Cry Havoc

Sometimes I take a break to see whether we have reached a plateau with insanity in our politics. It's clear we have ramped it up even higher.

The Montana Republican Party wants to outlaw "homosexual acts" in the state. What precisely are sexual acts committed by gays that are not committed by straights? Even teabagging.

The Idaho Republican Party has come out for the repeal of the 17th Amendment. Is this a cost-cutting measure to save on the expense of elections for Senators?

13 states are introducing anti-immgration bills modeled after Arizona.

The President's Financial Reform package got side-swiped by the death of Senator Byrd. This almost happened last year with Healthcare Reform, when Republicans insisted he had to be wheeled in at midnight to vote. The Secretary of State in West Virginia claims the Governor will nominate a successor and an election would be held in 2012. The Governor promises not to name himself but will have someone in place for the energy bill debate.

Joe Biden told Democratic party activists at a fund-raiser that at least seven Republican Senators were threatened that they would lose their committee assignments if they did not support the filibusters.

The conference had to recovene on the Wall Street reform bill because Republicans, some of whom are vital to its passage, were opposed to any fees being placed in the banks. Instead, they wanted the government to pick up the cost of the reform. This seems to be an on-going theme--the government should pay for the damage of the Gulf disaster and not the corporation that caused it.

The Tan Man John Boehner made news with his interview with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow captured some of his madness. But they missed the really salient parts of his remarks. While it is true he wants to raise the age of retirement to 70, more importantly was the fact that he wants to cut social security benefits now and revamp entitlement programs to pay for the wars. It was clear from his whole interview he really doesn't have much of an understanding of any of the issues facing the country. Today in Racine, Wisconsin President Obama ridiculed Boehner's statement that the economic crisis in the country was like "an ant". Boehner also said that Obama was killing the America he grew up in. Perhaps he was referring to the fact that the Cincinnati Reds are no longer the powerhouse team of the late 1950s and early 1960s. And this man wants to be Speaker of the House.

Conservative Utah Senator Bob Bennett, who lost his party's nomination to a teabaggers, spoke to the Ripon Society and blasted the GOP as a party of slogans, not ideas. He actually said Republicans would win back the House and that would be a bad idea since they wouldn't know what to do with it.

Nate the Great Silver at www.fivethirtyeight.com updated his Senate predictions, saying that Democrats gained slightly after the primaries. He's still at about a 55-45 Senate. He does write off Arkansas and North Dakota as 100% lost for the Democrats.

On the Kagan confirmation, all you have to understand is that only one Republican on the Judicial Commitee has to vote for her to have the nomination move to the whole Senate floor.

So enjoy the hearings for the amazing insight they provide us of the inner mind of today's Republican Party. The first day was spent lamenting school integration and the civil rights period--of course in code. But Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions spent his time attacking Thurgood Marshall and his activism. He was in fact referring to Marshall's days as a civil rights lawyer. In one moment, Sessions slipped by saving the Citizens United was today's Brown versus School Board. I guess the last people to be freed in the United States are corporations--or maybe he was referring to foreign corporations. Sessions was also concerned that Elena Kagan thought of the military as second-class ctitizens. When Mr. Sessions was the Alabama attorney-general, he refused to investigate the series of black churches burning down. Maybe a Justice Kagan wouldn't mind army military barracks burning down.

Tom Coburn, who never ceases to amaze me,wanted to know her views of mixed marriages. He went on to say that his state opposed mixed marriages. He really meant same sex marriages. But with the thrust of the Republican comments the first two days, you would think they really do want to repeal civil rights. One of the most repulsive scene was Senator Kyl, slamming Thurgood Marshall as "out of the mainstream".

The best stuff is really from the Christian Right community and their allies. 800 Orthodox Rabbis signed a letter condemning Elena Kagan, which was circulated by the Christian groups. The rabbis said that her confirmation would trigger a wave of "anti-semiticism" in the United States , which would "threaten the existence of the state of Israel". Tim LaHaye, Mr. Left Behind and an officer in the John Birch Society, sent out another apocalyptic warning about Kagan saying she is for "global law" and threatens traditional values. Focus on Your Family and other Christian Rght groups in the Beltway said that Kagan would promote the homosexual agenda and naturally trigger the end of Western civilization as we know it. One of the groups sent around an assertion that Kagan believed that Blue Cross-Blue Shield should cover sex change operations. And of course with her support of Sharia law,this would be bad news.

Kagan got the best line off in the last three days when Lindsey Graham asked her where was she when the Christmas gonad bomber was caught. "On Christmas, like most Jewish people I was at a Chinese restaurant." Ah, New Yorkers.

I know the South Carolina GOP likes to inject anti-semiticism into their campaigns but I disagree with the progressives that this was what Graham was trying to do. By all accounts, he's going to vote for her and the tenure of his remarks that day was to support her against accusations she was anti-military.

Republican candidates this year are being told not to give interviews to the lamestream press because this year's crop of candidates are nuttier than fruitcakes. But we got a big break from Sharon Angle, the teabagger from Nevada, who granted an interview with the Las Vegas press. She is against extending unemployment benefits because people earn more from unemployment than the lesser paying jobs they could have. She is for the government subdizes small businesses. And she is absolutely against abortion under any circumstances even incest and rape because God has a plan. However, she backed away from her previous suggestions that voters might have to kill Harry Reid. She;'s become a nicer, gentler fruitcake.