We have met Congressman Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, in this shebeen before. Congress being in recess and all, Mullin went back to where the waving wheat sure smells sweet to greet the folks. It went amazingly well, especially in Jay, as the Tulsa World tells us.

In a video making the social media rounds, Mullin can be heard saying, "You say you pay for me to do this. Bullcrap. I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got there and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go."

As you might have guessed, the folks in Jay were eager to discuss Mullin's revolutionary new view of public service. So were the folks in Tallequah, but the congressman cancelled his scheduled town meeting there because his mellow is delicate and easily harshed. Again, from Tulsa World:

"Over the past few weeks, we have seen an escalation of protesters at congressional town halls across the nation. We have even seen them right here in the Second District. I have continued to hold town halls and answer questions from constituents across the district, including those who have been vocal in their disapproval of my positions," Mullin said in the statement. "It is my intent to provide a safe environment for all attendees, which is why we have established protocols at each of our town halls to ensure each person's voice can be heard. Despite working with the venue, we could not reach an agreement using our protocols that guaranteed the safety of everyone, so I chose to cancel the town hall after much consideration.

Tallequah happens to be the capital of the Cherokee Nation, and Mullin happens to be a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, so I'm not exactly sure why he's so scared. But there's a lot of that going around these days among various tender conservative snowflakes.

On Tuesday night, Lawrence O'Donnell hosted a congressman from New York City named Dan Donovan, and Donovan's district includes Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn and Queens. However, Donovan has been reluctant to cross the water from the island to the other parts of his district, as the Brooklyn Reporter informs us.

The groups had hoped that Donovan (who has been the target of at least 10 protests since the New Year, many of which have included pleas from Brooklyn constituents to meet with them face-to-face, instead of hosting online or over-the-phone town halls) would show. However, according to co-founder of Fight Back Bay Ridge Mallory McMahon, the pol — who represents the 11th Congressional District in Staten Island and southwest Brooklyn — has formally declined numerous invitations. "I invited him in person," McMahon told this paper, stressing also that, after struggling to schedule a face-to-face with the pol at either of his New York offices, she and her partner Alan instead "went to D.C. because getting a meeting with him in Brooklyn was so challenging."

Bay Ridge. Tallequah. Centers of genuine American carnage, they are.

One of the interesting twists that the attendees have brought to the various town halls are cards reading, "Disagree." They hold these up whenever the member of Congress says something they don't like. It's a much quieter response than heckling, and I think we can all agree with that. However, the signs are terrifying the congresscritters. Mullin banned them from his town halls. The Denverite has a nice survey of the new threat to peaceful democracy presented by people holding up signs.

In Texas, Rep. Dave Culberson barred signs and noisemakers from a March 24 town hall, required those attending to prove they were constituents by showing utility bills or other documents, and insisted that questions be submitted in advance. He was still shouted down repeatedly by a crowd angry about the GOP push to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Then there are people—like Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, and Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio—who simply decline to have them at all, so their constituents have them for them, as The Dayton Daily News explains.

Turner on Thursday accused one of the organizers for Saturday's town hall of fraudulently misrepresenting herself and said he would not attend a meeting organized by a group he considers illegitimate. According to Turner, the Dayton Indivisible group pretends to be a constituent community organization when really it is an "arm of the Democratic Party" that is part of national protest efforts.

The ironic part—if, by ironic, you mean deeply, hopelessly hypocritical—is that a lot of these jamokes were elected as part of the Tea Party wave in 2010 and the aftershock midterms of 2014, in which we elected, in succession, the two worst Congresses in the history of the Republic. The run-up to those elections was marked by town halls that degenerated often into minor riots. That kind of thing got these people elected and now they're afraid of some people wielding construction paper? Suck it up, little buckaroos.

But that's nothing compared to what's going on with the members of the Cabinet. Early in her term, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was confronted by some obstreperous public school parents. As a result, DeVos has engaged U.S. Marshals as a protective detail at a cost of $1 million per month. From The Houston Chronicle:

The Education Department has agreed to reimburse the marshals $7.78 million for their services from mid-February to the end of September of this year, according to a spokeswoman for the Marshals Service - an amount that works out to about $1 million per month. Marshals will continue providing security for the education secretary for the next four years, or until either agency decides to terminate the arrangement, under an agreement signed last week. While the department is spending the additional money on DeVos's security, members of the in-house security team that guarded previous secretaries remain on the payroll. But they are not guarding DeVos and have not been assigned new duties, according to a department employee who was not authorized to speak to a reporter and asked for anonymity.

Here's where I point out that, as part of the draconian budget proposed by the president* a while back, the department would lose 14 percent of its funding. But it's going to reimburse the U.S. Marshal Service a million per month for 48 months to keep Betsy DeVos clear of angry middle-school English teachers. And grizzlies I guess.

Not to be outdone, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has decided that danger lurks behind every rock and tree. From The Washington Post:

So why the need for additional resources to protect Pruitt around the clock? That remains unclear. The EPA did not immediately offer comment Wednesday about the reasoning behind the request. It also remains unclear whether Pruitt himself sought the full-time security detail. Myron Ebell, who led the EPA transition for the Trump administration but has since returned to his role at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told E&E News this year that it would make sense for Pruitt to receive increased protection. "I think it's prudent given the continuing activities by the left to foment hatred and the reported hostility within the agency from some unprofessional activists," Ebell said at the time.

Here's where I point out that the same budget proposes to cut the EPA's funding by a little more than 30 percent. But there will be money to keep Scott Pruitt safe from science-wielding bureaucrats.

When did conservatives become such a miserable gaggle of public poltroons? What has happened to the party of hate radio, and angry preachers, and wrathful shut-ins that they're all now so afraid of placards, teachers, and botanists that we all have to pay to make them sleep well at night? It's not like an oil company wouldn't foot the bill for Pruitt's protection; it was plain during his confirmation hearings that the Republican majority didn't care that he'd spent his entire life in the vest pocket of various extraction gombeens. And DeVos married into a $5 billion fortune and her brother founded Blackwater, for pity's sake. Surely she can pay for her own peace of mind.

Jesus, these people…

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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