February 17, 2010 08:13 PM UTC

He's a Jerk, She's Hamming It Up

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels writes for The Spot:

Remedial bill reading, anyone? The suggestion [yesterday] raised the hackles of Rep. Amy Stephens.

The exchange between Stephens, a Monument Republican, and Rep. Jack Pommer, a Boulder Democrat, came as the two tangled over House Bill 1193, which would repeal the tax exemption for out-of-state retailers.

She wanted Pommer to explain the Senate amendments to the bill, and asked several times because she didn’t believe he had answered her questions.

“If you don’t understand the bill I would suggest you read it again. I think it is pretty self explanatory,” Pommer said. “If you don’t understand it, I suggest you ask for help. But I’m not here to do remedial reading.”

Stephens was furious and let Pommer know it.

“It’s absolutely uncalled for. It’s absolutely rude. And it’s a putdown in civility, sir,” she said.

Afteward, Stephens said she planned to write a letter to the speaker because she believed the comments were sexist…

Most people who know Rep. Jack Pommer will concede–at least when he’s not in earshot–that he is absolutely capable of being an asshole. We’ve heard enough stories about Pommer coming completely unglued on persons of either gender, though, that we don’t imagine for a moment this was a ‘sexist’ putdown–it’s just Pommer proudly displaying his inability to suffer fools gladly, which he would he done as abruptly to Mike May or anybody else. And if you haven’t noticed, things have been a little heated at the Capitol lately.

So, here’s our understanding of what happened: the bill Amy Stephens was claiming to “not understand” was, naturally, one of the tax exemption repeal bills that passed this week. Every one of these bills has been subject to over-the-top, drawn-out-to-the-limit obstruction attempts from the Republican caucus–this exchange occurred while the House was debating GOP motions to reject the amendments made by the the Senate and ship the bill back for still another round of debate, which had slightly less than a snowball’s chance in hell of happening.

After these exemption repeal bills have been debated and recriminated ad nauseum into the wee hours of the morning, and passed both houses, no legislator can plausibly claim to ‘not understand’ them–and Stephens was surely not going to hear anything that would change her “no” vote, was she? There’s nobody we’ve talked to who seriously thinks Stephens’ ignorance-feigning delay tactics were anything but exactly that. And once Pommer responded to Stephens’ lame, pedantic, repetitive requests with his trademark brusqueness, cries of “sexism?”

That’s just cheesy, and if you’re to take this seriously at all (we don’t, and based on this report few others do either), if anything she disrespected authentic victims.