Republicans agree that Loretta Lynch is a solid choice for Attorney General. You might infer that her nomination would be confirmed easily after the requisite committee hearings because she is so solid even Rupert Murdoch can't say bad things about her.
You'd be wrong. There will be hearings, and the scheduled witnesses come from the far right fringe, with one exception.
Here are your Loretta Lynch witnesses: True the Vote's champion vote suppressor Catherine Engelbrecht, Benghazi truther Sharyl Attkisson, and Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke. They added constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley in there, too, though he's no prize when it comes to the Affordable Care Act.
But let's talk about the first three. Catherine Engelbrecht will be there to whine about the IRS and how meeeean they were to her, I'm sure. She will demand that all voter suppression tactics continue and that voting rights investigations cease.
Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of the fraudulent Republican "voter fraud" group calling themselves True the Vote, is also scheduled to be called as a witness. Last September, as Dave Weigel notes at Bloomberg, when AG Eric Holder announced his intention to resign after a replacement was confirmed, Engelbrecht accused Holder of having carried out a "radical, racialist assault on voting rights."
That's her opinion, of course, but for her own sake, given her group's hilarious track record of failure, prevarication and complete fabrication, the GOP may not want to force this woman to be sworn in before she testifies on Wednesday...
Sharyl Attkisson should be familiar to all of you who stop here for your Daily Wingnut. She's an anti-vaxxer and Benghazi truther who lost her job at CBS after she fabricated a story that colleague Lara Logan then reported on 60 Minutes.
And finally, we come to Sheriff Richard A. Clarke. Our new Republican overlords are now legitimizing far right wingers like this guy by inviting him to testify at the Lynch hearings.
Clarke is a darling of the NRA who has called publicly for citizens to arm themselves so they can take care of trouble before police show up. His response to Ferguson was to blame it all on Obama.
Clarke often engages in inflammatory rhetoric and has been honored as sheriff of the year by far-right fringe group Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). In 2013, Clarke made an appearance on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' radio show in which he addressed Jones' claim that "analysts" he talks to "think that the Obama Marxist types want to start a civil war in this country" by confiscating guns. Clarke responded, in part, "I believe that if somebody tried to enforce something of that magnitude, you would see the second coming of an American Revolution, the likes of which would make the first revolution pale by comparison."
Then there's Jonathan Turley, who has been very helpful in pushing the Burwell theory about subsidies in front of the United States Supreme Court. He isn't insane like the other three, but he certainly seems to have a grudge against people needing health care.
These are the people invited to testify before the Senate considers confirming Loretta Lynch, a candidate who is well-qualified to succeed Eric Holder. Why didn't they just invite Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Ted Nugent?
