To Senator Roger Marshall

Let's Talk Basketball 🏀

Dear Senator Marshall,

We’re writing to you today to discuss something sacred: the Kansas Jayhawks — specifically, the basketball program. You know, that elite, tradition-soaked institution of athletic discipline, strategy, and rule-following that has brought honor to the state you “serve” while you live in a Florida McMansion.

And we bring it up not because we think you’ve ever dribbled a ball in your life — we know that’s asking a lot — but because someone needs to explain to you how rules work. Because your recent tantrum about the Senate Parliamentarian makes it embarrassingly clear that you either skipped civics class, or you think you can yell “deep state” at a shot clock and make it disappear.

You said, and we quote:

“It’s 2025 during reconciliation, and we need to again fire the Senate Parliamentarian.”

Roger. You absolute blundering elbow to democracy’s face. You want to fire the referee mid-game because you didn’t like her call? That’s not just anti-democratic — that’s anti-Jayhawk. That’s like demanding the NCAA overturn a travel violation because your player was “expressing himself economically.” It's like demanding the basket be moved ten feet closer because your team’s shots keep clanging off the backboard like your policies do off reality.

Let’s break this down in a language you might understand: Elizabeth MacDonough is the Senate’s referee. She doesn’t care which team wins. She doesn’t wear blue or red. She wears black and white. And when your team tried to full-on sprint through the Capitol carrying a flaming dumpster labeled “budget bill” — she blew the whistle. Because the Byrd Rule exists for the same reason double-dribble penalties exist: so the game doesn't become a goddamn farce.

But you don't want rules. You want to stuff a bill with Medicaid restrictions, land seizures, gender-based healthcare bans, and ideological hate-fueled garbage, then call it “fiscal policy” and demand it get fast-tracked like it's a chicken-fried stimulus. And when you get caught? When the Parliamentarian — a career rules expert with more constitutional literacy in her left eyebrow than your entire caucus — tells you “this doesn’t qualify”? Your response is to demand she be fired?

You’re not a lawmaker at this point. You’re an authoritarian toddler in orthopedic cowboy boots, stomping your feet and crying because someone told you the scoreboard still matters.

And let’s talk about Robert Byrd, since you seem to think throwing his rule out with the rest of your legislative integrity is a good idea. Byrd was a man who began in shame — as a segregationist and Klan member — and spent decades crawling his way back to moral ground. He evolved. He apologized. He transformed into one of the most principled defenders of the Senate’s institutional integrity. In contrast, you took a Hippocratic oath and now treat healthcare like it's a punchline in a Koch brothers roast. Byrd grew. You calcified.

You’re not just failing your office, Senator — you’re embarrassing Kansas. You’re dragging the name of a state known for basketball excellence, abolitionist courage, and constitutional backbone into the mud so you can appease a mango-colored demagogue who thinks reconciliation is a dating app.

And make no mistake — this is all about power. You’re mad because Elizabeth MacDonough stopped you from jumping over democracy like a drunk mascot with a trampoline. She did her job. You tried to cheat. And now you want the referee removed so you can rewrite the rules in real-time and call it “liberty.”

Newsflash: real liberty has rules.

So no, Roger. You don’t fire the Parliamentarian mid-game. You don’t change the court dimensions because you missed your layup. And you don’t get to claim constitutional high ground while swinging a legislative axe at Medicaid, reproductive rights, and public land protections.

You got called for traveling — because you traveled. You double-dribbled on policy, fouled out on logic, and now you're crying in the locker room because the person keeping the game honest had the courage to tell you "no."

Get over it. Learn the rules. Or better yet — retire and let someone who actually understands the game take your seat.

Sincerely,
Closer to the Edge

P.S. Next time you invoke the Jayhawks, wash your mouth out first. You're not worthy to whisper “Allen Fieldhouse,” let alone represent the state it stands in.

P.P.S. And one more thing, Roger — since you are a doctor, let’s talk about malpractice. If a surgeon walked into the OR with a chainsaw, blindfolded himself, and started hacking at Medicaid, Planned Parenthood, and gender-affirming care while shouting about reconciliation loopholes, he’d be stripped of his license and escorted out in cuffs. But you? You put on a Senate pin and call it policy.

You took the Hippocratic Oath and turned it into a bumper sticker — one you slapped on the back of a hearse filled with uninsured patients you helped abandon. Your whole “country doctor” persona doesn’t mean squat if your real legacy is gutting healthcare to please a spray-tanned narcissist with a vendetta against poor people and queer kids.

You don’t get to wield a stethoscope like a prop while advocating policies that would get actual doctors disbarred, disgraced, or sued into oblivion. Your oath said “do no harm.” And yet here you are — helping write the playbook for systemic cruelty with the enthusiasm of a man who mistook healing for handcuffs.

If there’s anything left of that medical conscience, you might want to check its pulse. Because from where we’re standing, it flatlined somewhere around your third Fox News hit.

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