Tea Party Can't Even Criticize Menendez Correctly

by: JRB

Sat Jul 17, 2010 at 11:13:53 AM EDT

Yesterday, I noted that the Tea Party is mad at Senator Menendez for -- get this -- leading the charge to re-imprison the bomber of Pan Am Flight 103  and investigate BP's part in trading justice for oil drilling contracts in Libya.

The tea partiers, who often chide others as neglectful of the text of the U.S. Constitution, are angry that Menendez is pursuing the Lockerbie/BP criminals when he didn't give the federal government greater surveillance powers (but that was during the Bush administration, so it's OK!). Never mind that pursuing a mass-murderer and reducing civil liberties are not one in the same -- they think he's a hypocrite.

Of course, they also think there's nothing hypocritical about pocket-constitution-thumping when they're trying to disrupt more than two centuries of the constitutionally designated six-year Senate term. Whatever suits their partisan agenda.

And -- surprise! -- the Tea Party also cited a vote that was wrong, wrong, wrong. They claimed Menendez voted against implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations. Except he didn't. Not in the least. He voted against a motion that would gut the bill. He happened to be a co-sponsor of the bill that passed the Senate, and the original sponsor of the bill introduced in the House in 2006.

In response came this gem from Rob Asaro-Angelo: "If this Tea Party organization misrepresents a fact so basic as Senator Menendez's leadership on the 9/11 Commission bill, it has to make people wonder what else they are misleading about. You have to fact-check what you read on the internet, but I guess that's too much to ask from the folks who founded Conservapedia."