The Diddly Awards

The Aaron Burr Award for Constitutional Devotion

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Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) lost his temper during a summer hearing on the Patriot Act. In the midst of sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, he denounced the proceedings as “irrelevant” and angrily gaveled the meeting closed, in violation of the “unanimous consent” rule. As the floor erupted with protests from witnesses and opposition party members, Sensenbrenner’s staff turned off the microphones and then walked out.

Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who, as House speaker, is ultimately responsible for forcing Rep. John Conyers into a basement room described as a “large closet” to hold hearings on the Downing Street Memos. During the time that Conyers called witnesses to testify, Hastert scheduled 11 floor votes to keep members from attending.

Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) exploded with so much rage at Democrats who earlier this year had decided to prevent a judicial nominee from coming to a vote by employing the filibuster—a parliamentary maneuver that is more than 160 years old—that he compared the Dems to Nazis: “It’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, ‘I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me? How dare you bomb my city? It’s mine.’”

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) leaped into the verbal assault of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who’s recently angered Republicans to the point that some have begun calling for his impeachment, by noting that one of Kennedy’s high crimes and misdemeanors was that “he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous.”

WINNER! Rick Santorum, for explaining to television interviewer Barry Nolan that America’s “entire culture” was focused on something that was “harming America.” Reaching for just the right words, Santorum boasted of his knowledge of “our founding documents” before hitting upon the precise phrase to describe what is destroying the land: “the pursuit of happiness.”

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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