Ultraconservative and fundamentalist congressman Paul Broun (R-GA) told a Baptist church last month that the Earth is roughly 9,000 years, and that evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang theory were lies spread by scientists who wanted to erode people's faith in Jesus Christ. [full text below]

Having denounced evolution as a lie "straight from the pit of hell," Broun has won himself a new political opponent: Charles Darwin.

The write-in campaign is tongue-in-cheek, said Jim Leebens-Mack, a plant biologist at the University of Georgia (which is in Broun's district), who started the Facebook page urging supporters to write in Charles Darwin for Congress.

"I'd think the Republican Party would want to put a serious legislator in this seat rather than have Paul Broun," Leebens-Mack said.

He's right. None other than Neal Boortz, who has a strong following among Georgia conservatives, is urging voters to cast write-in votes for Darwin.

"Religious fundamentalists like Broun damage the Republican brand... It makes Republicans look like knee-dragging, still-tending, tobacco-spitting Neanderthals."

Well yeah.

The bigger question is this: How is that Braun, a medical doctor and a Baptist from Athens, is serving on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee? That's like putting Dick Cheney on the Ethics Committee or George W. Bush on the Committee for Intelligence. How did he even become a Congressman, let alone be on such an incongruous committee? [Please don't make jokes about southern people.]

The Darwin camp hopes to pressure Republicans into removing Broun from a leadership post on the House Science Committee. Mark Farmer, the biological sciences chairman at the University of Georgia, said Broun should resign his committee seat or be removed.

"If you truly don't understand or accept the basic tenets of modern science, I find it difficult to see how you could be making basic judgments about science policy," Farmer said.

As the article noted:

...the laws of political science hold that Broun will likely win re-election to a fourth term. He has no Democratic opponent in the election Nov. 6 and Georgia law requires write-in candidates to register by early September. That, and Darwin is long dead.

The reaction from the Broun camp?

"Dr. Broun welcomes Mr. Darwin as a challenger and is particularly looking forward to the debate portion of the campaign," the congressman's spokeswoman, Meredith Griffanti, said in an e-mail Wednesday evening. "We're sure it will be very lively."

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Here's the video released by the Liberty Baptist Church of Hartwell, which claims Broun's September 27th comments were intended as off-the-record statements about his personal beliefs. Yah.

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Source:  AP

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Full transcript of the video for the lazy people:

God's word is true. I've come to understand that. 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. And it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don't believe that the Earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says.

And what I've come to learn is that it's the manufacturer's handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that's the reason as your congressman I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I'll continue to do that.