So, here's a question I never thought I'd send off to a sitting U.S. representative from an Asheville district: "Does Congressman Meadows believe that dinosaurs and man lived at the same time?"

The, ahem, genesis of this question, and others, I sent last week to U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows' press secretary was an Oct. 1 New Yorker article titled, "Mark Meadows and the Undisclosed Dinosaur Property."

It's a long read and tells a fairly convoluted but utterly fascinating tale about Meadows' involvement in a 134-acre property in aptly named Dinosaur, Colorado. Meadows sold the property for about $200,000 to a Kentucky-based Christian nonprofit called Answers in Genesis, founded by the Australian creationist Ken Ham, the article states.

"Answers in Genesis is dedicated to promoting young-Earth creationism, which holds that the Earth was created in six days, several thousand years ago," the article states.

Meadows was to be paid in monthly installments, ending last year.

"Neither the sale nor any such payments are noted on Meadows’s congressional financial disclosures, which he is required by law to file annually," the New Yorker staff writer, Charles Bethea, reports. He also notes that, as reported by the Charlotte Observer, Meadows previously failed to report the sale of another piece of property, in northeastern North Carolina, before becoming a congressman.

As former chairman of the far-right Freedom Caucus, Meadows, R-Tranyslvania, has become one of the more prominent members of the House of Representatives and was even considered as chief of staff for President Donald Trump in late 2018. Recently, he stood by Trump at a press conference about possible impeachment, nodding in agreement when Trump said Congress needs to identify the whistleblower.

Why hide the sale?

Early on, the article asks rhetorically why Meadows would not have disclosed the sale.

"It’s possible that these nondisclosures reflect a pattern of ignoring congressional reporting rules," Bethea writes. "It’s also possible that Meadows wanted to avoid drawing attention to the Colorado property and the complicated and perhaps unflattering story behind it."

The site is full of dinosaur bones, "and this appears to be the primary reason that Meadows bought it," according to the article.

"Those bones then became the subject of a long-running fight among young-Earth creationists — and they are likely the reason that Meadows sold the land, ultimately, to Answers in Genesis," it continues. "Meadows’ involvement with the land may have been, in part, a moneymaking venture, but it seems chiefly to reflect his commitment to, and entanglement with, the contentious and controversial world of creationist paleontology."

In a nutshell, creationist paleontology makes the debunked claim that dinosaurs were wiped out by the great biblical flood.

The tale gets pretty weird, but suffice it to say Meadows and his daughter appear in a documentary that claims his daughter found an intact Allosaurus skeleton, which could be a key in backing up creationists claims of a young Earth inhabited by men and dinosaurs at the same time. But then the creationists got in a big fight about it all because it was pretty obvious the bones had been found in 2000 not by the group of home-schoolers that included Meadows' daughter but by the property owner.

"Meadows appears in the movie several times," Bethea writes. "As the film is building to the climactic discovery of the allosaur skull, he describes a remarkable experience that he and his daughter have just had."

"'We were working towards the end of the day here, just trying to get one last bit of rock out before, you know, before we finished,” he says, when, “all of a sudden, we spotted a little bit of bone, we thought — and we found a claw.'"

The narrator, Bethea writes, says, "The tide is turning in the battle over origins. And the ‘DeRosa dinosaur’ may prove to be a critical tool in this battle. For the first time in more than a century, the Christian community of creation scientists is in possession of a rare, world-class Theropod skeleton: an allosaur.” As for the kids on the expedition, he says, “These young men and women will rise up to be the great defenders of Biblical and scientific truth in the twenty-first century.”

What does it all mean?

I told you it all gets pretty weird, so naturally I wanted to run it by my go-to political scientist, Chris Cooper of Western Carolina University.

"I have two takeaways: the article definitely aligns (Meadows) with creationism, and with a lot of thinking that runs counter to scientific consensus," Cooper said. "The second thing, which is unrelated but sort of related, is the lack of disclosure. A $200,000 land deal, that may not be a huge deal for a member of Congress, but it's a lot bigger than the northeastern North Carolina land deal ... that didn't get reported. So once again, it raises concerns about Congressman Meadows' financial disclosures."

Meadows owned three properties in Bertie County with a value of $85,415, according to an August report in the Raleigh News & Observer, and they were not listed on Meadows’ annual financial disclosure reports to Congress.

Back in February, I wrote about Meadows, or his office, apparently fudging his educational achievements, citing a Tampa Bay Times article that took a deep dive into how Meadows' biography claimed a four-year degree instead of what he actually earned, a two-year associate's degree.

We've also written about Meadows' getting into ethical trouble over his former chief of staff, Kenny West, who was accused of sexually harassing female staffers. The House Ethics Committee formally sanctioned Meadows in that case, saying he failed to act quickly enough after learning West was behaving improperly.

The committee ordered Meadows, a Transylvania County Republican who represents much of Western North Carolina, to repay the government $40,625 in excessive pay given to West after West was demoted in April 2015.

Meadows also came under criticism in December, as Trump floated the chief of staff notion, as video resurfaced of Meadows on the campaign trail in 2012, hollering about sending then-president Barack Obama "back to Kenya," a reference to another debunked theory about Obama not being an American citizen.

How old is Earth?

It's clear we have a congressman who has a problem getting his facts straight, reporting land deals and effectively handling sexual harassment in his office. And it sure looks like we have a congressman — you know, the folks who make public policy about issues such as education and global warming — who seems to believe man and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth that's just a few thousand years old, not 4.5 billion years old, as established by science.

I asked Cooper what he thinks this says about someone making public policy.

"I think it says that things we tend to take for granted — that the age of the Earth is settled science, for instance — is not settled science to everyone," Cooper said. "I'd even say that in his district, a lot of people probably agree with Congressman Meadows on this. Our country is so divided, we don’t even agree on basic scientific facts."

And to be clear, these are basic scientific facts. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Dinosaurs went extinct long before mankind emerged.

A scientist friend of mine who works for the federal governments put it succinctly: "The notion that all the dinosaurs were drowned in a huge flood that spared humans and other life is ridiculous. There's a whole field on radiometric dating that is scientifically sound and, assuming you believe the laws of physics, shows the Earth to be billions of years old, and radiocarbon dating that shows the youngest dinosaur bones are over 60 million years old."

He didn't want to be identified because it's been tough times of late for actual scientists, with real degrees, who work for the government.

More:Meadows, McHenry won't say if they think Trump tweets were racist

Let's not even get into how spear-wielding humans would've fared against all those toothy, voracious dinosaurs running about.

Of course, in the heavily gerrymandered 11th Congressional District, which includes a piece of Asheville and runs west to the end of the state, none of this will amount to much. It looks like Meadows, who's been serving since 2013, will get re-elected as long as he wants to, unless he's seen dancing with a female Stegosaurus of dubious reputation.

On a Sunday. At a local brothel.

"I don’t think the dinosaur story is going to affect his reelection prospects one way or the other," Cooper said. "It’s a fascinating story but it’s a convoluted one, and ultimately it's not clear he had any major ethical transgression."

Meadows office declined to talk to the New Yorker, and the congressman's people had very little to say to me.

A spokesman for the office said, "No comment on any of the Earth’s geological history questions."

As far as the land sale, the spokesman said, "We’ve previously had the ethics committee review the property, and they’ve told us it’s within the rules."

I checked with the House Ethics Committee but a spokesman said, "No comment." In general, the committee's investigations and other matters are handled in confidentiality.

So there you have it. That's our congressman.

God save the Republic.

This is the opinion of John Boyle. Contact him at jboyle@citizentimes.com or 828-232-5847.