Iowa's King-sized mess

Southwestern Iowa, can we talk?

Surely you've noticed lately that your guy in the U.S. House, Steve King, has been a little out of control . . . even by his own loose standards. Frankly, guys, the rest of the country is starting to think he's a little nuts.

OK, a lot nuts.

He's going around throwing rhetorical bombs. He's acts like he's trying to start something bad, trying to get people all riled up.

Frankly, if the tea partiers actually got their way and got national governance just the way the Founding Fathers served it up . . . your representative might be writing manifestos on toilet paper for his lawyer to smuggle out of jail and hand over to Glenn Beck. The Alien and Sedition Acts, as applied by President John Adams, surely would not have been kind to Steve King.

LET'S TAKE a look at Steve King's latest, greatest hits, shall we? Starting with this story today in the Omaha World-Herald:

Midlands Republicans on Capitol Hill strongly opposed health care legislation, but most showed little interest this week in repealing it now that it is the law of the land.

One man who is ready for a repeal push is Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

“Today the work begins to repeal Obamacare and restore the principles of liberty that made America a great nation,” King said within hours of the bill's passage. “The American people must take their country back by methodically eliminating every vestige of creeping socialism, including socialized medicine.”

Of course, repeal would be a steep climb. Republicans probably would need to capture the White House, a majority in the House and 60 seats in the Senate, where they currently hold 41.

THEN, WE HAVE this from KTIV in Sioux City:


AND THIS, an account of King's Sunday night antics, courtesy of The New York Times:

“Let’s beat the other side to a pulp!” Rep. Steve King, Republican of Iowa, shouted to the last stand of Tea Partiers on Sunday night. “Let’s chase them down! There’s going to be a reckoning.”

OF COURSE, let us not forget this, as recounted by CBS News:

Conservative lawmakers and pundits already have many grievances against the Democratic health care reform plan, but Rep. Steve King of Iowa and Fox News personality Glenn Beck are adding one more to the list -- the vote scheduled for Sunday.

Democrats are scrambling to get the bill to the president before leaving for Easter recess, prompting the House to schedule a vote for the bill this Sunday.

"They intend to vote on the Sabbath, during Lent, to take away the liberty that we have right from God," King said on Beck's radio program Thursday, the Hill reports.

Beck chimed in, "Here is a group of people that have so perverted our faith and our hope and our charity, that is a -- this is an affront to God."

OR THIS, in The Huffington Post on March 16:

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) urged a smaller-than-expected crowd of Tea Party protesters on Tuesday to launch a Velvet Revolution-style uprising against the federal government, saying the parallels are striking between America's current government and Eastern European communist rule.

Speaking to the Huffington Post shortly after his speech, King declared that a peaceful uprising, a la the successful overthrowing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on the streets of Prague in 1989 "would be fine with me."

"Fill this city up, fill this city, jam this place full so that they can't get in, they can't get out and they will have to capitulate to the will of the American people," he said.

"So this is just like Prague under communist rule?" the Huffington Post asked.

"Oh yeah, it is very, very close," King replied. "It is the nationalization of our liberty and the federal government taking our liberty over. So there are a lot of similarities there."

Earlier, King implored the crowd to bring the nation's capital to a sort of paralysis. Warning, erroneously, that the health care bill would fund abortion and fund care for 6.1 million illegal immigrants, he demanded that concerned citizens "continue to rise up."

AND, OF COURSE, we can't overlook this "Osama bin King" moment after Joe Stack flew his plane into Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin, Texas, last month:


SOUTHWEST IOWA, let me be direct. You have a problem -- you elected a lunatic. Furthermore, considering you elected a lunatic to Congress, he's our problem, too.

And we expect you to fix our problem at your earliest possible convenience.

Osama bin King, R-Iowa

Remember how mad you were when you saw Palestinians celebrating on 9/11?

Steve King, southwest Iowa's mad-hatter member of Congress, is one of those people. Just so long as the target for the terrorist's flying bomb is the Internal Revenue Service.

ACCORDING to Talking Points Memo, the Iowegian carbuncle on the House's ass told a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference he could "empathize" with a domestic terrorist like Tea Party Airlines pilot Joe Stack:

King's comments weren't recorded, but a staffer for Media Matters, who heard the comments, provided TPMmuckraker with an account.

The staffer, who requested anonymity because she's not a communications specialist, said that King, an extreme right-winger with a reputation for eyebrow-raising rhetoric, appeared as a surprise guest speaker on an immigration panel at the conservative conference. During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week.

During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people "implode" their local IRS office.

HELL, we invaded Iraq on flimsier evidence than that regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed support for al-Qaida. What to make of a sitting congressman who can "empathize" with domestic terrorists who launch suicide attacks against the United States government?

When confronted by Think Progress about his remarks, King said that if we just hadn't built the World Trade Center and Pentagon, those 9/11 suicide jockeys wouldn't have had anywhere to aim those jetliners full of innocent Americans. Or something like that:

I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax.

(snip)

It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

WITH THE political heat now on high, King took the weasel route in an interview published in this morning's Omaha World-Herald:

King said his heart goes out to the victims in Austin and their families.

“These acts of violence have no place in our society to be condoned or supported,” King told The World-Herald. “When someone finds themselves in this position of extreme frustration with the IRS, which I do understand that frustration, they should do what I did, get involved in the process.”

King said his treatment by the IRS contributed to his decision to run for public office.

As for the comments about imploding IRS buildings, King said he was employing levity in discussing his belief that the IRS should be abolished. He said he was referring to imploding the empty buildings left behind.

YEAH, RIGHT.

You know, if only the voters of southwest Iowa hadn't elected such a radical asshat to Congress, we who live across the Missouri River in Nebraska wouldn't point our fingers eastward and laugh so hard.

Maybe we should stop that, though. Terrorist-loving creeps like King -- especially when they get elected to high office -- hardly are a laughing matter.

What hath Bubba wrought?!?

More and more, it looks like when three little redneck bigots in Jena, La., hung nooses from their high school's "white tree," what they really did was light a long fuse.

That fuse, thus far, has led to and set off various small racial bombs. And the fuse yet burns. We know not where the last bomb lay, nor do we know its size.

YESTERDAY'S U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Jena Six, however, gives us some clues. The Politico reports:

The House Judiciary Committee hearing would have drawn a packed audience regardless — a crowd that is, by Capitol Hill standards, remarkably diverse — because the topic involves the Jena Six, a half-dozen African-American kids whose moniker has become the rallying cry of a resurgent civil rights movement.

(snip)

The room has a tense and excited feel to it. Two representatives of the Justice Department, Donald Washington, a U.S. attorney from the Western District of Louisiana, and Lisa Krigsten, representing the civil rights division, must defend the department for its decision not to press hate crime charges against teenage noose hangers in Jena, La., and for not doing enough to intervene in a racially disparate prosecution. Washington, an African-American, will draw the most heat from the committee.

“I’m sure we’re all familiar with the alleged facts,” says Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), though he and several Democrats enumerate them anyway:

On Aug. 31, 2006, “all Hades broke loose,” as Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) puts it. Three nooses were hung from what was known as the “white tree” at Jena High School after a black student requested the principal’s permission to sit under it. No charges were filed, and the culpable students, initially expelled, had their punishment reduced to a suspension and family counseling.

Tensions rose, and white District Attorney Reed Walters — who doubled as the school’s attorney — reportedly told students to cool it or he would “erase their lives with the stroke of a pen.”

Later that fall, one of the Jena Six, Robert Bailey Jr., had a gun pulled on him by a white student. Bailey wrestled the gun from him and was charged with stealing it; the white student was charged with nothing. Tensions rose further and white students were “calling folks niggers out in the school yard,” says Johnson.

Then in December, six black students beat up a white kid, Justin Barker. “There was a small degree of physical injury to the white student who attended a party,” says Johnson. The six were charged with attempted murder, and the story went national 10 months later when Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr. got involved.

(snip)

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) also stands up for Barker and says that the beating is more significant than the hanging of the noose. Although, he concedes, “I know I come from a part of the country where there’s less sensitivity to that.”

“We see things different,” agrees Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). She goes on to point out that while Democrats are talking about racial injustice, GOP members are “talking about single-parent families.”

By 11 a.m., the man most likely to do some disagreeing still isn’t here, and that’s just fine with Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.). “If I were compiling a group of witnesses” with the goal of racial harmony, he says, “I don’t know if Mr. Sharpton would make the cut.”

“He may be here shortly,” warns Conyers.

“He may be looking for me,” worries Coble. Indeed, a few moments later, chatter fills the courtroom as Sharpton makes his way to his center chair and cameras flash.

Conyers recognizes Sharpton, who apologizes, claiming his flight from New York was delayed two hours. Sharpton draws press attention, but he also draws scrutiny: During recess, a Washington Post reporter goes online to fact-check flight departure and arrival times.

Sharpton, though, for all his star power, ends up a minor player in the hearing, overshadowed by the emotion filling the room. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) betrays some of the sensitivity King referred to as she questions the Justice Department witnesses.

“I am almost in tears. Mychal Bell is now in jail. ... The tragedy of this case is that it called out for federal intervention for the protection of children,” she says. “Shame on you.”

Krigsten struggles to maintain a half-smile as Jackson Lee grows louder, directing her anger now at Washington, who she pointedly notes is the first black western district attorney. “I’m asking you to find a way to release Mychal Bell and the Jena Six,” Jackson Lee cries. “What are you doing now?!”

The room erupts in applause and shouts. At Washington’s answer — that he did what he could — the crowd hisses as Conyers tries to regain control.

The next to pile onto Washington is Waters, who adds that she is disappointed that the district attorney, who was invited to the hearing, chose not to show. The crowd breaks out in repeated shouts of “Subpoena!”

“You do have the power of the subpoena,” Waters reminds Conyers, reigniting the crowd: “Use it! Use it! Subpoena!” Conyers sits through the outburst but makes no indication of whether he will subpoena Walters.

THE CONGRESSMAN FROM IOWA, Steve King, is from just across the river from here. He is somewhere to the right of . . . well, probably everybody not already in some Idaho enclave. And, like many Midwesterners, he is clueless about race in America.

Where and when I grew up -- in the Deep South, in the '60s and '70s -- white people often were malicious about race. Here of most white Midwesterners like King just don't get it and, in the absence of a tradition of de jure segregation, are nevertheless still happy with de facto segregation.

And unless they are hit in the face -- over and over again -- with the rank inequity of how white malefactors in Jena got a wink and a wrist slap while black ones are looking at hard time in the state pen, they probably aren't going to get it.

The passions unleashed by the sins of Jena, however, make "not getting it" an exceedingly perilous proposition across a nation not nearly so well-off, tolerant, fair-minded and progressive as it thinks.

UPDATE: And there's this, in New York.

Hitting close to home. Again.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all
the evil spirits, who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

SEX AND MONEY. If one doesn't get you, the other one will.

They ought to engrave that above the doors of every chancery in every Catholic diocese in every corner of the world. Then they ought to make a sign and post it in every priest's office.

And in every damn one of our homes.

Mrs. Favog and I always thought Fr. Steve Gutgsell was a great guy. When we were wanting to become Catholic, Father Steve -- then an associate pastor at Christ the King here -- made the time to give us private instruction because we worked nights, when RCIA classes (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) met.

We got solid instruction -- we used Fr. John Hardon's Pocket Catechism -- and we completed our studies in about half the time RCIA would have taken. We began instruction in January, and Father Steve confirmed us during a regular Mass in May 1990. (And there's a whole story there that can wait for another day.)

During our instruction, Father Steve took a philosophically pro-choice Favog and began to open his eyes, and heart, to the Culture of Life. He gave us copies of Humanae Vitae to read for ourselves . . . and when I did, the light bulb went on in my head:

This isn't a scheme to make sure there are lots of Catholics. This thing makes absolute sense.

Before our confirmation, Father Steve heard Mrs. Favog's and my first confessions. After our confirmation, he put together a group of married couples (including us) to study scripture and Church doctrine.

By this time, we weren't even at his parish anymore. Didn't matter.

AND SOME YEARS LATER, when Mrs. Favog was in the hospital for cancer surgery, he made sure to visit her. Even though he was a pastor in O'Neill, Neb., hours away in the farthest corner of the Omaha archdiocese.

Between then and now, there came -- apparently -- that "wickedness and snares of the Devil" thing. It would seem, for Father Steve, the master of deceit (who, by the way, is a true professional . . . I know) slipped past St. Michael the Archangel. And on his rounds prowling about the world seeking the ruin of souls, he is alleged to have made a stop at St. Patrick's in south Omaha.

From the Omaha World-Herald (free registration required):

To some parishioners, the Rev. Stephen J. Gutgsell seemed like the kind of man who would spend money on St. Patrick Church rather than take money away.

He made sure tablecloths were new for every season, as well as the scarves that hang on statues in the south Omaha parish. Once, organist Rita Carbonell watched him pay for Christmas flowers with his own credit card.

"He liked to make it so the parishioners could do what we're here for -- come to God," said Carbonell, a lifelong member.

But that image was marred Friday when Omaha Archdiocese officials accused Gutgsell, 48, of embezzling more than $100,000 from the church.

The archdiocese contacted the Omaha Police Department Friday, and Gutgsell resigned his position as pastor.

"At least for the time being, he's not going to have a pastoral assignment," said the Rev. Joe Taphorn, chancellor of the archdiocese.

Taphorn said there are no indications that anyone else was involved in the theft. The archdiocese started a financial review in early January after parish lay leaders raised concerns.

Gutgsell could not be reached for comment Friday.

St. Patrick, at 1412 Castelar St., stands in the middle of a neighborhood with brick streets, large trees and old houses with chain-link fences. The church, like the neighborhood, is a place where people make their home for generations.

The parish -- Gutgsell's home since June 2001 -- has about 320 households and 680 parishioners, small when compared to other Omaha parishes. The Rev. James M. Buckley, an associate pastor at Holy Cross Church, has been transferred to St. Patrick as the parish administrator.

Gutgsell grew up in Blessed Sacrament parish in north Omaha in a devoted Catholic family. His brother, the Rev. Michael Gutgsell, is a former chancellor of the archdiocese and is pastor at St. Cecilia Cathedral.

(snip)

In addition to his regular church work, Gutgsell said Mass at other places in the neighborhood, including the Women's Care Center of the Heartland, St. Joseph Villa and St. Joseph Tower. He even led a regular Mass for home-schooled children.

He oversaw the opening of the Women's Care Center, a residential crisis pregnancy center housed in a former convent adjacent to the church.

"He was always hustling and bustling, said Fran Rieschl, who lives across the street from St. Patrick and attends morning Mass. "I've never seen anybody who is as busy as he is."

Rieschl said she refused to believe he would do anything wrong.

"He is a nice guy," she said.

Not everyone was shocked, though.

When 84-year-old Jennie Grazziano died in September, her son contacted Gutgsell to arrange the funeral.

Tony Grazziano, 58, whose mother was a St. Patrick member for more than 60 years, said he recorded his phone conversation with Gutgsell because he "didn't have a good feeling" about the priest.

In the recording, Grazziano and a man identifying himself as Father Gutgsell discuss conflicts about the funeral date. After declining to change the date, Grazziano has Gutgsell talk to funeral director Patrick Henry of Council Bluffs.

"I expect to charge this fellow (Grazziano) a huge amount of money for this," Gutgsell tells Henry. "That's what I'm expecting to do. Don't tell him this at this point."

(snip)

Monsignor Edgar Wortmann of Blessed Sacrament Church knew Gutgsell as a teen. Michael and Stephen served as altar boys. Their mother attended daily Mass and cared for the altar and the vigil candles.

Wortmann said he didn't talk much about a vocation with the young Stephen Gutgsell.

"But he was certainly thinking of it," he said. "(He was) very devoted, very -- I hate to use this word, but a very straitlaced person. There was absolutely no indication that anything like that was there."

A video report from KMTV, Channel 3 is here.

Just call this Object Lesson 1,239,702,481,968,807 in How the Lord's Prayer Is Deadly Serious Bidness. I don't know about you, but I plan on praying extra hard next time when I get to the "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" part.