There was an odd little resolution that passed the House yesterday, H.R. 784 , "honoring the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognizing his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought." Al Green (D-TX) proposed it and there were 41 co-sponsors, primarily progressive Democrats, although a couple of Blue Dogs and one Asian-American Republican signed on as well, Anh Cao (LA). I guess I even bothered looking at it because I had read something earlier in the day about how the GOP extremists had decided to target an Asian-American judicial nominee, Edward Chen who we had blogged about last week. Chen's an outstanding magistrate judge in San Francisco and at Dianne Feinstein's urging President Obama nominated him to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Every single Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, at the urging of the Senate's most blatant racist, KKK member Jeff Sessions of Alabama, voted against him. Media Matters pointed out that the Republican smear machine has cranked up to slime him. Fox and the, as usual, are leading the way. The Moonies claim he doesn't love America and O'Reilly pulled some unsubstantiated claim out of his ass that "you can't get more radical than Judge Chen." Hannity was quick to jump on board (as usual).So today when I noticed there was a vote on Confucius I thought it would be fun to see who voted against it. It passed 361-47 (with 13 voting "present"), 12 Democrats and 35 Republicans against. I thought maybe it was some serious advocates of Separation of Church and State. But no... just a gaggle of the regular racists, bigots and some of the crazier of the far right-wing Christian supremacists. Almost all the no votes among Dems were Republican-lite Blue Dogs like Jim Matheson (UT), Jason Altmire (PA), Gene Taylor (MS), Lincoln Davis (TN), Marion Berry (AR), Zack Space (OH), and Brad Ellsworth (IN). The Republicans were all the regular suspects from Jeff Flake (AZ), Paul Broun (GA), Lynn Westmoreland (GA), Jason Chaffetz (UT), and John Shadegg (AZ) to Pete Hoekstra (MI), Kenny Marchant (TX), Ted Poe (TX), Michael Burgess (TX), Mike Conaway (TX), and Sam Johnson (TX). Did I ever tell you how the first time I ate in a Chinese restaurant in Texas-- it was Amarillo-- they were serving canned Chung King with baskets of rye bread on the tables? Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) voted "present."When accused of bigotry, all the bigots claimed it was too trivial for their attention in such tough times. Jeff Flake, for example, thought he was being cute to quip:The Confucius bill was voted on at 1:48 PM. Just before it, at 1:41 PM, the House unanimously passed a resolution, HR 838 , "welcoming to the United States and to Washington, DC, His All Holiness Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, Ecumenical Patriarch on his upcoming trip on October 20, 2009, through November 6, 2009." Flake and the rest of the bigots had no problem with that one. And then right after the anti-Asian display, another trivial bill Flake and the bigot posse, H.R. 824 sailed through unanimously at 1:58 PM "congratulating the Northwestern University Wildcats on winning the 2009 NCAA women’s lacrosse championship, and to commend Northwestern University for its pursuit of athletic and academic excellence."

Labels: bigotry, GOP racism