Most Americans are realistic enough to know that, if the Cynic philosopher Diogenes carried his candle through the halls of Congress in search of a truly honest man, his return on investment in tallow would be modest. Until a couple of decades ago, however, few of us would have predicted that an ongoing effort by a prominent politician to deceive the voters would be publicly applauded by the members of his party. Yet that is precisely what we witnessed last Wednesday, when Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was censured by the House for his perpetuation of the Russia collusion hoax.
H. RES. 521, introduced by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), passed Wednesday afternoon 213–209. In addition to censuring Schiff “for misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives,” the resolution directs the House Ethics Committee to “conduct an investigation into … Schiff’s falsehoods, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.” No Democrats voted for the measure, and the Republican members of the Ethics Committee followed tradition by voting “present.” For his part, Schiff’s response was characteristically shameless:
To my Republican colleagues who introduced this sham resolution: You honor me with your enmity. You flatter me with this falsehood. Your words tell me that I have been effective in the defense of our democracy, and I am grateful.
Schiff’s response was entirely predictable, of course. He was defiant when he was kicked off the House Intelligence Committee last January, and no one really expected greater candor or remorse after he was censured Wednesday. The response of his Democratic colleagues was even worse. They booed and heckled Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (D-Calif.) as he read out the resolution. These antics suggest that the entire Democratic Party has drifted so far from its ethical moorings that all members should be banished to the political wilderness until they relearn how differentiate between right and wrong.
The party is morally bankrupt.
