Recently, during a House Judiciary Committee meeting, our US Representative, Steve King (R-Kiron) embarrassed all Iowans yet again.
According to him, states still have the power to ban contraception despite the fact that the US Supreme Court has held the constitutional right to privacy says otherwise. King maintains that Connecticut had the right to ban contraceptives in Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court case that overturned a law in Connecticut that prohibited the use of birth control even for married couples. What is more frightening; King’s ignorance or his willingness to disregard the Constitution and the law that he took an oath to uphold?
Is King a Constitutional law scholar to make such pronouncements? No, he never even graduated from college, much less law school. He is constantly given to making outrageous and idiotic statements, like comparing stem cell research to the Nazi Holocaust. He compared the torture at Abu Ghraib to fraternity hazing, which makes me wonder just what he did at Alpha Kappa Lambda. He didn’t study history or political science but left school to operate a bulldozer and eventually started a construction company. After managing somehow to get into Congress, King has dished more dirt than he ever did as a contractor.
Sex has interested King for some time. Last fall during the debate on health insurance coverage, King declared that insurance coverage for free birth control would lead to the end of the entire human race! There you have it. Not by fire and not by ice. By the pill!
King recently claimed that men and women will stop getting married if same sex couples can marry. He said same sex marriage “is a push for a socialist society because gay bureaucrats would seize the means of production.” A hilarious pun if intended, but I don’t think so.
King is so xenophobic he worries that if white women don’t have more babies they will be outproduced by minorities. King once claimed in a Rotary meeting to former Lt. Gov. Art Neu of Carroll that Iowa needed a “fertility” program. He cited approvingly a Singapore plan to increase its birth rate by putting newspapers in car windows.
Steve King is known coast to coast as the laughing stock of Iowa. Kingisms are so legendary that you could write a book. In fact, someone did. Douglas Burns of the Carroll Daily Times Herald wrote “King Kong Krazy: One Congressman’s Descent Into Ideological Madness.”
Burns says, ”After his remarks on papering car windows to allow for back-seat intercourse, and presumably more white babies, King moved on to other topics in an interview with the Daily Times Herald, pressing issues like the potential for taxing hookers without legalizing prostitution.” His argument for a national sales tax is that it will “tax coyotes (immigrant smugglers) prostitutes and drug dealers and pornographers”.
With our Rep. King talking sex and his friend, Rick Santorum, running for Theologian in Chief [before he finally conceded the race], what is the reaction of women to all of this? “Keep your theology off my biology,” is what I’ve been hearing ever since the Republican Party took up this sanctimonious debate and Rush Limbaugh pronounced women sluts if they favor insurance coverage for birth control pills.
To Iowa voters of the new 4th Congressional District, it makes little difference if Steve King is bat guano crazy, ignorant, or just appealing to his base. The fact is, he has to go if Iowa doesn’t want to be held up as a national disgrace for having the worst Congressman ever. We can’t fix stupid but we can vote him out of office. We deserve better.
Former Iowa first lady, Christie Vilsack, is running for Congress to replace Steve King. She will bring a sorely needed touch of class, and a penchant for problem solving instead of ideological rants.
David Mansheim
Parkersburg, Iowa
I have to state that H.L. Mencken once said: “No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” A socialist friend has said: “He hasn’t been proved wrong yet.” There seems to be such a lack of, or short supply of, commonsense these days. Some people would believe the moon is made of “green cheese.”
I have to take issue with some of the article by Bill Johnston on gay marriage (“Many Catholics Don’t Follow ‘Holy’ Orders,” 2/15/12 TPP). The whole subject matter is ludicrous. How much more evidence does one need that men are not made for each other? I wonder if he’s ever read 1 Corinthians 6:9-12? [Paul] states thusly: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor revilers, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.” Either the Bible is our guide for a church and Christians or it isn’t. Jesus also said he is the Way, the truth and the life. If that isn’t true then what in life is?
I share with Mr Johnston on birth control; no, I don’t believe in killing human life at any time. We must feed the hungry and care for people on the economic edge of life whatever it be, food, housing, shelter, national health care for everyone. I find far more Christian virtues in quasi-socialist Europe than here by far! I’ve traveled a good bit of the world and I agree with my priest (Orthodox) that what he hears here in US is how bad socialism is. My priest in no way agrees! Nor do I.
I’d like Obama to be a socialist but alas he’s far from it. The Republicans wish to destroy every vestige of the FDR legacy! Let’s hope for some sanity and love for those poor and elderly on economic edge of life. That is the essence of Christianity. My wife and I help serve meals with a Catholic parish who feed some 400 people and children who are hungry. It brought tears to my eyes when I first started. They have been doing this for 30 yearsl Tell me; what is more Christian than that? Let’s not get swept up in this other mess.
Gerald W. Shade
Milwaukee, Wis.
Editor Notes: Unlike Paul, Jesus apparently didn’t have anything to say about homosexuals, but He definitely believed in compassion and in aiding the poor. Also, if the Gospels are to be believed, Jesus didn’t have a high regard for the wealthy — or those who make a public show of their piety.
Mark Anderson in a 5/1/12 article (“Organic Farmers See Monsanto in Court”) ended it with “Monsanto is to seeds what the Federeal Reserve is to money.” I was flabbergasted. This is crazy. Seeds originated millions of years ago. They have been changing by natural causes all that time. Monsanto changes seeds by methods invented very recently by science.
Recent history has shown that scientific meddling can cause big problems from what was seen as great benefits: DDT, lead in paint and gasoline, plastics everywhere, power from burning coal and gasoline, etc. Money, however, is entirely human-made. It has been around in some form for, at most, a few thousand years. (Did all civilizations have money?)
Since we have made it vital to our civilization, it is entirely reasonable and proper that our government have some control over it. Recessions and depressions occur when money is poorly managed by a society. There is no natural control from millions of years of evolution. We as a society must figure this out for ourselves. Whatever you think of the Fed and money, they are nothing like Monsanto and seeds.
Amalie Callahan
Rock Island, Ill.
Given that prescription drugs will be provided, why is the question as to which drugs will be provided always and only debated between a Catholic and a Non-Catholic over counterconceptive drugs? Where are the Muslims and Jews on drugs from pigs? Where are the Hindus on drugs grown in cows? Where are the Buddhists on all drugs from animals? Where are the Christian Scientists on all drugs?
Where is the moral atheist on the payment of inflated drug prices to the part of a gigantic industry that was a major foundation of Hitler. (I, at least, have not forgotten.) Payment for drugs is a much bigger can of worms then is yet debated. Open this can fully.
George Ross McCombe
Jersey City, N.J.
Are we a nation of nincompoops? We fight a 45-year Cold War with communist Russia. We are finally the victors. Barely 20 years later, we are exporting much of our industrial wealth to communist China’s budding competitor and an economic colossus. Globalization and greed are the prime movers. Our capitalists have sought out more profitable areas providing cheap labor, lower taxes and less regulation. Besides the loss of jobs, the effect has devastated small businesses in many cities and towns.
Moving right along to 9/11, we have Osama bin Laden cornered in a cave in Afghanistan. We abruptly leave for Iraq, abandoning the perpetrator responsible for killing 3,000 Americans. We then discover the adventure was manufactured under false pretenses. In its wake, 4,500 Americans dead, countless lost limbs and boodles of billions of dollars wasted. Making matters worse, while the Iraq fiasco was in full tilt, the Bush/Cheney duo ran for reelection. Sen. John Kerry, a Vietnam multiple-medalled combat veteran was the opponent. He was defeated by artful propaganda and a covey of chicken hawks. These Vietnam shirkers had no guilt feelings sending others to war. To name a few, some prominent persons stand out: Vice President Cheney, Russ Limbaugh, Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Newt Gingrich. President Bush’s service records mysteriously disappeared. What does this say for our voting citizens In the 2004 election?
Skipping to the present, the public has been regaled with a media circus of Republican presidential aspirants (the clowns?). Embarrassing may be the kindest description. Are we in deed (pun intended) a nation of nincompoop.? You be the judge.
Hesh Brohinsky
Edgewater, Fla.
We citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave certainly suffer from amnesia. How else can we explain why, every time our soldiers commit an atrocity, we’re shocked and dismayed, as if it had never happened before? (War Crimes Create Lost Cause in Afghanistan,” TPP, April 15).
Contrary to what our leaders keep drumming into our ears, however, we are not the most noble and pure nation on the face of the earth. In fact, ever since our government launched into its imperialistic destiny, American soldiers have committed an untold number of despicable acts on foreign soil.
One example: During the Mexican American War, an American lieutenant wrote to his parents that after an officer named Walker was killed in battle, his Commander told his men to “avenge the death of the gallant Walker.”
And avenge him they did.
“Grog shops were broken open first,” the young lieutenant wrote, “then, maddened with liquor, every species of outrage was committed. Old women and girls were stripped of their clothing, and many suffered still greater outrages. Men were shot by dozens ... It made me, for the first time, ashamed of my country.”
Another example: During the war with the Philippines, General Leonard Wood gave his officers the choice to either kill six hundred men, women and children hiding in the crater of a dormant volcano — or take them as prisoners.
Well ... his gallant soldiers massacred all six hundred. Was General Wood court-martialed or even reprimanded for his contemptible action? Of course not! Instead, he was praised by President Theodore Roosevelt for honorably serving his country.
The indiscriminate brutality of war shouldn’t surprise us. And for that reason alone, we must do all in our power to avoid it.
David Quintero
Monrovia, Calif.
Although Rush Limbaugh appeared to be the focus of your 4/1/12 front-page feature "Rush Poisons GOP Brand," the real hero was Sandra Fluke who articulately and courageously exposed Limbaugh and the Republican Party's war on women health as a major and perhaps decisive issue in the 2012 election. Ms. Fluke deserves consideration as the 2012 Person of the Year.
Edward L. Koven
Highland Park, Ill.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2012
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