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Guns Guns Guns
Guest
The tutorial in 8[SUP]th[/SUP] grade biology that Republicans got after one of their members of Congress went public with something from the wackosphere was instructive, and not just because it offered female anatomy lessons to those who get their science from the Bible.
Take a look around key committees of the House and you’ll find a governing body stocked with crackpots whose views on major issues are as removed from reality as Missouri’s Representative Todd Akin’s take on the sperm-killing powers of a woman who’s been raped.
On matters of basic science and peer-reviewed knowledge, from evolution to climate change to elementary fiscal math, many Republicans in power cling to a level of ignorance that would get their ears boxed even in a medieval classroom.
Congress incubates and insulates these knuckle-draggers.
Let’s take a quick tour of the crazies in the House.
We’re currently experiencing the worst drought in 60 years, a siege of wildfires, and the hottest temperatures since records were kept.
Representative John Shimkus of Illinois said “The earth will end only when God declares it to be over.”
Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas barked “You can’t regulate God!” in the midst of discussion on measures to curb global warming. You may remember Barton as the politician who apologized to the head of BP in 2010 after the government dared to insist that the company pay for those whose livelihoods were ruined by the gulf oil spill.
Jack Kingston of Georgia, a 20-year veteran of the House, is an evolution denier, apparently because he can’t see the indent where his ancestors’ monkey tail used to be. “Where’s the missing link?” he said in 2011. He serves on a committee that oversees education.
A Gallup poll in June found that 58 percent of Republicans believe God created humans in the present form just within the last 10,000 years.
Another Georgia congressman, Paul Broun, introduced the so-called personhood legislation in the House — backed by Akin and Representative Paul Ryan — that would have given a fertilized egg the same constitutional protections as a fully developed human being.
Where do they get this stuff? The Bible, yes, but much of the misinformation and the fables that inform Republican politicians comes from hearsay.
Remember the crazy statement that helped to kill the presidential aspirations of Michele Bachmann? A vaccine, designed to prevent a virus linked to cervical cancer, could cause mental retardation, she proclaimed. Bachmann knew this, she insisted, because some lady told her so.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/the-crackpot-caucus/
Their war on critical thinking explains a lot about why no real solutions to our problems emerge from that broken legislative body.
