Tales of Hoffman: Unsweet tweet may meet ethics complaint fate

Bluestem has been following the rise of freshman senator Gretchen Hoffman with some interest, ever since I discovered that the yarn entrepreneur seems to have near-mystical insights into the effects of Minnesota's tax system on business relocation. Indeed, her family's firm in North Dakota was forced to stay in North Dakota, where it had always been.

But tonight's story is startling, even by the standards of the Vergas yarn peddler who vowed to protect the gun rights of the gays she doesn't want marrying. (No word on her thoughts about Cheez It box privileges yet).

PIM and the Strib have the story. PIM's Briana Bierschbach reports in Goodwin may file ethics complaint over tweet:

DFL Sen. Barb Goodwin may file an ethics complaint over a tweet from GOP Sen. Gretchen Hoffman during a debate on the Health and Humans Services budget bill.

In the midst of a heated and emotional debate, Goodwin rose on the floor to read off names people have called those with mental illnesses. Following her speech, Hoffman sent out a tweet saying Goodwin had called people with mental illnesses “idiots.”

“Sen Goodwin just called people with mental illness- idiots and imbeciles- while debating HHS bill,” the freshman senator from Vergas tweeted. Senate communications head Michael Brodkorb repeated the tweet on his own account.

The Strib reports in A tweet causes complaint on the Senate floor:

But Sen. Barb Goodwin, DFL-Columbia Heights, didn't. Instead, she disparagingly read on the Senate floor what people with mental illness used to be called. When informed of the tweet, Goodwin rose to her feet on the Senate floor to complain.

"This goes beyond the Pale. This is an ethics violation in my opinion," a shaking Goodwin said. "She totally understood what I said....This is beyond politics. This is just plain mean spirited."

Hot Dish has requested a response from Hoffman, and Senate staffer Michael Brodkorb, who repeated the message from Hoffman.

Update 5/19: Rachel Stassen Berger now reports that Senator acknowledges, but doesn't apologize for, Twitter upset. Read the comments; while the peanut gallery at the Strib tends to be heaily conservative, the comments today are running well against Hoffman and her talking points puppetmaster Michael Brodkorb. A sample:

zinovyMay 19, 119:29 am

Funny. Sen. Gretchen Hoffman is proud to display on her Twitter account, "Christian Conservative." Perhaps she overlooked the "bearing false witness" commandment in the bible. It's easy to overlook. After all, there are ten of them.

Perhaps Hoffman is merely a literalist, and since Israel in 4 BC had no mass communications (or the twitter), and there's nothing about cell phones in the good book, it's a-okay to do this sort of thing in Hoffman's "Christian Conservative" worldview. Sweet Baby Jesus in a corn crib, bless her little heart. [end update].

Here's a Youtube of Goodwin's remarks. It's obvious from the clip that Hoffman outdid even herself this time in foolishness: