GOP Family Values All-Stars. Feh.

-- Republican Commissioner ( of Richland County, Ohio ) David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

-- Republican Speaker of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, 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 anti-abortion activist who gained fame during the Schiavo media-circus, was convicted of two charges of raping a child in 2002 .

-- Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.

-- 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,a First Assembly of God youth pastor 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 lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.

-- Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter, the Susan Smith who drowned her adorable two sons "in cold blood" in a South Carolina lake in 1995.

-- Republican Judge Ronald C. Kline was placed under house arrest for child molestation and possession of child pornography.

-- 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 Tennessee State Representative, 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 at the home for troubled girls that he ran.

-- Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.

-- Republican candidate Richard Gardner,a Nevada State Representative, admitted to molesting his two daughters.

-- Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner had been convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl. when the Republican Party, knowing of these crimes, put him on the ballot.

-- 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 activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000.

-- Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession. With his political career over, he went to work in the hard-core pornography industry for Platinum X Pictures, owned by his daughter, porn starlet Jewel De'Nyle (Stephany Schwarz).

-- Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall, director of Faith & Family Alliance, (a Christian Coalition spin off), former student of Pat Robertson's Regent University, member of Ralph Reed's inner circle who funneled money to from lobbyist Jack Abramoff to Reed, 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 businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter.

-- Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.

-- Republican president of the New York City Housing Development Corp. Russell Harding pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer.

-- Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women. He was found guilty of raping a 15-year old girl, and his sentences added up to 126 years in prison.

-- Age 62 Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo of Denton County, Kentucky was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy.

-- Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins of Asbury Park, New Jersey plead guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14 year old girls.

-- Republican Mayor John Gosek of Oswego, New York was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.

This sums it up nicely.

They can call it Good vs. Evil all they want to, but to me it just looks like two teams of right-wing religious loonies fighting with each other, and the rest of us are just cannon-fodder or part of the battleground.
- Avedon Carol

Keep This In Mind

Bruce Schneier on Security

Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.
It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on specific plots.
But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.
The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn't make us any safer.

Once again, Gore made sense.

In 1996, a commission chaired by then-Vice President Gore recommended a number of regulations to protect the safety of airline passengers. Among the recommendations was that steel doors separate the flight deck from the rest of the aircraft. Characteristically, the airline industry lobbied against the legislation on the grounds that such doors would cost too much. The absence of the doors, however, cost almost 3,000 lives.