A Crazy Week in Politics

It has been a crazy week in politics.

Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert got her bitch ass thrown out of a theater in Denver (I had to say that. It felt good) that was putting on a performance of the musical Beetlejuice. Boebert insisted via her campaign manager that she was not doing anything more than singing along enthusiastically (which may be disruptive in and of itself. I don’t know how Boebert sings and I don’t want to), but eyewitness accounts and security footage indicate otherwise. There was yelling and screaming, vaping, recording with her phone, and even some hanky-panky with her date. As she and her date were being removed by security, she said such things as “Do you know who I am?” and “I will be contacting the mayor”. Boebert later issued an apology, stating that her behavior “fell short of my values”, but in reality such behavior is perfectly on brand for Boebert (she made waves by heckling Biden during his 2022 State of the Union speech) and plays very well with her base.

It is not my place to attempt to take down Boebert, though I do confess to feeling no small amount of schadenfreude at watching all this go down. Hopefully all this will play out; there seem to be indications that voters back home in Colorado may have had enough of Boebert.

In other news, long-time California senator Dianne Feinstein died yesterday at age 90.

Feinstein was elected to the US Senate in 1992. Her three decades in office made her the longest-serving female US senator in history. Feinstein was active up to the very end; she participated in a vote Thursday morning.

There had been concerns about Feinstein’s health over the past year. She had to take a lengthy leave of absence in the early part of this year, and there was much speculation over what would happen if she had to step down. This has led to an ongoing conversation around the fitness of aging lawmakers to remain in office.

Prior to serving in the Senate, Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco for many years. She became mayor in 1978 when then-mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. She was the first female mayor of San Francisco. Prior to that, she served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where she was its first female chair.

While in the Senate, Feinstein became the first female chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the first woman to sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She also served on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and was the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2021. Feinstein led efforts on gun control which resulted in a 1994 federal ban on assault weapons, which has since lapsed. She also was influential in a 2014 report that exposed much of the CIA’s practices of torture and interrogation in the wake of 9/11.

Feinstein was a progressive, but was willing to work across the aisle with Republicans, much to the consternation of her fellow progressives. She was praised for her distinguished career by progressives and conservatives alike, including Dick Durbin, Kevin McCarthy, and Chuck Schumer.

Whatever your political commitments may be, you cannot argue that Feinstein has served with class and distinction in a way that will be sorely missed, especially in the present political climate.