Asshat Of The Week: Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina

As anyone who reads this blog (that's all 10 or 15 of you) may have noticed, I haven't had a lot to say in the last couple days.

This is for several reasons.

Work has been sort of busy for me, and will be for the balance of the summer, I suspect... and the weather has (finally) been nice for the last few days.

Nice weather means when I get home from work, rather than sitting down at the keyboard, I've instead logged a few miles on my motorcycle. Riding is very soothing and therapeutic, and beats hell out of a analyst's couch.

So, I've been a bit lazy.

However, tonight, while eating dinner (after a short ride, of course) I tuned in to the Rachel Maddow Show. Rachel covered a story about the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HR 1913), also know as the Matthew Shepard Act, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday by a wide margin, 249-175.

Matthew Shepard was a young gay man who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered near Laramie Wyoming in 1998. It was clearly a hate crime in every sense of the word, perpetrated because Matthew Shepard happened to be gay.

But it wasn't a federal hate crime. A crime committed against someone because of their religion, their race, their ethnicity, even their gender- are all potentially hate crimes under federal law. Prosecutable under federal law.

Committing a crime against a gay person just because they are gay is... well, just a crime. Maybe. If the state or local laws happen to say it is. But the feds can't prosecute it, and it's up to state or local yokels to decide.

In a very simplified nutshell, the Matthew Shepard Act extends the federal definition of "hate crimes" to include crimes committed against people as a result of their sexual preference.

That makes perfect sense to me, and to anyone who thinks about it for a few minutes.

But - it's apparently A Terrible Idea™ if you're a "compassionate conservative."

A similar bill passed both the House and Senate in 2007... and was promptly vetoed by our then-President, "Mr. Family Values/Compassionate Conservative" George W. Bush.

Not really surprisingly, yesterday Representative Don Young, R-Alaska was one of the "noes."

Don rarely deviates from the party line except to help bring home the bacon - either for Alaska, or for someone from some other place who contributes to his Campaign Legal Defense Fund (like those Florida developer folks).

Now, I'm sure C-Span recorded many conservative's comments made during floor debate that were The Classic Stupid™.

But Representative Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina, takes the cake.

On the floor of the House, she claimed that the murder of Matthew Shepard was merely a robbery gone wrong, and that calling it a "hate crime" was a "hoax."

Here she is, in all her glory:



Perhaps torturing, beating, and murdering gays is considered a sport in North Carolina.

This woman is typical of the current crop of conservatives: Stupid, mean, and willing to lie their ass off if the truth happens to conflict with their religious or cultural beliefs.

Because, as Stephen Colbert pointed out, "the truth has a liberal bias."

It's especially fitting that her last name sounds the same as the cable "news" channel that spouts this sort of insane drivel... and gets away with it.

So, Representative Virginia Foxx, R-NC, you win the "Bodenstown Asshat of the Week" award!

I may make this a regular weekly feature... there's certainly no shortage of asshats out there... the problem will be determining their degree of worthiness.

Update: Just watched "Countdown With Keith Olbermann." KO bestowed Rep. Foxx the dubious "Worst Person in the World" award this evening (it's only because Keith elects to not use words like "asshat").