I’m just back from a week away, camping at our local astronomy club’s dark sky site near Gardner. There we host the Rocky Mountain Star Stare (RMSS.org) under some of the darkest skies in the country, where you are able to see through telescopes sights that are impossible to spot in most of the country. Indeed, the number of dark sky sites in Colorado is impressive, and we had more than 300 folks attend our event, with many who drove long distances to be with us. It’s the premier star party in the Rocky Mountain west, and our 35-acre plot is one of the loveliest places in the state to camp. It was relaxing and calming, just what I needed before leaping back into another often-dark area in Colorado, our partisan politics. (Editor: I see what you did there.)

And for my regular reader, I am sorry to have missed a couple of columns, though Jeff, my regular, is actually real and was camping with us. If anyone else missed my twice-weekly bombasts, I’m sorry. Anyway, back to my rickety soapbox…

The current incarnation of the Republican Party appears to be taking its playbook from elementary school playgrounds. Versions of “I may be, but so are you,” and “oh yeah? Well, you did the same thing!” spew out of a variety of GOP mouths, often without even a hint they understand the irony of their, well, spewage.

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In the last couple of days, we’ve seen GOPers that ignored a certain president’s son-in-law and close advisor (with a security clearance that daddy-in-law Trump himself forced through for the lad, after the certifying agencies decided he couldn’t be trusted with one) got roughly $2 billion from Saudi Arabia are losing their minds that a Trump-appointed prosecutor agreed to a plea deal over roughly $11 million that Hunter’s company got from Ukraine.

For the mathematically adverse, $11 million is roughly 0.55% of Jared’s $2 billion. Less than one half of 1% of what Jared got, but the manufactured outrage is deafening, with certain GOP leaders, themselves of flexible moral character, now demanding hearings that somehow they didn’t feel were necessary under Trump. But one would hope with the attacks on Hunter, who has found a way back from drug addiction, we now are formally declaring a president’s adult children and their businesses fair game, and the GOP House leadership will no doubt open hearings in to the Chinese patents, as well as the Saudi dollars that have greatly enriched the Trump kiddos. Right…

But I’m not going to talk about that…

Instead, I’d like to draw your attention to our own ongoing national embarrassment, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. She recently made more negative national news when she apparently forgot to vote in perhaps the most important vote of this legislative session: the bill to raise the debt ceiling. She claims to have skipped the vote as a protest. She seems to again forget that her words are often recorded, and we know what she actually said about missing the vote, and it wasn’t about making a protest.

I could talk about her ongoing personal issues or scandals, depending on your point of view, but happily, she provides enough gibberish on the public record. As reported in Colorado Politics, Boebert has introduced actual articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden (whom, I’m sure, the rest of the GOP are thanking for gas being about a dollar cheaper than it was this time a year ago? Anyone? Bueller?).

Boebert claims Biden is guilty of “dereliction of duty” by failing to secure the southern border. I’d note Trump didn’t either, yet for some reason, Boebert didn’t support his impeachment, sorry, either of his impeachments. Now, it’s nonsense of course that any president has “open borders.” People of goodwill can disagree on how best to secure a border while also respecting the actual U.S. law that allows for asylum seekers to flee from unsafe homelands.

She wrote, “Joe Biden unconstitutionally violated his duty under Article II of the Constitution to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ by intentionally disregarding our immigration laws and enabling an invasion along our southern border.” As Boebert has long been factually challenged, I’m sure she doesn’t know that since December, there has been a sharp decline in illegal border crossings. It seems Biden’s hard work has paid off. But facts have never been either Boebert’s forte nor her area of interest.

I could go on and on about how silly this show-horse of a representative is, but I’d rather allow my old friend and current congressman from Colorado, Jason Crow, to comment. In response to Boebert’s tweet about impeachment, Jason just tweeted “what a clown show,” accompanied by what young people like Crow call “emojis” of a clown and a circus tent.

Perfect.

Now, I’m betting even Boebert is aware there are not enough votes in the GOP-owned House to even start hearings on an impeachment, and of course, the Democratic Senate wouldn’t even take up the articles, should they somehow slip through the House. So, either Boebert is just trying to keep cameras pointed at her or she is up to something else. I’m even willing to state she might be bright enough to keep two ideas going at once: yes, she thinks impeachment might be possible, but more likely, I suspect she just wants to keep jabbing pins into the voodoo doll I bet she has of House Speaker McCarthy along with actions aimed at weakening the Speaker.

Boebert was among the most radical of the radical right that held up his election as speaker for 15 ballots, and got a concession installed in this term’s House rules that allows a single member to bring up a resolution that they have lost faith in McCarthy and a new vote needs to be held, one that McCarthy could well lose. Maybe Boebert is just reminding the Speaker that she is still in congress and wants to be paid attention to.

And so, the GOP hypocrisy train keeps rolling along, and Colorado hosts one of the nutty conductors, trying to steer the train to the hard right, undeterred by dishonesty nor disloyalty. Stay tuned, it’s going to be a bumpy ride (Editor: enough with these movie references).

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.