The Hope Needle In The Depression Haystack

These are depressing times in the world. Super-rich investment bank CEOs won't get their multimillion-dollar bonus, Monaco doesn't have the scratch to build a giant artificial peninsula into the Mediterrenean Sea, and Jay Leno is moving to prime-time.

(That actually has a financial rationale too, it's going to save NBC about $13 million a week and cut hundreds of jobs on weekly dramas.)

I need to feel good about something. Come on, world, hit me!

OK, Larry Craig is still guilty. Fine, fun in a schadenfreude kind of way, but lacking in "the world is a better place" kind of depth. Surely something must be benefiting the world!

... Found it.

A vaccine against the parasitic disease malaria cut illnesses by more than half in field trials and could be safely given with other childhood inoculations, two studies have reported. The vaccine, which will begin a third and final phase of clinical trials early next year, could become the first to protect children from malaria, which kills nearly 1 million people worldwide every year.

The studies, published online Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, were reported at a New Orleans meeting of tropical medicine researchers and were hailed as a significant breakthroughin the fight against one of the most intractable and deadly infectious diseases.

If the phase three trials are successful, it would be "an extraordinary scientific triumph," said Dr. W. Ripley Ballou, deputy director for vaccines and infectious diseases for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped fund the research.

"But more importantly," Ballou added, "it could save millions of children's lives."

We're talking about 1 million people a year, largely children in sub-Saharan Africa, dying of a disease that has been all but eradicated throughout the rest of the world. A vaccine would not only relieve a monumental amount of death and suffering, but could finally bring some stability to Africa. If children can grow up without the threat of disease and death, the continent can focus on education and economic development, and those children can be an engine to growth.

OK, that's positive.

Wherein I Praise Susan Davis AND Ellen Tauscher

They're not two of my favorite California Congresswoman. But their leadership on repealing don't ask don't tell comes to a head with a hearing today, chaired by Davis.

Democrats in Congress hope to ignite a drive to reverse the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy Wednesday with the first hearing on the subject since 1993, when President Clinton said gays could serve in uniform if they kept quiet about their sexual orientation.

Without this hearing, said former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman John Shalikashvili, "you will never repeal the law. It's a great idea." He is among more than 50 retired generals and admirals who have said it is time to rethink the policy [...]

Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee tried to have a hearing on the policy in April 2007, but opposition from conservatives in their party sank the idea.

Since then, "There's another year in the war," says Rep. Susan Davis, a California Democrat who chairs the military personnel subcommittee. "We want to start a conversation" that could put the issue on a front burner again.

Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher of California, the lead sponsor of a bill to repeal the policy, said she knows what military leaders would say if they testified.

"The military leadership will tell you that this is the law they've been given to operate under and that's what they do," she says, "which is a very different question of off-line and off-the-record, 'Personally, admiral, what do you think?' That's the only way they could answer … differently."

The Pentagon may be ducking this hearing, but they can't hide from public opinion. Over 75 percent of Americans would like to see DADT repealed. The arguments about "unit cohesion" have been shown to be ridiculous, and the case of Arabic translators being fired for being gay have highlighted not only the absurdity of this policy, but the national security harm it's actually doing.

The most fitting part of all of this is that Larry Craig supports Don't Ask Don't Tell. Yeah, he would, wouldn't he? I'm sure he'd love to change the title to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Just Tap Three Times," but then...

UPDATE: Patrick Murphy had a great hearing. He kicked a little butt today.

Worst. Messenger. Ever.

The short version of this is that your policy isn't worth a damn if you're so embarrassed by it that you have to get Larry Craig to make the amendment.

Huffington Post reports that Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) “quietly created presidential campaign ripples on Tuesday” when he “announced that he would offer an amendment to the forthcoming Iraq war supplemental that would strip the legislation of Sen. Jim Webb’s [D-VA] GI Bill.”

The Republicans already tried to insert their crap version of the GI Bill into a bill that would strengthen the collective bargaining rights of first responders. They got shot down.

Republicans, it should be reminded, support the troops.

A Look At Republican Lunatics Past

There are simply so many disgraced Republicans out there that it's hard to remember them all. But today we got a trip down memory lane on a couple.

Turns out that Rudy Giuliani managed his campaign finances as well as he managed his campaign.

A half-dozen senior officials of the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee conferred this week on how to wind down their affairs, and at least one piece of their correspondence painted what appeared to be a bleak picture of the dormant campaign’s financial situation.

“We are deeper in the hole than I thought we would be,” John Gross, the campaign’s treasurer, wrote in an e-mail message to several senior campaign aides that was obtained by The New York Times.

“Windown is likely to be less than projected, but travel expenses are higher,” Mr. Gross continued. “We cannot prefer any one creditor. We probably could make a 10% payment to all qualified creditors at this point, but probably not much more.”

Hysterical. This is the fiscal steward who wanted to run America.

Also, the Senate Ethics Committee admonished Wide Stance Larry Craig for his behavior in an airport men's room in Minneapolis.

The Senate Ethics Committee said Wednesday that Idaho Sen. Larry Craig acted improperly in connection with a men's room sex sting last year and had brought discredit on the Senate.

In a letter to the Republican senator, the ethics panel said Craig's attempt to withdraw his guilty plea after his arrest at a Minneapolis airport was an effort to evade legal consequences of his own actions.

Craig's actions constitute "improper conduct which has reflected discreditably on the Senate," the letter said.

Shockingly, Craig disagreed with the bipartisan findings of the Ethics Committee. By the way, this is the guy who "intended" to step down last year, then just didn't. He's also used about $200,000 in campaign funds to pay for his legal bills spent to unsuccessfully contest his guilty plea. It's amazing this guy manages to open his mouth in public. The Ethics Committee also brought up this bit of fun:

The panel also admonished Craig for showing the arresting officer a business card that identified him as a U.S. senator. Craig has been reported to have told the officer at the time, "What do you think about that?"

The committee wrote, "You knew or should have known that a reasonable person in the position of the arresting officer could view your action and statement as an improper attempt by you to use your position and status ... to receive special and favorable treatment."

Maybe he should have flashed the card to the committee instead.

Late Night You Tube

Foot tapping is the new "airplane food" joke.

Like They're Trying To Destroy Their Own Credibility

The UN climate change conference kicks off today in Bali, Indonesia, parts of which are sinking, by the way. And the Republicans are sending a representative from the Senate Environment Committee. Obviously they're looking to burnish their standing by sending someone of stature, of renown, of credibili...

Larry WHO???

Craig is traveling to Bali this week for the U.N.-led climate change conference as the “Republican representative from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,” which is led by chief global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).

Prior to his travels, Craig attacked EPW Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) for creating “all-pain, no-gain” climate change legislation that would call for caps on greenhouse gas emissions. It “demonstrates nothing more than her intent to revert the United States to a developing country,” he asserted.

Now, Washington to Bali is a long flight. It may not have been nonstop. My point is that there are a lot of airport bathrooms between here and there.

By the way, this comes on the heels of another devastating story from several men claiming they either received sex or sexual advances from Craig, which he categorically denied. Obviously, Bali is off the beaten path for political reporters looking to Craig for comment.

In a way, Craig is the perfect symbol for the GOP message on global warming: discredited, in denial, untrustworthy.

Oh Dear

Four men come out saying they, too, had sex with Larry Craig, or were subject to sexual advances from him.

This is just sad, and I'm starting to feel sorry for Craig now. Someone that closeted and that much in denial is living a tragic life.

BOISE, IDAHO - David Phillips. Mike Jones. Greg Ruth. Tom Russell.

Four gay men, willing to put their names in print, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig's guilty plea. Two said they had sex with Craig, one said he made a sexual advance and the fourth said he paid him unusual attention.

They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig's denials, including his now famous statement, "I am not gay, I never have been gay."

Sad.

Embarrassment, The Sit-Down Interview

By the way, the most highly amusing moment of the Larry Craig/Matt Lauer pow-wow was when Suzanne Craig went all "I know Larry Craig's penis, I've partied with Larry Craig's penis, you are not Larry Craig's penis":

Suzanne Craig: I was feeling violated, because they came in here and brought this almost pornographic audio tape. And played it in our home. And I knew immediately it was not the truth. Because the description he gave of Larry in some areas that only I might know about were wrong, on three counts.

Jon Stewart caught this tonight too. What are the THREE counts? Is there that much to a penis that three elements could be misstated? Are we talking birth marks? Veins? Am I sicked out yet?

This has been a late-night blog. D-Day after dark! (Except, of course, this was on in prime time on NBC. But if Janet Jackson's nipple pops out, the horrors!)

The Party of Wide Stance

I figured that since it got 24-hour coverage on MSNBC yesterday, I didn't have to mention Larry Craig's self-flagellation at the hands of Matt Lauer yesterday. But I will note one important point. At a time when the biggest domestic issue is Bush vetoing health care coverage for sick kids, and when the biggest foreign policy issues are all catastrophes that cut against the Republics in sundry ways, the guy in the GOP getting the most airtime is... Larry Craig. Sheesh. No wonder so many Republics are hitting the road as fast as they can.

There's a fair amount of Chicken Little-ism going around on the left, but the truth is that the Republican brand is just irreparably broken in the short term. That doesn't mean Democrats can't blow this thing, particularly if they continue to fail to lead on Iraq (on many other issues, it should be noted, they're doing just fine, and I recoil from the 9 year-old mentality that government must move at the speed of light to enact everything that individual constituents demand. World just doesn't work that way). But it does mean that it'll be exceedingly difficult for them to blow this thing, in many ways in spite of themselves.

UPDATE: The Baby Party:

"I don't like being in the minority," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who was first elected in the 1994 GOP landslide and will retire after this term. "It's not that much fun, and the prospects for the future don't look that good."

Waah waah waah. Whatever happened to serving the people?

UPDATE: By the way, Wide Stance said he "never used the Internet," despite discussing Google searches he made in various op-eds, etc., etc., lies, lies, bizarre weird lies for no reason, etc.

It's Going To Take A REALLY Wide Stance To Stay In The Senate Now

Denied. And obviously so, there are no do-overs in the criminal justice system, at least not ones based on "I didn't mean to say I was guilty," rather than changing evidence or what-not.

A Minnesota judge on Thursday rejected Sen. Larry Craig's bid to withdraw his guilty plea in an airport sex sting, a major setback in Craig's effort to clear his name and hang onto his Senate seat.

"Because the defendant's plea was accurate, voluntary and intelligent, and because the conviction is supported by the evidence ... the Defendant's motion to withdraw his guilty plea is denied," Hennepin County Judge Charles Porter wrote.

Craig can appeal Porter's ruling, but it wasn't immediately clear if he would.

I don't think that's it. This guy is in an OJ-like state of denial, and he doesn't feel like he did anything wrong. Why would he leave the Senate?

I say to Sen. Craig, don't leave on these terms. Appeal it to the US Supreme Court! Stand defiantly in the well of the Senate and make your votes! Run for re-election! Nobody can stop you! (except for everybody in the Republican Party and the voters of Idaho)

UPDATE: Craig to world: I'm stayin'!

"I have seen that it is possible for me to work here effectively," Craig said in a written statement certain to disappoint fellow Republicans who have long urged him to step down.

The third-term lawmaker issued his statement not long after Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter relayed word he has selected a replacement for Craig in the event of a resignation.

"He is ready to act should we receive a letter of resignation," said Jon Hanian, Otter's spokesman in Boise, in what seemed like a calculated signal that home-state Republicans want Craig to surrender the seat he has held for 17 years.

"Really, we're ready," Otter added. "Anytime you want to send that letter along, it's all set. I can have a new Senator there in 24 hours. You need a stamp? Is postage the problem? We can send you stamps! Just please, please leave!"

A Look Back At The Career Of Larry Craig

In the aftermath of Larry Craig's resignation from the Senate on this day, September 30, let's have a flashback and look at the best moments of... what's this now? He's not resigning today? Hm, OK... well, apparently Republicans are going to try and force him into some kind of retirement by airing all his dirty laundry in public.

Worried that the disgraced lawmaker intends to remain in the Senate indefinitely, they are threatening to notch up the public humiliation by seeking an open ethics hearing on the restroom scandal that enveloped Craig last month.

The Senate hearing would examine the original charges in Craig’s case, including the allegation of “interference with privacy,” for peeping into the bathroom stall occupied by an undercover police officer. One senior Republican aide imagined “witnesses, documents, all in front of the klieg lights.” The committee also could look for “a pattern of conduct” — which means combing court records in other locales to discover whether Craig had prior arrests that haven’t come to light.

These are the people that want to keep the government out of your lives, remember. Yet they're perfectly happy with humiliating a guy who's been a loyal soldier for 30 years, because they fear that just this one person will blow their moral integrity, not the other dozens over the past few years. I have no real love for Larry Craig, a closeted gay man who has made life miserable for homosexuals through his votes right until the end: he voted against expanding hate crime laws to cover homosexuals just last week. But clearly, the way the knives have come out against him is extremely telling. The Republican Party is vicious, heartless and downright mean.

The Party Of Accountability

Looks Like Larry Craig (R-WideStance) snuck a curveball by everybody.

Sen. Larry Craig won't resign from the Senate while awaiting a judge's ruling on his effort to get a guilty plea withdrawn in a restroom sex sting, a source said Wednesday.

Sen. Larry Craig is seeking to overturn his guilty plea stemming from an airport bathroom sex sting.

A judge in Minnesota heard arguments Wednesday afternoon about Craig's guilty plea in the case.

Craig had said he would resign from the Senate if he could not get the guilty plea overturned by September 30. But on Tuesday, Craig said he wouldn't resign until "legal determinations" are made.

For a Republican Party desperately seeking to evade responsibility for everything, from Iraq to corruption, this is par for the course. But you'd think this would be a nationwide outrage. The guy announced very specific groundrules for resignation, and now he's trying to pretend that he didn't and hope that everyone forgot about it. This is one man's ego against the whole country, mirroring the Republican Party's ego, also at odds with the country.

(Incidentally, I have consistently said that Craig did nothing illegal in that bathroom stall. But lying to a judge by pleading guilty because you wanted to keep your name out of the papers is actually the illegal act here, and Craig wants to remove responsibility for such poor judgment. There are no do-overs in the law, especially for a lawmaker.)

The New Gay Panic Defense

So, is Wide Stance Larry Craig really arguing that, because one local newspaper questioned him one time about being gay, he got so panicked that he pleaded guilty to trolling for gay sex in a bathroom? Doesn't pleading guilty make it MORE likely that he'd be seen as a gay man? And since when is "I was trying to bury the story" an acceptable reason for a court to withdraw a guilty plea? Isn't it illegal to lie to a court? Isn't Craig ADMITTING that he's done so? And wouldn't a lawmaker be expected to know the law?

I understand that Craig isn't actually guilty of much more than tapping his feet, and that he apparently got slightly harsher treatment than others caught up in this sting. But isn't that because he plea bargained instead of fighting the law? According to the Republicans on the Hill, he'd still have his seniority if he didn't plead guilty to a crime. Hell, I just saw David Vitter questioning Crocker and Petraeus in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the evidence that he's been adulterous is far greater than in the case of Wide Stance (and will get even greater today, as a New Orleans prostitute is going to come forward with details of a long affair).

This ridiculousness just got a bit more ridiculous.

It's My Prerogative

This time yesterday it looked like WideStance would not go gently into that good night, and in the morning his colleagues were not happy about being held hostage. Then the Senate Ethics Committee allowed the case against Craig to go forward, and then (this is fantasy) someone got a hold of the Senator from Idaho in a dark room and showed him some pictures from public bathrooms around the nation and...

Sen. Larry Craig has all but dropped any notion of trying to complete his term, and is focused on helping Idaho send a new senator to Washington within a few weeks, his top spokesman said Thursday.

"The most likely scenario, by far, is that by October there will be a new senator from Idaho," Craig spokesman Dan Whiting told the Associated Press.

The only circumstances in which Craig might try to complete his term, Whiting said, would require the overturning by Sept. 30 of his conviction for disorderly conduct in a men's room at the Minneapolis airport, as well as Senate GOP leaders' agreement to restore Craig's committee leaderships posts taken away this week.

Those scenarios are unlikely, Whiting said.

World's fastest trial balloon...

How many times have you seen a conviction overturned within 25 days?

Here Are Some Good Ads

This should whet everyone's appetite for the campaign ad wars to come. First from the DCCC, mocking the "moral high ground" that Republicans find themselves on these days:



Next, from Public Campaign Action Fund, recounting a sordid story where Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rewarded a former staffer-turned-lobbyist who raised $120,000 for his campaign, by providing his firm with an $8.3 million dollar contract to provide iPods for Afghani tribesmen. That was not devised in a Hollywood writer's room.



Progressive organizations big and small are hitting McConnell, and I think the suits in Washington see it as payback for Republicans going after then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle. His re-elect numbers have been dropping, and there's an opponent who's won a statewide race, Attorney General Greg Stumbo. This should be a fun one next year.

The 25-Day Sprint

Well, Mitch McConnell has resigned himself to the fact that he can't stop the thundering momentum of WideStance Craig.

MCCONNELL: I heard from Sen. Craig this morning. He called me to give me an update on where he is in order to dispel, as he put it, any confusion that might exist with regard to his intention.

So let me relate to you his comment -- he said that he is going to try to get the case in Minneapolis dismissed, that if he is unable to have that disposed of prior to Sept. 30, it is his intention to resign from the Senate as he expressed last Saturday. If he is able to get he case favorably disposed of in Minneapolis it would be his intention to come back to the Senate, to deal with the ethics committee case that he knows he will have, and to try to finish his term.

So whatever confusion may have been created in the last few days, as of this morning that is his view about where he is headed.

So he's got 25 days for his high-powered legal team, led by the lawyer from the Michael Vick dogfighting case, to dismiss the case up in Minneapolis. How that can possibly happen, given that he has admitted to perjuring himself by saying that he pleaded guilty just to make it go away, is beyond me.

His lawyer is now trying to say on Hardball that he simply committed a misdemeanor and the Congress has no jurisdiction over it, so the Ethics Committee should back off and he should be permitted to stay EVEN IF he cannot rid himself of the guilty plea.

This is getting crazier and crazier. And the GOP must be screaming right now.

As for why Sen. Specter would give WideStance this advice to fight on, it's difficult to underestimate the clubbiness of the Senate. These guys have a sense of entitlement, and Specter more so than anyone. So it's obvious to me that he would speak out for protecting the rights of his fellow Senator. Would that he looked out for his constituents in this manner.

The Craig Gift

Run Larry Run! He really needs to stand up for closeted gay Republicans throughout Idaho. It also fucks up the Bush Administration's Iran/Iraq rollout plans, as I'm sure the cable nets will go into full 24-Hour "Senator-We-Never-Heard-Of-Until-Last-Week-But-Now-He's-In-A-Gay-Sex-Scandal-And-It's-Lurid" mode.

What this guy said:

TPM Reader KB understands the nexus between imperialism and 24 hour cable ...

If Sen. Larry Craig reconsiders and steps all over Gen. Petraeus' week of surge, Bill Kristol's head will explode. That Penatagon media war room they set up will be useless in the face of this cable TV zoo.

And I think you can run on having exploded Bill Kristol's head, and win. Or at least be respectable.

Not only is Larry Craig the only man or woman in the state of Idaho who can deliver that Senate seat to the Democrats, but the benefits NOW to his intransigence can hardly be counted. I think a large part of the GOP stabbing him in the back and trying to get him backstage was the TIMING. There's a war to support and another war to start. We can't have the nation talking about a wide stance.

You Can't Kill Me I'm Already Dead!

It's the return of Craig.

Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening. "It's not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign," said Sidney Smith, Craig's spokesman in Idaho's capital.

"We're still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we're able to stay in the fight — and stay in the Senate."

Apparently Arlen Specter got him in a room and told him he wuz framed.

I've been arguing that there wasn't really enough here to convict somebody. And I agree with Arianna that vice-squad busts are totally insane in a time of terror, and just because they're needed for a lot of Republicans doesn't mean that they're necessary.

But here's the thing: he already pleaded guilty. And the law is pretty clear on this, that you can't "un-plead" guilty without some seriously extenuating circumstances, and I don't think "I wanted it to go away" is one of them. In fact, by admitting that he was lying about pleading guilty in the first place, he's potentially eligible for perjury. And we all know how seriously Republicans take perjury.

So Craig has his head in the clouds if he thinks he can win this fight legally. And politically this is a disaster for the GOP. It keeps the story in the news, and highlights their hypocrisy, as they continue to lean on Craig to leave the stage while David Vitter sits casually in his Senate seat. The Republican Caucus can't vote a sitting Senator out; only he can make the decision. And right now it looks like Craig is being obstinate. Even Mark Foley had the sense to get out while the getting was good.

This is hilarious.

UPDATE: Too, too much. Roll Call got a hold of a phone call that Craig placed to the wrong answering machine explaining the whole thing:

Roll Call, a Capitol Hill political newspaper, posted a voice mail tonight that Craig may have inadvertently left at a wrong number Saturday morning. In it, Craig says he changed the wording in his speech and that "this thing could take a new turn or a new shape."

"Yes, Billy, this is Larry Craig calling. You can reach me on my cell. Arlen Specter is now willing to come out in my defense, arguing that it appears by all that he knows that I have been railroaded and all that.

"Having all of that, we have reshaped my statement a little bit to say it is my intent to resign on Sept. 30. I think it is important for you to make as bold a statement as you are comfortable with this afternoon, and I would hope you could make it in front of the cameras.

"I think it would help drive the story that I’m willing to fight, that I’ve got quality people out there fighting in my defense, and that this thing could take a new turn or a new shape, it has that potential. Anyway, give me a buzz or give Mike a buzz on that. We’re headed to my press conference now.

"Thank you. Bye."

I don't understand these people that are so desperate to hold on to power. Is it a pathology? I mean, Larry Craig will never win another election again. Why not go off into the sunset and hope that everybody forgets all about this?

Quick Hits

Just a few short bits to catch up on this scorcher of a day:

• It's official: Larry Craig resigns.
  

• Bush met Friday with military leaders, who pressed urgent concerns about strains on the military due to long deployments in Iraq. Nut graf: "Indications are that Bush intends to stick with his current approach, at least into 2008, despite persistent pressure from the Democrat-led Congress - including some prominent Republicans - to find a new course."

• Mitt Romney (thinks he) is More Important Than You Are: Romney's rather pliable view of law enforcement is in the news again. Romney received a police escort between campaign stops in South Carolina - complete with flashing lights and traveling 10 to 15 mph over the posted limit - by Saluda County Sheriff Jason Booth, who also happens to be a Romney supporter. Choice Booth quote: "We wanted to make sure he stays safe and gets to where he's going," Booth told The Associated Press.

• Fred Thompson will make an appearance at this Wednesday's Republican debate in New Hampshire. After the New Hampshire Union Leader warned that if he didn't show up, people might conclude he wasn't prepared, Thompson - wait a minute. He won't be onstage at the debate. He just bought time for an ad that will run immediately pre-debate. Hmm. Is it really the best strategy to remind people that you're not there?

• Apparently Rudy! cannot be prevented from attending the 9/11 commemoration - but some hope he's not permitted to speak. Spokesman Tony Carbonetti reponds: "If you know Rudy Giuliani, he'd be down there paying his respects whether he was invited or not," Carbonetti said in a statement. "To say he's politicizing it -- he never would do anything like that." Of course not.

• Taking a cue from television networks' annual upfronts, David Petraeus has booked Radio City Music Hall to unveil his report about the troop 'Surge.' No word yet on Jay Leno's availability as master of ceremonies.
  

Okay, I made up that last one.

American Taliban

A state senator in Montana lets his slip show, along with the slip of his party:

As a Republican state senator in Montana and as a human being, I am offended by Senator Craig's existence. Why oh why are most of the perverts that get caught Republicans? Are there more of them or are they just stupid? The thought of a US Senator chasing love in all the wrong places makes me think longingly of the Ayotollahs in Iran. They would just kill the turkey.

Those happy days where men are murdered for their sexual orientation. Ah, those halcyon days...

Just looking at the left-right chart, it is clear that the conservatives are moving to the same kind of authoritarianism that we have in fundamentalist theocracies around the world. Far from being libertarian, they want to be in everyone's bedroom, legislating morality and physically harming those who aren't as morally pure as they are. This is the real face of the Republican Party in the 21st century. And if the GOP wants to survive, they need to purge their party of this strain of fundamentalism and theocratic impulses, or they will never be anything but a minority party as the long arm of history bends toward justice and liberalism. I thank this state senator for peeling back the curtain.

UPDATE: Well, the American Taliban has succeeded in pushing WideStance Craig out of their party. Not to defend Craig, whose inability to understand the law disqualifies him to be a lawmaker IMO. But clearly there is a major, major problem in the Republican Party with their demand for absolute fealty with a fundamentalist agenda.