On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Wisconsin’s 5th Congressional District, Jim Sensenbrenner, who has been a member of Congress since 1979. Through the years, he has been involved in some of the more distasteful legislative acts in our country, such as the attempted impeachment of President Clinton, where he read the opening statement, the drafting of the original version of the Patriot Act (which he denies leaving loopholes in to allow for government surveillance of the civilian populace), and his vote against $50 billion in relief aid for Hurricane Katrina. Sensenbrenner has also been prone to tantrums, like when in 2005, he walked out of a meeting about human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay prison after demanding C-SPAN turn off all cameras in an attempt at a media blackout. This guy even fought against funding for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis prevention, and against stiffer penalties for people convicted of dogfighting, he’s so heartless.
Sensenbrenner also has a long history of ridiculous quotes on climate change denial, including his insistence that there’s data to prove “global cooling” out there. That should come as little surprise, as Sensenbrenner owns stock in British Petroleum,and during the Congressional hearings after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, he actually refused to recuse himself from the proceedings, instead writing an angry letter to the White House to lay blame on them for the disaster. His disgust for the Obama White House goes a bit farther than that, as he actually tried criticizing Michelle Obama’s efforts to combat childhood obesity, because “she has a big butt” (because he himself is doing so much better in battling obesity).
Sensenbrenner actually voted against the renewal of the Violence Against Women act, and not only voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown, but voted against re-opening it when the time came. In 2015, Sensenbrenner was taking testimony in the hearings on Planned Parenthood, and asked witness Priscilla Smith why she prioritized Planned Parenthood over feeding hungry children, then cut her off to pretend to be baffled by her answer about how it helped mothers with cancer screenings so they could feed their healthy children, because they would still be alive to if it’s caught early.
Jim Sensenbrenner has been around for four decades, and has worn his conservative disdain for the working class the majority of that time. So, it’s little surprise that when he hosted a town hall back in April of 2017, he didn’t seem too concerned with his constituents’ wealth of complaints. When asked about his vote for SJ Res 34, where internet providers would now be allowed to sell the data information of their users to businesses, and how that would violate all sense of privacy, his response was, “Well you know, nobody has got to use the internet.” (Yeah, he’s that out of touch, he doesn’t seem to understand that most jobs require the internet these days, or that to even apply for one, you need to have an e-mail you can be reached at.)
Sensenbrenner was again re-elected in 2018 with 62% of the vote, and went back to Washington to serve his 21st term in Congress. We’ll note that it was twelve years prior, back in 2006 he finished second place in a Rolling Stone piece about “America’s Worst Congressmen”, only behind GOP colleague and child molester, Dennis Hastert. In that article, this was the assessment of the man representing Wisconsin’s 5th District:
”Sensenbrenner is an ever-sweating, fat-fingered beast who wields his gavel in a way that makes you think he might have used one before in some other arena, perhaps to beat prostitutes to death.”
And yet he has remained in office for another seven terms. In the current one Sensebrenner has missed numerous votes, but we have seen some of that tempermental, impotently-enraged Sensenbrenner back in action of late, specifically when he showed up at the Congressional hearings aimed at discrediting the Mueller investigation, and he spent a few minutes harassing Peter Strzok, failing to score any points in his partisan attack on the career FBI agent who investigated the massive corruption within the Trump campaign and its ties to Russia.
We at least got good news, though, in September of 2019, when Sensenbrenner announced he would be retiring at the end of his term. While he has begun missing votes more than any other point in his career, that doesn’t mean he’s going quietly, though, as he has started predictably flailing about during the impeachment inquiry, telling Democratic counsel that “you have made Joe McCarthy look like a piker”, and seemingly because he can’t remember he doesn’t wield a gavel anymore, he has used his time to accuse Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of losing control when Trump is simply disparaged, saying, “The committee is not in order and the chairman is not in order. We have to have some decorum in here.”
He is not taking the proceedings well at all, as he watches a president his own party helped elect, and has desperately tried to defend from legitimate charges of corruption and self-dealing, continuously make their job of protecting him nigh-impossible. We’re not going to be surprised if Jim Sensebrenner fakes a heart attack, or just goes apoplectic and has one as the impeachment hearings continue.