Challenge Accepted: 25 Examples of Ken Cuccinelli's Extremism

(Add another one: Cuccinelli endorser the Family Research Council says that "tragedies like Newtown and Boston - as well as the shooting at its headquarters last summer - are the result of 'sexual liberalism' and the lack of Christian influence on society." Does Cuccinelli agree with his endorser's views? If not, we're all ears! - promoted by lowkell) A bit earlier today, I noticed a "conservative" (whatever that word even means these days) Virginia blog (I'm not linking, but the blog's initials are "BD") had an article arguing that Virginia actually has NOTHING to fear from Ken Cuccinelli, that he isn't really "extreme," and that simply "repeating that someone is extreme over and over doesn't make it so." OK, fine, challenge accepted: I won't just SAY the dude's extreme, I'll provide examples, 25 of them for starters (there are many, many more - these are pretty much the ones off the top of my head!). And yes, I'd say Virginians have a great deal to fear from almost every one of these items...1. He wants to make it easier for Virginia public universities to discriminate against gay people. 2. He believes that "homosexual acts are...intrinsically wrong...don't comport with natural law...not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society." 3. He strongly supports a so-called "personhood amendment" to the Virginia constitution, that would effectively outlaw abortion as well as several types of birth control (e.g., the "morning after" pill). 4. He wants to ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest! 5. He has pushed to defund Planned Parenthood. 6. He has pushed to defund embryonic stem cell research, which is crucial for curing diseases from diabetes to Parkinsons to Alzheimers to...you name it, pretty much (note: the blastocysts would be discarded anyway). 7. He not only pushed for draconian, and completely unnecessary/arbitrary/absurd new regulations at Virginia women's health clinics, he went beyond that by "refus[ing] to certify that version of the regulations [which "grandfathered" existing clinics], telling [Virginia Board of Health] members that adopting such an amendment was outside their scope of power...[and threatening] to withhold state legal counsel from them if they did not pass his original version of the regulations." 8. He denies climate science (that alone should disqualify him from ever holding ANY public office, let alone governor!) 9. He launched a vicious witch hunt against one of the world's leading climate scientists, Dr. Michael Mann, something that AG candidate Mark Herring called "Un-American" (Herring added, correctly, that "that kind of attack on science went out with Galileo.") 10. He claims that Virginia can disobey federal laws it disagrees with. Uhhhh...didn't we fight the Civil War over that?

lowkell :: Challenge Accepted: 25 Examples of Ken Cuccinelli's Extremism

11. He dabbles in "birtherism" 12. He believes the government is tracking his kids via Social Security numbers. 13. As ThinkProgress explains, he's out to re-criminalize "sodomy" in Virginia, while "his vote to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court ruling when he was a state Senator in 2004 helped create the uncertainty over the provisions." 14. He opposes "bipartisan immigration reform efforts as 'amnesty' for the 'illegal aliens in the job market' who are 'depressing wages and reducing American's standard of living.'" 15. He cast the only vote against a "bill aimed as strengthening domestic violence protections." 16. He opposed a 2004 bill "to require members of the clergy to report child abuse - a bill supported by almost every religious group in the state." 17. He does his best Willard "47 Percent" Romney interpretation in his bizarre book, "The Last Line of Defense": "One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security, and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, and the like). These programs make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can't afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run, or costly to the rest of society." 18. In the same wacko book, Cuccinelli writes that Medicare is "despicable, dishonest, and worthy of condemnation," and that anti-trust laws are unconstitutional. 19. He also writes in his book that the Obama administration is "the biggest set of lawbreakers in America." 20. His top donors include right-wing extremists Foster "The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly" Friess and the Koch brothers. 21. He believes that Antonin Scalia, one of the most far-right-wing Supreme Court justices in U.S. history, is not right wing enough. 22. He believes it's worth going to jail  to stop the Affordable Health Care law mandate that insurance policies provide contraception to women free of charge. 23. He "briefly dabbled" in "the theory that President Obama stole the 2012 election, based on the concrete evidence that he didn't win any any states that had a voter ID law - though the president actually won four states that had voter ID laws and voter fraud is actually less common than being struck by lightning." 24. He compared the cause of outlawing abortion to the cause of abolishing African American slavery in this country. 25. He had his lapel pins modified so that the image of the Roman goddess Virtus on the Virginia state seal, in which she is "wearing a blue tunic draped over one shoulder, her left breast exposed," was "covered by an armored breastplate."Well, that was fun - not! Actually, I feel like I need a long, hot shower at this point. Blech. By the way, I can't wait to hear the Cuccinelli defenders try to brush off every one of these crystal clear examples of Cuccinelli's extremism and insanity, just as they rewrite reality to suit themselves on so many other things (e.g., science).