My regular reader (Hi, Jeff!) and others will recall from earlier columns I am an amateur astronomer, with a couple of nice telescopes and a deep love of the night sky. Heck, I even had an astronomy show on my local NPR station for five years.

And so it is not a surprise I want to bring something astronomical to your attention, especially if you are above a certain age and can remember 1986, because way out in deep space last week, past the orbit of Neptune, a dirty nearly black, roughly peanut-shaped hunk of rock and ice about nine miles long-by-5 miles wide completed its 38-year-long outward-bound portion of its orbit around the sun and began to fall back toward the inner solar system, to appear in our night sky as it does every 76 years.

No one really pays attention to that ice ball when it is far off in cold and dark regions of our solar system, but in about 38 more years, when it enters the area nearer the sun and begins to grow a comet’s tail, most folks will look up to see the return of Halley’s Comet. The most famous comet in history is on the way back.

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When it was last here, in 1986, I held my then-two-year-old son up to the eyepiece of my telescope. He won’t remember, of course, but when he is 78, and the comet returns, he can honestly say he, like Mark Twain before him, is among the select group of people to see Haley’s twice. But for the moment, the comet is far out there, having just completed its reversal of course.

I was reminded of the comet’s historic turnaround by what U.S. Rep. Ken Buck did (Editor: really?)

Recently I wrote a column praising Colorado’s 4th Congressional representative, noting that though I differ with him on most issues, I found him to be an honorable and thoughtful representative. I based that in large measure on his actions and comments during the angry and oddly entertaining GOP fight about whom the next House speaker would be. Buck took, in my view, principled positions and I admire that, even as I differ on policy. I thought he’d have been a good speaker, as I suggested.

Well, never mind.

A few days ago, the House, led by the radical far-right Speaker Mike Johnson, decided to vote on whether to formally launch an inquiry into the possible impeachment of President Joe Biden. There are lots and lots of reasons whey they shouldn’t, as one can see just from comments made by Republicans. For example, Iowa U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley – hardly a liberal snowflake – stated publicly he has seen no evidence President Joe Biden was in any way involved with the business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter. Yet Johnson led his caucus to a very public vote on whether to go after President Biden, rather than do actual legislation, and every single Republican, Buck included, voted yes, let’s go after the guy.

Now it is certainly clear Hunter Biden, during his time of addiction and other mental health problems, did things wrong. Heck, he had agreed to a plea deal, admitting guilt, that was tossed out for, well, ambiguous reasons. And he has repaid all the taxes and fines. But, as noted by Grassley, despite more than five years of GOP “investigations” they still haven’t come up with any evidence at all Papa Joe was involved.

Oh, and I’d very much like to point out the GOP is, by declaring the children of presidents to be valid political targets, opening a door they may well decide later they wished had been kept closed. Recall please most of the Trump kids are in legal trouble now, along with daddy. Oh, and remember while she was working at the White House, daughter Ivanka applied for and received from the Chinese government no fewer than 41 trademarks for companies she had ties to, including 18 in just a two-month period, to sell Ivanka-branded items in China. Can you imagine the GOP alligator tears and faux outrage if Hunter had done this, again, while working in the West Wing? But I’ve long since learned to ask for honor and consistency of the national GOP is a quixotic and doomed venture.

But I had hope for Ken Buck.

And since Buck had announced he wouldn’t be running for reelection in a safe-GOP district, he was fully unfettered, not only from the GOP but also from the need to keep donors happy, and he could have voted his conscience, which I suspect thinks this impeachment nonsense is, well, nonsense.

But he didn’t.

As Halley’s Comet felt the inevitable pull of gravity and reversed course, Buck inevitably felt the pull of his GOP masters and began his long fall back to the Republican far right. He voted the pro-Trump, far-right, factually vacuous inquiry to formally begin.

This GOP House has been stunningly terrible at their actual job: legislation. The current congress, the 118th, in the first of its two-year term, has passed 41 pieces of legislation that were enacted into law. How does that stack up? Well, the 117th had 1,234 enacted (admittedly in two years) and the 116th had 1,229 enacted during two years. Even if we double the first-year total for the 118th, that would only be 81 enacted laws, roughly 6% what earlier congresses accomplished.

But don’t worry, they are hot on the heels of Hunter Biden, who, by the way, is now being attacked by GOP U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan for defying a House subpoena (Hunter is willing to testify, but only in a public setting, while Jordan only wants secret testimony. Golly, I wonder why?) Oh, recall please Jordan himself defied a similar subpoena from the January 6th Commission, so kettle, meet pot. Halley’s Comet, as noted above, is very dark, reflecting only 3% of the light that hits it. That’s about how much light we get from GOP secret hearings.

The GOP rot has gotten so bad that, last month, Texas U.S. Rep. (and far-right guy himself) Chip Roy took to the House floor to deliver an impassioned speech, in which he decried the GOP’s incompetence and obsession with investigations as the cost of doing actual legislative work. Roy told his GOP colleagues: “For the life of me, I do not understand how you can go to the trouble of campaigning, raising money, going to events, talking to people, coming to this town as a member of a party who allegedly stands for something… and then do nothing about it. One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing – one – that I can go campaign on and say we did. One! …explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done.”

Those are the words of a Republican.

I wonder what Ken Buck would say to that?

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.