Over the course of five years in Congress, Rep. Steven Palazzo (R) of Mississippi has maintained a relatively low profile. He’s offered a spirited defense of the Confederate flag, and he opposed emergency disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy victims while supporting it for his home state, but in general, the far-right congressman hasn’t developed much of a national profile.
That may soon change. TPM reported this afternoon:
Staunch gun rights advocate Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) introduced a resolution on Wednesday to “censure and condemn” President Barack Obama over his newly announced executive actions on gun control.“For seven years, the President has gradually expanded his powers through executive overreach,” the Mississippi lawmaker wrote in a statement published on his website. “His actions this week to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens is just the latest, if not most egregious, violation of the separation of powers found in the United States Constitution.”
The congressman’s statement is online here, but it does not include any explanation of why Obama’s executive actions on gun policy — actions the NRA said do not actually do anything of significance — “take away” anyone’s constitutional rights.
Palazzo should probably work on this a bit before Congress takes the historic step of officially condemning a sitting president for modest, incremental administrative tweaks to existing gun laws.
The resolution itself, which does not yet have a formal bill number, is also online. It’s quite a colorful indictment, accusing President Obama of:
* failing to “faithfully execute the office of the president”;
* failing to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution”;
* failing to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”;
* implementing “unconstitutional executive actions without congressional consideration”;
* and depriving citizens “of their constitutionally-mandated right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.”
None of this is even remotely true — in fact, it’s all quite silly, really — but it’ll be interesting to see if House Republican leaders choose to take the resolution seriously.
Update: After publishing, the resolution picked up a bill number and 12 co-sponsors.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."