Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, is pretty much who you'd get if the Junior League went bad and started knocking over fruit stands. When she was in the House, she was the prime mover of the Planned Parenthood Sells Baby Parts horror fable. Now that she's a U.S. Senator—And, Tennessee? Seriously, we have to talk.—she's taken the lead in the legislative effort to secure the inalienable rights of ratfckers the world over. From The Hill:

Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for unanimous consent to pass three election-related bills. But they were blocked by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who noted that the unsuccessful attempt was the latest by Democrats to pass election security bills in the Senate ahead of 2020. “You know, it’s not a good sign if you’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result," Blackburn said.

And she's proud of it, too.

Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, tried to pass legislation that would require campaign officials to report contacts with foreign nationals who are trying to make donations or coordinate with the campaign to the Federal Election Commission, which would notify the FBI. “The alarm bells are going off and what are we doing? We’re running out of time to do something about it," Warner said from the Senate floor. Warner added that if a foreign government offers to interfere to help a campaign "the appropriate response is not to say thank you. The appropriate response is to call the FBI."

Blackburn did the same thing in June, arguing then that, if this kind of law passed, then we would all be deprived of Ukrainian canvassers and Croatian phone bankers, and we could get hauled away by the Feds for discussing the election with that nice Russian gentleman with the down the block who's always wearing the earphones and works in, ahem, international finance. From Axios:

"We are all for free and fair and honest elections. ... These reporting requirements are overbroad. Presidential campaigns would have to worry about disclosure at a variety of levels. So many different levels. Consider this: vendors that work for a campaign, people that are supplying some kind of voter service to a campaign. ... It would apply to door knockers, it would apply to phone bankers, down to any person who shares their views with a candidate."

This is, of course, all my bollocks. As Senator Mark Warner of Virginia pointed out at the time, the law merely requires the candidate to report a foreign national who comes along and offers something that's already illegal. No longer will this kind of thing be optional, depending on the good faith of the candidate and the candidate's desire for free and fair electio...no, I can't type it with a straight face. Tennessee, we really do have to talk.

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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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