Video after the jump.
We swear we did not go looking for War-On-Drugs hypocrites today — they’re just popping up right and… well, actually, only on the Right. As soon as we finished telling you about Lake Forest city council member Peter Herzog, a real hard-ass on medical marijuana, who was busted on a DUI charge, up popped Steve Katz. (more…)
Claims to fame: 65-year-old founder and former pastor, Living Word Fellowship of Santa Clara, St. George, Utah; right-wing extremist; one-time Republican candidate for Utah’s 2nd District; repeat GOP delegate; ex-U.S. Marine; Vietnam veteran; husband; father of five; grandfather of 18; convicted child molester
Moral apex: Sexually molested at least four young girls as young as ten years old, all relatives, under the guise of having them to his home to give them a “Godly upbringing.” (Family members (more…)
Backstory: “Proud Patriot Franklin Sain: ‘Hopefully Somebody Gifords [sic] Both of Your Asses With a Gun’,” February 26, 2013
March 4, 2013 — Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey has formally charged a man accused of sending threatening emails and a voice mail to a state representative. (more…)
Claims to fame: Former Chief Operating Officer (September, 2011 – February, 2013), Softec Solutions, Englewood, Colorado; former Director of IT Solutions, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), where he handled government contracts; alumnus, Wayland Baptist University, Plainview, Texas; alumnus, Regis University, Denver, Colorado; U.S. Army veteran (1988-98), “specializing in Intel and Intelligence Applications”; accused would-be assassin
Moral apex: Arrested “for investigation of harassment and attempt to influence a public official” after allegedly phoning and sending a volley of emails to Colorado House Rep. Rhonda Fields (D-Aurora) — the first African-American woman elected to the state legislature (yes, this is important; you’ll see why) — threatening her life and that of her daughter, in apparent response to Fields’s sponsorship of two gun-control measures. (more…)
A guy from Minnesota named Gerard Cellette is facing a whopping 116 counts of fraud, money laundering and other highly illegal shenanigans related to what the Orange County, California, D.A. calls “the largest Ponzi scheme to be prosecuted in Orange County history.” Cellette is accused of defrauding 55 victims in California — “without ever entering the State of California,” notes the D.A. — out of $21 million. There’s a nice, long explanation below that details exactly what Cellette is accused of doing (and why, until he was extradited to California a couple of weeks ago, he’d been twiddling his thumbs in a Minnesota prison) — but first, let’s hit the convoluted backstory. (more…)
Rampaging chimp video after the jump.
Some stories are just so bizarre on their own, we can’t think of a single witty remark to make them any richer — so we’ll just encourage you to read the stories below, and watch the rampaging-chimp video at the end.
First, check out this profile of the cast of characters (and we do mean characters) — Shirley Oyer and her sons, one who heads his own “United World Church” and claims to be John the Baptist (which Oyer herself apparently believes, (more…)
First, let’s review the background of the “commercial redemption” movement — a “sovereign citizen” scam that cites (among many other improbable things) The Wizard of Oz as the basis of its crazy (and illegal) method of ripping off the federal government (and thus you, Mr. or Ms. Taxpayer).
The Southern Poverty Law Center offers the most comprehensive, in-depth information about “commercial redemption,” but Wikipedia offers the most concise summary, so we’ll quote that and leave you with a bunch of fascinating (and scary) links from the SPLC for further reading. (more…)
Filed under “Things That Make Us Think of Jack Black Going ‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’”:
The Republican candidate for a state Senate seat in eastern Iowa has ended her campaign and instead declared herself a U.S. Senator for the state of Iowa. (more…)
Valarie Hodges is one of the Teabaggiest Teabaggettes in the state of Louisiana. She’s nothing unusual in that part of this severely divided land mass, as Louisiana — despite its willing to allow wild wantons to flaunt their heterosexuality in the streets, while keeping the throats of gays and women (gay or straight) under the jackboot of completely irrational oppression — is as politically backwards as a state can get, short of Alabama and Mississippi. And Virginia. And North Carolina. (more…)
“[D]id you hear the one about the tea party rally in Baxter County, where a joke delivered in black dialect, about lazy black welfare recipients, had the crowd in stitches? …
“And what does it tell you that in 2012, a white person can tell a joke about welfare in a ‘black’ dialect at a political event and not one person stands up and calls her out on it right then and there?” (more…)
Backstory: “Jason ‘JT’ Ready: Mormon Republican Neo-Nazi Mass Murderer… And Dead Candidate for Pinal County Sheriff (P.S. And How Did Russell Pearce Sleep Last Night?),” May 3, 2012
A newly released Gilbert police report describes the terrifying (more…)
And so we are once again rudely reminded to never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups — or, more accurately, the power of apathetic voters in large groups — as one Steve Smith was elected to the Republican Committee of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, this past April. As a write-in candidate. With one vote. Probably his own.
Steve Smith, “a longtime racist activist with a history of violence and (more…)
Backstory: “Charles Dyer: Oath Keeper, Teabagger, Ex-Marine Convicted of Raping Seven Six-Year-Old Daughter,” April 26, 2012
Good — although we’d prefer to see him behind bars for life:
Charles Dyer, a former Marine with ties to the antigovernment (more…)
Until today, D.J. Bettencourt was the anti-tax, anti-choice, anti-healthcare, Mitt Romney-loving, Catholic, Republican New Hampshire House bulldog with the bad skull-shave who spent his earlier days devoting his time to putting unqualified, misguided, stupid, and/or just plain mean Republicans into office, including George W. Bush (who was unqualified, misguided, stupid, and just plain mean). He was also a special aide to Romney during the latter’s reign over the temporarily-insane state of Massachusetts. (more…)
Backstory: “On May 30, 2009, Raul ‘Junior’ Flores, 29, and his daughter, Brisenia, 9, of Arivaca, Arizona, were murdered during a home-invasion by Shawna Forde and accomplices. Pima County [Arizona] Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said the attackers hoped to rob the Flores-Gonzalez family. Forde and her accomplices believed that it was their duty to kill the family as they were trying to protect the U.S.-Mexican border from illegal immigrants; Raul and Brisenia Flores, who died, as well as Gina Gonzalez, who survived, were all natural-born U.S. citizens. …
“Shawna Forde (born December 6, 1967), was convicted of this crime and sentenced to death. She formed and was the self styled Executive Director of the anti-illegal immigration group, Minutemen Civil Defense Corps even though she exhibited ‘unstable’ behavior, later formed a splinter group (Minutemen American Defense or M.A.D.) to pursue her political goals. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik alleged Forde to have planned and ordered the murder of Junior Flores. … (more…)
Video after the jump.
As if Arizona isn’t the scariest state in the nation these days (and it is)… On Wednesday afternoon in Gilbert, another whack-job “patriot” apparently slaughtered four other people — his own girlfriend, Lisa Mederos, Mederos’s daughter Amber, Amber’s boyfriend Jim “Jambob” Hiott, and Amber’s one-year-old baby girl — before taking the coward’s way out. (more…)
A crime doesn’t get much more sickening than this, nor does a criminal get much scarier — nor more right-wing — than 31-year-old Charles Allan Dyer.
The Oath Keepers are a group of “patriots” — mostly military types — formed in 2009. Their members will tell you their only goal is to protect the United States Constitution, and to refuse any “illegal orders.” What they appear to be is a paramilitary group, a self-appointed militia, which more than resembles (more…)
Steve Katz, 58, first-term Republican New York assemblymember “with Tea Party support who ran on a platform of reducing taxes and spending … was hit with a federal tax lien in 1992 for $54,198 in unpaid income taxes, interest and penalties from 1985, 1986 and 1987,” reports LoHud.com. “State regulators tagged him with a tax warrant in 1999 for $2,633.”
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