Wed: Republican'ts Who Sold Their Souls For Nothing:

Tiny Dots

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on tiny quantum dots.

Moungi Bawendi, of MIT, Louis Brus, of Columbia University, and Alexei Ekimov, of Nanocrystals Technology Inc., were honored for their work with the tiny particles that are just a few atoms in diameter and whose electrons have constrained movement. This effects how they absorb and release visible light, allowing for very bright colors. They are used in many electronics, like LED displays.

“These tiny particles have unique properties and now spread their light from television screens and LED lamps. They catalyze chemical reactions and their clear light can illuminate tumor tissue for a surgeon,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced the award in Stockholm.

Born to Be Corrupt

If the man who slammed down the gavel on Kevin McCarthy’s time as speaker seems unfamiliar, that’s not surprising. Despite two decades in the House, Rep. Patrick McHenry has a record remarkably unblemished by anything resembling accomplishment. His entire career seems to consist of keeping a safely Republican seat occupied and generally being a rude little snot.

Though he’s been in Congress since he was 29, the closest McHenry has previously come to holding any position of power was a stint as chief deputy whip for the Republican Party in 2015. Until he appeared at McCarthy’s elbow as a reliable sidekick during both McCarthy’s 15-round effort to capture the office and his got-it-in-one effort to be booted out, it’s doubtful that many had noted McHenry’s presence. But then, the new House speaker pro tempore is easy to overlook, both literally and metaphorically.

However, McHenry seems to have established that he loves payday lenders, hates gay people, and is consistently rude to everyone. It’ll be a wonder if Republicans don’t love him.

In his long tenure in the House, McHenry is mostly known for an incident in 2008 where he paid a visit to the “green zone” in Baghdad, then posted a video that showed him pointing out U.S. facilities. That video included filming the path of an incoming rocket that missed its target. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, after McHenry’s video was posted, a second rocket attack was more successful, killing two American soldiers. The Pentagon asked McHenry to take the video down and not air it again.

That Winston-Salem Journal article also notes that even then, McHenry was “perhaps known best for his bulldog efforts to tweak the Democratic leadership in the House.” By which they mean he was rude before being rude became the primary definition of Republican. That included a 2011 incident in which McHenry accused Sen. Elizabeth Warren of lying about a 15=minute move in the schedule of a meeting that had been approved by his own staff.

In the Warren incident, McHenry was so sneeringly awful that others present at the meeting apologized to Warren for his behavior. McHenry did not apologize. It was incidents such as this that caused Salon to introduce him as “the rudest, most shameless College Republican in Congress.” That article points out that one of McHenry’s first moves on arriving in the House was to vote in favor of an end to ethics rules, declares that he was “born to be cheerfully corrupt,” and that he had his first job at a “truly insidious conservative astroturfing/push-polling/communications firm.” Not much has changed since then.