Marc Thiessen was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He also wrote speeches for Donald Rumsfeld when he was Secretary of Defense. He’s the author of a book (I hesitate to call it ‘non-fiction’) entitled Courting Disaster; How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack. In part, the book argues that the use of torture (redefined as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’) is legal, moral and effective. Thiessen is associated with the Government Accountability Institute, which is a conservative group that claims to investigate government fraud. He also writes opinion pieces published in the Washington Post.

Recently the Government Accountability Institute issued a report claiming President Obama has ‘skipped half of his intelligence briefings.’ That claim is based on the number of times the president, after reading his daily intelligence briefing, decided he didn’t need a more detailed in-person follow-up briefing. Let me clear about this: there were, in fact, NO skipped briefings; there were only briefings that were sufficiently clear that President Obama didn’t require any additional information.

Marc Thiessen

Thiessen, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, repeated the ‘Obama skipped half of his intelligence briefings’ claim. Thiessen not only neglected to report the facts on which the misleading claim is made, he failed to note his relationship with the group that made the claim. Right wing bloggers picked up the claim and began to repeat it, without bothering to check its accuracy. American Crossroads SuperPAC, one of Karl Rove’s political attack machines, featured the claim in a pro-Romney campaign advertisement, noting the Washington Post as the source in order to validate the claim. Bloggers, right wing pundits, and contributors to FOXNews began to complain that the ‘mainstream press’ was deliberately ignoring the story.

And now there is a portion of the U.S. population who believes President Obama actually skipped half of his intelligence briefings.

If you ever wonder why a third of the Republican Party believes the president is a secret Muslim, or that he’s a socialist, or that he was born in Kenya — this is why. This is how the Republican Party works these days.

Researchers who deal with deadly snakes have learned to make themselves immune to snake venom. Gradually, over time, they repeatedly expose themselves to small doses of the venom, building up a tolerance for it, until eventually they can withstand a level of poison that would kill a normal person.

Folks, that’s what’s been happening to us in US politics. For the last four years we’ve listened to Republicans and right-wing extremists call President Obama anti-American. We’ve heard them claim he’s an illegal alien with foreign values. We’ve listened to them say he’s a secret Muslim out to destroy America. We’ve heard them claim Obama is a Communist and an atheist and a Socialist with terrorists for friends.

On occasion somebody in the Republican leadership will issue a weak rebuke, but for the most part they don’t discourage this sort of talk. More often, they encourage it or participate in it. The result is the American populace have developed a tolerance for this sort of poison.

So yesterday, when Gov. Mitt Romney, publicly stated that President Obama was in sympathy with the terrorists who assassinated a US ambassador and three other members of the US consulate in Libya, we heard reporters and pundits call those remarks “unfortunate” and “inaccurate” and “ill-timed” and “unpresidential,” and a “discredit to his campaign.”

Think about that. A candidate for the office of President of the United States accused the sitting president of sympathizing with the perpetrators of a concerted assault on a United States embassy, which resulted in four deaths of embassy personnel. What Romney said was so despicable that it should, by itself, render him unelectable.  And the news media calls that statement “unfortunate” and “inaccurate.” I’m telling you, America has been snake-bit, but we’ve been exposed to so much venom that our system tolerates it.

And you know what’s worse? You know what is even worse than the outrage deficit that allows Romney to get by with appalling shit like accusing President Obama of treason? I’ll tell you.

What’s worse is we’re not supposed to say that racism plays any part of the hatred the right wing feels for Obama. Because calling somebody a racist is offensive.

There’s a lot of apologizing going on right now in the Republican party.

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin has apologized for his comment about ‘legitimate rape.” Frank Szabo, who is running for the office of Sheriff in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, has apologized for saying if elected he’d arrest doctors who perform abortions and would resort to deadly force to stop them if necessary. Marilyn Davenport of the Orange County Republican party apologized for sending out an email with a photograph of President Obama’s head on the body of a chimpanzee. Congressman Paul Ryan, who is running for Vice President of the United States, has apologized for accusing U.S. military commanders of being dishonest about their budgetary needs in their testimony to Congress. Mitt Romney, running for President, apologized for saying he was not concerned about the very poor.

Everywhere you look there’s a Republican apologizing — and not meaning a word of it. Has Akin had a change of heart? No, he hasn’t; he still wants to make it illegal for a woman to terminate a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. Has Szabo changed his position on shooting doctors who perform abortions? Not really; he now says “I recognize it [abortion] is legal, and for that reason deadly force against an abortion doctor is not justifiable.” Only for that reason; otherwise, I guess he’d just have to shoot their sorry asses. What about Ms. Davenport? Is she really sorry about sending out that photograph? She’s only sorry “if anybody was offended” by it, because she claims there’s nothing racist about it.

Does Ryan now believe the generals were telling the truth when they testified under oath that they didn’t need the increase in military spending that Ryan wants them to have? No, he doesn’t. He says he “misspoke” when he accused them of dishonesty, and “I was clumsy in how I was describing the point I was trying to make.” He still believes, though, that “what we got from the White House was more of a budget-driven strategy and not a strategy-driven budget.” In other words, he still thinks the generals were lying, but only because they’re cowards and not because they’re mendacious. And what about Romney, is he really concerned about the very poor? Yes, he absolutely is. He’s concerned they’re getting too much support from the government — support he believes ought to be going to…well, people like him.

When these folks say “I apologize,” it appears they actually mean to say “I’m very sorry that what I believe is so unpopular it might hurt my chances to get or maintain the power and authority I need to impose those beliefs on people who disagree with me.”

They’re a sorry bunch, the current Republican party — and they’re not afraid to say so.

Okay, first let me confess that I have on occasion gotten magnificently drunk and gone skinny-dipping. I’ve even gone skinny-dipping when moderately drunk, when mildly intoxicated, and when perfectly sober. I have absolutely no problem with skinny-dipping as a practice.

But I’ve never done it in front of families — and especially not families with children. Nor am I a member of the Republican Party. Nor am I a member of Congress. Those are some of the many many things that set me apart from Kevin Yoder.

Republican Skinny-Dipper Kevin Yoder

Yoder, a GOP congressman from Kansas, was part of a Republican ‘fact-finding’ trip to Israel last year. During that trip, about twenty congressmen and congressional staffers decided to take an after-dinner swim in the Sea of Galilee. According to the Kansas City Star, some of the GOP congressmen “said it was a religious experience (the Bible says the Sea of Galilee is where Jesus walked on water); others said they wanted to cool off; and still others admitted alcohol may have guided their decision.” Or maybe they wanted to cool off after all the alcohol and getting nekkid was a religious experience.

Yoder has issued the following statement:

“A year ago, my wife, Brooke, and I joined colleagues for dinner at the Sea of Galilee in Israel. After dinner I followed some Members of Congress in a spontaneous and very brief dive into the sea and regrettably I jumped into the water without a swimsuit. It is my greatest honor to represent the people of Kansas in Congress and [for] any embarrassment I have caused for my colleagues and constituents, I apologize.”

He jumped into the water without a swimsuit. Regrettably. He apologizes for the oversight. It was a Congressional fact-finding mission, and one of the facts Congress found is that you probably shouldn’t go swimming naked with your Yoder hanging out.

The Kansas Republic Party is distressed, but glad that the public’s attention has been diverted from Todd Akin, their candidate for the US Senate who believes there is such a thing as ‘legitimate rape.’ According to Akin, a legitimate rapist confers some magical property to the victim which prevents her from conceiving. It’s a lesson for all those illegitimate rapists out there: if you really care about women, you’ll get more serious about rape. Spare your victims the trauma of an abortion.

Republican Dumb-ass Todd Akin

In other news, NASA is considering sending a rover mission Kansas to fire a frickin’ laser into the heads of GOP members of Congress, seeking signs of intelligent life.

“The theory of evolution is a theory, and essentially the theory of evolution is not science—Darwin made it up.”

When I read this comment by Kentucky State Representative Ben Waide (do I need to say he’s a Republican?) I just shook my head. I wasn’t the least bit surprised; I wasn’t at all distressed. Scientific ignorance is rampant in some parts of the nation and it runs deep in one political party. So the guy is a dolt when it comes to science. So what?

Then I learned Waide is a member of Kentucky’s Joint Committee on Education. This guy is making decisions on education policy. And suddenly he’s not just a dolt when it comes to science — he’s a dolt with the power to create more dolts. And that matters.

Rep. Ben Waide

Waide went on to say one of the most profoundly stupid things I’ve ever heard. “My objection is they should ensure whatever scientific material is being put forth as a standard should at least stand up to scientific method. Under the most rudimentary, basic scientific examination, the theory of evolution has never stood up to scientific scrutiny.”

Never stood up to scientific scrutiny? I doubt that any scientific theory has been more thoroughly challenged and examined than theories of evolution. There is far more scientific support for evolutionary theory than there is for the current theories of gravitation, more solid scientific evidentiary support than there is for atomic theory, more  than there is for the theory of general relativity. If Waide believes evolution isn’t science, then the University of Louisville (where he graduated with a B.A. in Health Science) should rescind his degree. They should seize his diploma, burn it, bury the ashes in the ground and salt the earth above it.

Darwin made it up, he says. The shallowness of that claim is staggering. His total lack of understanding of science and how science works may not disqualify him from representing his district in Kentucky — his constituents have the absolute right to vote for somebody with that bovine level of intelligence — but you’d think it would be enough to prevent him from shaping education policy. Or misshaping it, as the case may be.

I don’t care if Waide personally doesn’t believe in evolution. I don’t care if he’s Kentucky’s version of Madeline Basset (who famously “holds the view that the stars are God’s daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born”). But if you believe babies are a result of sinus issues in the wee folk, then you shouldn’t be shaping birth control policies.