What I really want to write about today is the continuing and absolute hypocrisy going on inside the GOP these days. Specifically, I’d like to call out the current D.C. leadership regarding their outrageous comments regarding the likely (perhaps even before you read this rant) indictment of former president Donald Trump. You see top Republicans like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy attacking the New York City DA for pursuing charges regarding payments to a former porn star, from Trump, as he assembled his first presidential campaign. It was, McCarthy insists, “personal money” and therefore not of public interest. Well yes, I guess it was Trump’s money, funneled through his crooked lawyer, to pay off an adult film star for having had out of wedlock sex with Trump.

I’m thinking back to Bill Clinton being impeached over lying about a sex act with an intern. I’m pretty sure the GOP (to include many still on the Hill) didn’t think that was a private matter. But Trump? Of course that’s out of bounds. Oh, and isn’t it interesting the hundreds of GOPers who chanted “Lock her up” for alleged and fictional criminal acts by Hillary Clinton are somehow totally OK with Trump’s long history of criminal activity? Hypocrisy much?

Oh, and remember the GOP is supposed to be the party of limited government, that will keep the feds from interfering with local government? Right… But it was Republican lawmakers who sent a letter – from the federal government – to the Manhattan DA demanding he, a local legal official, come hat in hand to a contrived GOP House committee to explain himself for having the audacity of going after Trump on the illegal hush money payments.

Let me say that again: the GOP tried to insert its federal office holders into a local criminal matter. Can you imagine the response had, say, the Democratic senate convened a committee hearing about a certain Florida governor’s recent state laws regarding banning books and such? The indignity would be palpable, with GOP leaders leaping in front of any available camera to denounce that horrid overreach. Federalism, anyone?

Happily, the Manhattan DA is no shrinking violet. He let the GOP lawmakers hear it, when he denounced their efforts to launch  “an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution,” and “unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty.” Again, the issue is not one of national security or international economic policy. No, it is about a thrice-married man who paid a porn star illegal hush money to not reveal that he cheated on wife No. 3 with her. Why is the GOP still trying to protect this man?

Unfortunately, my editor kind of hates it when I write about national stuff, so let me turn (Editor: finally!) to a Colorado Politics story about a Biden nominee to the federal bench. Kato Crews (a name that might lead many to become an action movie star) is undergoing the review process that follows his nomination. It has been very interesting how low the GOP will go in an effort to undercut the reputation of a highly qualified nominee.

During his time as a magistrate judge for Colorado’s U.S. district court, Crews has issued roughly 1,500 recommendations and orders. Interestingly, Crews’ background is one that often took the side of employers and other folks we’d assume were GOPers.

At his recent confirmation hearing, my old boss, U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, warmly endorsed the nomination. “Kato’s family didn’t have a lot as he was growing up, but his parents worked hard to put him and his sister first,” Bennet told the Senate Judiciary Committee in introducing Crews. He noted that “Crews was born in Pueblo and went to school in Rye, where he was the only Black male student at his high school. His dad had a solo law practice in Pueblo.”

Impressive, right? He also was in private practice for a number of years, where he often, as noted above, found himself defending employers against various lawsuits. Yet when it came time for GOP Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana to ask questions, he attacked Crews and his record, noting that he had been reversed on appeal 18 times during is time as a magistrate. Wow, pretty damning, right Senator Kennedy?

Well, maybe not so much…

It seems that Crews handed down more than 1,500 such opinions and orders. If 18 of them were overturned, that’s a rate of… carry the one… 0.012%. Oh, and one interesting example of Crews being overturned was a case involving an inmate who suffered from a bowel disorder, who wanted special items made available to him due to that illness. Crews ruled for the Department of Corrections, asserting the adult diapers supplied were sufficient. He was overruled on appeal, but heck, wasn’t his initial ruling a “law and order” decision you’d think would appeal to Kennedy and his ilk?

Oh, and a quick check of Kennedy’s voting record suggests dozens of votes cast by him are aimed at enriching the rich even further, as well as against a wide variety of individual rights, but I digress…

I would have respected Kennedy a great deal more had he simply stated he, as an arch-conservative, opposes the appointment of moderate to liberal judges. That, at least, would be honest. But instead, he went hunting for false facts, which we know to GOPers are quite flexible, and attacked Crews over the 1.2% of his cases that were overturned. Not at all honorable, but frankly, entirely expected of the GOP that remains utterly in the control of Trump.

Crews will likely be confirmed in the Senate, and that’s a good thing. But the nonsense tossed against him yet again shows us the modern GOP feels truth is only what they say it is, and if you disagree, they will just yell “lock her up,” and something about being woke.

And that’s a pity…

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.