Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)

Paul now appears to have company in his opposition to civil rights. In an exclusive interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Broun told ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes that a federal law protecting LGBT Americans from employment discrimination is unconstitutional. And he strongly suggested that all federal employment laws violate the Constitution:

KEYES: One of the issues that the Senate’s now looking at is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, whether or not it should be illegal for a company to be able to fire someone for being gay. Do you have a sense on where you stand on an issue like that?

BROUN: I believe that the federal government should be doing what the Constitution says it should be doing. Following what our founding fathers meant for us to do. These issues should be dealt with on the state basis. When we inject the federal government with things it should not be doing, we create this huge federal government that is spending money it should not be spending. [...]

KEYES: Do you think the federal government should even have a role in anti-discrimination laws at all, at least as it pertains to employment?

BROUN: I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don’t have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system. I want to see us to shrink the federal criminal justice system, let the states prosecute these types of laws. We’re spending money we shouldn’t be.

At this point, Keyes asked Broun to clarify whether his statement that anti-discrimination issues “should be dealt with on the state basis” also applies to race and gender discrimination, but a staffer accompanying Broun insistently cut off the interview.

Listen:

There are a number of factual errors in Broun’s answer. Typically civil rights suits are civil, not criminal, matters, for example, so declaring federal civil rights laws unconstitutional would do very little to “shrink the federal criminal justice system.”

Most importantly, his reading of the Constitution flat wrong. The Constitution gives Congress broad authority to regulate the national economy — in the Constitution’s words, the power to “regulate commerce . . . among the several states” and to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” its power over the nation’s commerce. While segregationists did indeed claim that this power does not extend to discrimination by local businesses in the 1960s, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected these arguments.
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Nine Congressmen — all male Republicans — voted Wednesday against a resolution to allow the U.S. House to consider re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The vast majority of House Republicans (214) and all 200 House Democrats voted for rule, which will allow votes Thursday on the watered-down GOP version of the bill and (assuming that fails), the bipartisan Senate plan.

The nine Republicans were Representatives Paul Broun (GA), Scott Garrett (NJ), Louie Gohmert (TX), Tim Huelskamp (KS), Walter Jones (NC), Steve King (IA), Thomas Massie (KY), Tom McClintock (CA), and Matt Salmon (AZ).

Three of the nine — Gohmert, Jones, and King — voted for the watered-down Republican version of the bill last May, making their opposition to even bringing up the bill now a surprise. King said of the 2012 bill, “I supported VAWA in 2005 and am doing so again to see to it that victims of domestic violence and sexual assault have access to the resources and protection when they need it the most.”

While apparently none of the opponents has released a statement on today’s vote, some explained their opposition to last year’s bill. Huelskamp, in a letter to constituents, noted that he does not believe the federal government has a role in funding protection against domestic abuse. “This is a matter that should be left to our states,” he wrote, and Congress “should not be in the business of handing out grants conditioned on how states do or do not prosecute criminals.”

McClintock, in explaining his 2012 vote against VAWA, argued: “This is a feel-good measure that uses ‘Violence Against Women’ as an excuse to vastly expand a dizzying array of government grant programs, hamstring judges who are attempting to resolve and reconcile highly volatile relationships, add $1.8 billion to the nation’s debt and generally insinuate the federal government into matters the Constitution clearly reserves to the states. Federal grants of all kinds (essentially gifts of public money with little or no oversight) are out of control and ought to be abolished — not expanded.”

The landmark 1994 law, authored by then-Senator Joe Biden, expired more than a year ago.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), the Georgia lawmaker who once described the Civil War as the “Great War of Yankee Aggression,” offered an amendment to a spending bill at 10pm last night that would have stripped the Department of Justice of its ability to enforce Second Five of the Voting Rights Act. Section Five requires certain areas with a history of race discrimination to “pre-clear” its voting policies with DOJ or a federal court in order to ensure that those laws do not target minority voters, and it was the basis for a few recent DOJ decisions to block voter ID laws.

Fortunately, it soon became clear that Broun’s attack on voting rights lacked support after Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a hero of the Civil Rights Movement who still bears visible scars from when he was beaten by Alabama state troopers for marching in favor of voting rights, reminded the gathered lawmakers why we have a Voting Rights Act:

It is hard, and difficult, and almost unbelievable that any Member — but especially a Member from the state of Georgia — would come and offer such amendment. There’s a long history in our country, especially in the 11 states that are old Confederacy — from Virginia to Texas — of discrimination based on race, on color. Maybe some of us need to study a little contemporary history dealing with the question of voting rights.

Just think, before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it was almost impossible for many people in the state of Georgia, in the state of Alabama, in Virginia, in Texas, to register to vote, to participate in the democratic process. The state of Mississippi, for example, had a black voting age population of more than 450,000, and only about 16,000 were registered to vote. One county in Alabama, the country was more than 80 percent [black], and not a single registered African-American voter. People had to pass a so-called literacy test. . . . one man was asked to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. Another man was asked to count the number of jelly beans in a jar.

It’s shameful that you would come here tonight and say to the Department of Justice that you must not use one penny, one cent, one dime, one dollar, to carry out the mandate of Section Five of the Voting Rights Act. . . . . People died for the right to vote. Friends of mine. Colleagues of mine. I speak out against this amendment. It doesn’t have a place.

Watch it:

Broun withdrew the amendment after Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Dan Lungren (R-CA) also chastised him for trying to sneak it into a late-night vote, rather than using the normal committee hearing process.

In 2006, when George W. Bush was president, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched the first of a series of misguided sting operations where illegal guns were sold in the expectation that they could be tracked to drug traders. Instead, the agents lost track of the guns, and at least two of these guns were likely later used to kill a federal agent.

This series of operations, which includes the “Fast and Furious” operation, were deeply botched. They should never have been executed and the government officials found responsible for them have correctly been removed from their jobs or demoted. None of these officials are Eric Holder. As Attorney General, Holder supervises nearly 112,000 employees. It is neither desirable for him to be aware of every single operation being conducted by low-level field agents, nor would it even be physically possible to brief him on all of these operations if he wanted to be.

Nevertheless, congressional Republicans believe they can somehow blow this botched operation up into a major political scandal for Holder simply through repeated use of hyperbole. In an interview with Fox News this morning, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) made the most outlandish claim to date — that Holder should not only lose his job, he should also face criminal charges:

It’s getting blatantly evident that Eric Holder’s broken the law. He’s lied to Congress. He should resign. He should be prosecuted for lying to Congress. And he should be disbarred. The president ought to call Eric Holder into his office and fire him today.

Watch it:

There is no basis for Broun’s claim that Holder somehow lied to Congress. Last May, Holder testified that he only recently learned about the nature of the Fast and Furious operation. Several lawmakers since accused Holder of perjury after they uncovered a July 2010 memo to Holder that mentioned the name of the operation but didn’t actually explain what the operation was. This memo, however, could no more have informed Holder about the operation’s misguided tactics than the fact that this blog post contains the words “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” would inform anyone who Willow Rosenberg is. It is far too generous to say that Broun is grasping at straws.

Yet, while Broun’s blovating has no chance whatsoever of pinning this botched operation on Holder, it could have a very real impact on the Department’s ability to ensure that this kind of mistake never happens again. So far, the Department appears to have acted responsibly by investigating the operation and removing the people responsible for it. Nothing, however, chills an investigation into a legitimately troubling incident more than an army of witchhunters who care more about embarrassing senior officials than they do about learning the truth.