{"id":2958,"date":"2011-06-15T19:09:07","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T19:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2958"},"modified":"2011-06-15T19:09:07","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T19:09:07","slug":"citizen_legisla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2958","title":{"rendered":"Citizen Legislator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the start date of a potential state government shutdown draws closer, nerves are beginning to fray. A Republican state legislator <a href=\"http:\/\/minnesota.publicradio.org\/collections\/special\/columns\/polinaut\/archive\/2011\/06\/mape_objects_to.shtml\">recently accused a state employee of being complicit in a communist plot<\/a> after she e-mailed him to express her opposition to the Republican Legislature&#8217;s budget cuts. Representative Tom Hackbarth then set a world record for proving <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Godwin%27s_law\">Godwin&#8217;s Law<\/a> when he invoked Hitler in the same e-mail reply:<br \/><b><br \/>Hitler rose to power using and blaming the jews for the destruction of the German economy. Castro built his army of murderers by blaming the&nbsp; rich bankers and capitalist for destroying Cuba and taking advantage of the Cuban people. Hummmm?  <\/b><\/p>\n<p>Hackbarth has a reputation for being a generally unpleasant person. He was stripped of a committee chairmanship after <a href=\"http:\/\/minnesota.publicradio.org\/display\/web\/2010\/12\/09\/hackbarth\/\">he was caught with a loaded gun in a Planned Parenthood parking lot<\/a> a few months ago. Given his history, juvenile outbursts like this are to be expected. The rest of the GOP caucus hasn&#8217;t been very forthcoming with thoughts on their colleague&#8217;s intemperate remarks, which I suppose is also to be expected. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the start date of a potential state government shutdown draws closer, nerves are beginning to fray. A Republican state legislator recently accused a state employee of being complicit in a communist plot after she e-mailed him to express her opposition to the Republican Legislature&#8217;s budget cuts. Representative Tom Hackbarth then set a world record <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2958' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-LI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}