Dear Editor:
It seems that House Republicans and Mr. Dyke share a persistent reluctance to accept facts, overwhelming evidence and practical logic.
First, on four occasions in that budget Republicans insisted upon language preventing any federal expenditure in support of ACORN. The organization has not existed since 2010. The possibility of spending federal funds on ACORN is zilch, zero, zip, nada.
Yet to sustain a fanciful opportunity of attack, legislators and staff wasted resources and money to prevent something that is factually impossible.
They also prohibited the State Department from "closing" the Vatican Embassy, a recently featured charge based upon fallacy.
Reported by the usual Limbaugh-Hannity-RedState-NewsMaxx-Fox-WorldNetDaily crowd as an insult to Catholics, the actual proposal followed an accepted British model and combined the Italian and Vatican embassies in one compound closer to the Vatican, incidentally saving U.S. taxpayers more than a million dollars.
The Vatican stated the move provides a separate entrance and address for the U.S. Embassy thus meeting their requirements. Having the attack line received priority over saving any money.
The budget also prohibits transferring control of our drone campaign from the CIA to Defense which would have given more transparency of sorts to this 21st century technology whose parameters and ethics we are still attempting to determine. But then President Obama proposed it. That alone prevents Republican support.
Yes, Democrats voted for this budget as well. But Senator McCaskill's office indicated that it was impractical to blow up the deal over funding a non-existent ACORN for example.
I have not forgotten Mr. Dyke. His recent proposed escape tactic for Governor Christie included among others the IRS "issue". This is another case of a fact-free narrative being more valuable than truth.
Between May 14 and August 20, 2013, an Inspector General's report, an IRS internal audit and testimony to the House Oversight Committee presented clear evidence of no influences by individuals or organizations outside the IRS, evidence that the IRS "never, never discussed any, any political aspirations" and "no evidence of intentional wrongdoing by anyone in the IRS or involvement in those matters by anyone outside the IRS."
Further, the record shows that liberal groups were scrutinized as well and the only actual denials were for liberal/progressive groups. I suppose a fact-free offering on climate change was insufficient.
But Mr. Dyke and House Republicans never met a damaging narrative without basis in fact that they were unwilling to use.
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