Major *ick* factor

South Dakota: very conservative, very Republican, very concerned with women’s reproduction, and none of it in a good way. This story just personifies the worst of South Dakota’s repressive residents perfectly.

A former South Dakota lawmaker is accused of molesting his own foster children and legislative pages.

Ted Klaudt, 49, a Republican rancher from Walker, faces a long list of charges: eight counts of rape, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, two counts of witness tampering, sexual contact with a person under 16, and stalking.

Court documents mention five possible victims. Three were foster children between the ages of 15 and 19 who lived with Klaudt’s family. One is a cousin of one of those girls, and the fifth is a friend of Klaudt’s daughter.

In the most disturbing accusation, the girls say Klaudt had them convinced they could earn up to $20,000 by donating their eggs to a fertility clinic. And even though he has no medical training, the girls say Klaudt did all the supposed “exams” and “procedures” himself.

If you feel the urge to go wash compulsively, you’re excused.

But, see, this is one of the virtues of keeping young women ignorant of basic reproductive health. He was able to convince them to let him, a farmer with no medical training, that he needed to give them breast exams and poke around in their reproductive tracts…and they believed him. All those restrictive laws passed by repulsive old Republicans suddenly make sense.

If the South Dakota legislature is sufficiently repelled by this horror story, one way they could make amends is by rushing through some sensible sex education laws.

Straight talking

Ralph Reed is a sleazy con artist who hides his predatory nature behind a mask of piety; Hannity is a slow-witted thug with a simple-minded view of the world that he takes straight from the religious. It was therefore rather delightful to see Christopher Hitchens plainly reject their ridiculous demand for a hypocritical expression of sorrow at the death of a rich old shaman.

I was particularly appalled at Hannity’s list of Falwell’s virtues that included founding Liberty University. If founding a compound where ignorance is encouraged to fester is one of his accomplishments, I will admit that he was much much more successful at it than Jim Jones, David Koresh, or Elizabeth Clare Prophet…but I refuse to regard it as positive on Falwell’s ledger sheet.

It was good to see how to handle the right-wing blowhards well, too: charge ahead, don’t allow them to force you into their frame, and talk right over their diatribes.

War camp?

For only $399, you can send your kids away to spend a few days this summer with Ollie North, professional traitor, frolicking about on a military base and pretending to be brave warriors with absolutely no risk. It’s the perfect activity for young Republican chickenhawks-in-training. It’s an organization called the “Freedom Alliance Military Leadership Academy”, and it claims to be training the next generation of American leaders.

That’s really all we need: a generation of leaders who think of war as a fun summer outing.

It’s clear, though, that the real intent of this exercise is to let Republican kids put “Military Leadership Academy” on their résumés—look at what they claim for their program:

Academy graduates are highly motivated, physically fit and goal oriented. Many have pursued careers in the military and as DOD civilians, such as the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, while others go to college or directly to the workforce.

The “Academy” is five days spent on a military base, making field trips to local military hardware, and the worst hardship the kiddies might face is a little rain. I don’t think the academy can take much credit for anything, unless Republicans are really that shallow and easily impressed by the word “military” on a CV.

Maybe they’re reading this post right now

Neddie finds something rather disturbing: a border guard leaving a comment in a blog, flaunting his knowledge of the comings and goings of the blogger at a border crossing. It’s vaguely threatening, in a “I know where you live” kind of way. The assertion that “you do not have a right to privacy” is even more creepy—I think someone on the border patrol is a little too full of himself.

I’ve driven up to Canada a couple of times now, and the remarkable contrast has been how pleasant and casual the guards at the entry into Canada have been, and how surly, snide, and officious the guards coming back into the US have been. I don’t quite understand the point of having the guards at the border treating people as potential criminals; it’s not as if real criminals and terrorists are going to be at all dissuaded by supercilious snottiness, but legitimate visitors to our country are going to be dismayed by our gracelessness at the doorway.

Even us residents aren’t at all thrilled with their behavior. After showing multiple forms of ID and answering all their questions, they still acted suspicious and resentful, as if they were offended that I had dared visit a foreign country, and they weren’t sure if they should let me come back home. (Uh-oh…next time I visit Canada, are the guards going to mutter about my blog and subject me to a strip search now?)

It’s an honor, of sorts

She beat Brownback. She trounced Tancredo. She even clobbered Coburn. America’s Holiest Congressperson is Minnesota’s own Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

Bachmann, an Evangelical Lutheran, and self-professed “fool for Christ,” ran for Congress because God—and her husband—wanted her to. The representative publicly credited her campaign to her submission to her husband, who was channeling God’s wishes for her.

Prior to this higher calling, Bachmann earned a law degree from Coburn, an affiliate of Oral Roberts University, and helped found a charter school where she reportedly worked to prevent the Disney movie Aladdin from being shown, because it supposedly promoted paganism. Then, as a Minnesota state senator, Bachmann launched a crusade to outlaw gay marriage that turned into a highly publicized spectacle replete with restroom run-ins with angry lesbians and grainy photos suggesting that Bachmann was “spying” on a gay rights rally while crouching behind a bush.

Tireless in her pursuit, Bachmann has even gone so far as to be active in efforts to “rehabilitate” people who “suffer from ‘same-sex attractions,’ and once articulated the merits of being “hot for Jesus Christ.”

The magazine also has a list of our Ten Dumbest Congressperson — couldn’t they have saved some space by consolidating the two lists?

Hitchens on Rose

Christopher Hitchens’ appearance on the Daily Show was a disappointment—largely because Hitchens seemed to be half in the bag, and Stewart kept stepping all over his words trying to make them funny, and the short format was not to the favor of a fellow who tends to speak in complete sentences and paragraphs. So how about a half hour interview with an alert Hitchens, with an interviewer who’s interested in hearing what he has to say, and gives him the opportunity to speak at more length? Here’s Hitchens on the Charlie Rose show.

Much better, even if I disagreed strongly with Hitchens on much of what he said.

More than half of the interview is taken up with discussing the Iraq war. I agree with Hitchens’ assessment that an important nation in the Middle East is on the road to destruction, that it is going to be a failed state, and that by pulling out we diminish the power of the US in the region. I also agree that it is a great tragedy, and that leaving Iraq will mean many of our supporters will die. Where I disagree, though, is that Hitchens thinks the war was inevitable and necessary, and that the US did the right thing by invading. I say we sowed the seeds of defeat when our government decided the appropriate response was to invade with crushing force, and make Iraq a treasure chest to be looted by military contractors. The current ongoing debacle can be blamed directly on the credulous boosters for war as a prerequisite for nation building, of whom Hitchens was one.

The last half is a discussion of his new book, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). I haven’t read it yet—my copy is supposed to arrive this next week—but I’m looking forward to it, and there’s some hope from this interview that it will be a solid piece of work. This part of the interview was much less contentious than the first half, I thought — I’d be curious to see what a Christian pro-war Republican would say, though.

Go ahead and talk about the Republican debate

I don’t want to talk about it — I despise the whole field — but everyone is emailing me about it, and I was even talking to my mother on the phone tonight and she asked me about it (I said I wouldn’t watch those weasels unless they were in a crotch-kicking contest). I’ll let this thread open up for a free-for-all discussion of the cacophony.

All I’ve heard so far is that a) they avoided talking about Bush, preferring to measure themselves against Reagan (Reagan was almost as great an incompetent as the current resident, so they’re obviously aiming low), and b) when they were asked about evolution, a goodly subset of them were so stupid that they said they didn’t believe it. Too bad this debate wasn’t merged with that quiz show, so some stern harridan could have announced, “You are the weakest link!” and pulled a lever that would have catapulted them into a shark tank or something entertaining.

So who are the Republican anti-science goons? Huckabee, Brownback, and … ?

Watch the response at Crooks and Liars. The foolish three are Huckabee, Brownback, and Tancredo.