Today in a committee hearing on Capitol Hill Terry Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina, kept demanding to know why the Director of the National Parks Service shut down the national parks during a government shutdown. Jonathan Jarvis, the Director, explained
that D.C. parks and memorials must close during a shutdown under the Anti-deficiency Act, which prohibits federal employees from spending money that has not been authorized by Congress.
But Gowdy continued to ask for a specific statute that required the government to close memorials during a government shutdown.
Jarvis has more patience than I; I’d have said “What part of ‘Anti-Deficiency Act’ do you not understand, Rep. Gowdy?”
It really does prove once again what South Carolina State Representative James Petigru said about the state on the occasion of its vote to secede from the Union: “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”
Is there a conspiracy theory attached to this?
Because that usually turns out to be why someone asks meaningless impertinent questions like that. Because even though they look like stupid to most people, they wind up looking clever & persistent to people in tinfoil hats. But if you don’t know what the conspiracy du jour is, it would just sound like nonsense.
Not really a conspiracy theory, just the general Tea Party victimhood mantra: “The President did it! The President did it! T’wasn’t us!”