The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is fed up with the antics of one of their home-state Senators, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). Recently, Hawley rhetorically leaped to the defense of antagonists at school board meetings after the Justice Department stated that it would be cooperating with local leaders on the development of plans to tackle violence and harassment perpetrated at such local meetings. The behavior has included both threats of violence and actual violence, which has been geared around outrage over policies related to COVID-19, including face mask-wearing. The Justice Department specified that its focus would be on those committing criminal acts — and these are the people who Hawley eagerly rushed to defend.
The Post-Dispatch noted that Hawley “offers the Orwellian notion that confronting harassment and intimidation by parents against school board members is, in itself, harassment and intimidation,” adding the pointed question:
‘Is Missouri’s Republican junior senator trying to incite more of the kind of violence he incited on Jan. 6?’
Maybe so. The paper added as follows:
‘What is happening in society today when people interpret their constitutional right to free speech as a right to disrupt public meetings, hurl insults and threats at officials in public forums and even physically assault those officials?.. They include left-leaning activists like the immigration-rights protesters who recently followed moderate Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., into a bathroom in Phoenix… But the most common culprits are parents who have disrupted school board meetings around the country, shouting down, threatening and in some cases assaulting board members over mask mandates.’
And again — these people, who are committing criminal acts, are who Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has opted to self-righteously defend. Hawley claimed that the Biden administration is “sending FBI agents to try to silence voting, taxpaying parents,” which is simply not an accurate reflection of reality, no matter his self-confidence.
The Post-Dispatch added the following:
‘It would be one thing if Hawley, [Missouri Attorney General Eric] Schmitt and the rest were merely opposing federal involvement in local criminal matters — a legitimately debatable aspect of Garland’s memo. But the pushback from them and other Republicans goes way beyond that, holding up these misbehaving parents as heroes of advocacy and victims of intimidation instead of the purveyors of it. Given the parameters of Garland’s memo — “criminal conduct” — these GOP politicians are explicitly siding with those who promote mayhem and mob rule, and against law enforcement. Given the events of Jan. 6 and its aftermath, perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising.’
It’s notable for Republican leaders to openly align themselves so closely with law-breakers considering their obsession with trying to pin left-wing-associated violence on Democratic leaders who have repeatedly and unequivocally denounced it. Hawley and those aligned with him don’t live in reality. Read more from the Post-Dispatch regarding Hawley — who has never shown contrition for helping inspire the Capitol riot with his lies about the integrity of the election — at this link.
