Keith Rothfus And The Suicide Caucus

By the way, the "suicide" rhetoric come not from the left but from the right - Charles Krauthammer:

Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist and regular Fox News panelist Charles Krauthammer warned over the weekend that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was leading Republicans on a “suicide” mission to defund President Barack Obama’s health reform law with an attempted government shutdown.

And:

“It would be over a cliff for the GOP,” Krauthammer said on Sunday’s edition Inside Washington. “I admire the sincerity and the passion of those who don’t want to pass the budget unless you get rid of Obamacare, but it is utterly impossible in the real world. And the only thing it will do is to undo all the gains the Republicans have made over the past year, and undo their very real chances of having great successes next year.”

“I think it’s a suicide caucus, and I hope enough of them will realize that so that [House Speaker John Boehner] will have a majority, even if it’s a bare majority, to pass a continuing resolution,” he added.

Recently, the P-G called out some local House Members on their tea-party affiliations:

The shutdown of the federal government shouldn't be dismissed in the cliched terms of "those people in Washington." Some of those people live right here. They are our members in the dysfunctional House of Representatives who have now exported their dysfunction to the nation.

Republican Reps. Keith Rothfus of Sewickley, Tim Murphy of Upper St. Clair, Mike Kelly of Butler and Bill Shuster of Blair County -- we're talking about you.

Do you think of yourselves as extremists? No? Then what are you doing siding with Tea Party radicals who have dragged the Republican Party to one extreme -- shutting down the federal government -- and who may embrace the ultimate craziness, default on the federal debt later this month?

There's one name on that list that also shows up on this letter to Speaker Boehner: Keith Rothfus.

Apart from signing a letter that contains this gut shearing bit of historical revisionism:

Moreover, the Internal Revenue Service, an agency now publicly known to have deliberately discriminated against conservative entities, pro-Israel groups and other organizations...

Yea, as we already know those "other organizations" were liberal groups.  But let's move on to this:

Since much of the implementation of ObamaCare is a function of the discretionary appropriations process, including the operation of the “mandatory spending” portions of the law, and since most of the citizens we represent believe that ObamaCare should never go into effect, we urge you to affirmatively de-fund the implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare in any relevant appropriations bill brought to the House floor in the l l31h Congress, including any continuing appropriations bill.

So one of the local people we have to thank for the guv'ment shut down is Representative Keith Rothfus, we should let him know how good a job we think he's doing.

Or we could, except it doesn't look like he accepts email from outside his district.

Here's his DC info:

Washington, D.C. Office
503 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2065
Fax: (202) 225-5709
Hours: 8:30AM - 6:00PM

We should all call him and thank him for helping to shut down the guv'ment.

Congressman Mike Doyle Knows His Internet Memes!

And puts them to great use -- good on him!

Can I burn down your house? No Just the 2nd floor? No Garage? No Let's talk about what I can burn down. No YOU AREN'T COMPROMISING!
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 2, 2013

UPDATE: And Congress just went into recess because of reports of shots fired near/around the Capitol--so much for a lighthearted post...

PodCamp 2013 Announcement

Will you be attending PodCamp this October 5?

I'll be there - I'm doing this:

In the wake of recent revelations by Eric Snowden and Glenn Greenwald about the world wide electronic surveillance carried out by the National Security Agency, what are the legal limits of our privacy online? What data have they been gathering, how have they been gathering it and what does that all mean?

Just a note for our friends in the intelligence community: Everything I'll be discussing comes from published sources.  That is to say, nothing's from Anonymous or Wikileaks.  But I suspect you already know that.

Just a note for Anonymous: Hey guys.  Drop me a line sometime.  I'd love to hear from you.

Sue Kerr's hosting a session too.  As is Thomas C Waters.

An interview with a member of the Tea Party Caucus in the House

More On GOP House Members And Their Tea Party Overlords

From The President of the United States Of America:

At midnight last night, for the first time in 17 years, Republicans in Congress chose to shut down the federal government. Let me be more specific: One faction, of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government, shut down major parts of the government -- all because they didn't like one law.

This Republican shutdown did not have to happen. But I want every American to understand why it did happen. Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to fund the government unless we defunded or dismantled the Affordable Care Act. They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans. In other words, they demanded ransom just for doing their job.

Can we start calling the Tea Party Caucus zealots from now on?  How about bullies?  How about ignorant ideologues who have no idea what governing means?

I am surprised they didn't demand the president's REAL birth certificate (or a confession for Benghazi, or the IRS or Climategate) as a prerequisite for "bipartisan negotiations" where they get everything they want and the twice elected president gets nothing in return.

Obligatory Pittsburgh Post

Shutdown

Yes, the federal government has been shut down. Here's Jon Stewart's great take on it. The only thing missing from it is the fact that there are enough votes in the House to pass a clean Senate bill. The blame lies with 30 to 60 representatives--call them, oh I don't know, TEA PARTY members--and House Speaker John Boehner who fears them.

 (If you're in Pittsburgh, you can learn more about the Affordable Care Act at this event today.)