Justin's Political Corner

The chairwoman of Georgia’s Republican party voiced her opposition to marriage equality over the weekend by warning that people will use same-sex marriage to commit tax fraud.

Chairwoman Sue Everhart (R) expressed that her foremost criticism of same-sex marriage was that “it is not natural for two women or two men to be married… If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship.” But she also told the Marietta Daily Journal that straight people would abuse a law change for “the benefits”:

Everhart said while she respects all people, if same sex marriage is legalized across the country, there will be fraud.

“You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow,” Everhart said. “Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

Nine states, along with the District of Columbia, have passed marriage equality. There has been no indication of a fraud epidemic thanks to those laws, just as there is no widespread fraud because of opposite-sex marriages.

h/t: Think Progress LGBT

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) made no secret of his controversial positions on everything from the dangers of science to eliminating the Voters Rights Act in his time as a Tea Party favorite. In preparation for a Senate run, however, Broun has chosen to keep his views to himself — and his potential donors.

Broun is currently the only Republican who has announced a bid to replace Sen. Saxby Chambliss in the Senate upon the latter’s retirement in 2014. In the interest of winning over a state-wide majority of voters, Broun has sought to moderate his positions somewhat, referring to bipartisan efforts in manufacturing jobs in a recent radio interview.

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has pointed out, however, his new moderate tone has yet to reach the Congressman’s fundraising efforts. AJC’s Jim Galloway highlighted a few choice paragraphs from one of Broun’s fundraising letters to potential funders:

As a Member of the House of Representatives for the last few years, I have fought tooth-and-nail against President Obama’s agenda at every turn.

I was the first Member of Congress to call him a socialist who embraces Marxist-Leninist policies like government control of health care and redistribution of wealth….

On the Senate side, I’m a staunch ally of now retired Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina — and of course, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky….

Broun is likely right that he was the first to call Obama a Marxist back in 2008. In the same interview, he also compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler.

As recently as January, Broun said that President Obama only upholds the “Soviet Constitution.”

h/t: Hayes Brown at Think Progress

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) filed paperwork Wednesday to run for the seat of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), the first to jump into the race, National Journal reports. 

Broun, who made headlines last year when he called evolution and the big bang theory “lies straight from the pit of Hell,” could be a headache to establishment Republicans who want to make sure the nomination goes to a candidate likely to appeal in a general election, a risk even in a red state like Georgia.

h/t: TPM LiveWire

RedState creator and newly minted Fixed Noise “Contributor” Erick Erickson goes even further down the hole of asshattery.

The offense: On twitter, he defended the employee who spanked an 8-year old child at least 25+ times over throwing a cookie at her at a Dollar General Store in Wrightsville, Georgia.

WXIA (11Alive), Atlanta’s NBC affiliate:

WRIGHTSVILLE, Ga. — A Dollar General employee arrested in Wrightsville last week for hitting a child with a belt has now been charged with aggravated assault. The charges were upgraded from simple battery because store video showed the woman hitting the 8 year old at least 25 times.

“It was more or less a beating than a spanking the way she was hitting him,” said Logan Ivey’s father Jody. “I don’t know how to explain it, and I don’t want to think about it.”

Eight-year-old Logan said it was very painful.

“I felt like I had five needles sticking in me; it really hurt, I was screaming ‘Momma,’” he said. “And I was crying real bad because she had actually hurt me…when she stopped whipping me my pants were actually a little bit warm.”

Wrightsville Police Chief Paul Sterling said Logan Ivey was running around in the store and got into a confrontation with 39-year-old store clerk Emilia Graciela Bell. Bell told investigators the boy threw a cookie at her and that’s when she removed her belt, chased the boy down and spanked him behind the counter.

Media Matters

Fox News contributor Erick Erickson wrote that a Dollar General employee deserves “a medal” for reportedly responding to an eight-year-old child who threw a cookie at her by hitting the child with her belt dozens of times.

Erickson has a long history of using his Twitter feed to engage in inflammatory commentary.

(cross-posted from Daily Kos)

WASHINGTON — Senator Saxby Chambliss, the Georgia Republican who helped lead efforts to find a bipartisan deficit reduction compromise, announced on Friday that he would retire at the end of 2014, a decision likely to set off a battle on the Republican Party’s right flank for a successor.

Already, organizations backed by the Tea Party were stirring interest in a primary challenge for Mr. Chambliss over his embrace of new revenues as a part of any comprehensive deficit package. Representatives Tom Price and Paul Broun, two Republican doctors and ardent conservatives from Georgia, had expressed interest in a possible challenge.

But without Mr. Chambliss in the picture, the Senate contest in Georgia could shape up to be a battle royale on the right. Other possible candidates could include Herman Cain, a failed presidential candidate, and Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state who ran for governor in 2010 with the backing of Sarah Palin. Ms. Handel lost that contest but went on to a senior position at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation, where she championed a controversial move to withhold financing for Planned Parenthood cancer screenings.

In a statement, Mr. Chambliss took pains to say he did not fear losing a primary challenge.

“Lest anyone think this decision is about a primary challenge, I have no doubt that had I decided to be a candidate, I would have won re-election,” he said. “In these difficult political times, I am fortunate to have actually broadened my support around the state and the nation due to the stances I have taken. Instead, this is about frustration, both at a lack of leadership from the White House and at the dearth of meaningful action from Congress.”

Democrats insisted they would make a run at his seat.

“Georgia will now offer Democrats one of our best pick-up opportunities of the cycle. There are already several reports of the potential for a divisive primary that will push Republicans to the extreme right. Regardless, there’s no question that the demographics of the state have changed and Democrats are gaining strength. This will be a top priority,” said Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

But in a mid-presidential term election, Georgia will present a steep climb for the Democratic Party.

h/t: The New York Times

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) said Tuesday that President Obama seeks to uphold the “Soviet constitution” and that he has “no concept” of the United States Constitution. 

“I think my role is to uphold, support and defend our Constitution,” Broun told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  

h/t: TPM

Former Senate candidates Todd Akin (R-Mo.) and Richard Mourdock (R-Ind.) may have lost their respective elections over their controversial comments about rape and abortion, but Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) made the point clear on Thursday that they are not alone in their beliefs.

Gingrey, a former OBGYN and co-chair of the House GOP Doctors Caucus, defended the two men at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Georgia on Thursday morning. He said he believes that they are at least “partly right” in what they said about pregnancy and rape, the Marietta Daily Journal reported:

In Missouri, Todd Akin … was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, “Look, in a legitimate rape situation” — what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, “Hey, I was raped.” That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that. …

And I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, “Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.” So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.

Akin said in August that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant, because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” He later apologized and acknowledged that his comment was factually wrong. Recent studies have shownthat rape and consensual sex have the same pregnancy rate.

Gingrey also defended Mourdock, who said in October that he opposes legal abortion without an exception for rape victims because if a woman conceives from rape, “it is something God intended to happen.”

h/t: Huffington Post

In a 900-word indictment of Sen. Saxby Chambliss, RedState editor and CNN contributor Erick Erickson described the Georgia Republican Tuesday as “waffling around like a dog off its leash for the first time.”

The RedState post, which laid out the conservative case in full against Chambliss, read a lot like a campaign manifesto, which maybe it was: Erickson said Tuesday evening on his radio show he’d been approached “by serious people” to consider a primary challenge and is giving it “prayerful consideration.”

An Erickson primary challenge would certainly make for great political theater. He’s won elected office before — he served one term on the Macon City Council — and could complicate Chambliss’s re-election bid. But as a leading conservative blogger, radio talk show host and frequent cable television presence, Erickson’s also got a long trail of writing and video that might not be so helpful in a statewide campaign.

H/T: Charlie Mahtesian at Politco.com

The Georgia Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that it would not allow the Ku Klux Klan to participate in the state’s Adopt-A-Highway program.

“The impact of erecting a sign naming an organization which has a long rooted history of civil disturbance would cause a significant public concern,” the department wrote in a denial letter to the Klan group.

“Impacts include safety of the travelling public, potential social unrest, driver distraction, or interference with the flow of traffic. These potential impacts are such that were the application granted, the goal of the program, to allow civic minded organizations to participate in public service for the State of Georgia, would not be met.”

The state of Missouri argued in 1999 that they could prohibit a Klan group from participating in the state’s Adopt-A-Highway program. With the help of lawyers from the ACLU, the Klan group eventually won its legal battle in 2001.

h/t: Eric W. Dolan at The Raw Story