{"id":26592,"date":"2017-11-30T20:47:13","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T20:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26592"},"modified":"2022-04-19T20:45:20","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T20:45:20","slug":"bad-behavior-claims-another-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26592","title":{"rendered":"Bad behavior claims another one"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

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Now it’s Joe Barton who’s bailing out of the U.S. House of Representatives.<\/p>\n

Barton is a Republican from Ennis who reportedly sent some nasty pictures of himself over Twitter while he was engaged in a relationship with a “mature, adult woman.” The scorn poured over him. Barton, the senior member of the Texas congressional delegation, hung tough for a little while.<\/p>\n

Then he announced his retirement, effective at the end of his current term in 2018.<\/p>\n

Barton had to go. His departure should not be a surprise to anyone. The mood across the country has revealed a diminishing tolerance for public officeholders’ lewd behavior. Barton, of course, was careful to explain that the recipient of the hideous pictures was engaged in a consensual relationship with him.<\/p>\n

Fine, congressman. Hit the road, will ya?<\/p>\n

Barton is just the latest in a long list of Texas lawmakers who are calling it quits. His announcement, to no one’s surprise, contains no mention of the trouble he brought onto himself.<\/p>\n

Read more about Barton’s announcement\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

With the departure of the Texas congressional delegation’s dean, the longest-serving member from Texas is Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, who took office in January 1993.<\/p>\n

And, hey, that means the Panhandle’s GOP House member, Mac Thornberry of Clarendon, who was sworn in just two years later, in January 1995, becomes the No. 2-ranked tenured member of the delegation.<\/p>\n

I mention that only because Thornberry was elected in that 1994 Republican wave that ran on the Contract With America, a lengthy platform of government reforms that included term limits for members of the U.S. House and Senate. Thornberry has voted for term-limit amendments to the U.S. Constitution whenever they were presented to House members; they just haven’t gotten the votes needed to be referred to state legislatures for ratification.<\/p>\n

And, no … he never made a personal pledge to bow out after three terms in the House.<\/p>\n

I just thought I would bring it up because it seems oddly relevant.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now it’s Joe Barton who’s bailing out of the U.S. House of Representatives. Barton is a Republican from Ennis who reportedly sent some nasty pictures of himself over Twitter while he was engaged in a relationship with a “mature, adult woman.” The scorn poured over him. Barton, the senior member of the Texas congressional delegation, … Continue reading Bad behavior claims another one<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14,18],"tags":[1112,1941,7423,2849,4234,6321],"class_list":["post-26592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-political-news","category-state-news","tag-congress","tag-gop","tag-joe-barton","tag-mac-thornberry","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-texas-congressional-delegation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26592"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51266,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26592\/revisions\/51266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}