Doc Hastings News item
Doc Hastings Wants to Improve Endangered Species Act.
A long time goal of his, I suppose.  That and … um…

Sigh.

But here’s the big controversy Hastings is tangently parts of.

When award-winning West Virginia anti-coal activist Maria Gunnoe went to Washington, D.C. last week, she was prepared for obstructionist tactics. She was prepared to face icy stares and hard questions from Republican lawmakers. She was not prepared to be branded a pedophile.

On Friday, Gunnoe testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources in a hearing on the Obama administration’s contentious relationship with the coal mining industry. She had prepared a slideshow presentation that included a photograph by the photojournalist Katie Falkenberg depicting a nude young girl sitting in a bathtub filled with murky brown water. The photo was meant as a salient statement to legislators on the impact of coal mining on society’s most vulnerable. “We are forced to bathe our children in polluted water,” she said. “Or not bathe them.” […]

It was a point she never got to make: Shortly before she testified, Gunnoe was approached by staffers for Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) and told she had to remove the photo from her presentation. She complied, but after testifying was escorted into an empty side room by Capitol Police Special Agent Randall Hayden and questioned for nearly an hour about the photo, which she had gotten the approval of the photographer, the child’s parents, and Democratic committee members to use. Gunnoe said Hayden, whom she described as kind and professional, told her the committee believed the photo to be suggestive of child pornography, and that he would be following up on the possibility of her being involved in such illegal activity.

[…]

Committee Republican spokesperson Spencer Pederson said after Lamborn decided the photo was “inappropriate for committee use,” his staff, with the blessing of committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), contacted police to “apprise them of the situation.”

I’m pretty sure the idea is along the lines of a Vietnam War supporters crying foul at the photograph of the young Napalm victim
… or if you’re sympathetic to the the Hastings lead committee, perhaps some tactics by abortion protesters and PETA activists…

… except that the specific charge becomes more aligned with… oh… Tom Coburn’s objection to Schindler’s List broadcast.  Naked equals smut.  Even in grotesque situations.  The mind boggles.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2012 at 9:34 am and is filed under Doc Hastings and the 4th Congressional District of Wash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.