Halloween Frightfest

By ticorules on October 25, 2012 • ( 0 )

This being the scary holiday season, I thought I’d start off the festivities with a short tour of the scariest house of this or any other holiday. I am of course talking about the House of Representatives. And although there are neither ghost nor goblins, I assure you it is all quite frightening.

Let’s start our tour with perhaps the least scientific members of congress.

First up we have Representative Todd Akin from Missouri. Mr Akin is already a member of Congress but this year he’s decided to run for the Senate. Akin wasn’t content being just an average everyday wack-job with statements likening the federal student loan program to a “stage three cancer of socialism.” Most recently he’s moved on to women’s health. Here’s a choice quote from the font of scientific information that is Congressman Akin:

First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Henceforth, every time someone says something truly ignorant about women’s health, let’s just agree to say that person must have studied at the Todd Akin School of Gynecology. Also who are these doctors he’s consulted? Dr. Pepper? Dr J.? Dr. Who? Perhaps it was our next contestant.

Next up we have Representative Paul Broun from Georgia. Representative Broun deserves a special distinction for somehow not only making it though a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry but also a medical degree without actually believing in any science at all.

All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said in a recent speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

What’s that you say? You aren’t sufficiently scared of two wacko Congressman from the Midwest and the deep South? How can those two do anything to affect your life? Well, here’s the thing that’s truly scary. They’re both members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Any piece of legislation that deals with energy, the environment, research, science education, space & aeronautics, and technology goes through that committee. That means the economy, health care, climate change, damn near everything.

BOO!