The Conservative Fool Of The Day is...Jim DeMint!

If you're the most conservative U.S. Senator, your sneer has earned its place in the Hall of Shame.

Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, was ranked by National Journal as the most conservative of all 100 senators for 2006, in a ranking released last year. When DeMint was running for his Senate seat, he was such a gaffe-a-minute guy that the Republicans had to call out a Senate staffer to babysit him so he wouldn't keep making a spectacle of himself.

DeMint is backed by both the Club for Growth and by socially right-wing types who share his view that single mothers and gays should not be allowed to become teachers. One of the most miserable moments in DeMint wingnuttery was his blaming of antiwar Democrats for casualties in Iraq. Regarding "Diaper Dave" Vitter's prostitution scandal, DeMint urged senators not to make an issue of it. "We can be next," DeMint said. Oh, so you can be found to have a diaper fetish too, Jim?

Jim DeMint is angry now because the city of Berkeley, California, has voted to evict the Marines recruiting station from downtown. The intent of Berkeley's action isn't to disrespect America's fighting men and women. It's to stop Berkeley's young people from being used to fight Bush's wars. The main point though is that it's a local decision and that the city is exercising its power of self-rule.

But the senator is more interested in what's going on in California than tending to the needs of his home state of South Carolina. So he's trying to impose his politics on Berkeley by withholding federal money from city services.

Weren't the Republicans the ones who were running on "states' rights" and local autonomy a decade ago? They were the ones crying about a big, mean federal government, but now they want to stick the federal government's snout into a city's affairs because the city has the "wrong" politics. It's their city, Jim - not yours.

If Jim DeMint wants so badly for Berkeley to send its residents off to a war they oppose, he should enlist himself. I've looked at DeMint's biography, and there's not a word in it that says he ever served in the Armed Forces. Which means he probably never served - which makes him another chickenhawk like most of the other tired Flat Earthers who continue to support the war.

DeMint is a liar when he says Berkeley is trying to disrespect the men and women in uniform. He knows it's not true. He also said, "The First Amendment gives the City of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money." His measure would cut off child nutrition programs - thus endangering the health of the city's children all because of the city's politics.

What about all the cities that use federal tax dollars on conservative gimmicks that just pad the coffers of firms owned by political supporters? Does that make it right to cut off children's health programs that are completely unrelated to these scams? I should think not.

Why do you hate America, Jim? DeMint wants more Americans sent to war and would cut off funds for American children in cities that don't comply, so what other conclusion is there?