Another Republican running for state office has weighed in on Jeremy Walters’ reprehensible comments.

Dave Leach, who is running for Iowa state Senate, says that the Republican Party of Iowa erred in denouncing Walters for claiming that AIDS is a punishment from God for homosexuality.

The Iowa Independent has the latest:

Leach, who is running against Democratic state Sen. Matt McCoy in Senate District 31, said Walters statement was “theologically clumsy, but it seemed close enough to Biblical truth to not merit a censure from the Republican Party.”

“GOP head Matt Strawn is right in saying HIV does not discriminate; in other words, the fact that someone has HIV by no means proves they got it through sodomy,” Leach said in an e-mail to Strawn and The Iowa Independent. “But I don’t see that that is what Jeremy said.”

Whether the Bible says there is a connection shouldn’t matter, he said, since, “everyone knows there is this connection.”

From Leach’s email:

Everyone knows sodomites suffer [HIV/AIDS] far more than the rest of the population, and that sodomy’s practices, which are so embarrassingly unsanitary that you dare not detail them in one of your articles, would inevitably create such a disease if it did not already exist. It seems “inappropriate,” to use Strawn’s word, to apologize for saying what the Bible says, with which everyone agrees. It is “inappropriate” for anyone to ask such a thing. I am sorry that Jeremy gave up his ground, although at least he stood it for awhile, which is more than most will do.

You can learn more about Iowa state Sen. Matt McCoy, the Democrat Leach hopes to unseat this fall, here.

Leach recently directed his inflammatory rhetoric directly at Sen. McCoy. At a rally staged by the National Organization for Marriage at the beginning of August, Leach handed out campaign fliers and told The Iowa Independent, “I am running against Iowa’s chief sodomite.”

One Iowa is expressing concern over the increasingly violent rhetoric emerging in the Iowa GOP.

“Considering Leach’s background and his most recent statements, we’re beginning to see a disturbing pattern of Iowa GOP candidates who use violent rhetoric and misinformation as a political weapon,” said One Iowa Executive Director Carolyn Jenison. “These remarks fan the flames of bigotry and hatred and they have no place in our civic dialogue.”

So this is what it’s come to, just a few days removed from the 90th anniversary of the day the 19th Amendment was ratified. Elyse Siegel at the Huffington Post reports that Minnesota’s 56th District GOP committee wants you to vote Republican because they think their favorite conservatives look better in bikinis:

The nearly five-minute long spot is set to the tune of Tom Jones' "She's a Lady" and touts the physique of ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, along with that of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and other familiar female conservative faces.

Following a montage of images hyping the Republican looks, the music transitions to Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out?" before distorted snapshots of House Speaker Nancy Pelsoi, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Rosie O'Donnell's head photoshopped onto 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's body flash across the screen.

(First Lady Michele Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are also among the Democratic figures highlighted in the web ad.)

DFL State Chair Brian Melendez blasted the message of the web ad, calling it “Sexist and offensive.” He added that “The day when a woman was judged by her looks rather than her competence and intelligence should have passed three generations ago.” We would add that cheap-shot personal attacks against an officeholder’s family are supposed to be off-limits, too.

But then again, political instincts like those displayed by 56th District Republicans are probably one reason Democrats gained 32 State Legislative seats in Minnesota over the last two cycles (including both State House seats and the State Senate seat in district 56).

That’s because Minnesota voters have a long history of rewarding candidates who campaign respectfully of each other and punishing candidates who behave like oafs.

So by all means: stay classy, Minnesota Republicans.

A Republican candidate for the Iowa House has found himself under recent scrutiny for some reprehensible comments he posted on his Facebook page.

The Iowa Independent broke the story Tuesday, revealing that Jeremy Walters, who is running against the Democratic Majority Leader of the Iowa state House, posted some incendiary remarks regarding AIDS and homosexuality on his Facebook page last week (he’s since removed them in a belated fit of remorse, but that’s what screenshots are for). Walters wrote that when the Bible says homosexuals should be “put to death; their blood shall be upon them,” the “blood” is actually AIDS.

The folks at One Iowa were understandably upset about these reprehensible statements, and they swiftly demanded that the Iowa GOP denounce Walters’ musings.

Which the Iowa GOP did:

“Mr. Walters’ comments are inappropriate and in no way represent the beliefs of the Republican Party of Iowa,” Strawn said in a statement to The Iowa Independent. “HIV/AIDS does not discriminate and our hearts and prayers go out to any Iowa family facing this disease.”

Walters, meanwhile, stood by his statements:

Walters told The Des Moines Register that he has no plans to remove the posting from his Facebook page, saying it’s only offensive to gay rights advocates, “because they know it’s the truth. Truth does hurt.”

But by 6:50 p.m. Tuesday evening, he had removed the vile sentiments from his Facebook page. (This came shortly after the Iowa Republicans rescinded his invitation to staff their State Fair booth on Thursday and Saturday. There is no direct evidence that these events were linked, but we find the timing suspect.)

Walters also posted an apology of sorts (quoted directly, no edits):

I appologize for the mistake and if this statement offened anyone.
Both postings have been removed and these comments do not pertain to my campaign or the Republican Party of Iowa.My passion is to listen and learn from the people so I can represent them at the state house. Everyone makes mistakes, please forgive me.

One of the intrepid bloggers at Think Progress succeeded in contacting Walters, who took the opportunity to explain himself further:

WALTERS: I just felt people should know what’s in the Bible, you know, scripture…I’m sorry that I even posted that because now I’m getting all of this attention and it’s bad attention, it’s not good attention. What inspired me posting that is because I had a few friends who were both homosexuals and passed away form AIDS.

VOLSKY: I understand that you regret posting it…But do you still believe that AIDS is the result of the sin of homosexuality?

WALTERS: Well, I don’t want to say that I don’t. I just, like I said, had an experience of friends dying….But back to the posting, that post when I posted, I do feel sorry and denounce what I said.

VOLSKY: Ok, so just to be clear, you are denouncing what you said? So you no longer believe that AIDS is God’s way of getting back at the sin of homosexuality?

WALTERS: Well, you know, I want to say that I’ve been seeing a lot of people that are in that lifestyle become with HIV and AIDS, but like I said, you can also get it through dirty needles and things so…. I would have to say that I removed it because it was not right to post it on there and I shouldn’t be picking on their lives, because they’re not picking on my life. I should be an understanding person and not a hater.

Apparently, the Iowa Republican Party finds his contrition insufficient. Last night he lamented on his Facebook wall (again, no edits):

since everthing that happin Today. I am ban from any events that the Republican party puts on so now what? Am I a bad candidate I want to represent the people not myself.

Here’s a little more background on the political career of GOP House candidate Walters:

He has previously run three times in three different legislative districts, most recently losing to Democrat Geri Huser in House District 42 by more than 20 percentage points in 2004 and in the GOP primary in House District 62 in 2008. He later served as a precinct chair for Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 Iowa Caucus campaign.

Walters is currently running in state House District 67 and seeks to unseat House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The Family Research Council tried to make hay with our Legislative Priorities Survey, which showed (among other things) that over 80% of our readers and newsletter subscribers consider equal rights "somewhat" or "extremely" important. The FRC headline? "Homosexual Agenda is Low Priority—Even for Democrats." Huh?

They got there, of course, by conveniently forgetting about the 33% in the “somewhat” category. By that standard, this Pew Poll showing that only 48% of Republicans strongly oppose same-sex marriage “proves” that opposing equal rights is low priority for Republicans. (To be clear, the Pew survey was a scientifically constructed poll - ours was a non-scientific, self-selecting survey.)

Now, as anyone involved in politics will tell you, 80% of respondents calling an issue important is pretty close to monolithic. Not quite as monolithic or as intense as our education supporters (who are staring down the barrel at billions in school cuts and hundreds of thousands of laid-off teachers) or our job promotion supporters (because of the recession), but overall support for equal rights was in the same ballpark.

So the FRC's glee was more than a bit puzzling. But it did remind us of a Boston Globe article last week about a university experiment exploring what happens when political ideologues are presented with verifiable evidence that something they believe is false:

The participants who self-identified as conservative believed the misinformation on WMD and taxes even more strongly after being given the correction. With those two issues, the more strongly the participant cared about the topic — a factor known as salience — the stronger the backfire. The effect was slightly different on self-identified liberals: When they read corrected stories about stem cells, the corrections didn’t backfire, but the readers did still ignore the inconvenient fact that the Bush administration’s restrictions weren’t total.

"Backfiring" would certainly explain the Family Research Council. They saw a document showing equal rights to be wildly popular among the progressive base, and they thought it proved the opposite. What's more, the FRC is based in Washington, D.C., which approved civil marriage equality last year. Yet faced with such compelling, empirical evidence in his own backyard that equal rights shouldn’t be a big deal, the author of the FRC’s blog post continues to suggest that homosexuality should be considered a mental illness and that gays are “ten times more likely to molest children” than straight people. Both claims have been thoroughly discredited and represent bigotry, plain and simple.

Sorry, but when the DLCC wants scientific commentary, we’ll find someone whose boss didn’t give $82,500 to David Duke or give speeches before racist hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Should no one meeting those strict standards be available, we'll settle for someone with a strong enough grasp of basic arithmetic that they can add two percentages together.

We don’t get involved in governor’s races. That’s the Democratic Governors Association’s responsibility, while we focus exclusively on electing Democratic state legislators.

But one Democratic gubernatorial candidate is making his state’s Republican-controlled legislature an issue in his campaign, and he’s taking them to task for having (shall we say) the wrong priorities during this recession. According to the narrator in a new TV ad:

A governor can create jobs by selling the advantages of Georgia to firms looking for a home. But it’s hard for industry to take us seriously when the Legislature attempts to outlaw stem cell research, passes bills about microchips in the brain, and talks about seceding from the Union.

The new ad reminded us about the legislative debate surrounding one of the GOP's misplaced priorities – the microchip bill, which makes it a misdemeanor to implant a microchip in someone without their consent. And when we found the full story, we wondered how on earth we’d missed it the first time.

From a committee hearing about the microchip bill:

“I’m also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip,” the woman said. Slowly, she began to lead the assembled lawmakers down a path they didn’t want to take. (…)

She spoke of the “right to work without being tortured by co-workers who are activating these microchips by using their cell phones and other electronic devices.”

She continued. “Microchips are like little beepers. Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission,” she said.

It was not funny, and no one laughed.

“Ma’am, did you say you have a microchip?” asked state Rep. Tom Weldon (R-Ringgold).

“Yes, I do. This microchip was put in my vaginal-rectum area,” she replied. [Republican State Rep. Ed] Setzler, the sponsoring lawmaker, sat next to the witness – his head bowed.

One can only hope that the woman was playing some elaborate, Candid-Camera-style joke on the legislators. Nobody thought so at the time, and amazingly, the Republican-controlled State Senate then approved the bill without so much as a second thought.

But the best joke from this whole sorry episode probably comes from the Democratic candidate now making this an issue, who notes in his stump speech, “If somebody holds me down and drives a microchip into my head, it had better be more than just a damn misdemeanor!”

Back in May, a diarist at SwingStateProject revisited Tom DeLay’s infamous mid-decade gerrymandering of Texas. Using Dave’s Redistricting App (an excellent “do it yourself” redistricting tool that didn’t exist publically in 2001) to produce maps, demographic data, and presidential election results in each district, the diarist produced an excellent study of what might have happened without DeLay’s hijinks.

The diarist makes a different argument than we would, but what most have forgotten (and what the data strikingly reveals) is how many of the long-time Democratic members of congress targeted by DeLay and the Republicans came from staunchly Republican districts even before the 2003 gerrymander. Targeted Democrats in the 17th, 11th, 4th, 2nd, and 1st districts all represented constituents who gave either George Bush or John McCain (or both) at least two-thirds of the vote.

All of these Democrats won elections in 2002, and some of them won nearly 60% of the vote themselves in that year, which was certainly not a strong one for Democrats. It stands to reason that many of the Texas Democrats who lost in 2004 did so not because they found themselves in more conservative districts, but because so many voters in their new districts were unfamiliar. These news voters had never seen the incumbent congressperson on a ballot and (if they lived in an unfamiliar media market) may never have seen the incumbent’s campaign ads in previous years.

So the threat of Republican gerrymandering goes beyond the risk of Democratic incumbents being drawn into more conservative districts. It’s also easy to target Democrats who already represent tough districts – particularly in states where Democrats have gained recently despite an already GOP-friendly map.

If we can prevent the GOP from having complete control over redistricting in key states, they won’t be able to target Democrats with the impunity they showed in Texas.

And that’s just one more reason why this election is the most important we’ll see for the next ten years.

Yesterday was the first day that the health care reform law’s “high-risk pools,” set up by the federal government to cover people with pre-existing conditions, began accepting applications. But because states have the option of using the federal plan or setting up their own, only 21 states can take applications so far:

These 21 states have asked the federal government to run the high-risk pool rather than administer it themselves: Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wyoming.

Residents of these states can apply starting Thursday. Administration officials said people who apply by July 15 will begin receiving coverage by Aug. 1.

The remaining 29 states and the District of Columbia will run their own programs and begin accepting applications over the next several months.

“Asked,” of course, is a charitable description by the Los Angeles Times. No doubt some of these states – particularly those with Democratic-controlled legislatures and whose leadership actually care about the uninsured – weighed the options and decided that a federally-run high-risk pool is the better option for them. The federal pools are coming online quicker, most likely, because Federal officials have had the better part of two years to think about how to implement high-risk pools, and some states obviously saw value in having a plan that’s part of a national standard.

But other states didn’t “ask” the federal government to set up their high-risk pools any more than an infant throwing a dinner-time temper tantrum “asks” mommy or daddy to handle the spoon and sippy-cup. For Republican officials in those states, local control was far less important than throwing their tantrum and making a big show out of refusing to lift a finger for reform.

Mother Jones described the situation with a little bit more context at the beginning of May:

At least 15 states—all but three led by Republicans—have decided against creating insurance pools for Americans with pre-existing conditions, forcing the federal government to step in and establish the high-risk pools itself. By contrast, at least 28 states—all but seven led by Democrats—will help the federal government by creating the pools themselves. It’s the first major decision for states to make under the new law. And the Republican-led refusals are the latest sign that red states will be far less willing to play nice as health reform gets underway.

Ultimately, though, the L.A. Times got it right. Republicans may have thought they were making some grand statement against President Obama and against health care reform by refusing to cooperate in the high-risk pools, but all they were really doing is asking the federal government to make the decisions for them.

And they didn’t even succeed in slowing down reform in their states. If anything, they sped it up – which makes this Republican failure a WIN for those with preexisting conditions.

The far-right Republican platform-writers are at it again, this time in Montana, where the recently-adopted GOP platform fully embraces the idea of government officials policing people’s bedrooms:

(…)the Montana Republican Party has adopted a platform that would criminalize “homosexual acts”:

Homosexual Acts

We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal.

Ironically, the platform uses some form of the word “constitutional” at least 10 times and even argues that constitutionality should be decided by the states. But the Montana Supreme Court struck down the State’s sodomy law in 1997 and ruled that it violated the constitutional right to privacy. [H/T Think Progress]

The Montana Supreme Court, of course, was about six years ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court, which declared state anti-sodomy statutes unconstitutional in 2003. In the facts surrounding that case, Lawrence v. Texas, a sheriff’s deputy had burst into the apartment of one of the petitioners and arrested them both under Texas’ anti-sodomy laws. It was literally a case of the government policing people’s bedrooms.

And speaking of Texas, the GOP platform there also seeks to turn back the clock and return to a pre-Lawrence authoritarian utopia:

The 2010 GOP platform in Texas supports laws that criminalize sodomy and suggests that straight people who support same-sex marriage should be penalized with jail time. The GOP platform was quoted as openly stating:

“We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy,” the GOP platform reads. Meaning that even though the U.S. Supreme Court overturned sodomy laws last decade (ironically in a case that stemmed from Texas), Texas Republicans would like the state to have the power to criminalize LGBT folks for having sex.

Thankfully, this is one idea where Republicans are clearly swimming against the tide of equal rights.

Whenever there are big-ticket contests in a state, some extremely interesting down-ballot happenings can go under the radar. Such was the case three weeks ago when millionaire Republican State Sen. Charles Bishop of Alabama lost the GOP primary to take on State House Majority Leader Ken Guin, a member of the DLCC Board of Directors.

Bishop, who’s compiled a lengthy history of violent altercations with fellow legislators, earned infamy for this 2007 incident in which he punched Democratic State Sen. Lowell Barron on the Senate Floor:

One of the legislators in the video restraining Bishop from landing any further punches is none other than then-Democratic Sen. Parker Griffith. Griffith, of course, was later elected to Congress, switched parties, and was then humiliated in the GOP primary three weeks ago (losing the same night as Bishop).

Good riddance to them both.

Bishop had initially announced his retirement this cycle before making a surprise, last-minute entry as a candidate against State Rep. Guin (whom Bishop was apparently also not fond of). Based on the primary result - in which Bishop was dispatched by an underfunded political newcomer - Bishop obviously should have stuck with his retirement plans.

You might remember Republican State Sen. Dennis Nolan of Nevada from last week, when he was caught on tape allegedly offering to bribe the witness in a rape trial to change her story. (You can listen to the audio here.)

Well, this story just got much, much uglier. Sen. Nolan has now posted an open letter on his campaign website claiming he feels “compelled to believe the sex was consensual” because the 16-year-old victim had been “very sexually active” prior to the rape, and because (“as a side note,” he says) 42% of Nevada teenagers have been sexually active before age 16.

Just to reiterate, this is a man whose job it is to write laws, including the laws used to prosecute sexual assault. This man has no business serving in any public office – he needs to resign, immediately.

This is the sort of document that eventually gets scrubbed from a campaign website, so we’ll quote from the screen-shots we took:

As a side note in Nevada, approximately 42% of all teens ages 12-16, admit to having had intercourse, about 25% of them admit to having multiple partners.(Council of Chief of State Schools Officers), Is it right? NO! Is it right for adults to engage in sex with minors? NO! But sadly, it is happening, and that’s the fact.

Knowing this young lady, reading the case and observing her behavior before and after the incident, I am compelled to believe the sex was consensual. She was very sexually active and, according to court records, had an abortion just two weeks prior to the alleged sexual assault (this is now public record). Was it right? NO!

Nolan also lashes out against the victim’s father, accusing him of being a pedophile:

My call to the “alleged” victim’s sister, Mr. Lawes' ex-wife, who is an acquaintance, was made only after I received information that both young women were abused as children by their father and that he may be continuing to “control them” as abusers often do. The possibility that the very person publicly accusing me of “defending a SEX OFFENDER, being FRIENDS with a RAPIST “ may himself have been or may be an abuser, is maddening.

And as for the answering machine message – the one where he tells a witness from the case that it would be “very financially beneficial" to change her story? Nolan has an explanation for that too:

I made two calls to the woman pleading with her to talk to me and offering to assist in getting the help she needed to stand up to her father and regain custody of her children. They went unanswered, I left a third message implying “someone” could compensate her if she would tell the truth “about what was going on”. The Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau Legal Division issued a written legal opinion which stated clearly, this did not constitute “attempted bribery”! These allegations are just plain lies!

Clearly. Nolan’s logic is that he offered someone else’s money, therefore it couldn’t have been a bribe. Just like this girl could not have been raped because some other teenage girls are sexually active. And just like being sexually active even once means that all future sexual activity is consensual.

This kind of disgusting rhetoric – especially coming from an elected official – is exactly why sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the country. Victims have to worry about whether they’ll be believed at all and whether their reputations will be dragged through the mud by people like Dennis Nolan.

We already thought Nolan had gone too far, but now we’re convinced. He needs to resign - click here to add your name to our petition.

CHECK THE FACTS – read Sen. Nolan’s letter for yourself:

Nolan Letter page 1 – 06-04-2010
Nolan Letter page 2 – 06-04-2010