We’d all love to see Speaker Pelosi toss Louis Gohmert and the 125+ Republican seditionist assholes out of the House of Representatives on Day One of the new term. But, it’s not gonna happen. Why not? Because it can’t.

The fake progressives on the far left will have a field day calling Pelosi a coward, a corporate tool, a Republican wannabe, and all of the rest of the pre-scripted bullshit they like to fling. None of that is the case. Pelosi can’t refuse to seat Gohmert and his fellow Schutzstaffel, and — wait for it — it’s a good thing she can’t. House Speakers do not have, and should not have, the unilateral right to deny a state district representation in the House. (Imagine the fun previous speakers like Dennis Hastert, John Boehner and Paul Ryan would have had if they actually had this power.)

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Who Can Blame Him?) demanded that Pelosi refuse to seat the pig bastards back in mid-December, after the quislings signed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-Scum) asking the Supreme Court to unilaterially overturn election results in four key swing states and award Trump a second term. The Court, of course, refused. The brief was, Business Insider reporter Yelena Dzhanova wrote, “a strong display of support for the president’s weekslong attempt to subvert the election results.”

Pascrell said Pelosi should cite the 14th Amendment, which states that no elected member “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States or its various governing bodies.

The text of the 14th Amendment expressly forbids Members of Congress from engaging in rebellion against the United States. Trying to overturn a democratic election and install a dictator seems like a pretty clear example of that.

He added:

Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of the Congress. These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election undoubtedly attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each Member swears to support and defend. …I call on you to exercise the power of your offices to evaluate steps you can take to address these constitutional violations this Congress and, if possible, refuse to seat in the 117th Congress any Members-elect seeking to make Donald Trump an unelected dictator.

Well, hellfire, Max, Pascrell is right! Yes. Yes, he is. But right and legal are two different things, as I learned from watching the eight million and three episodes of Law & Order.

Pascrell is correct in saying that the 126 Republican shitstains did indeed advocate sedition by signing onto the legislation. They did violate their oaths of office. They did betray the Constitution.

But they haven’t been charged with a crime. They haven’t been convicted of a crime. If I go up to Matt Gaetz, slap the taste out of his mouth, and call him a seditionist and a traitor, he can retort (while spitting blood — I hit pretty hard for a guy on the high side of middle age): “Where’s the proof? Where’s the conviction? I haven’t even been indicted, for fuck’s sake!” And he, too, would be right. (And off to jail I would go for assaulting his sorry ass. Totes worth it, in my view. Always punch a Nazi.)

Wanna expel a duly elected Representative from the House? Fuck yeah, let’s do it! We can, but there’s a long, dull, and deadly boring process to follow before we give them the bum’s rush. And worse, you most likely have to do it one at a time.

Let’s start with that dipshit Gohmert, who went on Newsmax the other day and bellowed for his idiot followers to hit the streets and “and be as violent as Antifa and BLM” after his ludicrous lawsuit asserting that Mike Pence has the power as Vice President to unilaterally overturn states’ elector slates and choose his own was tossed out.

Of course, Gohmert was also one of the 126 goons who signed on to Paxton’s lawsuit.

Should the House start expulsion proceedings on his dead ass? Absolutely. In fact, I hope the House does just that. Here’s how it shakes out.

First, the House Ethics Committee gets to consider the matter, bolstered by complaints other members may make against him. Did Gohmert violate the law? His oath? The Constitution? The committee would form an investigatory subcommittee to investigate Gohmert and his evil ways. After all of that parliamentary dosi-do’ing, let’s say the full committee issues a resounding “Fuck yeah, he did! Expel his fascist ass!”

Good. Can we throw him out yet? Not yet. Pelosi then gets to call a vote of the full House, where two-thirds of the members decide yea or nay. This is based on Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution.

Wait! Didn’t previous Congresses throw people out ass over teacup without all this bureaucratic waltzing around? Not really. In 1861 and 1862, during the Civil War, the Senate refused to seat 14 members and the House refused to seat three, because they supported the Confederacy. A senator was booted in 1797 for conspiring against Spain. (Yes, really.) In 1980, a House member was expelled for taking bribes, and in 2002, Jim Traficant (D-Dumbass) was kicked out after being convicted of racketeering, bribery and tax evasion.

Don Ritchie, the official historian of the US Senate in 2010, said then:

Expulsion almost always requires breaking the law and being convicted of it. Because of the democratic spirit, you don’t deprive the voters of the person they chose, so they’d rather have the voters throw them out in the next election rather than do something in between, but if the person has been convicted and is going to jail it makes the institution look bad.

Gohmert, Gaetz, Jim Jordan, and the rest of those swinefuckers have done far more than make the House look bad. I would absolutely love it if Pelosi frogmarched them by the dais one by one before throwing them ass first into whatever alleyway backs up on the Capital Building. But she can’t do that.

I hope she does order the Ethics Committee to begin proceedings against Gohmert, if nothing else, though I strongly doubt the Republican Nazi Caucus will allow a single member vote to expel him. It’s more likely she will bring censure proceedings against him and some of the others. We’ll see.

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46 COMMENTS

    • It’s what they live to do. Their criticisms of Trump and his Nazis are bloodless and desultory. But they get energized as hell when they find an opportunity to attack Democrats. OTOH, I was pleased that AOC and the Squad supported Pelosi for Speaker this time around.

      • Can I just say how much I hate those self-sabotaging idiots’ antics? Deep down, I’m convinced that they want us to keep losing so that the fight never ends. Consequently, they can keep standing against something so that they never have to stand FOR something else. The former is infinitely easier than the latter outside of cheap sloganeering (see Tea Party).

        • Part of their problem that they unreasonably want it all and they want it now, and conveniently forget all the progressive stuff that have made it to the mainstream and even into conservatism, if not into the Constitution. A dramatic example is the women’s right to vote.

        • I was somewhat shocked in 2016, when Clinton ran on the most progressive platform in presidential history, and “progressives” doubled down on their attacks on her. I was just disgusted in 2020, when Biden ran on a platform even more progressive than Clinton’s, and the same assclowns went after him. For them, it isn’t about making progress. It’s about attacking Democrats. (For the progressives reading this: if you didn’t do any of that, if you stood up for Biden and Clinton in the general elections, thank you. This doesn’t apply to you.)

          • Long ago, when The Young Turks criticized Democrats, at first I thought they were refreshing impartial evaluators, but after a while I realized they just use Democrats as a punching bag.

        • I’m sure that that’s what some of them prefer doing – it doesn’t require as much work from them. (Spanberger seems to be one of those.)

  2. I pray she feels as healthy as she looks for a woman of her age. No better person to run the house. Maybe she can have their gym memberships revoked. I wouldnt trust gym jordan there anyway.

  3. “fake progressives on the far left”

    Really. Was that needed.

    The window has shifted.

    There is no far left. Progressives are nothing more than true liberals.

    To the Reich. Pelosi is a flaming liberal and I’m pretty sure no one in the Democratic party would consider Pelosi far left.

    Thanks for punching the people in the mouth who made this election win possible. See Clinton.

    The same people who will hold Corporate Dem Joe Biden’s feet to the fire so he doesn’t sell out the Dems or refuse to fight back like Obama.

    Far as this site. You just lost a visitor.

    • That display of grievance nurturing demonstrates why you not only fail but deserve to. The world has indeed changed but you refuse to change with it. That is the error in judgment that has destroyed the Republican party. Imitating them is hardly a good look.

    • Why did you come? To whine about us not being left enough for you? It’s opinion, and yours is worth as much as mine. And the GOP-T doesn’t think either of us should have a vote.

  4. Bill Palmer is fond of saying that there are no magic wands in politics. This is just the latest example of that principle in action. I really think that a lot of us have fooled ourselves into thinking otherwise thanks to Trump’s presence in the room.

  5. So basically Gohmert is saying, anybody who does not get their desired remedy through the courts should just demand it with violence? I don’t think that’s what he intends, but it’s definitely what he’s implying.

  6. Guys, um, I identify as Progressive. And say as much. In the tradition of Bob La Follette. Social Security, Medicare for All, public education funded by equitable taxation, strong unions, freedom of religion including freedom FROM it if preferred, reparations (I’ve put my own money and employability on the line for that one, more than once, no regrets).

    I also contribute financially to this site – and to no others, just so you know. Limited budget, and I preserve the rest of it for donations to worthy causes (political and other) and individuals in need.

    Please stop hating on me by proxy. I am not a caricature, I am not a target silhouette, I am a human being. Aspie, true, but human nonetheless.

    My own progressive beliefs BEGIN with the belief that people have the right to disagree – civilly – without being hated, targeted, pursued for destruction. Can’t we leave that horrible garbage where it already dominates the landscape? What’s the point of escaping oppressive conditions, if you bring your oppressors’ mentality with you?

    I’ll let myself out. Dammit, I’m a woman without a country.

    • Gael, read my words, and read my other writings on this subject on this site. “The fake progressives on the far left…” is what it says. I am not going to play the “ooh, I’m a progressive, I’m being bullied, I’m being othered” game that they play on DK. Don’t drag that shit in here. I’ve made it very clear that the fake, toxic progressives I’m talking about are not the majority of progressives. I’m not going to do the usual #NotAllProgressives dance every time I write something.

      And while I appreciate your contributions to the site, I don’t appreciate the implied threat — you’ll take your donations and let yourself out if you don’t like what you read. Sorry. I won’t write to please you and your contributions.

      • It wasn’t a threat, Max. Nor was it a promise. It was simply a disclosure: I’m one of the people who feed people here, and I do it here when I don’t anywhere else, so why on earth are you doing this to me? But now that you suggest it, well, hell.

        And I haven’t noticed people being careful to qualify their hatred.

        I’ll figure out a way to keep sending Ursula grocery money. But I won’t underwrite people who not only hate me, but revel in it to my face. I had hoped to provoke just a moment’s thought, a pause in the mob yelling, ten seconds’ worth of “hey, what the hell are we doing?” Because, of course, if you want to think of yourselves as different from and better than, it’s incumbent on you to BE those things.

        I really should have given up on this species long, long ago. We really are going to destroy an entire planet because we can’t give up the sweet feeling of hating one another, and we can never bring ourselves to admit we are wrong about anything. Good god.

        • If you consider yourself as someone who is “feeding” me, then that can stop right now. I won’t dance to your tune or anyone else’s. My suggestion to you is to end this conversation here and now.

        • If you think that donations to the site mean that it should write to suit you, then you should start your own blog. (And the same goes for people whining because the mothership isn’t covering things the way they want.)

    • Wow…just wow. The self-pity in that comment is truly breathtaking, Gaels. One might even say you made yourself into a caricature with it. Personally I would think the fact that you are alive, (hopefully) well and able to post anything online puts you ahead of a few hundred thousand fellow citizens who didn’t get out of 2020 alive. PERSPECTIVE, please.

      • She is not wrong. There are a number of liberals who denigrate Christians with such a wide brush, I am not surprised she felt she was being painted with a similarly wide brush regarding progressives. Hypergeneralities are almost always incorrect.

    • He is referring to what he call fake progressives. Perhaps “fake” is the wrong descriptor. It has certainly been overused. However, there is definitely a faction among progressives who seem intent on denigrating everyone who won’t climb onto their bandwagon. There is barely a tissue paper’s difference between their comments about Pelosi and Biden and right-wing propaganda. If that is not you, then he was not talking about you. I do think he is being unnecessarily defensive and harsh in his responses to you.

  7. Yes laws and procedures must be followed. But the process of getting rid of these seditious traitors must be started as soon as possible! And get rid of them we must! Their criminal behavior and betrayal of their oaths of office MUST BE PUNISHED! We are still a nation of laws despite trump and his criminal cronies!

    • They will be. Not perfectly, not completely–we do not live in that kind of world–but enough. Ironic, isn’t it, how Trump keeps making that forthcoming punishment easier to administer by the day? Dr. Mabuse strikes again.

    • First you have to figure out how and with what to charge them. What they say on the floor of Congress is protected, and they have the same 1A rights as we do.

  10. About this point:

    “A senator was booted in 1797 for conspiring against Spain. (Yes, really.)”

    A note should be added for explanation. That little conspiracy involved attempting to incite Native American tribes living in Spanish West Florida (which had been returned to Spain after the American Revolution) to rebel and return the region (and all of then-Spanish Louisiana) to England. France had recently defeated Spain in a war and Blount (the senator in question) was among many who believed that France would take over Spain’s North American colonies (at least the ones that Spain got from France following the “Seven Years’ War” (the last of the “French and Indian Wars”) in 1763 and the ones it got from Britain following the Revolution (in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, Britain got Spanish Florida which included modern Florida plus the southern half of modern Alabama and Mississippi and modern Louisiana east of the Mississippi River except for New Orleans). Blount’s real incentive was, of course, financial. He’d been a land speculator and had bought quite a bit of land, but land prices had collapsed and he was trying to sell to British investors but with no success. Additionally, Blount and others believed that if France did regain all that territory from Spain, then France would bar the use of New Orleans to American traders.

    Ironically, of course, France did reclaim the Louisiana Territory from Spain not long afterwards while the US would negotiate control of the majority of “West Florida” from Spain (leaving only the coastal strips of Mississippi and Alabama and the small bit of Louisiana along with all of modern Florida; these areas would come under US control between 1803 and 1819).

  11. Nancy Pelosi does not want to advocate the same treatment for democrats if a tinpot dictator usurps the presidency, which we can easily see happening.

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