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Tea Party Slams Menendez For Hitting BP On Libyan Terrorist Controversy

You know, typically, I wouldn't *dream* of suggesting that the Tea Party
movement is a group of people who have taken their internalized anger at
losing a presidential election and created a witless, paranoid movement
centered around the idea that America is experiencing bona fide, big
government tyranny<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/23/rosen-on-nyt-tea-party-pi_n_473847.html>.
But then you get to Friday, July 16, 2010, and you find that they're
angry<http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m7d16-Menendez-a-hypocrite-on-natl-security-says-Salanitri>
that
a Democratic senator wants to find out if BP played a role in the early
release of Libyan Lockerbie terrorist Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi.

Here's how this tracks. For some months now, the Tea Party has mounted a
quixotic effort to "recall" Senator Bob Menendez
(D-N.J.)<http://www.salon.com/news/2010/03/02/us_nj_senator_recall>.
Menendez, on the other hand, has been living his life, and this week, he
joined Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) as a cosigner of a letter to Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton<http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/07/lockerbie_bp_investivation.html>
:

In the second letter, the four Democrats said they were concerned BP may
have put profits ahead of justice in the al-Megrahi case, given the
petroleum giant's current handling of the Gulf oil spill.


"Evidence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster seems to suggest that BP would
put profit ahead of people -- its attention to safety was negligible and it
routinely underestimated the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf," according
to the letter from Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer of New York and
Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. "The question we now
have to answer is, was this corporation willing to trade justice in the
murder of 270 innocent people for oil profits?"

The BP-Lockerbie connection is a serious matter to serious-minded people.
But, if you are a Tea Party member from New Jersey, your one and only
thought is: "BLAAARRGLE! MENENDEZ BAD!" And so,
tra-la<http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m7d16-Menendez-a-hypocrite-on-natl-security-says-Salanitri>
:

"For Menendez now to be calling for a man like al-Megrahi to be put back in
[prison], after voting against sensible national-security measures all the
time he's been in the Senate, is the height of hypocrisy," says [RoseAnn]
Salanitri.

Salon's John Bohrer
explains<http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/07/16/tea_party_menendez_lockerbie/index.html>
what
these "sensible national security measures" were [ed. note: link to Bohrer
piece was broken at time of writing, try War Room main page as
alternative<http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html>
]:

The self-proclaimed constitutional purists are upset that Menendez and other
senators refused to give the federal government greater surveillance powers.

Riiiight. Remember, this is a movement opposed to "big government" and
"tyranny."
--
Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co