Kansas Senator Pat Roberts — Thinks President Obama’s Plan to Close Guantanamo Is Wrong Headed — so He Has Been Blocking Approval for the New Secretary of the Army — Demonstrating (again) that Kansas Is Where Stupidity apparently Breeds

29 April 2016

A Senator with the brains of his state’s sunflower symbol

Let’s drop in on this story as it was in January 2016 — as then reported by the Army Times:

After a smooth and overall positive hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Eric Fanning’s [see here] confirmation to be the next Army secretary still is not guaranteed.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., [see here] is standing firm on a hold he placed last fall on Fanning’s nomination. Roberts placed a similar hold on former Army Secretary John McHugh’s nomination in 2009 when he learned that Fort Leavenworth [see here], home to the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas was being studied as a potential site for relocating prisoners if the facility in Guantanamo Bay [see here], Cuba, is closed.

“The senator’s hold on Eric Fanning is not personal,” Katherine Knight, a spokeswoman for Roberts, said in a statement to Army Times.

“The senator has asked the administration to provide a guarantee that detainees will not wind up in Kansas, as he was able to do when this issue first arose in 2009.”

“He remains committed to stopping the president from moving a single detainee to the U.S. and will continue to use all legislative tools at his disposal to do so,” she said in the statement.

This is because (I guess) Senator Roberts thinks that terrorists, illegally held Guantanamo innocents, and Muslims generally are Super Human and can escape from anywhere except Cuba.

Or some other such equally pusillanimous nonsense.

Senator John McCain yesterday lost patience with his boobish Kansas colleague

As anyone in his or her right mind would have:

Arizona Sen. John McCain pleaded with a fellow Republican, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, on the Senate floor Thursday to withdraw his objection and allow a vote on Eric Fanning to be Secretary of the Army.

But Roberts wouldn’t budge, again citing his opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposal to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and transfer its detainees to U.S. sites, including, potentially, Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

“It is not fair to the men and women of the United States Army to be without the leadership of a Secretary of the Army,” McCain said.

At times getting impatient with Roberts, McCain said Fanning was “eminently qualified” and that he had “nothing to do” with the president’s policy on Guantanamo.

McCain, a Navy veteran and former prisoner of war, said Roberts’ action was “not the appropriate use of senatorial privilege” and “a distortion” of the Senate’s duty to advise and consent.

“If we inaugurate a practice here of holding nominees over an issue that is not related to those nominees,” McCain said, “we are abusing our power and authority as United States senators.”

Is the Sunflower State, stupidity’s copulation destination?

What with, among many other things, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s demolition of his state’s budget:

Gov. Sam Brownback has had plenty of help in turning Kansas into a national punch line the last few years.

Brownback’s delusions about his budget-destroying income tax cuts, his imperious approach to governing and his dismissive attitude toward poor people have damaged the future of the Sunflower State.

But Brownback has not been alone.

Here’s part of the gang that’s gone along for the ride through the state’s debacles.

The Republican-dominated Legislature has been in Brownback’s camp on almost all major decisions.

And from another source:

Republican Sam Brownback’s approval rating in perhaps the nation’s reddest state is down to 21 percent, according to Fort Hays State University. The Legislature is in rebellion. Even conservative lawmakers are scrambling to put distance between themselves and the governor.

Already worn down from years of spending cuts and shameless budget gimmicks, lawmakers found out last week that they’d have to deal with a new shortage of almost $300 million over the next 15 months.

For some perspective on how everything became so terrible in such a short span, it’s instructive to revisit some of Brownback’s more memorable pronouncements about the steep income-tax cuts that have left Kansas gasping for revenue even as citizens deal with one of the highest sales-tax rates in the nation.

Evidently not content with wrecking their own home, we can assume that Kansans are not objecting to Senator Roberts’ attempt to drag the whole nation down with it.

The moral? — One could hypothetically conclude that . . .

Two things may be true:

Small states should have only one Senator — presumably reducing the chance that an idiot will appear in the slot

and

individual Senators should not have the power to stall the nation.

No wonder then that Arizona Senator McCain has implicitly had his fill with a state that cannot even run itself properly obstructing the entire United States in doing something administratively necessary.

PeteFree.com

Kansas Senator Pat Roberts — Thinks President Obama’s Plan to Close Guantanamo Is Wrong Headed — so He Has Been Blocking Approval for the New Secretary of the Army — Demonstrating (again) that Kansas Is Where Stupidity apparently Breeds