To sell everything from NRA shirts and hats to concealed-weapons jackets, the Fairfax-based gun lobby sent a fundraising email to supporters evoking – of all things – President John F. Kennedy and the Challenger disaster, Media Matters reported Monday. That's right: The slain-by-an-assassin's-bullet John F. Kennedy; the Challenger was just a convenient time hook.
Unfortunately, this bad idea isn't a new one. Media Matters reported last September that other NRA fundraising emails evoked 9/11, including an image of the smoldering towers and a message inferring that the NRA's political opponents are as bad as terrorists. In November, the NRA used an image of Abraham Lincoln (also murdered with a gun) using an NRA website in another fundraising email.
Just two more assassinated presidents to go.
The Virginian-Pilot of Hampton Roads reported Monday that she challenged a bill requiring a woman to get an ultrasound before getting an abortion by proposing a protest amendment: requiring men to undergo a rectal exam and cardiac stress test before being written a subscription for erectile dysfunction medication.
To Howell, it's "only fair." "If we're going to subject women to unnecessary procedures, and we're going to subject doctors to having to do things that they don't think is medically advisory," she said. Her amendment failed on a party-line vote, but the ultrasound bill passed.
As intrusive as the ultrasound bill is for inserting the government between a woman and her doctor, doomed protest amendments often come off as jokes and overshadow genuine concerns. Even The Washington Post and The Huffington Post picked up on this legislative oddity, for instance.
Janet Howell rectal turned up 1.1 million Google hits as of this morning.
Boykin, currently a professor at Hampden-Sydney College, was invited to speak at West Point's National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 8. But VoteVets (a coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the institution to rescind his invitation because of disparaging remarks he's made on Islam.
Boykin most famously declared in uniform in 2003 at a church that America is "battling Satan" and that a Somali warlord had an "idol" for a god. He's been on an Islamophobic trip since. He said in 2010 that Islam "should not be protected under the First Amendment" and that Muslims "are under an obligation to destroy our Constitution." Also in 2010, he co-authored a book titled "Shariah: The Threat to America," in which the writers argued that most mosques and Muslim social organizations are radicalized. Boykin said on a radio show in September that there should be "no mosques in America" and that Islam is "a totalitarian way of life." Worst Virginians called him out in September for saying that people don't mind offending Christians but won't do anything to offend Muslims – present company excluded, apparently.
VoteVets argued that Boykin's comments run contrary to military values and, "Our counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan demands that the military as an institution respect, and not demonize, Islam. The very safety of our men and women in uniform counts on it."
The Associated Press reported Monday that Boykin withdrew his invitation. He wouldn't comment, but in a statement defending his original invitation, West Point said it was confident that he would've given an inclusive address and that exposing cadets to a variety of opinions and ideas is what being a cadet is about. CAIR responded, "I doubt that they would invite a KKK speaker and claim that they want to expose the students to a variety of opinions."
The Constitution that Boykin vowed to protect and defend gives him the right to express his views, no matter how contemptible. Yet, the First Amendment gives his critics the right to speak back, and for Muslims to live and worship freely in America, whether Boykin likes it or not.
That's Lt. Gen. Jerry "A Totalitarian Way of Life" Boykin, today's Worst Virginian in the World!
