Last week’s ruling by the Ninth Circuit that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional was a frequent subject throughout the weekend, but not with any concern for the couples seeking to marry. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) teamed up with retired game show host Chuck Woolery to dismiss the decision, promoting the idea that the people’s vote is all that matters and “Majority rules.” Woolery even went as far as to reject all civil rights, claiming he’s discriminated against because he’s old and “a one percenter.” National Organization for Marriage Chairman John Eastman also claimed the Prop 8 ruling will have “catastrophic consequences for civil society.”

Others at the conference expressed that bullying and violence against LGBT people should persist. The President of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) attacked the United Nations for urging countries to protect LGBT people from persecution and execution, suggesting that “their theory of international law is done by lying, coercion, and trickery.” Focus on the Family’s Candi Cusman, meanwhile, continued her crusade against anti-bullying efforts, suggesting that “sexual advocacy” groups were hijacking the safe school message to indoctrinate young people. At no point did they express concern for the actual victims of harassment or acknowledge that the harassment was even taking place. Tea Party activist Kevin Jackson didn’t hesitate to further demonize LGBT people by claiming the Left has ”changed the definition of pedophilia.”

All of this rhetoric fed into the weekend’s  condemnation of America’s diversity. For example, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and a panel of white nationalists discussed how “the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American identity.” It’s no wonder conservatives are so unsympathetic to the plight of LGBT people — they refuse to admit we even exist.

So I got this green bag right here. And I filled it up with the black market light bulbs. And I brought them back to my office here in the Capitol. Whenever I need to put a bulb in the lamp, I reach in this green bag and I screw it in there and smile. A little bit of my liberty back. A little bit of our freedom back. And I want to challenge you to do the same thing. Bring back some of that liberty, some of that freedom.

Following his attack on energy-efficient light bulbs, Rep. King took on the water-saving showerhead in his shower, before bringing his tirade to a close with the declaration, “I want my liberty back!”

Watch it:

The new light bulb efficiency standards have faced strong opposition from members of the GOP, who consider the rules not only a ban on light bulbs, but as another example of unneccessary federal regulation. Environmentalists and energy-efficiency business groups disagree and are quick to point out that the standards do not ban incandescent light bulbs, but requires them to be more efficient. Despite the GOP’s best efforts to pass measures that would block funding for the standards’ enforcement, The Energy Department rules went into effect at the beginning of the year.

– Fatima Najiy

King at a Paul campaign event in August (courtesy Gage Skidmore)

“Iowa Rep. Steve King’s assessment on Ron Paul, one of the two co-frontrunners going into his state’s caucuses next week: “He’s not dangerous unless he’s president.” [...]

“I don’t think that the Paul supporters have really stepped back and thought about what would happen if Ron Paul were operating out of the Oval Office and the commander-in-chief of our armed forces,” King said.

Paul’s campaign has soared in recent days, leading the field in Iowa in some polls. Finally taking his candidacy seriously, a number of high profile Republicans and conservative leaders have publicly condemned the unorthodox Texas congressman.

King has previously been somewhat bullish on Paul, telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that people shouldn’t underestimate Paul. “He has a group of solid core, very dedicated supporters that will be there,” King told CNN in July of the Ames Straw Poll. King even appeared at a campaign event in Ames with Paul in August.

Upon discovering the tweet several hours later, Jackson Lee took a moment of personal privilege during the hearing to respond to King’s snark, which quickly turned into a verbal sparing match with two Republicans on the committee:

JACKSON LEE: I have no reason to think that anybody cares about my words, but I would offer to say that Mr. King owes the committee an apology… I’ve never known Mr. King to have a multi-task capacity, but if that is his ability, I do think it’s inappropriate while we’re talking about serious issues to have a member of the Judiciary Committee be so offensive.

So I’m putting on the record — he is not here — I…

REP. F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): Chairman I demand the gentlewoman’s words be taken down.

JACKSON LEE: Well I’m not taking them down. So you can break this hearing, because I’m not.

[CROSS TALK]

Excuse me, I’m in the middle of my dialogue and I will continue.

REP. LAMAR SMITH (R-TX): No, the gentlewoman will suspend.

JACKSON LEE: I have a personal privilege at this point.

Watch it (the exchange begins at 1:30):

It seems Rep. Sensenbrenner concluded that King’s use of “boring” did not fall afoul of House rules against “unparliamentary language,” but Jackson Lee’s taking offense did. When she refused, Rep. Smith — the committee’s current chairman — went at it again, saying he was attempting to “avoid making an official ruling” that Jackson Lee had “impugned the integrity of a member of this committee.”

Jackson Lee again refused, and demanded King “give the committee an apology.” But by this point, unfortunately, King was no longer at the hearing and could not respond. After further back and forth, Jackson Lee consulted with a parliamentarian and eventually relented, agreeing to have her use of “offensive” altered to “impolitic and unkind” in the Congressional record. The hearing then returned to its official business.

Later, an apparently undaunted King took to Twitter once again to comment on the dust-up:

Rep. King, it would appear, does not lack for self-assurance.

Portions of the nation’s most harmful immigration law went into effect last month in Alabama, causing widespread fear and panic among the state’s Latino population. It requires school officials to verify students’ immigration status, prompting thousands of frightened Latino students not to show up for school. The new law even makes it a felony for utility companies to provide water in undocumented immigrants’ homes.

ThinkProgress spoke with one of the leading anti-immigration voices in the House GOP, Rep. Steve King (R-IA), yesterday in Iowa to get his take on Alabama’s law. King brushed aside concern that the law may go too far, arguing instead that police officers ought to “see somebody on the street and say, ‘Why are you here? What are you doing? Who are you? I don’t know who you are.’” When we asked whether forcing hospital patients to prove their immigration status would cross the line, King disagreed, stating, “I don’t know why that would be too far.”

KEYES: Do you think that Alabama went too far in terms of asking schoolchildren their immigration status or having utility companies be able to shut off water to families if they don’t provide their immigration status?

KING: [...] Going too far to ask someone about their status? Whether they can be legally or illegally in the United States? Not in the world I grew up in. In the world I grew up in, a police officer would see somebody on the street and say, “Why are you here? What are you doing? Who are you? I don’t know who you are.” [...]

KEYES: Is there anything you think that could be too far, like asking people in the hospital about their immigration status?

KING: I don’t know why that would be too far. It depends on who is doing the asking. But I have walked through the hospitals down along the border, and I know what goes on. Tucson University Hospital, for example, is the most southerly trauma center in Arizona. The reason for that is all the rest of them had to close because they’ve been required to provide free medical care to people who are in the United States illegally.

Watch it:

In his eight years in Congress, King has amassed a long record of castigating immigrants and Latinos in general. Last year, he declared that Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s (D-AZ) southern Arizona district may have been “ceded…to Mexico.” Prior to that, King called immigration a “slow-motion Holocaust.” And while discussing a border fence on the House floor in 2006, King proposed electrifying it, noting that “we do this with livestock all the time.”

KING: Could you reverse engineer the United States of America and come up with a better result that what we have here? Could you go back through history and turn us in history in any way where our mortal wisdom could supersede the actual history that we’ve experienced as a country? I say not.

I believe that the Bible was written with divine inspiration. I believe that the declaration was written with divine guidance. I believe that God moved the Founding Fathers around this country and the globe like men on a chess board.

Watch it:

King’s affirmation of the entirety of U.S. history ignores, of course, the country’s dark chapter of legalized slavery. Many of the Founding Fathers, who King believes God micromanaged, were slave owners themselves and enshrined protections for slavery in the original Constitution. Would King really want to repeat this history?

In 2009, King was the only member of Congress to vote against a House resolution to acknowledge the role that slave labor had in constructing the U.S. Capitol building. The resolution would merely authorize the placement of a marker inside the new Capitol Visitor Center, but King opposed it because he said it would not present “a balanced depiction of history.”

Last year, King’s good friend Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) caught flack for erroneously claiming that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly” to end slavery.

King made the comments to ThinkProgress following a Republican press conference on Capitol Hill today. The Iowa congressman joined several Republican colleagues to renew their call for repealing the landmark health reform law “by the roots,” as King often says, including its provisions to close the Medicare Part D coverage gap, also known as the “donut hole.”

ThinkProgress asked King about what would happen to the millions of young people and seniors who are already enjoying the Affordable Care Act’s successes. King ridiculed the notion out of hand, saying, “I can’t imagine there being any seniors who have seen any benefits of Obamacare.” When we pointed out that millions would benefit from closing the donut hole, King was dismissive: “That’s such a minor part of this whole picture.” He said the provision was a “talking point for the Obama administration” rather than “a significant piece of policy.”

KEYES: What do you make of the millions of young people and seniors who are seeing some of the benefits already and would have those obviously stripped away if the bill were to be repealed?

KING: I can’t imagine there being any seniors who have seen any benefits of Obamacare.

KEYES: I guess in terms of the donut hole being closed.

KING: That’s such a minor part of this whole picture. I’ve had no constituents come to me and say, “it’s so good that the donut hole is closed.” I haven’t heard that subject even brought up in six months. That is a talking point for the Obama administration but it isn’t a significant piece of policy.

Watch it:

In fact, closing the donut hole is a key part of making health care affordable for seniors. Before health reform was passed, Medicare only covered prescription drug costs between $0-$2,700 and anything over $6,154. However, seniors were forced to pay for the entire cost of their prescription drugs between $2,700 and $6,154 with no Medicare coverage, presenting a major hardship for many older Americans.

The Affordable Care Act will phase out that donut hole over the following decade, allowing millions of seniors to afford the care they need. The benefits are already apparent; new data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services shows that “nearly 1.3 million people have received a 50 percent discount on their brand name prescription drugs when they hit the donut hole, saving a total of $660 million so far this year.”

King was responding to a clip of Van Jones describing Wall Street as “the scene of the crime against our future.” Republican lawmakers who disproportionately benefit from Wall Street’s generous contributions have conveniently forgotten the corporate malfeasance that inspired the protests in the first place, choosing instead to focus their contempt on protesters themselves.

(HT: Political Correction)

KING: The United States of America borrows money and hands it to people and tells them, you don’t have to work for this. You don’t have to produce anything for this. We just want you to spend it. [...]

The former speaker of the House, Speaker Pelosi, has consistently said that unemployment checks are one of those reliable and immediate forms of economy recovery. [...] The 80 million Americans that are of working age but are simply not in the workforce need to be put to work. We can’t have a nation of slackers and then have me have to sit in the Judiciary Committee listening to them argue that there’s work that Americans won’t do, so we have to import people to do the work that Americans won’t do, and borrow money to pay the welfare for people that won’t work. That is a foolish thing for a nation to do. We’ve gotta get this country back to work and get those people out of the slacker rolls and onto the employed rolls.

Watch it:

King’s belief that people collecting unemployment checks are merely lazy is startingly common among conservatives, but it is as wrong as it is offensive to the million of Americans who are out of work by no choice of their own. In reality, there are 4.32 unemployed people for every job opening in the country, so even if every opening was filled, there would still be millions of people lacking employment.

Moreover, unemployment benefits are hardly generous, require beneficiaries to be actively searching for work, and run out after a certain period of time, so it’s unlikely someone would chose to remain unemployed. In fact, research by the San Francisco Federal Reserve has found that workers who qualify for unemployment benefits stay unemployed just 1.6 weeks longer than those who do not qualify for such benefits.

King calling unemployed Americans “slackers” is almost as bad as Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) compared the jobless to alcoholics and drug addicts.

One such member is ardent anti-abortion congressman Steve King (R-IA). ThinkProgress spoke with King about funding for Planned Parenthood at last month’s Ames Straw Poll.

King said that he still wants to strip Planned Parenthood funding, despite the fact that federal law already prohibits taxpayer money being used to pay for abortions, because “money is fungible.” We asked King if, by his logic, he would therefore like to see money stripped from hospitals that provide abortion as well. King entertained the idea – “Maybe. I’d want to look at the case.” – before telling us that Planned Parenthood is currently breaking federal law.

KING: That’s one of the things that Planned Parenthood’s pioneering, there are Skype global abortions. And I offered the amendment that blocks all funding to that. I don’t think that any taxpayer should be compelled to fund anything that has to do with abortion, and I don’t think we should have federal funds going to any organization that provides abortion services or counseling.

KEYES: What about hospitals that provide abortion? Would you like to see the money stripped away from them, for instance?

KING: Maybe. I’d want to look at the case. I think it’s immoral for us to compel pro-life America to fund pro-abortion America.

KEYES: So just to clarify, Planned Parenthood, are they breaking federal law here or just switching money?

KING: They’re breaking federal law here and if these reports come through, we could just shut that off so I don’t know if that’s going to be the case anymore.

Watch it:

Earlier this year, King called Planned Parenthood – an organization that provides such services as breast cancer exams, STI testing, and cervical cancer screening – “ghoulish and ghastly and gruesome.“

Attendees also complained that there is no picture of President Obama hanging in the district office, despite it being federal space. ThinkProgress asked a staff member inside about the matter and they claimed to have never received a picture of Obama (though they had received presidential pictures in each of former President Bush’s terms).

A key House Republican is calling for congressional hearings into President Obama’s decision to grant “administrative amnesty” by pulling out hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens already in the deportation pipeline. [...]

King said Congress has limited powers in what it can do to force the Obama administration to adhere to immigration laws, but that it can cut funding to the departments involved “to send a powerful message to the White House. Or, we can hold hearings and bring them forward to publicly humiliate them until they become politically vulnerable, and at that point, Obama might withdraw such a position,” King said.

The McGuffin driving King’s latest attempt to humiliate President Obama is the administration’s recent decision to prioritize enforcement of immigration laws against undocumented immigrants who are violent or otherwise potentially dangerous. But the truth is that some kind of prioritization is absolutely necessary unless King plans to jack up the federal deficit in order to round up immigrants who pose no threat whatsoever to anyone.

It would cost a massive $285 billion to round up every man, woman, and child who is in the United States illegally and deport them to their country of origin. That’s more than six times the Department of Homeland Security’s entire budget for FY 2011. Given these financial constraints, the Obama Administration unquestionably made the right decision by targeting its very limited resources on efforts that actually protect the American people from harm.

If King wants to argue that America should take on even more debt to round up taxpayers and college students, then he is welcome to make those arguments. Clearly, however, King has no interest in discussing actual facts and real data — he just sees an opportunity to embarrass President Obama.

One of the reasons I voted “no” on the debt ceiling deal is because it was supposed to be an important lever for us to get a vote on a balanced budget amendment, but they did not have first a definition for a balanced budget amendment…[that] has a supermajority [to raise taxes] and an 18 percent GDP cap in it. [...] If we pass something out of the House that’s meant as a constitutional amendment that has no heat then we have no results then it will look like we are just posturing ourselves rather than actually fixing the problem.

Listen:

It’s hard to read King’s statement as anything less than an admission that he doesn’t really care whether the budget is balanced. In 1995, the House passed a true balanced budget amendment, which would have made it very difficult to enact an unbalanced budget. Had this actual balanced budget amendment been in effect in 2001, for example, the single largest driver of our present deficits — the Bush tax cuts — would have been unconstitutional. Likewise, the House GOP’s Medicare-killing budget that passed the House earlier this year also would fail under a clean balanced budget amendment because it fails to raise enough taxes to cover its costs.

Needless to say, congressional Republicans don’t like this outcome, which is why they are currently dressing up a Tea Party fantasy amendment in balanced budget amendment clothing. The so-called “balanced budget amendment” that King supports does far more than simply requiring federal spending to equal federal revenues. It makes it functionally impossible to raise taxes by imposing a two-thirds supermajority requirement — a provision closely modeled after the California anti-tax amendment that blew up that state’s finances. It would also require spending cuts so steep that it would have made Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy unconstitutional.

Last month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained that he supports this Tea Party amendment because it eliminates the ability of something as silly as the American people voting for candidates who don’t want Tea Party fiscal policy from actually having an impact on national policy. Rep. King’s opposition to a clean balanced budget amendment is just one more admission that Congressional Republicans don’t actually care a bit about balancing the budget — they just want to use the American people’s legitimate anxiety over our long term deficits to permanently enshrine a comprehensive Tea Party agenda in the Constitution.

KING: They’ve called it preventative medicine. Preventative medicine. Well if you applied that preventative medicine universally what you end up with is you’ve prevented a generation. Preventing babies from being born is not medicine. That’s not— that’s not constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let our birth rate get down below replacement rate we’re a dying civilization.

Watch it:

As astonishing as it might seem that Republicans would object to something as widely accepted and used as birth control, King illustrates that many conservatives despise contraception altogether for “preventing babies from being born.” King goes so far as to say that birth control “is not medicine.” Some Republicans have decried birth control as tantamount to abortion and signed on to legislation that would effectively outlaw it. These so-called “personhood laws” would make criminals out of the 15.3 million women in the U.S. who use hormonal birth control.

King’s dire predictions are laughably uninformed. Contraception and other family planning services dramatically reduce the number of abortions and save states billions of dollars each year. In other words, facilitating women’s access to birth control benefits society at large and is the fiscally conservative position, which is why 78 percent of Americans support government-subsidized birth control.

Media Matters points out that there are three million unintended pregnancies in the U.S. each year, 20 percent of which end in abortion. “But, according King’s logic, all those accidental pregnancies are actually the desired outcome.” Apparently nothing upsets conservatives more than the idea of women being able to control their own reproductive health.

(HT: Political Correction)

This morning, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) sent out a tweet imploring followers to “STOP talking about default. [...] Obama would be impeached if he blocked debt payments.”

King has apparently forgotten why the nation is on the brink of default in the first place: Republican hostage-taking. During President Bush’s tenure, GOP leaders voted to raise the debt ceiling 19 times — by a total of $4 trillion — without demanding draconian cuts to the social safety net in return, and 130 current House and Senate Republicans have voted to raise the debt ceiling under Bush. In fact, the entire debate right now ignores the fact that Bush’s policies added over three times the amount of debt than have Obama’s policies.

Still, as Congress figures out what it will take to get Republicans to agree to raise the debt ceiling and avoid “financial collapse and calamity,” King exemplifies how extreme GOP intransigence has become. When ThinkProgress spoke with King recently and asked him if he could accept a debt ceiling deal that included $3 trillion in cuts and just $8 in revenue increases, the Iowa congressman refused, declaring, “I’m not for raising taxes.”

This is not the first time House Republicans have floated impeaching Obama, nor will it likely be the last. Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) confirmed to ThinkProgress this month that Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) and other House GOPers were exploring impeachment over the debt ceiling. In the spring, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) called for impeachment if the president refused to support the Defense of Marriage Act. Last year, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) hinted at impeaching President Obama if he didn’t do more to stop illegal immigration. Even the birthers have gotten in on the action, with Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) last year saying he may force President Obama to release his birth certificate under the threat of impeachment.

There is no better example of this stubbornness than by Rep. Steve King (R-IA). ThinkProgress spoke with King following a House GOP Caucus meeting this morning. We asked the Iowa Republican, a persistent critic of the president’s policies, whether he could accept a debt ceiling deal that included $3 trillion in cuts and just $8 in revenue increases. King stood firm, telling ThinkProgress, “I’m not for raising taxes”:

KEYES: Obviously any type of deal is very fluid at this point, but in terms of what you would be willing to accept and vote for. For instance, say there were $3 trillion in cuts and just $8 in revenue increases, do you think that’s something you yourself could be supporting? [...]

KING: I’m not for raising taxes. I won’t support anything that raises taxes. Revenue increases are a euphemism for raising taxes. Closing loopholes, one person’s loophole is the other one’s legitimate business expense. And tax deduction or tax credit as the case may be. That doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Let’s send a constitutional amendment to the states for ratification and then start talking business.

Watch it:

The absurdity of King’s position — revenue increases are so heretical that he cannot accept a deal that would include a 375,000,000,000:1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases — is topped only by the fact that many House Republicans likely share his belief in refusing to raise any additional revenue. Indeed, nearly every single Republican in Congress has signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge.

However, King’s refusal to budge on even $8 in revenue increases epitomizes just how unwilling Republicans have been to compromise. Even 74 percent of Republicans told Gallup that deficit reduction should include tax increases as well spending cuts, but for King and other House Republicans, it’s more important to pander to the fringe right than the majority of voters.

Update

Cartoonist Clay Bennett perfectly captured the state of negotiations:

This afternoon on Hardball, host Chris Matthews wondered how King could come to such an aberrant determination that a default is not a threat. “You have some superior knowledge — what basis do you have for your judgement?” Matthews asked. “I do have superior knowledge, thanks for recognizing it,” King jokingly responded.

Over the next few minutes — at the very same moment Moody’s was reporting that it may downgrade the U.S. AAA bond rating — Matthews pressed King on where he gets his knowledge. Hilarity ensued:

MATTHEWS: Who are the people you’re dealing with? [...]

KING: The American citizens. [...]

MATTHEWS: So you’re polling in your district to find out whether the United States goes into default or not at the end of this month. … They know what’s going to happen…

KING: I have an independent judgment as well.

MATTHEWS: Ok tell me where it comes from.

KING: It comes from a long experience of dealing politically, and in business, and raising a family, and being an American citizen…

MATTHEWS: What does raising a family teach you about international finance? [...]

KING: That’s not my only source of information — is raising my children. [...]

MATTHEWS: Do you trust the Wall Street Journal, do you trust the New York Times?

KING: I read the Wall Street Journal. I sometimes read the New York Times. I don’t really trust it. I don’t trust the words of any source.

Matthews continued pressing King on whether he trusts the Chamber of Commerce and other conservative organizations who warn of a crisis if the debt limit isn’t raised. King said he challenges all those sources.

Matthews then asked if King could cite one — just one — international or domestic expert who he trusts on these issues and agrees with his view. King, of course, could not name one. Watch it: