It was bad enough that the only Capitol Police allowed to testify at this week's January 6 Commission hearing were disgruntled members of the force, one of whom has a long record of anti-Trump statements and support for Black Lives Matter riots. We have also learned that the Capitol Police are opening offices in Florida and California, the better to investigate potential threats against legislators, which is normally the job of the FBI.

Now Nancy Pelosi is ordering Capitol Police to arrest anyone in the complex who refuses to wear a mask -- a penalty more severe than any that is imposed anywhere in the nation on anybody.

Pelosi has long been a petty tyrant. She centralized power in her office during her first tenure as Speaker (2007-11), infamously passing Obamacare before anyone really knew what was in it. When she regained the Speaker's gavel, she insisted that she was co-equal to President Donald Trump, whom she also impeached, twice, on flimsy grounds. She used proxy voting -- not just to fend off the coronavirus, but to centralize power even further. Since President Joe Biden took office, she has lorded it over the opposition, despite losing seats in the last election. She has kicked Republicans off committees, undermining the legitimacy of the opposition, and now she wants to arrest people who dare not to wear masks, even though they may be vaccinated. If masks work so well, then someone else not wearing one is not really a major additional risk, is it?

I believe masks do work, but I would deliberately not wear one in Congress, if I were working there. Let them arrest me. Civil disobedience to this tyrant is absolutely necessary and long overdue.

But beyond the issue of masks, what we see happening is the deliberate politicization of the Capitol Police into a praetorian guard -- the one police force Democrats want to valorize, since it protects the elite politicians against the voting rabble. This damage will take a long time to undo.