by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Elise Stefanik is a Republican congresswoman from New York who is currently enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame, and like others of her political persuasion, she has primarily achieved her notoriety through outlandish behavior rather than through legislative industry or prowess. Stefanik, the chair of the House Republican Conference, grabbed a few headlines when she tried to pin some seemingly liberal university presidents down on how students who expressed what Stefanik regarded as "anti-Semitic" views on campus should be treated.
Stefanik took the lead in a House hearing a few weeks ago in which three prominent university presidents were grilled on their responses to protest behaviors and free speech at their schools, interrogatories in which the questioner angrily tried to present the administrators as condoning anti-Semitic behavior by students. The three GOP targets were the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania (Liz Magill), Harvard (Claudine Gay), and MIT (Sally Kornbluth).
Congresswoman Stefanik, who is herself a product of a privileged education having graduated both from a private girls' academy as well as Harvard, was relentless in her dogged pursuit of the three female university presidents. When Magill resigned from her position at the University of Pennsylvania a couple of days after the hearing, Stefanik went on "X" to proclaim "One down. Two to go." And when Claudine Gay resigned from her position at Harvard days later, Stefanik bumped her tweet eloquence up to "Two down." Now Stefanik is impatiently waiting on Kornbluth to join her two former colleagues and fall on her sword before the Grand Inquisitor so that she can claim a third down.
Interestingly, Stefanik has not spoken out against Donald Trump and his verbal forays into the hate speech of the world's most well known anti-Semite, Adolf Hitler. There is nothing bi-partisan about Elise Stefanik, no-siree-bob!
But there is another inquisitor from New York State who is not afraid to pursue justice along bi-partisan lines. Letitia James, the state's aggressive and whip-smart attorney general, and a democrat, has already forced the state' previous governor, democrat Andrew Cuomo, to resign, without patting herself of the back with a "One Down" tweet.
Just a couple of days ago, James had another very significant victory when her efforts to clean up the National Rifle Association, an organization whose charter is in New York, resulted in the sudden retirement "for health reasons" of the group's CEO and Executive Vice President, Wayne LaPierre, a man who has been a national right-wing political instigator for more than three decades. LaPierre announced his resignation for the end of the month, just as the NRA corruption trial will be getting underway. If she were an insatiable braggart, Letitia James would undoubtedly go on "X" and boast "Two Down!" But apparently she is too mired in decency to waste the taxpayer's time and money in self-congratulatory tweeting.
Now Ms. James is down to just one more major target, her New York inquiry into the financial dealings of Donald Trump, senior members of his family, and the "Trump Organization." Bringing down Trump's financial house of cards would definitely merit bragging rights for the ages, but based on her past performance after courtroom successes, Letitia James will probably just go on doing her job without constantly looking over her shoulder to see if she is "trending" or not.
Letitia James is a work horse who is focused on getting the job done, regardless of where it leads. Elise Stefanik, on the other hand, is a show horse whose primary concern is keeping the house lights focused on herself.
A prancing pony may be great fun to watch, but she won't get the field plowed or the corn planted. That takes work.
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