WASHINGTON (Rooters agency) – “Who does he think he is?” demanded House Speaker John “Stone Age” Bomber. “If he’s the Pope, why does he want to be talking about the real world?”
With these words, Bomber concluded the debate, after which the House of Representatives voted to establish the House Unappealing Activities Committee (HUAC), with a mandate to “expose badness masquerading as goodness” by questioning, ridiculing, slandering and hopefully jailing for contempt anyone who threatens to discredit “the political opinions of the duly elected Congressional majority.”
The motion passed on a party line vote, all the professed Catholics and fundamentalist Christians voting in favor and everyone else against.
A number of Congress members told Rooters that the House had been looking to create HUAC for a long time, but that the visit of the Pope had provided the necessary impetus. Some said that they thought the Pope’s speeches mentioning climate change and poverty had crossed the boundary of the United States’ traditional separation between the state and religious ideas that might infringe on someone’s profits.
Many politicians, inside and outside the House of Representatives, found it particularly inappropriate that the Pope called for action on climate change, which is a question of science, which is inferior to faith, and they had faith that there was no need to do anything as long as the fuel corporation campaign contributions continued to arrive regularly.
Catholic presidential candidate Governor Rick Risky said: “The Pope should stay out of politics. He is infallible on morals, but he doesn’t have my practical political understanding of how to pay back your enemies.”
Another Catholic and presidential candidate, Senator Mark Arboreal, agreed: “The pope, as an individual, also has political opinions. And those, of course, we are free to disagree with if they have any connection with real problems.”
The newly created HUAC is expected to hold hearings as quickly as possible, before it’s too late to influence the 2016 elections. Insiders say that the committee is likely hear from CIA and FBI agents implanted in the Church, who will testify as to its undemocratic and hierarchical structure. It will then ask for testimony from the Pope on the adequacy or otherwise of safeguards against ballot fraud in his own election.
In case the Pope declines to testify, Speaker Bomber’s office is reported to be looking into the possibility of a subpoena, and into the legalities of requesting extradition by Italy if a subpoena is not honored.
Some in the Congressional majority want to take the questions further. One Congressman offended by the Pope’s comments, who is a possible appointee to the new committee, put it this way: “I want to make him swear on the Bible that he’s not an eco-communist Muslim. Like the President.”
That is probably regarded as an immoderate view even by many of the members of the House who voted to create HUAC. But members on both sides of the aisle tend to agree that something needs to be done to stamp out the idea that there should be any connection whatsoever between morality and politics or government.
News From Somewhere 