Throw the rascals out

Over at The Daily Beast, former columnist and speechwriting lickspittle to Rudy Giuliani John Avlon lists ten rogues in the U.S. House of Representatives who need to be given the heave-ho. He’s pretty even-handed—something that you’d expect from an author who wrote Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics, a title I’m sure Jim Hightower* enjoyed—in naming not only the usual GOP right-wing kooks like Michele “Crazy Shelley” Bachman and Steve King but ethically-challenged Dems like Charlie “Rent control is my middle name” Rangel and Laura Richardson.

However, Avlon neglected to include GA’s 10th District representative, boy Congressman Paul “Bill of Attainder” Broun in his Beast tally and so—BZZZZZZT!!!—I have to disqualify his article. (The man who makes Broun looks like an idiot in this YouTube clip—Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida—does make Avlon’s countdown… thereby confirming that the chattering political pundit class makes less and less sense everyday.)

*Jim Hightower is the former Texas Agricultural Commissioner and progressive populist who once summed up my political philosophy with a book entitled There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos.