U.S. Congressman from Maine’s 2nd District Jared Golden was one of 22 House Democrats to vote Tuesday in favor of a resolution censuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) for “promoting false narratives” regarding the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, and for calling for the destruction of the State of Israel.
The resolution passed by a vote of 234-188, with Golden along with 22 other Democrats siding with nearly all the House Republicans.
Rep. Tlaib is the only Palestinian American serving in Congress, and one of three Muslims in Congress.
The resolution accused Tlaib of justifying the Oct. 7 attack as legitimate “resistance” to the “apartheid state” of Israel, spreading a false narrative that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza, and endorsing the phrase “from the river to sea” — which the resolution states “is widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people.”
One Democratic opponent to the resolution, Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes, criticized the measure as “cancel culture.”
“We need to stop this now. In both directions. Sanctioning members of congress for what they say is inconsistent with the freedom of expression protected by the 1st amendment AND the speech and debate clause,” Rep. Himes wrote on X Tuesday.
Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, one of four Republicans to vote against the resolution, provided similar reasoning for his vote.
“Free speech isn’t just about protecting speech you like; it’s especially about protecting speech you don’t like,” Rep. Massie said.
Maine Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree was among the 184 Democrats to vote against censuring Tlaib.
On Tuesday Rep. Pingree joined 56 members of Congress in urging U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to support a “humanitarian pause” in the Israel-Hamas conflict to ensure humanitarian aid reaches Gaza.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="23184 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=23184">2 Comments
Wow! A Democrat with a moral compass.
For those who don’t know what the “speech and debate clause” is, it’s why Harry Reid could lie from the well of the senate about Mitt not having paid his taxes, and Adam Schiff stating that evidence that Trump colluded with Russia “is right there in plain sight.”
It says that Members of Congress and their staffs, etc, cannot be held to account for anything they say in the conduct of their official business. It’s pretty clear that the meaning has expanded over the years to cover everyone in the Federal Government.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S6-C1-3-1/ALDE_00013300/
I don’t know what thought process led the founders to include such a privilege in the Constitution itself, but it is a wide open door for abuse, and clearly leads to a lack of “tells” when these “public servants” lie through their teeth. The clause, internalized, negates the shame of lying to the public….in full view….which is why barefaced lying is standard coin of the realm in our “polity.”
And why we dumb plebians can think of ourselves as oafs for believing truth-telling is part of acting honestly and with integrity. Which is a barefaced lie we tell ourselves for a warm fuzzy feeling that is the equivalent of wetting our knickers in a dark blue wool suit.
It gives us a warm feeling, but nobody notices.
Homework: if you are not familiar with Post-Modernism, look it up. It’s where terms like :”her truth,” “their truth,” and other abuses of plain language derive from.