Woeful lunatic of the day

When Jared Loughner put a bullet through Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffard's brain and killed six bystanders including a nine year old child, some commentators suggested that the killer was inspired by the violent rhetoric of tea party gun nuts like Sarah Palin. This may or may not be true, but her counter-accusation that such a suggestion was a "blood libel" showed that she had no idea what the term meant.

To recap, a "blood libel" is a false accusation that religious minorities, usually Jews, kill children and use their blood in their religious rites. Sarah Palin saying something ignorant is only news in the 'dog bites man' sense but, in this context, here's something really jaw-droppingly crazy:

Gabby Giffords was both Jewish and a staunch defender of abortion rights, holding that abortion needed to be legal in all circumstances. In this regard, her political stance was perfectly in line with her religious beliefs.

She not only supported abortion in all circumstances, she supported embryonic stem cell research, was strongly supported by the pro-abort Emily's List and pushed contraception like it was going out of style.

This past Saturday, a man stirred her brains with a bullet in much the same way that an abortionist stirs the brain of unborn child with a knife during a partial-birth abortion.

In this case, the only major difference between Giffords and the babies whose death she supported is that medical professionals are trying to save her life instead of end it.

It's from  the rather disturbing  blog of one Steve Kellmeyer, which I've been following with morbid fascination for some time now. The blog goes by the snappily fascistic title of The Fifth Column ("Orthodox Catholic commentary on current events"). It started off pretty strange but those posts just keep on getting weirder and weirder. You can read the whole thing here* if you want a glimpse of life on the bizarre planet that extreme religious fundamentalists inhabit. Are there echoes of something really nasty here, or is the guy just two wafers short of a communion? You decide.

* I took a screen shot just to prove that he actually did say it, just in case this ever gets retrospectively edited.