But I digress.

You need to do this before any upcoming elections. Find out who is

on the ballot has a record of opposing guns vs. who has a record of supporting guns, and vote against the gun supporters and for the gun opposers.

I made a list of current members of the Minnesota US Congressional delegation, and put it at the top of the post, with relevant information. I also looked some details up from HERE and HERE.

In a recent rating of recent and current members of the Minnesota House delegation, the NRA gave Rick Nolan, Keith Ellison, and Betty McCollum the grade of “F” and none of these three lawmakers have taken money from them.

Collin Peterson took $2,500 bucks from the NRA, Michele Bachmann took $3,500, Erik Paulson took 2,250, John Kline $2,500, and Tim Walz took $2,000. They all got a rating of “A” from the NRA.

Notice that party lines are being crossed here.

During the recent congressional session, Congresspersons Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison supported zero bills that support guns, but have supported 14 gun control bills.

Richard Nolan has supported one gun control bill.

Al Franken has supported two gun control bills.

Amy Klobuchar has supported two gun control bills.

Those are the clear good guys in Congress from Minnesota. But you might ask why the great variation in number of bills?

Congressman Erik Paulsen has supported one gun rights bill and has not supported any gun control bills. Collin Peterson has supported three gun rights bills and zero gun control bills. Tom Emmer has supported zero gun control bills and five gun rights bills. John Kline has supported a whopping nine gun rights bills and zero gun control bills.

(oversize video below the fold)

Why does FOX still get press passes? Are they still in the White House press corp?

More here at Raw Story

“He intends to depose all of the female legislative staff employees who participated in intimate relationships, as well as the legislators who were party to those intimate relationships, in support of his claims of gender discrimination,” the notice said.

Brodkorb is seeking a half a million in damages. I wonder if he’ll be using that to pay out damages to the people he is now bent on damaging?

PS: Stephanie has also posted an item on this.

A couple of months ago, it was revealed that a senior Republican legislator in Minnesota was having an affair with a staffer. This was a reasonably powerful individual (the elected official) having an affair with an adult who was also reasonably powerful (a senior staffer) and it was really just their own business, but since she was part of the Republican Leadership and Republicans have this idea of family values that they insist on legislating for the rest of us, her hypocrisy was noted. And, someone added some extra frosting to the icing on the cake by noting that the legislator’s husband had the right to file criminal charges using an arcane and archaic, and rather misogynist, state law. This law provides penalties for a woman who steps out on her husband, but only if the husband files criminal charges with the appropriate law enforcement agency. There is not an equivalent provision for penalties for a man who steps out on her husband. Either our state-wide founding fathers knew this never, ever happened, or …. they knew it happened all the time (with them) and chaos would ensue!

Either way, having the prospect of an old fashioned, misogynist proto-family values type law rise up out of the dustbin of history and bite some significant Republican on the ass was satisfying, even though the likelihood of such charges ever being brought was obviously zero.

This has happened again, but this time with Rush Limbaugh, and the arcane statute has been brought to the foreground by the famous oft-but-not-always feminist lawyer Gloria Allred. As you know, Rush Limbaugh has made a series of asinine statements regarding the sex life of a Georgetown Law student named Sandra Fluke. It turns out that in Florida, there is a law that says that if a man says things about the chastity of a woman, he can be charged by the state.

… Allred … sent a letter to the Palm Beach County Attorney’s Office on Thursday saying prosecutors should consider a charge under an 1883 law making it a misdemeanor to question a woman’s chastity.

“He has personally targeted her and vilified her, and he should have to bear the consequences of his extremely outrageous, tasteless and damaging conduct,” Allred said in a phone interview Friday.

No one seriously thinks this old law will ever be used in an official action; it would surly not survive even initial scrutiny in any court room (not that arcane blue laws have not had their place in court rooms in recent decades). But the absurdity of having a pre-Family Values statute brought against Rush Limbaugh, whose image is in the American Heritage Dictionary next to the definition for “Absurd,” is just plain delicious.

I hope that this is a trend. Every few months there should be some Right Wing Republican either caught in the act or challenged for over the top hateful commentary matched with a still-on-the-books statute that legislates morality just like the Right Wing would desire. Exposing these atavistic statutes, which seem to be quite common in the 50 states and zillion counties parishes, and municipalities, will remind people that they are there, that these laws and these societal fetishes are things of the past, and that they should be removed through the usual processes, and linking these prescriptions and proscriptions with current day personalities will help put their politics in perspective. And it’s kinda fun.

We are reminded, when this sort of thing happens, that not so long ago our society was governed by laws and assumptions that we would see today as ridiculous and unfair. We are also reminded of the surprising degree to which our society has recently shifted toward Christian Fundamentalism, with Republican politicians and the key political philosophers of the Republican Party such as Rush Limbaugh leading the way, following a few decades of movement in a more progressive direction.

Via The Huffington Post: ” The Republican Party in a small, conservative South Carolina county expects its candidates to lower taxes. They also expect them to not watch porn, be faithful to their spouses and not have sex outside of marriage. The Laurens County Republican Party originally decided that anyone who wanted to run for office with the GOP’s blessing would have to sign a pledge and be approved by party leaders…”.* Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss on The Young Turks.

Think Progress has the whole story, here’s a bit of it:

ThinkProgress reported last week that Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R) was forced to apologize to First Lady Michelle Obama after forwarding an email to fellow lawmakers that called her “Mrs. YoMama” and compared her to the Grinch.

Earlier that same week, the Lawrence Journal-World was sent another email that O’Neal had forwarded to House Republicans that referred to President Obama and a Bible verse that says “Let his days be few” and calls for his children to be without a father and his wife to be widowed.

Kansas should be ashamed of itself.

Amazingly, Mitt Romney is in the lead according to a recent poll by the Des Moines Register, going into Tuesday’s caucuses, but the lead is slim. And the configuration of the field seems at least a little stable. The CNN poll of December 28th shows this pattern:

Mitt Romney 25
Ron Paul 22
Rick Santorum 16
Newt Gingrich 14
Rick Perry 11
Michele Bachmann 9
Jon Huntsman 1

… and the Des Moine Register poll shows this pattern:

Mitt Romney 24
Ron Paul 22
Rick Santorum 15
Newt Gingrich 12
Rick Perry 11
Michele Bachmann 7
Jon Huntsman 2
Not Sure 7

Interestingly, according to the Des Moines Register poll, Santorum and Perry share a 15 point lead for “second choice” and have relatively low numbers for the “Like Least” category. They are followed by Not Sure (14) with Romney coming in at 13 for the Second Choice category. The most “lease liked” is Rick Perry (15) with Romney (13) and Bachmann (12) close behind.

In some ways, this is the most interesting part of the poll:

Gingrich is the most knowledgeable by far. I guess that is because he is a professor. Bachmann is the least knowledgeable but not by as much. I guess that’s because she’s a moron. Paul wins for reducing debt and having the smallest ego.

Romney leads the back by a large margin in being the “most electable” and Bachmann and Paul are almost tied for “lease electable.”

Interestingly, Huntsman is very ver ylow on “the most consistent” rating while Romney is fifth from the bottom. That surprises me. Otherwise, most of this makes sense except the part about Ron Paul’s ego.

What do you think?

A couple years back there was an incident of an elected (state level) official contacted by some sort of citizens group for a meeting (a normal thing to happen) and he/she let slip that this group would never have an audience because of opposition during the election.

The other day a gay man asked New Gingrich about his position on engaging gay people once in office, and Gingrich’s reply was to tell the man to vote for Obama.

I asked him if he’s elected, how does he plan to engage gay Americans. How are we to support him? And he told me to support Obama,” said Arnold. […]

“When you ask somebody a question and you expect them to support all Americans and have everyone’s general interest,”Arnold said. “It’s a little bit frustrating and disheartening when you’re told to support the other side. That he doesn’t need your support.”

quoted from the Des Moines Register, here.

So, here’s what I think. Republican candidates, while running for office, should be presented with lists … during the debates would be a good time … of different factions of Americans, and then they must declare if they will represent these people or not once elected.

Will you or will you not be an effective, thoughful, and fair representative for …

• Gay people
• Transgender people
• People who support single payer health care
  Union member
• …
• And so on and so forth

Then these results can be vetted by the press (they are so good at that, after all) and adjusted to reflect realty, and the results hung by the voting booth so people are clear on what they are doing when they pull the lever.

Which is worse:

He’s a Republican Family Values (read: Anti-Gay) Conservative who is, apparently, gay;
He’s spending taxpayer money to buy gay stuff in a gay adult bookstore; or
He’s spending said Taxpayer (And that’s Mississippi Taxpayer) money in a foreign country!?!? (Canada)

The Raw Story Reports:

“At this point in my life and in my career, while I have tried to maintain separation between my personal and public life, it is obvious that this can no longer remain the case … While I have performed my job as mayor, in my opinion, as a very conservative, progressive individual — and still continue to be a very conservative individual — I think that it is important that I discuss the struggles I have had over the last few years when I came to the realization that I am gay”

Apparently he has misspent just under 200 thousand dollars, but only $67 of that was at “Priape, Canada’s premiere gay lifestyle store and sex shop”

He doesn’t remember what he bought at the gay adult sex shop in Canada.

So, here’s your assignment. Go to Priape and find something that costs about 67 dollars. Report back.