If you're looking to bet on the various people who can muck up the 2020 presidential election, you can do worse than put a little early money on Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat of Hawaii, whose flea-on-a-griddle semi-progressivism is beginning to look less like charming eccentricity, and more like calculated mischief. She's positioning herself for a possible run at the nomination herself, if there's room for someone whose history says she's more offended by Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono than she is by Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Let me explain, but first, let me tell you about my grandfather, for whom I am named.

Charlie Gibbons was a sign-painting man in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was a man of several enthusiasms, which included his own art, the Boston Red Sox, unfiltered Camels, and Narragansett Lager Beer. (On most Sundays in the summer, he would watch the Sox with three companions—the Camels, the 'Gansett, and me.) He also was a very big deal in the Knights Of Columbus, and I mean a very big deal. He had a cape and a sword, the hilt of which was distinguished by having been fashioned out of a tiny statue of Columbus himself. This was not the coolest sword in my upbringing—my father brought home a Japanese officer's dress sword, a dagger, and a deadly samurai blade from his days in the war—but it was the most elegant by far.

The Knights of Columbus Getty Images

The Knights were formed in New Haven in 1882 in order to create a fraternal order for Catholics who were excluded from the standard ones like the Elks, and who were forbidden by Church doctrine from joining the Masons. And that was pretty much all I knew about the Knights, with whom I lost touch when the Camels and the 'Gansett finally got my grandfather in 1965.

But, apparently, they've done very well for themselves, at least as far as the National Catholic Reporter could tell.

For more than a decade and a half, under the leadership of a former political operative, the Knights of Columbus has increasingly used its enormous wealth to influence the direction of the church, underwriting think tanks and news outlets while gaining entrée to some of the highest levels of decision-making in the church. Its capacity for funding has given the Knights of Columbus an inordinately loud voice, potentially drowning out that of others, and no other lay group can match the Knights' ability to leave its mark on the church. Some worry that such influence can actually distort the church's ecclesiology, its structure and its governance...

If funding is any indication, however, the Knights are deeply engaged in the culture wars with some of the largest grants going to the loudest and most influential participants in the church and the public square. In 2014, a total of $1 million, in three separate amounts, went to the Susan B. Anthony Foundation, an aggressive anti-abortion organization most recently campaigning to defund Planned Parenthood. The foundation can be as highly partisan as it is anti-abortion, even opposing pro-life Democrats.

A message from the Knights of Columbus Getty Images

It targeted Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, D-Pennsylvania, for instance, for her vote for the Affordable Care Act, which the foundation labeled a "pro-abortion health-care bill." Dahlkemper had previously publicly defended federal restrictions on the use of taxpayer funds for abortion.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a legal group that has carried the fight for the U.S. bishops and the Little Sisters of the Poor against the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act, received $300,000 in one 2014 donation and an additional $25,000 from the Knights of Columbus as "a sponsor of the Canterbury Medal." Supreme Knight Anderson received the award in 2007, and Chaput in 2009. The Little Sisters of the Poor had received $100,000 in 2013 and another $20,000 in 2015 to "support facility improvements." The Becket Fund received another $25,000 in 2015.

To me, if you "target" a candidate, you lose your tax-exempt status by that afternoon, but that's just me. However, and most significantly for our immediate purposes, there's this.

The Knights gave $50,000 each year, in 2014 and 2015, to the Federalist Society, described in a recent New Yorker article as "a nationwide organization of conservative lawyers" whose executive vice president, Leonard Leo, "served, in effect, as Trump's subcontractor on the selection of [Neil] Gorsuch" as nominee, eventually confirmed, for justice to the Supreme Court. Aside from Leo's reputation as a devout Catholic, the society is thoroughly secular and largely an operation benefiting the Republican Party.

Which brings us to Gabbard's most recent trip to wonderland.

Kathy Dahlkemper Getty Images

At issue is the nomination of one Brian Buescher to be a judge on the federal district court in Nebraska. Buescher is a bog-standard Trump judicial nominee—a career activist, hip-deep in the wingnut side of the culture wars, as the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was quick to point out when his name was placed in nomination.

Mr. Buescher is a political operative and partisan warrior. His ideological views were most prominently on display in 2014 when he ran unsuccessfully to be the Nebraska Attorney General, but he has worked behind the scenes for years on behalf of Republican candidates and causes. According to his Senate questionnaire, he has worked as a campaign volunteer on 14 different Republican campaigns, and he has contributed thousands of dollars to Republican candidates.

In addition, he has served as a Nebraska Republican Party State Central Committee member, Nebraska Republican Party Convention Delegate, Nebraska Republican Party Finance Chair, Nebraska Republican Party Rules Committee Chair, Nebraska Republican Party Resolutions Committee Chair, Nebraska Republican Party Volunteer Legal Counsel, Douglas County, Nebraska Republican Party Chair, Omaha Young Republicans Chair, and treasurer of the University of Nebraska College Republicans. Such deep political connections would, at a minimum, cast significant doubt on whether Mr. Buescher would be able to check his politics at the courthouse door if he became a judge.

Beyond that. Buescher is a muckety-muck in the K of C, as we used to call the Knights. Given the fact that the Knights seem to have politicized themselves in a big way, and that one of the ways they did it was to give money to the Federalist Society, to which the president* has subcontracted the job of staffing the federal courts, Senator Hirono has been grilling Buescher about his membership in the K of C and whether or not he can be trusted to leave the beads in chambers when he takes the bench.

Mazie Hirono Getty Images

This has given Gabbard another opportunity to dive into the spotlight, this time at the expense of a colleague in the Hawaiian congressional delegation. From The Hill:

We must call this out for what it is – religious bigotry. This is true not just when such prejudice is anti-Catholic, but also when it is anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu, or anti-Protestant, or any other religion. In politics or at home, we Americans can disagree with and oppose people if we are concerned about their views, opinions, or their commitment to uphold their constitutional duties. However, we must not claim or imply that an individual is not qualified because of their religion or their membership in a particular religious organization, or their belief in the tenets of their faith.

To repeat, Hirono is not questioning Buescher's faith or anything like it. She is quite logically inquiring whether or not his membership in a highly politicized lay organization will affect his judgment on critical issues that might come before the court, issues that Buescher already is on record for having taken a side on during his days as a conservative activist in Nebraska. (The guy ran for attorney general in Nebraska, for pity's sake.) Hirono is doing nothing more than being "concerned about their views, opinions, or their commitment to uphold their constitutional duties," which Gabbard concedes is part of their duties as members of the national legislature.

The Knights of Columbus, for all their charitable work and their gifts for accessorizing, are not a religion. They have chosen to involve themselves in secular politics through their support for the Federalist Society and their targeting of certain political candidates. They can't hide themselves in the gospels now, and Mazie Hirono should tell Tulsi Gabbard to go suck up to another dictator and stop trying to run for president on Mazie's coattails.

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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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