According to Rep. Gerry Connolly, the behavior of Rep. Darrell Issa (R) yesterday was not just some “inside baseball” or “petty squabbling,” but was “all about minority rights.” What Issa demonstrated yesterday was “profound disrespect…with respect to one of the most distinguished members of our caucus, the ranking member, Elija Cummings, who’s a real statesman.” As Connolly explains, “to have a chairman of a committee cut off another member’s microphone because he doesn’t want him to be able to speak while considering contempt against a woman who has invoked her constitutionally protected privilege, the 5th amendment, is a mountainous irony…a shameful episode.” To put it another way, Darrell Issa is a disgrace to the country and to the Congress, a throwback to the McCarthyism of the 1950s, and fundamentally unAmerican in the way he operates.
P.S. Connolly adds that “if I were a Tea Party Republican in this country, I would be really concerned about the actions of Darrell Issa and Company” in suppressing 1st Amendment rights while simultaneously undermining the 5th Amendment.
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