What are the latest developments in the utility of abject ignorance as a career enhancer, you ask? Well, let’s look over this administration*’s Cabinet, because every person in that Cabinet got there because, one way or another, they found peddling abject ignorance politically useful.

For example, here’s Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Neilsen, who, alas for the poor woman, apparently has spent the last two years living in a yurt on the outskirts of the Sea of Storms. From CNBC:

She was asked by a reporter if she has "any reason to doubt the January 2017 intelligence community assessment that said it was Vladimir Putin who tried to meddle in this election to help President Trump win."

"I do not believe that I've seen that conclusion," Nielsen said. "That the specific intent was to help President Trump win, I'm not aware of that, but I do generally have no reason to doubt any intelligence assessment."

Not to be surpassed, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos dropped by a House Committee to demonstrate again how little she knows about education. She got crossways with Marcia Fudge, Democrat of Ohio, who wanted to know why DeVos apparently has chloroformed everyone who works for her department’s Office for Civil Rights.

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In reply, DeVos lapsed into a English dialect with which neither I—nor, apparently, Fudge—is familiar. I believe it is common among beauty contest contestants and dudes called upon in class who Have Not Read The Material.

“The office for civil rights is committed to protecting the civil rights as determined under the law of this land and we do so proudly and with great focus each day.”

If you watch the video through to the end, you see Fudge simply give up, realizing that she essentially is asking for detailed responses from a doorknob. But, at least, in that committee room, things remained peaceful.

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By contrast, Scott Pruitt, the energy-industry marionette placed in charge of the EPA, held a summit conference on Tuesday regarding environmental contaminants. (Sources are unclear whether or not Pruitt is in favor of them or not.) He was not, however, wild about having to share the summit with certain scurvy media types. From the AP, which is very much a part of the story.

The Environmental Protection Agency is barring The Associated Press, CNN and the environmental-focused news organization E&E from a national summit on harmful water contaminants. The EPA blocked the news organizations from attending Tuesday’s Washington meeting, convened by EPA chief Scott Pruitt. EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox told the barred organizations they were not invited and there was no space for them, but gave no indication of why they specifically were barred. Pruitt told about 200 people at the meeting that dealing with the contaminants is a “national priority.” Guards barred an AP reporter from passing through a security checkpoint inside the building. When the reporter asked to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.

What the hell is this? Pruitt is embarrassment enough every day he goes to work. If he’s not undermining the mission of his own agency, he’s flitting around the globe like the Aga Khan on our dime. And now he’s got his bullyboys bum-rushing female journalists out the door? Nothing but the best people is never not going to be funny, but it's getting close to not being funny at all.

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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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