Research­ing a class paper on the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act, years ago in upper floors of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame’s Hes­burgh Library — around a cor­ner from its “Touch­down Jesus” mur­al — I acquired a cou­ple of per­son­al heroes who rep­re­sent­ed our coun­try” bet­ter angels.”

They were Rep­re­sen­ta­tive William McCul­loch of Ohio, rank­ing Repub­li­can on the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, and senior Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dick Bolling of Mis­souri. Bolling was strate­gist as the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act was marked up in com­mit­tee. Along with fel­low Repub­li­can mem­bers Charles “Mac” Math­ias of Mary­land and John V. Lind­say of New York, McCul­loch insist­ed the bill con­tain a strong guar­an­tee of pub­lic accommodations.

McCul­loch was, in Pres­i­dent Lyn­don Johnson’s words, “the most impor­tant and pow­er­ful force” in get­ting a meaty bill.

The Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, near­ly six­ty years lat­er, could be cit­ed as proof that Dar­win was wrong. Its Repub­li­can ranks are dom­i­nat­ed by the most extreme ultra MAGA Repub­li­cans, with the pan­el chaired by the nasty, shout­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive  Jim Jor­dan, also of Ohio.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene, D‑Washington, found her­self con­fronting the extrem­ists some years back when Judi­cia­ry cre­at­ed a “spe­cial sub­com­mit­tee’ to probe alle­ga­tions that Planned Par­ent­hood was deal­ing in body parts of for­mer fetus­es. The “evi­dence con­sist­ed of heav­i­ly spliced edit­ed tapes made in secret record­ings by Project Ver­i­tas and far-right dirty trick­ster James O’Keefe.

The pan­el was chaired by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (now Sen­a­tor) Mar­sha Black­burn, her­self a deal­er in mis­in­for­ma­tion and disinformation.

The Repub­li­cans, back in nar­row con­trol, con­vened a hear­ing Thurs­day to talk about “Weaponiza­tion of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment.” They pro­duced as wit­ness a ringer, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the anti-vaxxer con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist who is chal­leng­ing Pres­i­dent Biden for the 2024 Demo­c­ra­t­ic nomination.

RFK Jr., was giv­en a nation­al plat­form to com­plain about TV net­works, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and COVID-19 vac­cines. No fam­i­ly mem­bers accom­pa­nied him: The Kennedy clan has repu­di­at­ed his the­o­ries, and even Kennedy’s lat­est wife says she dis­agrees with him. Instead, his back­up was ex-Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Den­nis Kucinich, who was ger­ry­man­dered out of his House seat but then signed by Rupert Mod­och’s FNC as a left­ist foil. Kucinich is man­ag­ing Kennedy’s campaign.

The pur­pose of the hear­ing was to have Kennedy car­ry the torch for the polit­i­cal right, and he was hap­py to oblige. He came through with a litany of their favorite tar­gets, from the mass media to big tech com­pa­nies. He declared him­self the vic­tim of “mal­in­for­ma­tion” by a sin­is­ter alliance of gov­ern­ment offi­cials and tech giants. Face­book and Insta­gram, in 2022, restrict­ed the accounts of Kennedy’s front group, the Children’s Health Alliance, on grounds of misinformation.

More than one hun­dred House Democ­rats signed a let­ter last week­end urg­ing Repub­li­cans to yank their invite for Kennedy to appear. They cit­ed remarks by REFK, Jr., at a New York fundrais­er in which he said – with­out evi­dence – that the COVID-19 virus was “tar­get­ed to attack Cau­casians and Black peo­ple” while “the peo­ple who are most immune are Ashke­nazi (Euro­pean) Jews and Chinese.”

He sug­gest­ed groups had been “delib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed” and spec­u­lat­ed that Chi­nese sci­en­tists are devel­op­ing “eth­nic bioweapons… so we can tar­get peo­ple by race.”

On a par­ty line vote, com­mit­tee Repub­li­cans vot­ed down a motion by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz, D‑Florida, to end the hear­ing and go into exec­u­tive ses­sion. Kennedy was left free to vent, and repeat­ed­ly, shame­less­ly iden­ti­fy him­self with his father and uncle Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy – and also Thomas Jef­fer­son, Amer­i­ca’s third president.

“You are here for cyn­i­cal rea­sons to be used by that side of the aisle to embar­rass the cur­rent Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States: You’re an enabler of that effort and it brings shame on a sto­ried name that I revere,” Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ger­ry Con­nol­ly, D‑Virginia, told RFK, Jr.

Once an achiev­ing envi­ron­men­tal lawyer – he direct­ed efforts to clean up New York waters – Kennedy has gone off the deep end.

He has likened the suf­fer­ing of unvac­ci­nat­ed Amer­i­cans to vic­tims of the Holo­caust, and evoked com­par­isons with Anne Frank. (He did lat­er apologize.)

He has even spec­u­lat­ed that chem­i­cals in water turn kids transgender.

Kennedy has repeat­ed­ly pushed a now-debunked study, pub­lished in and lat­er retract­ed by The Lancet, which claimed that mer­cury in com­mon vac­cines caused an increase in child­hood autism.

Our Wash­ing­ton last saw RFK, Jr., in 2019. The state had expe­ri­enced a measles out­break in South­west Wash­ing­ton, large­ly among unvac­ci­nat­ed Russ­ian emi­gree chil­dren. The Leg­is­la­ture took up a bill to remove personal/philosophical exemp­tions from school vac­ci­na­tion requirements.

Kennedy spun his con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries at a hear­ing crowd­ed with anti-vaxxers. The leg­is­la­tion passed, but with near-unan­i­mous Repub­li­can opposition.

Hav­ing spent years cov­er­ing RFK Jr’s per­son­al life in sala­cious detail, the Mur­doch media have turned into his cheerleaders.

RFK Jr. left Thursday’s hear­ing for an appear­ance on FNC.

Sean Han­ni­ty has him booked for a “town hall” next Tues­day. He has made com­mon cause with Lau­ra Ingra­ham denounc­ing U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Oth­er signs he is a Repub­li­can ringer? One Jason Boles is list­ed as trea­sur­er of the Kennedy super PAC called “Heal the Divide.” Democ­rats point­ed out at the hear­ing that Boles is also list­ed in FEC fil­ings as trea­sur­er of com­mit­tees for Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene, Lau­re Boe­bert and George San­tos, and that he was involved in Her­schel Walker’s Sen­ate cam­paign in Georgia.

The Kennedy fam­i­ly has spo­ken out in sor­row and anguish. Ker­ry Kennedy has described RFK Jr’s remarks on COVID as “deplorable and untruthful.”

His nephew, for­mer Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Joseph P. Kennedy III tweet­ed: “My uncle’s com­ments were hurt­ful and wrong.”

Jack Schloss­berg, a grand­son of our thir­ty-fifth pres­i­dent, was even blunter: “Trad­ing on Camelot, cel­e­brat­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and con­flict for per­son­al gain & fame… I’ve lis­tened to him, I know him, I have no idea why any­one thinks he should be pres­i­dent. What I do know is his can­di­da­cy is an embarrassment.”

As for our Com­man­der-in-Chief, the thir­ty-year-old Schloss­berg described our incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent as the country’s “great­est pro­gres­sive pres­i­dent we’ve ever had. Joe Biden shares my grandfather’s dream for Amer­i­ca that we do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

“Let’s not be dis­tract­ed again by somebody’s van­i­ty project.”