Devolder SAG-AFTRA card, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup business cards, and stacks of $199 receipts watching his favorite OnlyFans subscriptions until they escort him out…… or until some genius like Jamaal Bowman, who doesn’t seem to know the difference between a door and a fire alarm, forces a Capitol evacuation.
The likelihood of Santos being convicted of the multiple charges against him following that brutal Ethics Committee report is pretty high, based on its revelations. He is currently facing 23 felony charges, including conspiracy, wire fraud, false statements, aggravated identity theft, falsification of records, and credit card fraud.
George Santos calls it all Fake News and a Witch Hunt.
He will have his day in court, and it is very likely that the serial fibber’s fate will be sealed.
There is a cost.
Republicans don’t seem to understand the reason why corporations spend trillions of dollars on branding. It is to build support from people who may want to buy their product. Instead, Santos has been parading around as a GOP mascot, reaffirming the caricature the agenda-driven media has already painted.
Santos voluntarily stepped down from all his committee assignments in January, something then House Speaker McCarthy should have done, had he had any virtue.
Republicans can expel him from the House Republican Conference. According to House Republican Conference rules under the 118th Congress, it takes a two-thirds vote to expel a GOP member from the conference.
They should remove Santos, and while they’re at it, remove Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. The fact that either of those knuckleheads are seen as spokesmen for the party is a national embarrassment.
Whether or not this Congress would do that is another question altogether. This class of Congress seems to have been recruited directly from Butterball. I guess birds of a feather do flock together.
It reminds me of that classic rock song from the Scottish band Stealers Wheel… “Dodos to the left of me, turkeys to the right, here I am…” Except, it’s not the middle that has been abandoned; it is our conservative values, virtue, character, ethics, honor, integrity, honesty, and principles.
These days, the balance has shifted to votes over virtue. What they don’t seem to understand is that virtue is what will get votes.
George Washington believed that a Republic could only be built on a foundation of morality. In his September 17th, 1796 farewell address, Washington said, “'Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”
Benjamin Franklin believed, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” He had discussed the turkey as a superior choice over the bald eagle as a national symbol in his letter to his daughter, Sarah, in 1784. He viewed the bald eagle as “a bird of bad moral character.”
He obviously could not have foreseen the turkeys strutting around Congress today.
I was reading a passage in the bible about the Martyrdom of Eleazar. Eleazar was “one of the scribes in high position” during King Antiochus IV Epiphanes’ persecution of Judaism. He was offered to be spared from torture and death if he simply defied religious law and ate pork as an example to the public.
The King commanded him to eat and offered him kind treatment in return.
Rather than capitulate to the crowds, which urged him to give in, Eleazar refused to betray a lifetime of virtue and principles. Instead, he stood on principle, defied the crowd and King, and chose to be a lasting example for all.
He was taken to a rack, tortured, and put to death.
31 So in this way he died, leaving in his death an example of nobility and a memorial of courage, not only to the young but to the great body of his nation. 2 Maccabees 6:31
The challenges we face today are not nearly as perilous as the martyrs of the past, but the influence we wield and the example we set are just as important.
Have a great week.
Best wishes,
-m
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Links of Interest:
Beyond Useful Idiots & He’s Sorry —Scott Johnson, Power Line
What Were the Hamas Monsters Thinking? —Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness
Tooting Your Own Horn —Roger Kimball, Epoch Times
Manipulating With Lies and Manufactured Sob Stories —Clarice Feldman, American Thinker
They Don’t Mind Being Wrong —John Hinderaker, Power Line
My mother let me, an innocent child, live. I am eternally grateful—Jim Ross Lightfoot, AOL.com
Railroaded Derek Chauvin’s foes will stop at nothing to punish ex-cop as he’s nearly killed in prison —Miranda Devine, New York Post
The Fall of Minneapolis —watch for free -thefallofminneapolis.com
The Invisible Hand Just Slapped Disney —Jonathan Turley, Res Ipsa Loquitur
A little more on the “Human Shields” controversy:
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