Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz has had a tough week. His Thursday town hall went over like a lead balloon when the large and angry crowd tore into Chaffetz over his refusals to investigate Trump's conflicts of interest, over Trump’s nominees, over Republican attempts to dismantle healthcare reform and over myriad other Republican sins; after bolting from the hall an hour early, Chaffetz later made the maudlin and much-mocked assertion that the malcontents were “paid” protesters brought in from out of state.
Perhaps no boos during the meeting, however, were as richly deserved as those Chaffetz received for dodging the question posed by 10 year old Utah resident Hannah Bradshaw. She asked about the environment. Then she asked: Do you believe in science?
[I]nstead of saying anything remotely resembling the words “I believe in science,” Chaffetz deflected hard enough to cause whiplash. Luckily, the crowd wasn’t having it. One woman in particular can be heard loudly repeating the words “ANSWER THE QUESTION,” and so Chaffetz was goaded into responding to Bradshaw. [...]
The Salt Lake Tribune live-streamed the entire event on Facebook, and if you pick up the exchange over there you’ll be treated to Chaffetz continuing to ignore Bradshaw’s questions while propping up muddy arguments like electric cars being dirty — “There’s a lot of people who want to move to electricity. Well how in the world do you think electricity is generated?” — and how solar farms are destroying wildlife.
Chaffetz endured another 15 minutes of the town hall before literally being booed off the stage.
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
“When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and government.”
—Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—Pure and Simple: Equal Rights:
Thirty years ago this month, Right-to-Life activists in Boulder, Colorado—scurrilously egged on by the local, chain-owned daily newspaper—challenged one of the nation’s earliest tendrils of what they called the “gay agenda.”
Then, as now, the gay agenda was a quintessential American agenda— the acquisition of equal legal protection by yet another group of our country’s second-class citizens. At issue in Boulder was not gay marriage or civil union, but another basic right: non-discrimination in employment. Shortly before Christmas, 1973, the nine-member city council—with its two-year-old liberal majority at the helm—passed one of the first four or five such ordinances in the U.S. Some gay activists and progressives to the left of the council had wanted something more: a clause proscribing non-discrimination in accommodations.
The legislation was initiated by Mayor Penfield Tate II, elected by the unpaid council as the first black mayor in Colorado history, chosen in a city with less than 2% African-Americans. A lesbian acquaintance told Tate she had been fired specifically because of her sexual orientation. Tate knew about injustice first-hand. And he saw the matter quite simply: an abrogation of the constitutional right of every American not to be legally diminished for background or belief or biology.
THE WEEK’S HIGH IMPACT STORIES • HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
Monday through Friday you can catch the Kagro in the Morning Show 9 AM ET by dropping in here, or you can download the Stitcher app (found in the app stores or at Stitcher.com), and find a live stream there, by searching for "Netroots Radio.” |