Killing The Messenger Dept: Somehow going still lower, Republicans - aka "you absolute fucking pieces of shit" - just hauled Dr. Anthony Fauci into a Senate hearing to charge the guy who saved three million lives with "sabotaging" a dog heartworm pill, wanting to be a megalomanic "sun god," destroying "Americans' trust in their government" and probs being "responsible for this entire pandemic." In response, Fauci, "the man they cannot forgive for being right," declined to answer any of their "questions."

Wednesday's hearing, born of a GOP so desperate they've resorted to, "Ok, but remember the pandemic?", offered more dismal proof that bowdlerizing science remains a vital right-wing tactic, and Fauci - a Cornell-trained, 85-year-old immunologist and infectious disease specialist who spent over 50 years in public service - its main punching bag. Fauci served almost 40 years as head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid) under seven U.S. presidents, from Reagan, who hired him, to George H. W. Bush, who cited him when asked to name someone he admired, to George W., who gave him a Presidential Medal of Freedom and asked him to design the historically successful AIDS relief program PEPFAR, which saved more than 25 million lives, mostly of poor people in Africa.

In the 1980s, HIV/AIDS was one of multiple public health crises largely afflicting marginalized populations, along with Ebola and a first coronavirus, that Fauci confronted with grace and courage. "AIDS arrived attached to a despised population," notes one observer. "Fauci did not look away." He redirected research toward what was then deemed a plague "when it was neither safe nor popular," and when furious, screaming, ill AIDS activists stormed his office, he invited them in, listened to them, decided they were at least partly right and expedited clinical trials so patients could get quicker access to experimental drugs. Fierce AIDS activist Larry Kramer, who once called Fauci "an incompetent murderer," years later called him "the only true and great hero" among government officials of the time.

This week's hearing, called and convened under subpoena by rabid gadfly and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, was billed as an investigation into the origins of COVID, a legit scientific question that to some extent remains unresolved. For years, MAGA has chosen to blame an accidental "lab leak" from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Paul has devoted much of his otherwise less-than-memorable political career to arguing, according to that theory, that Dr. Fauci “could be responsible for this entire pandemic” - because NIH once provided the Institute with a sub-grant. Most virologists and other health experts say it was more likely caused by the occasional "spillover event" of a virus jumping from an infected animal to a human, arguing the “preponderance” of evidence points to that natural origin.

Public health officials have stepped up to protest the government's “vilification and harassment" of American scientists,” and a group of 155 scientists wrote an open letter dismissing bizarre MAGA charges against Fauci - he covered up the origins of his own research, bribed or others to join him, holds patents on vaccines, is working with bad actors to suppress the awful truth - as "baseless...No credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges." Still, Paul's office spent last weekend dumping over 1,100 pages of Fauci’s private “diary” online; after blowback, they took them down, made redactions and reposted them. Inadvertently or no, they left in Fauci's various descriptions of Trump as “rambling,” “crazy,” “bumbling,” “incompetent,” “an idiot” and “truly an obnoxious adolescent.”

In a somber preamble, Fauci noted that over the decades he has testified, willingly and under oath, hundreds of times before Congress. He went on, "Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government," following the advice of his attorneys he would invoke the Fifth and "refrain from answering your questions." He also blasted Paul's "unhinged obsession" with him. Then, dozens of times over the next infuriating hours, he intoned, "On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.“ Later, one expert noted his carefully neutral body language during the ordeal: "He is refusing to participate in the confrontation beyond what is legally required.”

Paul quickly grew agitated by Fauci's calm stream of........

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