Meet the new Senator from Oklahoma From Daily Kos: The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee meets in their Committee room. The members are listening to testimony on child care. Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the Committee Chairman, is presiding. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a Committee member, is the antagonist. The other players include Cheryl Morman – President of the Virginia Alliance for Family Child Care Associations — who is there to testify, as well as others from the early education community. The dialogue It is Mullin’s time to ask questions. You can find the video HERE. He starts by sniping at Sanders. In class, Mullin would have been penalized for using the ad hominem fallacy. Whatever Sanders may or may not be is irrelevant to the quality of the argument Mullin will make with his subsequent questions. Note: It will be an argument and not a search for the truth because this is politics, and the truth is its first victim. Mullin also trots out the straw man fallacy. He says that Sanders is a socialist because Bernie says he is a Democrat [sic] Socialist in his book. The two political philosophies are not the same, despite the similarity in names. Claiming they are, is the same as saying that a koala bear is a bear, even though a bear is more closely related to a killer whale (NB it is not a whale) than a koala. Thomas Jefferson belonged to the Democratic-Republican Party and was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Mullin…