Ray LaHood. An arrogant, garrulous sociopath, an enthusiast for war, a hater of the bill of rights, an antiabortion loon who opposes choice even in cases of rape or incest. And now he is going to be a member of Obama's cabinet.
I had two encounters with the guy during his illustrious congressional career, which I describe below. But I also want to note the "vibe" that I got from the guy was such that it made me ashamed to be a human being.
The first encounter was in 2003. He was a speaker at a local function. During Q & A, I asked him whether he thought the President had the right to detain a US citizen indefinitely without charges or hearing. He tried to dodge the question by saying that he didn't answer hypotheticals. I then brought up Padilla and Hamdi. LaHood then said the President had an obligation to keep us all safe from terrorists and we should all trust the President.
The second encounter was in 2006. LaHood gave a few minutes of his valuable time to a peace group, probably because it was run Christians. (I was honored to be asked to attend the meeting, though I am not a Christian.) At the meeting, LaHood made the following points:
* We will maintain a military presence in Iraq for at least 50 more years- as long as we were in Germany or Japan.
* We invaded from the highest motives of toppling an evil dictator. Our motives have nothing to do with oil, and current high oil prices establish that we are not trying to take over Iraqi oil.
* The Iraqi people love us (yep, he said that). They love us in Baghdad because we keep opening new hospitals.
* Our invasion was authorized by the UN Security Council (At this total lie, I shook my head, which produced an impressive temper tantrum by LaHood. It is bad manners to shake your head at a lying congressman.)
* The troops are strongly behind the mission, which he knew from having visited the wounded at Bethesda.
Yes, I know that Ray LaHood will not be running Obama's "defense" policy (he has another right-winger for that, George Bush's very own Robert Gates. However, the act of choosing this right-wing scoundrel for his cabinet, rather than, say, any of a million good Democrats who actually know something about public transportation, was a clear expression of contempt by Mister Change for the peace and justice movement to whom he owes his election.