Craziest Republican of the Day: Mike Lee

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Think Progress:

In an interview on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday evening, tenther Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) admitted that he is using the threat of a catastrophic default to extort the nation into rewriting the Constitution to force a permanent era of conservative governance:

Chris Matthews: How many days do you think we have, on the outside, to get this debt ceiling through before we have a problem? How many days?

Lee: I don't know, maybe ten days.

Matthews: Okay, in ten days you want to change the United States Constitution by two-thirds vote in both houses? That's what you're demanding.

Lee: Yes. If possible we can't change the Constitution just in Congress but we can submit it to the states. Let the states fight it out.

Matthews: And you think you're being reasonable by saying you want a two-thirds vote in the House, which is Republican, and in the Senate which is Democrat. You want the Democratic Senate, by a two-thirds vote, to pass a constitutional amendment or you want the house to come down?

Lee: Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying and I've been saying this for six months.

This guy's crazy stupid and crazy ignorant, but another word for this is treason.

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Craziest Republican of the Day: Mike Lee

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Think Progress:

There's three things Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) likes in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and "unconstitutional." Indeed, Lee has recently claimed that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. Yet Senate Republicans have inexplicably chosen to put Lee on the very Senate committee that has jurisdiction over constitutional questions and the judiciary...

Placing Mike Lee in charge of overseeing the Constitution is a bit like putting Dick Cheney in charge of hunting and gun safety, yet the Senate GOP was so eager to put this radical tenther on the Judiciary Committee that it waived a rule prohibiting both of a state’s senators from serving on Judiciary in order to ensure Lee's membership.

That's right, this Teabagging Republican -- one of the four members of the Senate's Tea Party Caucus -- thinks that child labor laws, along with food/drug regulation, federal emergency management, and social assistance programs for the poor, are unconstitutional.

Which means, one must presume, that he's fine with child labor (and, of course, screwing the poor).

And far from being on the fringe of the GOP, he and his views are being empowered, literally, as he takes on a significant position on constitutional matters.

As crazy as he is, the party that enables him (and celebrates him) is crazier still.

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