Watch NRA Heads Explode: Al Qaeda Spokesman Urges Terrorists To Buy Lots Of Guns At Gun Shows

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

That popping sound you hear is the heads of NRA loyalists exploding from massive cognitive dissonance, all because of the release this week of a video showing a spokesman for Al Qaeda, Adam Gadahn, urging would-be jihadis to go out and stock up on as many guns as they can get their hands on -- through the gun-show loophole:

America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?

Of course, we've previously discussed how the gun-show loophole is an open invitation to criminals, particularly in the context of the the drug-cartel violence along the Mexico border, which is in fact being heavily fueled by guns purchased legally in the USA, many of them at gun shows.

As Chris Brown at Media Matters observes:

At gun shows buyers can purchase guns from private sellers without passing a background check. An investigation by the City of New York showed that even buyers that identified themselves as people who "probably couldn't pass a background check" were able to purchase guns at gun shows. The investigation also showed the wide variety of guns available at gun shows.

In addition, people on terrorist watch lists are not forbidden from purchasing guns and many have done just that. Gadahn's instructions come in the wake of Associated Press reporting that showed that more than 200 people with suspected terrorist ties bought guns legally in the United States last year. Following the AP report Representative Mike Quigley introduced an amendment to the Patriot Act that would give the Attorney General the authority to block gun sales to individuals on terror watch lists. The amendment was voted down.

Of course, the NRA remains adamantly opposed to closing the gun-show loophole. Indeed, they also remain opposed to bipartisan efforts to make it tougher for terrorists to buy guns.
One can only conclude that they are objectively pro-terrorist.

House Republicans Want To Bring Back Elizabeth Warren For Yet Another Round Of Lying Abuse

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We all saw what happened the last time Elizabeth Warren testified before a Republican-led House committee: She was repeatedly called a liar by the committee's chairman -- a bank-financed wingnut, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina -- that day, including on a CNBC appearance before the hearing.

Now Republican Rep. Darrell Issa wants her to come back for a full day's grilling:

Issa's letter said he wanted to question Warren again to give lawmakers more time to grill her. He cited her "unwillingness to provide direct and responsive answers to a number of important questions" at last week's hearing, according to the letter.

The California Republican asked her to clear an entire day in June for the hearing. The hearing would be Warren's third appearance before a GOP-controlled House panel this year.

"The American people have a right to know how you intend to organize and operate the CFPB," Issa said in the letter.

Warren, for her part, played it cool:

Warren "looks forward to her next appearance before the committee," said Jennifer Howard, spokeswoman for the consumer bureau.

"As the former chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, Professor Warren appreciates the importance of and value in checks and balances," Howard said.

Warren has Republicans so freaked out that they're refusing to adjourn so that President Obama can't make her a recess appointment. Mitch McConnell thinks she "could be a serious threat to our financial system".

And they know they already have the complicity of the Beltway media in hand -- since the McHenry smear was treated by the press as just another political tiff, as CJR's Ryan Chittum explains:

So somebody’s got to be wrong, right? Who is it? We’re not told. So readers end up with McHenry says Warren lied, and Warren denies it. Thanks for nothing.

The Wall Street Journal was no better, nor was Reuters, The Hill, or almost any of the other mainstream news stories I read.

But for anyone half paying attention, much less a beat reporter, this is not a close call: McHenry is full of it.

Moreover, Chittum notes, this is a clear case of the press simply repeating Republican lies and treating them as mere versions of the truth:

There’s no way around it: By passing on McHenry’s already debunked claims without fact checking them, the press lent credence to falsehoods. In other words, it’s helping politicians lie and perpetuating a smear against Warren.

There’s no excuse for that.

Oh, we know their excuse: "Hey, everybody does it." It's just a profoundly lame one, that's all.

At Ellis Island, Sarah Palin Attacks The DREAM Act: It 'Usurps' Legal Immigration

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.] 

Yesterday, while making a photo op of Ellis Island on her bus tour of the East Coast, Sarah Palin made plain she's with the nativist wing of the Tea Party -- which is to say, pretty much the mainstream of today's Republican Party -- in opposing the DREAM Act:

PALIN: The immigrants of the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line and follow rules to become U.S. citizens. I’d like to see that continue. And unfortunately, the DREAM Act kind of usurps that-the system that is a legal system to make sure that immigrants who want to be here legally, working hard, producing and supplying revenue and resources for their families, that they’re able to do that right and legally. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act doesn’t accomplish that.

Not that facts or reason ever matter much with Palin, but Andrea Nill at ThinkProgress does point out that, in fact, the DREAM Act perfectly fits Palin's description:

Actually, the DREAM Act aims to accomplish precisely what Palin described. Under the DREAM Act bill that Republicans killed last December, applicants would have had to go through a rigorous process of background checks, in addition to paying taxes, learning English, and either serving in the military or attending college. They would have then received a “conditional nonimmigrant” status and would be required to “stand in line” for ten years before being granted legal immigrant status. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the same bill would reduce the deficit by $1.4 billion over ten years.

Today's Republicans are so deeply in the thrall of their nativist wing that they can't even bring themselves to endorse a common-sense piece of immigration legislation like the DREAM Act. Instead, they succumb to the pack of lies that the nativists sell.

They will regret this deeply, and soon. I'm looking forward to seeing Sarah Palin trying to sell her "Latino outreach" in the 2012 election. Bet it goes over about as well as Sharron Angle's ill-fated stab.

Donald Trump Rips Republicans For 'Mistakes' On Medicare, Says He Might Yet Enter The Race

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Anyone who takes Donald Trump seriously gets what they deserve. And yes, there were -- and apparently still are -- Republicans who take him seriously.

Last night on Greta Van Susteren's show, Trump -- who at one time, before he announced he wasn't running, was being touted on Fox by "Republican strategists" as a serious candidate -- not only ripped into the Republican Party for their idiocy with Paul Ryan's let's-kill-Medicare plan and Eric Cantor's refusal to help tornado victims, but threatened to enter the race after all, if the eventual Republican nominee turns out to be "a stiff."

Trump was too slippery to identify who might be among the stiffs, but it's safe to say candidates like Romney, Paul, Gingrich, Pawlenty and Santorum are on that list.

In any event, Trump told Van Susteren that he never actually really got out of the race, and he might decide to drop in, maybe as an independent, if the GOP fails to come through.

The guy is a complete circus act and should be laughed off the stage. It tells you a lot about today's Republicans that he hasn't been yet.

Karmic Update: Russell Pearce Recall Campaign Turns In 18,000 Signatures -- More Than Twice What's Needed

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We've been tracking the recall campaign against Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, author of SB1070, because he insisted on playing his nativist fiddle in the Senate while Arizona's economy burned to the ground. It probably hasn't helped that he's become belligerent whenever anyone brings up his role in the Fiesta Bowl scandal, either.

Of course, Greta Van Susteren knew better than to ask Pearce any such tough questions last night on her Fox show. She mostly lobbed out the news of the day -- the fact that the people leading the recall had filed more than twice what they needed, some 18,000 signatures -- and let him swing away.

But Pearce looked scared, and he should be:

In a celebratory display of unprecedented organization, a bipartisan group of activists poured into the Arizona secretary of state's office yesterday with more than 18,300 signatures to demand the recall of State Senate president Russell Pearce. The filing of the petitions marked the culmination of a campaign that has defied expectations, and a watershed moment for the beleaguered state. Once the state and Maricopa County recorders verify the legal requirement of 7,756 signatures from the traditionally conservative and Mormon-founded Mesa district, Pearce—who is considered by many as the de facto governor and motivating force behind the state's notorious blitz of extremist policies on education, health, guns and immigration—will become the first State Senate president in American history to be recalled.

Those signatures contain a message:

Recall proponents say they filed petitions bearing 18,315 signatures. But campaign chairman Chad Snow acknowledged thousands of those might be duplicates or signatures of people who live outside the Senate President's district.

"We want those extra petition signatures to send a message," Snow said. "We want to send a message to Sen. Pearce, to every legislator down here at the Arizona Legislature that this kind of extreme, ideologically driven policies will no longer be tolerated in our state."

Pearce claimed to Van Susteren that most of the signatures would be proven ineligible and that his legal team intended to contest them. Then he claimed that the people involved in the recall are "radical leftists" and "anarchists." Then he claimed that his nativist agenda was in fact extremely popular with his constituents.

Right.

Of course, he has formed a response team:

His supporters have formed their own group, The Citizens Who Oppose the Pearce Recall, and on Tuesday launched a website to solicit donations to fight the recall effort.

"We will not sit back and let out-of-state and out-of-district special interests attempt to use a recall to harass and intimidate Arizona's constitutionally elected officials," said Matt Tolman, chairman of the group. "We will oppose this recall so that President Pearce and other officials can do the job for which they were elected."

I hope the folks in Mesa are ready for the fight of their lives.

June 30: Our Long GlennBeckian Nightmare Finally Has An End Date

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Glenn Beck's show has become an inane bore in recent months, especially since it was announced he was leaving Fox News. Lots of nattering about his Grand Caliphate Theory and warning that evil radical liberals were colluding with far-right radical Islamists to end the Western way of life. Lots of blackboards and sincere talks. Yawn.

Like yesterday's episode, wherein he told people who objected to his incessant reliance on Nazi analogies to "get over it":

BECK: We have gotten an awful lot of criticism on this program whenever we talk about Nazis. Well, you know what? Get over it. The fact is, however -- you don't have to go back to the violence and vicious hatred and the desire to exterminate an entire race of people. You only have to turn on your news. Check the headlines. You'll see it right before your eyes, but most in the mainstream media will not tie this stuff together.

These are people who surround a tiny little country, Israel. These are people who have been trying to wipe out the Western way of life. The same people who flew planes into the World Trade Center. The same the radicals on the left in America are teaming up with to destroy the Western way of life, through Israel.

Of course, if he were really concerned about eliminationist rhetoric on his TV tube, Beck should begin with his own program.

In any event, it's been dragging on, creating a looming sense of "Can we please just get this over with." So it was with a real sense of relief that we read today that, there's finally an end date to all this:

Mediaite has learned that Glenn Beck’s last day on Fox News is currently scheduled to be June 30th. Fox News has confirmed this information to Mediaite.

As Richard Lawson at Gawker puts it:

But yes. The Beck as we know him right now will end at the end of this month. And thank God (and by "God" I of course mean the mighty Hunga-Deity that is George Soros) for that. The greatest thing about all of this is that we can now begin to speculate about how fantastical and surreal his final show will be. Take a drink every time he squeezes his eyes shut really tight and desperately tries to ascend to heaven, right there live on TV!

Matt Drudge's Race-War-Mongering Narrative: How Selective Editing Can Lie

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]


Andrew Breitbart isn't the only right-winger out there creating false narratives about his targets through selective editing -- indeed, this is a common practice at Fox News, too. But the real champion of selective editing -- in quite a different fashion -- is Matt Drudge.

Instead of chopping up video, Drudge selectively edits tidbits of information from around the country to create narratives on his widely read Drudge Report website -- narratives that, in fact, are often right-wing lies pandering to right-wing audiences.

Recently, the narrative at Drudge has been this: Criminal young black men, freed to wanton abandon by the Black Panther-coddling Obama administration, are embarking on a retributive crime wave against white people.

Alex Pareene at Salon calls him out:

Since Obama actually took office, though, Drudge has seriously stepped up his "scary black people" coverage. There was, in September of 2009, the story he heavily publicized of a kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up. A kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up is not really national news -- until Drudge makes it so. The fact that the beater was black and the victim white is why Drudge made it national news. Rush Limbaugh made the subtext explicit: "In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering."

This is the narrative that Drudge is trying to create, especially on slow news weekends when there's nothing real to aggregate and post: The blacks are rising up and attacking the whites. If that sounds a bit crazy, in a Charles Manson way, then you're obviously not paying attention. Black people are angry and they're taking over! When Barack Obama was campaigning to win Chicago the Olympic games, Matt Drudge led with a terrifying photo of (black) gang violence and the breathless, all-caps headline, "OLYMPIC SPIRIT."

The violent death of a young man is definitely news ... in Chicago, where it happened. It had very little to do with whether Chicago is a suitable venue for the Olympics. Violent murders happen in big cities and small towns across the nation every day. But only some of them can be used to stoke paranoia about emboldened, angry black people rising up.

John at Gawker observes that this past weekend, there were 10 Drudge headlines supporting this narrative:

Then be sure to check in with the Drudge Report, which has conveniently rounded up a slew of run-of-the-mill summer crime stories that happen to involve black people and suggestively weaved them into a nationwide race riot.

...

The race-baiting is a bit more transparent—"urban," "rib fest"—than we've come to expect from Drudge, who is usually more elegant in his efforts to stoke white rage. All of Drudge's readers in the media business, the cable news producers and Politico reporters who regard him as "America's assignment editor," know exactly what his intent is with those headlines. But instead of being dismissed as a racist weather-obsessed recluse he continues to be regarded as a power player in right-wing politics.

Unsurprisingly, some of the wingnutosphere's duller tools in the shed promptly leapt to Drudge's defense by trotting out the classic right-wing stereotypes about blacks and crime -- thereby clinching the case that what Drudge was doing was stirring up these resentments. F'r instance, Confederate Yankee:

Pareene is a far left liberal that would like to embrace the childish fiction that all races and cultures are essentially the same. It's a wonderful view to have when you're ten.
While individuals within these cultures can be anyone and achieve anything, it is a statistical fact that African-Americans are disproportionately responsible for crimes in this nation compared to any other ethnic group. They are also more likely to commit some of the more sensational crimes, such as the near riots and wildings that are the prime headline fodder that are Drudge's bread and butter.

If Pareene really wanted to make an impact, he'd spend his time and resources trying to find the reason for the statistical discrepancy that shows African-Americans are more prone to be criminals and victims of violent crime.

Of course, he already knows the reason. It started with LBJ's "Great Society," and continued with the rise of Planned Parenthood and the destruction of the African-American family unit due to "progressive" social reforms.

Oy. The stooooooopid, it burns. And then these same conservatives look hurt and amazed when people point out that their attitudes are deeply racist.

Right-wingers like Bob Owens never seem to understand that the correlation of crime with race is not a causal relationship -- rather, the causal relationship is between poverty and crime. And black people are more likely to be impoverished in America than other races for a broad variety of reasons, many of them historical in nature, but including a number of ongoing factors: demographic segregation, job discrimination, and impoverishment of urban schools.

There are many theories about race and crime in America -- some of them promoted by white supremacists such as Jared Taylor and David Duke.

As Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon observes:

Drudge's choice of what stories to highlight is about creating a narrative, and the insinuation is now that we have a black President, all hell is breaking loose. One of the weirdest, most long-standing conservative myths is that black people are aching to "rise up" and take the nation by force. The argument is then that they have to, more in sorrow than in glee, argue against equal rights for black people. They'd want to share, but you know, violence! The notion that black America is revenge-minded is something that is surprisingly powerful for wingnuts. That's why there's non-stop chatter on right wing radio about slavery reparations, even though the subject has no traction in real world discourse, and even if it did, said reparations would look much different than right wingers imagine it would like. (They're picturing jack-booted thugs stealing your grandmother's pearls and giving it to some family you don't know to pawn, but it would more likely be a check that resembles a Social Security check or a tax refund.) And that's why Andrew Breitbart thinks that some court settlement to black farmers who were systemically discriminated against for decades is the biggest problem our nation faces.

Indeed, Drudge's editorial choices tell us far more about him -- and his many fans -- than anything else.

Sarah Palin's 'Unconventional' Route To The Presidency: The Power Of Messianic Delusion

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Everyone in the press and the Republican establishment seems equally confused by Sarah Palin's bizarre run-up to her near-certain presidential run. What they don't get is the depths of Palin's messianic delusion: She really believes she's been sent by God to save America, and she can run any way she wants.

Karl Rove was on Fox News yesterday morning (actually working on Memorial Day!) pointing out the stark contrast between Michele Bachmann's run-up to her presidential bid -- making nice with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, building connections with local Republicans, and all the traditional things that are part of a presidential run -- with Palin's:

ROVE: Sarah Palin -- much different, which is: 'I'm gonna conduct a bus tour, where I go not to -- ' I mean, she's about ready, sometime in the next couple of weeks, to make her first visit to New Hampshire in over two years. That's, that's really unusual. And then you've got the situation of -- you know, she's going to Antietam and Gettysburg and to Philadelphia. And I'll bet you a dime to a dollar that those visits to those areas are not preceded by courtesy phone calls to the local Republican Party chairmen and a request that they generate volunteers. She's just gonna announce her schedule and show up. So that's what I mean by unconventional.

That's right: Palin is not concerned about any of the ordinary aspects of running for the presidency, especially not the party-building that has been successful Republican nominees' bread and butter since the days of Nixon. She has bigger fish to fry. She's on a mission from God.

The WaPo's Chris Cilizza seems equally taken aback:

The trip, which was announced via her political action committee website Thursday, resembled nothing so much as an episode of “Amazing Race” — a helter-skelter series of stops at historical sites with little (if any) advance notice given of her plans.

The lack of details left reporters confused and scrambling, and the political world wondering just what she was up to. Which is, of course, exactly how Palin likes it.
Asked about a potential 2012 campaign on Sunday night, Palin said “it would definitely be non-conventional and untraditional,” a comment that amounts to the political understatement of the year.

Palin added in an interview with Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren (one of her go-to members of the mainstream media): “I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media ... I want them to have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this, and that would include not necessarily telling them beforehand where every stop’s going to be.”

That translated into Palin punking the reporters following her on the tour:

Palin reportedly faked out reporters at her Gettysburg, Pa. hotel Tuesday morning. She snuck out early with her family and a few staffers, leaving her unmistakeable bus behind and giving the press the impression that she was still readying for the day ahead. When her staff came out to load luggage into the bus, reporters and tourists swarmed to get a glimpse of the former Alaska governor herself, but she was long gone, off to the historic battlegrounds.

As Cilizza observes, Palin is trying her own formula here:

Instead of communicating via the media, Palin will use her massive Internet and social media presence to push her message out. Rather than a regimented schedule of travel to early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Palin seems likely to opt for a more fluid schedule that allows for surprise drop-ins on average Americans.

No presidential campaign in the modern era has been run in such a manner and succeeded. Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson sought to minimize his travel to early states and focus on communicating with voters through cable televison and web videos. He didn’t win a single primary or caucus.

Meantime, rumors are that Palin may punk Philadelphia, too.

In Sarah's world, of course, this lack of conventionalism makes perfect sense. The press isn't a free publicity on the hoof (the way, say John McCain treated them) -- they're Satan incarnate and the more they can be bedeviled, the better. Because Sarah speaks directly to the people you know -- so long as they don't ask her any tough questions.

And party-building doesn't matter when the Lord is going to make everyone come together behind her. It's more important she get her message out to as many people as possible.

There are folks who think all this is really proof that Sarah's not running. All I can say is: Wait and see.

Is Paul Broun The Dumbest Member Of Congress? Signs Point To Yes

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I'm not the biggest fan of TSA security procedures myself, but I probably prefer them to the laughably ineffective regime that existed prior to 9/11. And I definitely prefer them to what the bedwetting wingnuts who want us to resort to ethnic profiling measures immediately instead of messing around with random searches, which they consider "political correctness."

Guys like wingnut Georgia GOP Rep. Paul Broun, who was on Fox News yesterday with Shannon Bream sharing his expertise -- the guy sits on the Homeland Security Committee, which is a disconcerting thought indeed -- because of TSA procedures he witnessed recently in an airport:

BREAM: Congressman, thanks for joining us today. What did you see that has you so upset?

BROUN: Well, Shannon, what happened at the airport is, uh, an elderly lady walked -- ah, followed me behind in the screening process, and she was patted down. A little kid was patted down. And this guy in Arabian attire just walks right through.

And the point of all this is that we have to focus upon those people who want to harm us.

TSA has been abysmal -- abysmal failure. We're spending eight billion dollars a year on this, and we're -- we're focusing on these total body scans, these enhanced patdowns. We need more, uh, intelligence.

That we do, Congressman, that we do. In Congress, especially.

Broun wants everyone who wears "Arabian dress" to get the thorough patdown at TSA security checkpoints -- even though anyone even half-knowledgeable about antiterrorist security can tell you that no terrorist will wear garb that attracts attention to themselves. They are uniformly intent on blending in and being unnoticed. Anyone wearing "Arabian dress" is actually not likely at all to be a terrorist.

But that ain't no nevermind to someone like Broun. He has bigger fish to fry here:

BROUN: We need to focus on those people who are trying to harm us as a nation. And so it's absolutely critical for us change from this wasteful, um, inefficient -- type of screening that's going on at the airport. It's wasting billions of dollars and we need to start focusing upon what is absolutely going to help prevent people from being killed.

And that's to get the human intelligence out there -- some -- infiltration into these various groups so that we know who is gonna harm us and so we stop these attacks, instead of wasting the taxpayers' money, instead of having this big hassle at the airport. It's costing American taxpayers, as well as the airline industry, billions of dollars.

See, Broun is one of those many Republicans who thinks that simple ethnic profiling measures will do the job and make us good and secure, and probably save us a bundle in the process. Skip the random patdowns and replace it with simple profiling of Muslims, and voila! No more need for a TSA.

This is, of course, rank stupidity guaranteed to get people killed, because it is guaranteed to make us more vulnerable. As we've explained previously:

If you want to profile every "known Muslim," you're going to have a hell of a time in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, considering that their populations are a mix of the world's religions, and any Muslim who wanted to pose as a member of, say, a Christian church in order to fool authorities could do so with ease.

This just underscores how foolish the whole notion of racial profiling actually is, because when you embark on such policies, they actually make you more vulnerable, not less.

That's because terrorists are not that stupid. If you begin profiling for Middle Eastern men, they will find Indonesian or African or European operatives to perform the same task. If you begin profiling for Muslims, they will find ways to conceal their religious preferences.

We know two things about profiling, especially ethnic, religious, or racial profiling: 1) These policies expose the profilers to being gamed by terrorists; and 2) They are always a tremendous waste of resources and inevitably are counter-productive.

Sounds like your classic conservative solution: Hey, let's just make matters worse!

And waste a bundle of money while we're at it.

The best part is listening to Broun provide a down-home rationale for ethnic profiling, straight out of Dukes of Hazzard:

BREAM: But Congressman, how tough is this job now for the TSA, just to see the way that somebody is clothed, or see the pigmentation of their skin to automatically have to suspect them? That puts them in a tough place.

BROUN: Well, it does, Shannon. But the thing is, if a guy who's a young man robs a bank and goes and jumps in a blue Camaro with racing stripes and flames on it and goes running off, you say -- does the police put out an all-points bulletin saying, 'There's a person driving a motorized vehicle. Look for them.'

You know, we've got to focus on those who want to harm us. And the way we do that is we have to have the human intelligence, and we have to stop this inane political correctness that's going on.

Political correctness is not -- eh -- won't save any lives. But focusing on those that want -- will harm us -- uh, will. We've already seen how political correctness run amok has cost lives with Major Hasan out in Texas at Fort Hood. We've got to get past that, we've got to start focusing on those people.

All of which raises the question: Is Paul Broun the stupidest member of Congress? Really, you can't help but watch this performance and wonder.

I remember back in the day that the political columnist Jack Anderson ran an annual piece naming someone or other the "dumbest member of Congress". (I remember this because two of my congressmen from Idaho -- George Hansen and Steve Symms -- were perennial winners.) I don't think anyone does it anymore, but someone should. Because Paul Broun would win. A lot.

Joe Conason, in fact, named Broun the stupidest member of Congress last year. I'd say he's in the running again this year.

This is a guy who, just days after the 2008 election, declared that "he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship." When one of Broun's supporters wished aloud for someone to shoot President Obama, Broun laughed and brushed it off. This is the guy who thinks a vital piece of legislation is to declare a "Year of the Bible".

On health care, Broun was equally reality-based (which is to say: not at all), saying thing like this:

"If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that's in people's pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between The States -- the Great War of Yankee Aggression."

And this:

In July, Broun declared that the public insurance option "is gonna kill people." Later in the month, he argued that "ObamaCare" would "give every single one of those illegal aliens health insurance." At a town hall meeting in September, Broun literally walked away from a constituent who couldn't get health coverage after telling him, "If you have a suggestion, send it to me." And, just a few weeks ago, he introduced "alternative" legislation that would eliminate Medicare altogether.

Yesterday, Broun escalated his attacks on the Democratic reform bill, saying that its passage will "destroy America as we know it today."

Yep, he's back in the running.