Sean Hannity Defends Oil Companies.

For the last two days on Sean Hannity’s radio program, he has relentlessly defended oil companies. Despite the massive profits oil companies have been seeing, Hannity has defended them lock-stop for the last two days. What is the real culprit to the high cost of gas in Hannity’s eyes? You guessed it. Democrats and environmentalists. Big surprise. Or is it?

Strangely, Hannity has even been lambasting Republicans on this issue, for “not sticking to principal”, and for “sounding like little Democrats”. Easy for “Mister Principal” to say, as he isn’t looking at a pink slip in November.

But criticizing Republicans for “not sticking to principal” is quite ironic for Hannity. For the last two days he has criticized the high cost of gas on “government taxes” and “environmental extremists” who don’t want new oil refineries built. Strangely, these talking points closely resemble those stated by oil giant Conoco Phillips, who have made the same talking points in their own media relations webpage. These rants tend to be in between commercials advertising how wonderful propane is. Conflict of interest?

Hannity’s explanation is simply without logic. As gas prices have soared, gas taxes have remained fixed, thus as the gas prices increase, the gas companies are paying a smaller percentage in gas taxes in ratio to the price at the pump. This is an institutional incentive for gas companies to raise prices, which could be fixed in a heart beat, simply by changing petrol tax law from a fixed amount to a percentage of the cost at the pump. Additionally, gas companies have no reason to build more refineries, as doing so would cost them money to increase supply, a formula for oil companies to invest in losing money. And while Hannity bloviates about massive gas taxes, he fails to mention the billions in tax-payer dollars that was given to the oil giants as a gift in last year’s energy bill.

Hannity has even exclaimed the “outrageous” proposal by Maryland Senator Chuck Schumer to break up some of the oil giants, contradicting his supposed support for “free market competition”. Instead of placing the blame on oil giants like Exxon-Mobil for the high cost of gas, he has put the blame of Senator Schumer, for reasons only known to Hannity himself.

Additionally, Hannity has claimed that petrol taxes “don’t produce anything”, despite that gas taxes are the primary revenue resource funding the nation’s highways, and additionally mass transit infrastructure. Considering that the gas companies must have roads for their consumers to drive on, petrol taxes are simply nothing more than a massive subsidy to the oil giants.

Further parroting Conoco Phillips’ talking points, Hannity has said that the profits per dollar on gasoline are far behind that in many US industries, including food and beverages. What Hannity, and Conoco Phillips fail to point out, is that Americans do not have a need to purchase 20-50 gallons of soda pop on a weekly basis. But if gas companies make so little profit off a gallon of gas, as Hannity claims, then it makes one ponder why has gas companies’ profits skyrocketed at the same time that prices has risen at the pump? You could ask Hannity for the answer, but he would likely be parroting oil industry PR flacks. The truth is everyone knows the answer, as it couldn’t be clearer.

Terrorist Attacks At An All-Time High.

The Associated Press is reporting that according to the US Government’s own figures, 2005 saw the most terrorist attacks since the government began keeping tabs on such numbers since the 1980’s. The National Counterterrorism Center, to release official figures soon, has said that worldwide terrorist attacks for 2005 have reached an all time high, exceeding 10,000 incidents. A NCTC official said that over 50% of the total increase of terrorists attacks happened in Iraq.

As Nitwit Planet noted in August of last year, the National Counterterrorism Center saw a massive spike in terrorist activity in 2004, with a total of 3,192 terrorist incidents, 60% of the 10 most deadly terrorist incidents occurring in Iraq. In 2003, the same year that the US went to war with Iraq, the Patterns of Global Terrorism report listed just 208 terrorist incidents.

Is it just me, or is a five hundred percent increase in terrorist attacks in just three years -the same years we have been in Iraq, where most of the terrorist incidents are occurring - seem to indicate that the Bush administration’s method of fighting a global war on terror has been a complete and total abysmal failure?

Once again, it has been proven, that the best way to fight terrorism, is to stop being terrorists.

Why Natalee Holloway Is Lucky.

I saw this on News Hounds the other day, and thought it was so brilliant, that I could not help but repost it.

Why Natalee Holloway Is Lucky She Is Not Around to Make Accusations
Reported by Judy - April 20, 2006

Natalee Holloway is lucky she is not around to make accusations against anybody who may have done her harm. Why? Just look what has happened to the woman who says members of the Duke lacrosse team gang-raped her. Fox News has turned her into the criminal, attacking her credibility and rallying to the defense of the white privileged defendants in the case. It's all about the underlying political agenda of Fox News.

Everything on Fox News has a political agenda -- even coverage of missing white women, which we all know far exceeds the coverage of missing people of any other gender or race on this network. But what is the Fox News political agenda regarding missing white women and how does Fox News coverage of the Natalee Holloway disappearance and the alleged gang rape of a woman by members of the Duke lacrosse team exemplify that?

The thinking of Berkeley linguist George Lakoff -- Don't Think of An Elephant -- helps explain Fox News' political agenda in these matters. Fox News' editors and reporters subscribe to a world view in which men rule -- what Lakoff calls the strict father paradigm. The father is the boss in the family, and by extension, George Bush is the boss in the country, the world. Family members are subject to the strict father's severe discipline, which they need in order to learn how to survive in the world. Besides meting out discipline, the father's job is to protect the famly members from the dangerous outside world.

Lakoff contrasts this view of the world (he calls it a "frame") with the world view of progressives. Progressives see the family as made up of nurturing parents who are both equal and equally responsible for raising children in a loving environment that stresses empathy and caring over strict discipline. Now, according to Lakoff, most people have both world views embedded in their psyches but using certain words or phrases can activate one frame or another. When the strict father frame is active in viewers, George Bush and conservatives win. It is Fox News' job to keep that strict father frame active in its viewers at all times.

Within this world view, Fox News recognizes only two kinds of women -- victims and sexual deviants/whores. Natalee Holloway represents the first kind. In Fox News' world view, we can feel sorry for her because she has been a victim of the dangerous outside world. More importantly, we can feel sorry for her because she is no longer around to level charges against her accusers.

Suppose Natalee Holloway had been able to escape her attackers that night and go to the police with her story of what happened? Then Natalee Holloway would have slipped from the category of victim to sexual deviant -- the same Fox News category that encompasses the alleged victim in the Duke lacrosse gang rape case, the female teachers who have sex with their students, and most progressive women politicians, such as Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein.

Why would Holloway have switched categories? Because her going to the police would necessarily have entailed making accusations against males. And unless those males were non-white, by making an accusation against a male, Natalee Holloway would have been challenging the authority of the strict father figure, which is the touchstone of so much conservative thinking. Strict father figures are to be obeyed, not challenged. Once a woman, even a likely victim such as Natalee Holloway, challenges that authority, they must be destroyed through character assassination, and the targets of her accusations must be defended at all costs because they are society's supreme authority figures -- privileged white males.

Fox News' agenda was never so clear as on "Dayside" on Thursday (April 20, 2006). The program featured first a segment on developments in the Duke lacrosse gang rape case. "Dayside" co-hosts Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy interviewed Russ Ferguson, the student body chief of staff at Duke University, who said the campus mood has switched from sympathy for the accuser to support for the lacrosse players. Issues of class and race of the accuser and the accused make that no surprise, but the decision of defense attorneys to begin aggressively spinning evidence, which they never make public, in favor of their clients also accounts for some of the switch.

Then Huddy and Jerrick went to questions from the audience, and who is the first person they call on? A guy from New Jersey who just happens to have known the family of one of the accused, Reade Silbermann. The New Jersey delivers a character defense of Silbermann, unrebutted in any way by a spokesperson for the victim or women's advocates, and laments how Silbermann will never be able to get his good name back when he is cleared. The audience applauds. (Amazing,isn't it, that Huddy and Jerrick were able to find this guy randomly in the audience on the first try? Is Fox News actively working with defense attorneys in this case to skew public opinion in favor of the defendants?)

Then "Dayside" went immediately to the Holloway case in Aruba. Julie Banderas cried no tears about the potential impact of trying the case in the press for the defendants in the Holloway case. In fact, she still is trying to implicate Joran van der Sloot even though police have arrested someone else.

The difference in treatment of the back-to-back stories was jarring and cried for an explanation.

Because Holloway is not around to make allegations, she can safely remain in the victim category. She is not challenging male authority, thus she is a "safe" victim. If she were alive and making allegations of a horrific experience at the hands of male attackers on the beach that night, Fox News would drop her like a whore with syphyllis. Natalee Holloway would become the issue to a much greater extent than she has so far -- what her sexual history was, what she told police and any inconsistencies that existed in her story, what kind of a woman goes to the beach with guys she doesn't know, and on and on -- and the white male suspects would become the victims.

There have been other cases of the strict father frame at work on Fox News. John Gibson's attack on CBS legal analyst Wendy Murphy on Wednesday (April 19, 2006) is one of them. His contempt for the victim was visceral. You could almost feel his outrage at the challenge to his authority as a strict father figure.

Which brings us back to Fox News' political agenda. Strong progressive women fall into the sexual deviant category not because of their sexual activity necessarily, but because of the threat they pose to the strict father paradigm. They are sexual deviants because they don't fit into the conservative frame of a family where the father rules without challenge. They must be attacked and destroyed unmercifully because every right-wing male knows that if Hillary Clinton is ever elected president, his authority within his own family is at risk -- or so he fears.

The challenge for progressives, according to Lakoff, is to avoid activating that strict father paradigm in American voters at all costs. In the case of women who cry rape, that means focusing on caring and compassion for the victim, in hopes of activating that nurturant parent frame that exists in many Americans' psyches and deactivating that strict parent frame.

The strict father frame never sleeps on Fox News. And that's why Fox News' watchers should not sleep either.

Link Of The Day.

Here is the link of the day. Enjoy.

GOP Trashed in Special Elections.

This from In These Times:

GOP Trashed in Special Elections
March 17, 2006
By Hans Johnson

Democrats are winning, often overwhelmingly, in districts and states that have backed Republicans in recent elections.

A drumbeat of corruption, deficits and war dead has begun to haunt Republican candidates as they hit the campaign trail. The macabre cadence is playing more widely than just federal races: Since November, it has become the background music in a series of state special elections.

Democrats are winning, often overwhelmingly, in districts and states that have backed Republicans in recent elections. The results show that state-level progressive candidates are better poised than at any time in the past 14 years to benefit from a defection of moderate conservatives and a slight left turn in the electorate.

In central Texas, nurse and former school board member Donna Howard beat Ben Bentzin in a Feb. 14 special state House race in suburban Travis County, outside Austin. Howard’s win signaled that Democrats can stand tough even in Republican-tilted districts imposed by “the DeLay-mander,” a revamping of federal districts now under scrutiny by the Supreme Court.

“People were receptive to the idea that someone was willing to talk about going into the legislature and actually making hard decisions, rather than following in lockstep with the failed leadership,” Howard told the Austin American-Statesman. Like other Democratic triumphs of late, her 58 to 42 percent victory came in a district that broke for the GOP in ‘04.

The same day in Kentucky, in a race that drew media attention and doorknockers from three states, Perry Clark, a veteran and Boy Scout volunteer, took the 37th state Senate seat. He won 54 to 46 percent in a district that snakes inland from the Ohio River on the southwest side of Louisville. It too was carried by the GOP in 2004.

Labor households were galvanized by recent Republican efforts to undermine Kentucky unions through a “right-to-work” law. In addition, Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher is under investigation for filling state jobs with cronies in violation of rules on merit-based hiring. Both dynamics boosted Clark.

Next door in Virginia, Mark Herring took a state Senate seat in the D.C. suburbs that Democrats hadn’t even contested in 2002. The landslide 62 to 38 percent win on Jan. 31 sent shockwaves through the GOP, already reeling from a blow just three weeks earlier. In Jerry Fallwell’s stomping ground of Lynchburg, Shannon Valentine rode to a 58 to 42 win for a seat that also hadn’t drawn a Democratic challenger last time around.

Missouri, a battleground that rates as the best bellwether of presidential elections, has seen Democratic victories in conservative districts as well. In February, down in Ashcroft Country, the state’s southwest corner, Charles Dake claimed a state House seat, 56 to 44 percent, that his party hadn’t even sought in 2004.

Jane Bogetto got the ball rolling Nov. 8, beating the widow of the previous seat-holder in a district west of St. Louis. Bogetto, an adoptive mother of three who spotlighted her family in all her campaign mailings, faced smears trying to link her to late-term abortion and same-sex marriage. She prevailed 58 to 42 percent in a district the GOP had held for a generation.

“The hate stuff fired up the people working in my campaign, and it backfired. It just really turned off a lot of moderate Republicans,” Bogetto told the Webster-Kirkwood Times.

“I never thought I’d see a Democrat elected to the legislature,” local political analyst John Pohlmann told the Times. “A lot of suburbs all over the country are starting to trend to the Democrats, mainly because of women voters.”

That trend held in Minnesota. On Nov. 22, Terri Bonoff won a race for the 43rd state Senate seat in the collar communities west of Minneapolis. Once again, her 54 to 46 percent win was a reversal from the previous result, in 2002, favoring the GOP. Then, on Dec. 27, Tarryl Clark took a Senate seat in working-class St. Cloud, another turnaround from the ‘02 outcome. In both races, a novel coalition of environmental, housing, low-income, pro-choice and gay-rights activists used their lists and shoe leather to get out local voters. Their win not only put a hitch in right-wing plans to ram an anti-same-sex-marriage amendment through the legislature and onto the ‘06 ballot; it also produced a blueprint for an even better collaborative program this fall, when a U.S. Senate seat, U.S. House seats, the governor’s mansion and the state House are all up for grabs.

Finally, over the past three months in New Hampshire, where GOP activists still face charges for jamming opponents’ phones during the ‘02 campaign, candidates John Robinson, Penn Brown and Jim Aguiar won special elections for state House seats in districts that were swept by the GOP just a year earlier.

Between general elections in 1992 and 1994, then-Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour ballyhooed Republican wins in disparate states during the period and proclaimed a grassroots mandate against the Clinton administration. The trend foreshadowed huge GOP gains in November ‘94. Now this pattern is playing out again—for the other side.

It’s Time To Strike.

With our nation headed down the tubes, with the war on the middle class, with an endless bloody war in Iraq, and the Squatter in the White House trying to whip up a nuclear war with Iran, many progressives are feeling uncomfortable, frustrated, and even helpless. I have heard so many say, “I don’t know what to do.”

But the answer is simple. Progressives made one major mistake in 2004. We put all our eggs in one basket, that was, do everything possible to get John Kerry elected. It worked, but the election, again, was stolen, this time in Ohio. This left 50% of the country holding a bag with broken eggs. Should we do the same thing this time, just waiting and hoping that the Democrats can take back the House and Senate? Obviously, that should be something we all should be working for, but we must not make the same mistake as we did in 2004.

What is utterly amazing to me is that the answer which so eludes us is right under our noses. All we must do is take a good hard look at the war machine that is the US Military Industrial Complex, and simply say, “I’m not going to participate anymore.” It starts with all of us, right here, right now. It is a nation-wide general strike.

One would have to wonder that a general strike would be the most difficult thing we could possibly pull off, just imagine the organization involved! But really, it’s not that difficult. All you have to do is just say, “Stop”. Stop consuming. Stop going to work. Call in sick if you can. Make your living costs drop to zero. Turn off the power in your house. Don’t call anybody on the phone. Don’t buy any groceries, but if you do, just buy what you absolutely need. Don’t drive your car unless you have to, besides it’s a nice time of year to start walking. Don’t buy gas. Don’t go to the mall. Don’t do anything. And most importantly, don’t wait for your neighbor to join you. Right here, right now, just stop.

No one seems to stop and think about it, but the war machine that is killing Iraqis, killing our fellow Americans, and waging a relentless war on the middle class, can only do so with our assistance, our labor, our participation, and ultimately, our acquiescence. All you have to do is stop participating in that machine, and it will crumble. I, for one, have long ago grown tired of the blood on my hands. How about you?

President Bush: In His Own Words, Part Duh.

We have all long suspected that President Bush stepped out of line when God was handing out brains. This week, our suspicions, if any of us were still in doubt, were put to rest. In a move that could well prove that Bush’s handlers are quite possibly as dumb as he is, the President addressed students at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a division of Johns Hopkins University on Monday. One could hardly think of a worse audience for Bush to address: smart kids studying American foreign policy.

The worse mistake was for the Q & A session, in which Bush repeatedly made an imbecile out of himself. But this question’s answer, was unbelievable.

A student asked:

“Mister President, I agree with your assertion that Iraq is going to serve as a model for reformers - democratic reformers - in the Middle East, but at the same time I believe that whenever the seas are rough that despots of the Middle East keep their heads down until the winds blow, and then they continue to do the exact same thing that they’ve been doing for generations. So, I’m wondering sir, what pressures are we putting or planning to put on these despots, some of whom are our allies?”

Fairly reasonable question, right? It hardly seems like this would stump anyone. Hell, President Chucklenuts could just blither on for a minute or two about the importance of diplomacy, right? Here was Bush’s answer. Read very carefully, as it’s a bit hard to make sense of it:

“I believe that it’s very important for people to be, to listen. And, uh, therefore I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m a person who does a lot of my work in private. This is a defining moment in my judgment on these debates. I got a pretty good antennae. You know, I’m able to get a pretty good sense of how people are trending. And, uh, it’s a, uh, I would hope that out of this school comes people who are confident in American values, and confident in our ability to compete. Now we gotta do smart things, and uh, and so, we just hope, I hope, look I’m not telling you what your curriculum is, but uh, it’s something worth talking about. These are, these happen to be the big trends of our society. And, and it’s gonna take in my judgment a future generation of people standing up not losing our, look at the 1920’s in our country’s history. We shut down immigration. We had huge trade tariffs, and, uh, we were isolationists. They didn’t serve our country well in my judgment. Alright, I gotta go to work.”

If you can’t believe your eyes, then here, go ahead, and believe your ears, if you can.

The only thing this leaves me with is one unanswered question, that perhaps the students at SAIS might be somewhat more qualified to answer than anyone in the Bush administration. Is stupidity an impeachable offense?

Are Republicans Child Molesters?

Last week it was revealed that the deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, Brian J. Doyle, 56, was arrested on charges that he attempted to have sex with a 14-year-old girl via the internet. Doyle, who was actually soliciting an undercover Florida detective, was arrested at his Silver Spring home on 7 counts of using a computer to seduce a child and 16 counts of transmitting harmful materials to minors.

According to the Polk County Sheriff Department, Doyle had given the detective his office phone number, and urged her to buy a web cam so he could watch her defile herself.

Amazingly, this isn’t the only time DHS has had some problems with staff members engaging in sexual activity with minors. Frank Figueroa, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa, Florida, is facing trial on charges of exposing himself to a teenage girl at a mall.

As disturbing as this is, later in the week a similar sounding sexual scandal came to light. Republican Steven Baden, an Ohio commissioner for Henry County was arraigned on charges of stalking 14 year-old Shyane Miller. According to Miller, Baden got out of his car at the Broadway Food Center in South Toledo and said, “come here little girl,” before chasing her on foot. The girl’s mother said that Miller is now terrified to alone and will need counseling.

Ohio commissioner Republican Steven Baden
will not be stalking 14 year-old girls anymore.

After hearing this, I began to wonder if this was a coincidence. Is this just the reality we live in today in a society of loose sexual standards and morals? Or is there a specific pattern of deviant sexual behavior among certain kinds of people? I was shocked to find the latter in a very big way.

As Armchair Subversive has well documented, that behavior pattern is exhibited by a certain group of people in a very significant way. For instance:

• Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was found guilty of raping a 15-year old girl. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women.
• Republican County Constable Larry Dale Floyd was arrested on suspicion of soliciting sex with an 8-year old girl. Floyd has repeatedly won elections for Denton County, Texas, constable.
• Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.
• Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy.
• Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins pleaded guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14 year old girls.
• Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.
• Republican Mayor John Gosek was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.
• Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
• Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.
• Republican Committeeman John R. Curtain was charged with molesting a teenage boy and unlawful sexual contact with a minor.
• Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.
• Republican zoning supervisor, Boy Scout leader and Lutheran church president Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered.
• Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.
• Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.
• Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.
• Republican advertising consultant Carey Lee Cramer was charged with molesting his 9-year old step-daughter after including her in an anti-Gore television commercial.
• Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.
• Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.
• Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.
• Republican activist Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child.
• Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page.
• Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter.
• Republican Judge Ronald C. Kline was placed under house arrest for child molestation and possession of child pornography.
• Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped.
• Republican activist Marty Glickman was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD.
• Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.
• Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.
• Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.
• Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.
• Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.
• Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.
• Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl.
• Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.
• Republican politician Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children).
• Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was found guilty of molesting a 15-year old girl.
• Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.
• Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl.
• Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters.
• Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl.
• Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy.
• Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison.
• Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwallsex from boys and girls over the internet. was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet.
  
• Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a "good military man" and "church goer," was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
• Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.
• Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.

Does anyone see a pattern here? As I have noted on Nitwit Planet previously, conservatives often show several symptoms of clinical psychopathy, particularly being egocentric, having a lack of remorse, guilt, or empathy, and are deceitful, manipulative, and impulsive.

Is there a link between psychopathy and child molestation? According to The Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, there is.

“When the relationship between psychopathy and deviant sexual arousal was evaluated in [incest offenders, child molesters, and rapists], several significant correlations emerged. However, a finer analysis of these correlations revealed that child molesters evidenced a significant correlation between psychopathy and the Rape Index and psychopathy and the Pedophile Index.”

So, in conclusion, not only is there a link between child molestation and psychopathy, but there is a link between psychopathy and conservatism. Which leads us to our original question. Are Republicans child molesters? The evidence seems to point in that direction.