Just as most of us were still shaking our heads in amazement at Senator Rob Portman's(R-Ohio), whiplash conversion to supporting same-sex marriage following the revelation that his son is gay, comes word of another Republican politician caught in an act of monumental hypocrisy. Honestly, these incidents are coming almost too fast to document them all.
New York Assemblyman Steve Katz just last year voted down a bill to legalize medical marijuana in New York. On Wednesday of this week Katz was pulled over for speeding in excess of 80 miles per hour on the New York State Thruway in Coeymans, near Albany. The officer who pulled Katz over reportedly smelled pot in the car, at which point he discovered that Katz had a bag of marijuana in his possession.
Katz was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana and released on an appearance ticket. He’s due in court in Coeymans on March 28.
Katz, a veterinarian from Yorktown with a practice in the Bronx that lost its license last year, was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2010 with Tea Party (insert “tea” jokes here) support.
Nobody should be surprised, of course, and I’m not suggesting that the Republicans have a monopoly on hypocritical politicians, but they sure do have way more than their fair share of them. That’s probably because being in the All-American Family Values Party of No just creates so many more opportunities to be caught with your pants down and your head up your ass.
But what bugs me much more is that, regardless of what a bill pertains to -- civil rights, legalization of pot, or sending young Americans off to war – it shouldn’t be too much to hope for that every politician casts every vote as if the results were going to directly affect him- or herself and his or her children.