Here’s what happened
(WTOP) A man armed with a baseball bat showed up at the Fairfax, Virginia, office of Rep. Gerry Connolly Monday morning, asked for the congressman and then attacked two staffers.
The U.S. Capitol Police identified the man as 49-year-old Xuan Kha Tran Pham, of Fairfax. He is facing charges of one count of aggravated malicious wounding and one count of malicious wounding.
They do not know what his motives one, but, apparently, he was known to local police. Reports say he had never been violent. But, the police knew who he was? For what? His father states he was schizophrenic and had dealt with mental illness since his late teens. He supposedly attacked a woman in her car with the bat three minutes earlier but 5 miles away from the office, which really doesn’t make sense. Anyhow, he damaged a bunch of the office, but, haven’t we been told by Democrats that it “is just property”?
Last month, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger testified before lawmakers that the number of threats against members of Congress has increased roughly 400% over the past six years.
I don’t condone it, but, maybe Congress should consider doing their jobs better. Perhaps they should also forgo all their racebaiting, demonizing people who do not agree with them, crazy talk, authoritarian impulses.
Security fears flare anew in Congress after an attack on one of their own
Congressional staff and lawmakers are on edge, once again, in the aftermath of a violent Monday attack that targeted the district office of Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly.
The incident, which sent a longtime Connolly aide and an intern to the hospital, has lent urgency to members’ continued concerns about their safety outside the Capitol’s heavily patrolled perimeter.
What is the perimeter patrolled with? What makes it safe?
Ahead of the slated Tuesday release of the House’s legislative-branch spending bill, which will lay out funding levels for Capitol Police and other security measures, lawmakers are again discussing what — if any — level of protection would make them feel truly safe.
The bill is expected to boost funding for the Capitol Police, in line with more than a decade of annual increases lawmakers have reliably delivered to the department. As threats and fears rise, lawmakers hope that a steady stream of cash can insulate them from growing threats.
What will the cash bring to the table to offer more protection?
Yet aides on both sides of the aisle described themselves as “freaked out” and “uneasy” after news of Monday’s attack spread and details emerged about the baseball bat wielding assailant asking for Connolly by name. The lawmaker himself said he was “mobbed on the floor by Republicans and Democrats who easily related to what happened to me.”
“We don’t have the kind of security we have up here at the Capitol, at the district level,” Connolly said in a Monday night interview. “Many of our offices are in malls or office buildings, and so you don’t have any kind of sophisticated protection or security screening. And so I think we’re going to have to really talk about that.”
It’s so strange that they want security for themselves and their staffs. On the grounds of the Capitol Building and at the Congressional office buildings they have quite a bit of, you guessed it, armed security. People who are carrying weapons with extended magazines and “assault rifles”, some of which are fully automatic. Things they want banned for ordinary citizens. And now they want, without saying it specifically, armed security for their offices. Because they are freaked out and uneasy.
“I am very, very concerned about the normalization of political violence, particularly by leaders who should know better,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) said in an interview on Monday night. “We should all be condemning political violence wherever it occurs.”
Democrats weren’t particularly concerned when Rep. Steve Scalise was shot along with four others, by an unhinged Democratic Party supporter. They laughed when Senator Rand Paul was attacked by a neighbor. And Democrats do not care about the rising levels of crime in their cities and states for the peasants. They want to take away their ability to protect themselves. But, when the Political Class is attacked, well, things have to change, right?
Read: Congress And Their Staffs Are Very Concerned Over Security »