Today we learned of another GOP politician who has “sinned against God…”. Republican Representative Mark Souder of Indiana announced his resignation in light of of an affair with a staffer.

Do you suppose that the kool-aid drinking, holier-than-thou, hate-everyone-but-us conservatives have figured out that we are all sinners yet? The intensity of hate that spews from the mouths of these creeps is astonishing when it comes to gays, minorities, and anyone not conforming to their fake belief systems.

Mr. Souder will get a free pass, because he quit. “I am resigning rather than put my family through that painful, drawn-out process.” Sir, YOU decided to subject your family to that process the minute you unzipped your pants. I’d like to see your colleagues give free passes to a Democrat in is situation. What’s more I’d like to see your colleagues stop judging others by their temporary lapses in moral direction, and exchange their slanted views for those that are more closely aligned with the real teachings of Christianity.

The recent movements (or stall tactics, as they are) in Washington, D.C. around the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) reveals some interesting overtones in our country today. First and foremost to fully appreciate what is at work here one need only look at the convenient timeline Mr. Obama has created. He promised future constituents that he would tackle the hard issues of DADT from the very start – and then did nothing. He promised to address the issue of same-sex marriage and did nothing. He promised to bring a tone of civility around these issues and to encourage a broader “conversation” about the issues – and then did nothing. Now he has proposed looking at DADT and trying to find a way to bring it to conclusion. The problem, of course, is that Mr. Obama set forth no timeframe in which this had to be done. So, the military will launch a series of investigations and internal reviews, as only the military can, to determine whether abandoning DADT is possible, and that process will take approximately 10-12 months to complete.

Of course by then the country will have gone through another election cycle and once again the real issue of basic human rights will have been clouded by the right-wing hypocrisy machine and we will all take one giant leap backwards. The right-wing will have vilified every aspect of individual rights because it makes them uncomfortable. What’s interesting about the right-wing approach to DADT is that the rhetoric you hear frames the debate as a moral/morale question that harkens back to a time when African-Americans could not serve in the full military.  It is this polarizing tradition of the right-wing that is the lifeblood of the GOP. In the 1960’s it was the Civil Rights movement, in the 1970’s it was the anti-establishment, anti-War, pro-Abortion Rights that fed the beast, and in the 1980’s it was the liberal intelligentsia that kept the GOP moving forward with pro-business/anti-government sentiment. The 1990’s were especially sweet for the party of hate as it focused on everything Clinton. But the past decade has been the best so far for the GOP.  You can basically define the last 10 years as the Age of War for the right-wing because it’s the period of time when the right was at war with anything and anyone with a thought contrary to the Kool-Aid formula, which conveniently means that terrorists and gays get lumped together.

Political systems generally understand that in order to maintain control they must exercise control. Some use military force to gain and retain control over the people, while others use mental torture. Our political system, not just the GOP, has elected to take the later.  Fear is a rich element by which to rule the masses. Today we have a fear of gays the way we had a fear of African-Americans 50 plus years ago.  Fear is also a powerful tool to control the moral beacon of a people.  Frankly, I believe that what our society really fears is the face we see in the mirror. If your moral convictions are so high, and your spirituality allows you to have a close personal relationship with a deity, then what do you have to fear by allowing gays to marry, or even serve openly and proudly in the military. That is, of course, unless your moral convictions are shallower than you admit to, or perhaps your spiritual connection is not as clear as you might hope.

In either case, grow-up America!

2006 proved to be quite an exciting year as we saw that the average American voter just might “get it” after all. I am cautiously optimistic about 2007 as we anxiously await the changing of the guard in the House and Senate in Washington.

Rest assured that our work here is not done, and that we can always do more to help those that cannot help themselves, and to ensure that the basic civil rights of ALL of our citizens are protected under the Constitution created by our founders. This means that watching all of our lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, is a priority and that we should call BS when we see it no matter the party affiliation.

Over the course of the last several months I have heard numerous antidotes about “conservative” voters turning their backs on the GOP in the upcoming mid-term elections. NBC Nightly News did a story back in August about a registered Republican voter who said she was voting Democrat in the next election because she did not think the current party and leadership was doing enough for her daughter’s generation. She was particularly alarmed by the rising level of spending and little attention to the budget deficits accumulated since 9/11. Then there are the growing numbers of Iraq war veterans returning home and running as Democrats in various state and federal elections.

But the comments posted on the Washington Monthly blog site “Showdown ‘06″ by one self-described “conservative” really gives reason to hope that this year may be the year to turn the tide:

If the Democrats take the disgusting moral hypocrisy of a Republican Party that aids child predators, and use the awareness of that hypocrisy to bring credibility in the public’s eyes to the true concept that the Republican elite are hypocrites on all sorts of issues, than the Democrats can be the majority Party that Rove wishes his Coalition of Hypocrites could be.

And my favorite part:

I’m not a Democrat, and I am a conservative. But because I am a conservative, I will vote Democrat in the coming mid term election and hope that the Republican Hypocrites lose this election in a landslide.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) has checked himself into an alcohol treatment center as way of explaining why he pursued a number of male interns while in Congress. From the AP:

“I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and other behavioral problems,” Foley said in a statement, Roth told the AP.

Foley, a Republican, abruptly quit Congress on Friday after reports surfaced that he’d sent sexually charged electronic messages to boys working as pages. In the statement, Foley said the “events that led to my resignation have crystalized recognition of my long-standing and significant alcoholism and emotional difficulties.”

“I deeply regret and accept full responsibility for the harm I have caused,” Foley said. He also expressed “gratitude for the prayers and words of encouragement that have been conveyed to me.”

In another example of the duplicity that has become the GOP, Foley has decided to blame something else on his behavior. Just come out and say you are a perv and that you have used the power and influence of your office to cause harm to others.

What is more impressive are the reports over the weekend that the house leadership actually knew of Foley’s problem long before it went public, which has resulted in calls for the leadership (Speaker Hastert and Majority Leader Boehner) to resign from within the party.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida) resigned from his seat today following allegations of misconduct and inappropriate communication with a minor male intern that worked in his office in Washington. This story is getting wide “exposure” all over the Internet, with Americablog.com having screen shots of some explicit emails sent to the young intern.

Foley denies that his resignation has anything to do with the allegations.  But considering this quote from ABC News:

A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

So, the theocon’s sent a representative to Congress, gave him an important comittee chair position, and he used his power to talk dirty to a young intern?

Well, apparently, there is more. Check out this quote from the Stop Sex Predators blog from at least one different intern (I say this because the intern in the ABC piece is a minor and the author of this letter makes reference to college):

THIRD EMAIL
From: repub intern
Mailed-By: hotmail.com
To: stopsexpredators@gmail.com
Date: Sep 18, 2006 2:07 PM
Subject: CONGRESSIONAL CORRUPTION!!!
Reply Reply to all Forward Print Add sender to Contacts list Delete
this message Report phishing Show original Message text garbled?

My dad who gives a lot of money to republicans got me an internship capitolhill. I thought that I was hot shit, having such a good internship after myfreshman year of college.After a few weeks, I was finally learning my way around DC and I wasenjoying my job.One night, I decided to go out with my new fake ID to my first gay bar.I went to this bar named Coblot.There was old guy who would not leave me alone. He kept following me around.I tried to get him to leave me alone by going to the bathroom.Instead he followed me in and tried to grope me.A few days later my boss had me run something over to another congressmansoffice. It turned out that the guy who groped me was Representative MarkFoley.

So the very people who want to deny LGBT rights on issues such as partner benefits and marriage are trolling DC gay bars. Oh! What a tangled web indeed!

Do you remember what you were doing in the summer of 2001? More importantly, do you remember what your President and his Congress were doing in the summer of 2001? I do.

Just a few short weeks before 9/11 our President was perched at his Crawford, Texas ranch enjoying a very long vacation (5 weeks if I remember correctly). His attention was focused on the moral dilemma of stem cell research and how he could use the Christian cloth he had wrapped himself in to suppress promising research for curing diseases. This topic was so important that he took time away from chopping wood and barbecuing to address the nation in primetime.

If the Bush administration was so focused on terrorists (namely al Qaeda) why did he never once speak to the American people about the problem? After all, Bush knew that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the USS Cole in the Fall of 2000. Why did he not go on national television to the tell the American people that he knew who attacked our service men and women? Why did the President not speak directly and openly to the American people and our enemies alike and say that the United States was not going to take it and that he would develop a master plan for eliminating terror from the face of the Earth? Why was Bush and Company not more proactive in their approach to the war on terror?

This is the kind of questioning that conspiracy theorists love to hear, because it is so easy to say that the President wanted to be attacked. Personally, I just think the President was distracted with giving tax breaks to the most wealthy and in becoming our moral leader on deeply personal issues and that he simply could not be bothered with the big picture.

Five plus years is a long time ago for some of us. Perhaps our memories have been clouded over with more recent events. So I ask then, what were the Republicans (Bush and Company) concerned with in the Spring of 2005? Was it the war in Iraq? Was it Afghanistan? Osama bin Laden? Was it on protecting our borders? Was it beefing up security on freight shipments and cargo ships that enter our ports everyday? The answer is no. The Republicans were worried about the obviously brain-dead Terri Schiavo and having her feeding tube removed. They [Republicans] simply could not stand to have a moral and personal decision go with intervening by creating bogus laws for one specific case. Once again the GOP decided to wrap itself in the Christian cloth of morality in hopes of undermining the personal freedoms and personal relationship between an individual choice and their belief system.

How is that related to the war on terror? Does this demonstrate that the Republicans are the party of protecting the American people? Again, no. But as long as the “war on terror” is being fought, the Republicans know that they have a banner to wave that proclaims them as the gladiators that are going to save us all.

In 2004 the GOP pulled out all of the stops and forced the same-sex marriage debate front and center for the general election. The plan was to stir fear that the American family was somehow threatened by two loving people sharing in the same rights (not privileges, but rights) as everyone else. The summer of 2006 started out the same way. The GOP was down in the polls and it needed a boost, so twice the House of Representatives passed bills to amend the Constitution to ensure that same-sex couples never receive any rights at all, and twice the Senate rejected the same initiative. When that didn’t work, the GOP turned to protecting our borders. The President even went before the nation on primetime (something he likes to do for political reasons and seldom out of the collective interest of the citizenry) to spell out his plan for protecting the border with Mexico and to lay out his plans for immigration. But in the spirit of true Republicanism, the House has spent the entire summer touring the country talking about the issue but doing little else. Now there isn’t enough time to act on any legislation, so Congress has delayed the vote until after the election.

How is any of this serving the needs of this country in the war on terror? The Republicans are not about protecting anyone but themselves and their financial supporters. Good people with good common sense and the ability to think critically should remember all of this as they head to the polls in November.