I realize things on Capitol Hill have changed since I worked there 50 years ago; still, I know a bad idea when I hear one.
Earlier this week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) introduced a bill in the House to award the Congressional Gold Medal to Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager found innocent of killing two and injuring one during a 2020 Black Lives Matter riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
"Kyle Rittenhouse deserves to be remembered as a hero who defended his community, protected businesses, and acted lawfully in the face of lawlessness. I’m proud to file this legislation to award Kyle Rittenhouse a Congressional Gold Medal," Greene reported. To date, her bill has no co-sponsors.
The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest honor Congress can award an individual or institution. If you want my opinion, the medal should go to American heroes like Mike Malone and three of his Treasury Department colleagues. They were the ones, not Eliot Ness, who broke the back of Al Capone's nefarious business empire during the 1920s and early '30s.
How did they do it? For one, Malone, who passed himself off as a hoodlum from Pennsylvania, ended up living next door to Capone's body guard in Chicago for 18 months. His daily notes about the gangster's lavish spending were so detailed, Malone and his fellow agents became known as "The Fathers of Forensic Accounting." That's a far cry from a teenager armed with an AR-15.
The notion of awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to young Rittenhouse isn't just a bad idea, it is absurd. Then, again, it is being proposed by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
-DF
Congressional Gold Medal honoring Women Airforce Service Pilots during W.W. II