Election 2012

A new report today reveals that approximately one of every ten dollars spent by Iowa congressman Steve King’s re-election campaign goes to him and his family members, who have together collected close to half a million dollars out of his $5.5 million campaign war chest. The review of his campaign expenditures, conducted by CREDO Action, found that King, along with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, have been paid handsomely by his campaign. This lucrative nepotism is nothing new: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington points out that King's family members have received tens of thousands of dollars during the last two campaign cycles. And when King isn’t using campaign money to boost himself and family members, he is using taxpayer dollars to help his own business.

Such nepotism isn’t exactly surprising coming from King, who often appears to be more concerned with making headlines with shocking statements than actually proposing meaningful legislation.

Just this year, King has accused President Obama of breaking his oath of office and destroying the Constitution while claiming that a Romney election would be a victory for God; lamented that states cannot ban contraceptives and doubted that rape can lead to pregnancy; defended dogfighting, compared same-sex marriage to desecrating the Eucharist; and sat on a panel with White Nationalists Peter Brimelow and John Derbyshire, who was subsequently fired by the National Review for his racist writings.

As noted in People For the American Way’s report Meet The Leadership , King has made stunning assertions about immigrants, progressives and gays and lesbians.

King claims that his first priority in the 112th Congress will be to abolish birthright citizenship, a right plainly established in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. He said that his legislation will attempt to end what he calls the “anchor baby industry” and that if his bill is ruled unconstitutional he will move to amend the Constitution to repeal birthright citizenship.

King, who has appeared with violent vigilante groups, defended his proposal to have electrified wire on border fences by saying on the House floor, “We do this with livestock all the time.” He erroneously claimed that illegal immigrants kill 25 Americans each day , and referred to all immigrants as criminals and disease-carriers. King compared illegal immigration to a “slow motion Holocaust” and a “slow-motion terrorist attack on the United States.” Opposed to a pathway for citizenship for illegal immigrants working and residing in the country, hesaid that he would only support comprehensive reform if “every time we give amnesty for an illegal alien, we deport a liberal.” He defended profiling by asserting that police officers should be able to distinguish illegal immigrants from citizens “from what kind of clothes people wear – my suit in my case – what kind of shoes people wear, what kind of accident [sic] they have, um, the, the type of grooming they might have.”

After the deadly earthquake in Haiti, King resisted plans to give Haitian refugees temporary protection status, instead suggesting that deporting refugees already in the U.S. would help Haiti since the country is in “great need of relief workers.” King also fought legislation that would give protective status to translators from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and provide legal status to service members who don’t have citizenship and their families.

In 2005, King successfully marshaled opposition to naming an Oakland post office after former Oakland city councilwoman and activist Maudelle Shirek because he believed that Shirek was “un-American.” After Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee accused him of McCarthyism, he said, “If Barbara Lee would read the history of Joe McCarthy she would realize that he was a hero for America.”

On the House floor, King blasted the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus as “separatist groups,” and suggested that a “very, very urban senator, Barack Obama” provided “slavery reparations” through the USDA Pigford II settlement with black farmers.

During the presidential election, King maintained if Obama won that Al-Qaeda “would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror.”

King said that it was “bizarre” for Obama to say his middle name “Hussein” during the inauguration, and asserted that the President “has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race - on the side that favors the black person.” He also dubbed the President a “Marxist” who “doesn’t have an American experience” and is in “violation of his oath of office.” When asked at a rally in support of Arizona’s draconian SB 1070 immigration law if Obama was “bringing small quantities of Muslims into this country,” King replied that he “wouldn’t be surprised that that is the real factual basis.”

Just days before Obama’s victory at the polls, he warned Americans, “When you take a lurch to the left you end up in a totalitarian dictatorship. There is no freedom to the left. It’s always to our side of the aisle.” Earlier this year, he said that Democrats were similar to “Pontius Pilate” and would have supported the Pharaohs of Egypt over the enslaved Israelites in the Bible. On Glenn Beck’s show, King declared that Democrats were trying to “take away the liberty that we have right from God” by having members vote on the health care reform bill on a Sunday.

A fierce opponent of LGBT equality, King strongly opposes the Uniting American Families Act, which allows U.S. citizens and legal residents to petition for their permanent partners (including same-sex partners) to obtain U.S. residency or citizenship. He told the Family Research Council that gay Americans should stay in the closet if they wanted to avoid discrimination, and equated gay rights with rights for “unicorns and leprechauns.” After the Iowa Supreme Court said that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, he claimed that Iowa could soon become a “gay marriage Mecca due to the Supreme Court’s latest experiment in social engineering.” King has compared homosexuality to incest and described marriage equality as “a purely socialist concept.” While addressing a rally of supporters of the successful effort to remove three Iowa Supreme Court judges from the bench, King said that gay marriage will lead to the breakdown of the family, religion, and the Constitution:

I think that if we can’t defend marriage, that it becomes very hard to defend life. So, if we lose marriage — for instance, if our children are raised in warehouses, so to speak. There have been civilizations that have tried to do that. The Spartans did that. They took the children away and taught them to be warriors. It’s a good way to defend a country, but not much of a way to run a civilization.

So, I’m afraid if that happened — if we lose the marriage, we lose the home, we lose the nuclear family then we can’t teach our values. We won’t be able to teach our faith. We won’t be able to teach life. We won’t be able to teach our Constitutional values either. That’s why I’m afraid it’s going to be very, very difficult to defend life.

King was also the only member of the House to vote against a plaque commemorating the slaves who helped build the Capitol, which he said was part of a plot “by liberals in Congress to scrub references to America’s Christian heritage from our nation’s Capitol.”

As is his usual practice, Bryan Fischer began his radio program yesterday with a Bible reading and discussion, in this case a passage from 2 Kings.  It is Fischer's belief that the Old Testament was preserved so that we can understand "the principles by which God deals with nations," and this reading prompted him to declare that if this nation re-elects President Obama in November "I sincerely believe that America has no future" as the decision "will either delay [God's] day of judgment or it will hasten that day of judgment":

Bishop E.W. Jackson of Staying True to America’s National Destiny (STAND) continues to tell (largely white) Religious Right leaders that black voters are about to move against President Obama in huge numbers to punish him for supporting marriage equality for gays and lesbians. While Jackson came in fourth place in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Virginia with less than 5 percent of the vote, he won accolades in the conservative movement for his new video comparing Democrats to salve masters.

While speaking to talk show host Janet Mefferd, Jackson claimed that his video is part of a larger move of God to move African American voters against Obama and other Democrats. He told Mefferd that black Christians are “overwhelmingly” supporting his mission to punish the Democrats for backing gay equality, saying that the party is “in rebellion against God” and lost the confidence of Black America.

Unfortunately for Jackson, polls show Obama receiving over 90 percent of the black vote, in line with past elections showing tremendous support for Democratic presidential candidates among African Americans.

Jackson: When the Democrat Party [sic] said we’re making same-sex marriage a part of our platform and the President came out in support of it I think those were straws that broke the camel’s back and people say ‘you know, we’ve had it.’ Black folks have voted overwhelmingly against these things when they’ve come up on state constitutional questions and now I think many are saying, ‘you know what I voted for this president the first time, I cannot vote for him again and I cannot support this party because it’s in rebellion against God.’

Mefferd: What has been the reaction, you have mentioned a lot of people have been reacting to your video and overwhelmingly you’ve had great support from black pastors, what about rank and file black Christians listening to what you’ve had to say, are they with you?

Jackson: I think overwhelmingly yes. I think there’s a generational issue here and people ask me, ‘how can the black community support people who just absolutely reject their most core values’ and I said because it’s not logical, it’s emotional. There’s a sense of fear, there’s a sense that this is what we’re supposed to do, but I think younger people are coming along. I noticed younger pastors, when I said younger I’m not talking about 20s and 30s I think in the 50’s they’re saying ‘you know what we need to take another look at this?’ I am finding that rank and file black folks have come up to me and they’ve said: how do I change my registration? I’ve voted for this party in the past, I’ve been a kneejerk Democrat, I’m never going to do that again. I’ve had people come to me in tears and say ‘thank you for waking me up.’ God is doing something Janet, it’s far beyond me and that video, I believe God is doing something to stir the hearts of His people as an eagle stirs a nest.

Later, while discussing the manufactured scandal regarding the New Black Panther Party case, Jackson said that the Justice Department has “turned loose their investigative powers on anybody who seems to question them” and that the Obama administration is “going to try to hurt you” if you stand in the way of their supposedly anti-Christian agenda.

Jackson: I complained when they intimidated voters during the last election and you can imagine what kind of response I got from Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, absolutely none. They ignored me. In fact if you press too hard apparently they have actually turned loose their investigative powers on anybody who seems to question them, they’ve done that on more than one occasion to people. So it’s just clear to me that we’ve got in a sense an administration that’s decided it’s not interested in God, the Bible, Christianity or any of that, it’s interested in pursuing its own willful agenda and if you get in the way, they’re going to try to hurt you. We just need to make sure that we are prayed up and we’re trusting in God because He is our ultimate protection anyway. Even though STAND does not endorse candidates, we’re standing on principle; I trust that the outcome of this election will at least begin to move the country back toward more traditional values, toward our Constitution, our Declaration and our Judeo-Christian principles.

Janet Mefferd brought Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner on her radio show yesterday to shower praise on his wildly anti-gay column attacking Tammy Baldiwn, the openly gay Democratic congresswoman running for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin. They kicked off the program by mocking gay Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank’s marriage to his “male husband or wife” and Kuhner joked that he will support same-sex marriage only if Frank or his husband can get pregnant.

Mefferd: I love this line, the left got so mad at you for saying this, you say, ‘the last thing Wisconsin needs is Barney Frank in a dress’ and I thought, who is that insulting, Barney Frank’s manhood? I’m not even sure. Aren’t they transgender-friendly, why are they mad about that?

Kuhner: He’s married now and I’ve issued a challenge to Barney Frank. I said, Barney, the purpose of marriage is to have children, now if you and your male husband or wife, I don’t know how to put this, your male partner, if one of you can get pregnant because now they’re in the honeymoon phase, they’re lovers, I said if one of you can get pregnant and you can pull off a miracle I will openly support gay marriage. So I am waiting for a miracle from Barney.

Mefferd: That’s very magnanimous, well good for you.

Kuhner had previously told Mefferd that the LGBT community promotes “civilizational collapse” and is “even worse than the radical Islamists” and “brutal dictatorships,” and yesterday maintained that the “gay gestapo” is the “most frightening, scariest lobby” in politics. He said Baldwin’s Republican opponent Tommy Thompson should not have apologized over a campaign aide’s smear email targeting Baldwin for attending a gay pride rally, arguing that a pride parade is like a “bordello” and “pornography on asphalt.” Kuhner advised Thompson to remind voters that homosexuality is “destructive” and “harmful” to children.

Kuhner: Here you have a woman who is not just an open lesbian, she’s been an active promoter of the gay lifestyle, she’s an active promoter of gay pride, she’s always in these marches. I’ve been to some of these marchers, for example, you go to the one in San Francisco, it’s a bordello. The public displays, this is not fit for people to see. It’s basically pornography in public, on asphalt. When I look at this and I see the way Tammy Baldwin has behaved and conducted herself and the values that she preaches and champions I don’t understand why Tommy Thompson is apologizing, in fact I would do the opposite. If I were Tommy Thompson I would say very simply: marriage is between a man and a woman, we do not believe that homosexual behavior is natural and moral. Every major faith: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, going back thousands of years, in most cultures today, in most civilizations today, understand marriage to be between a man and a woman. 

If Tammy Baldwin wants to be lesbian in the privacy of her own bedroom, that’s her business. But when she makes it a public issue, when she starts promoting a lifestyle that we know is immoral and we know is destructive and we know has a harmful impact, especially on children. Children who are adopted by homosexual couples clearly don’t do as well as children that are adopted by heterosexual couples. Why? Because children need — newsflash to the liberals — a mommy and a daddy. Instead what we have is the gay gestapo who go out and try to intimidate morally, economically, professionally and personally anybody who speaks out against the homosexual agenda. After my piece came out—Janet I said this on your show before and I’ll say it again—the homosexual lobby is to me the most frightening, scariest lobby whenever I publish a piece. They are the worst.

They ended the show by warning that gays promote a form of “totalitarianism” and “will do everything possible to destroy” those who are in their way. “Either you accept homosexuality or you are burnt at the stake,” Kuhner said.

Kuhner: There’s nothing tolerant about it, there’s nothing inclusive about it, there’s nothing compassionate about it. They preach an intellectual, moral totalitarianism. Either you accept homosexuality or you are burnt at the stake, professionally your career will be finished, and they will do everything possible to destroy you. Well to me, that’s not America.

Mefferd: No, that’s not America and that’s why this agenda has to be stopped. As you said very well, it’s one thing to allow people the personal freedom to conduct themselves the way they choose in their own home and not have the state intrude into people’s bedrooms, but when it becomes a matter of public policy, as you say very well, it affects all of us, it affects our religious freedom when it comes down to it.