Reporter John Croman of Minnesota's KARE broadcasting dug up a good one about Michele Bachmann, but it got buried in the body of his story:
A more serious legal matter (stemming from Bachmann's failed presidential bid last year) remains unresolved.
One of Bachmann's former Iowa campaign staff members, Barbara Heki, filed a lawsuit on Monday against the third-term congresswoman and several presidential campaign aides.
Heki's role in the campaign was to reach out to Christian home school teachers in Iowa, and she had plenty of contacts because of her leadership role in the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators, or NICHE.
In her suit, filed in Polk County, Heki alleges that State Senator Kent Sorenson, Bachmann's Iowa campaign chairman, stole the NICHE mailing list from her private computer in her office at Bachmann's campaign headquarters in Urbandale.
There's more...
(CONTINUED)
...and you can read it at the link below.
Now that's a pretty heinous accusation, using the word "stole" in connection with a Bachmann campaign chairman. And it's also worth pointing out that here we have a case of Christian believers suing other Christian believers in the secular courts (which is something St. Paul really thought was ridiculous and shameful, but who listens to him when there's money and careers on the line.)
But it is a rare and valuable little glimpse into the actual ethical world within the Christian right. The story of the lawsuit is newsworthy because all the people involved in it claim to be on the side of Christian morality. But the Christian right's claim that it observes biblical standards for morality stops cold when it comes to practicing politics.
Bachmann's name is conspicuously absent from the list of Republican headliners scheduled to speak at this year's GOP presidential convention. (As you recall, Bachmann was a star attraction four years ago when McCain was nominated in Minnesota.)
It's not the GOP is blowing off controversy and the Tea Party. Far from it; Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Governor Rick Scott of Florida will be riling up the convention crowd. But so far, no spot for Bachmann with her accusations of radical Islam inside the White House itself.
The blow-off is a little embarrassing for conservative star with a national following and all that Muslim-hating, fundraising juice at her disposal. But the Romney campaign accepts her support because they need those paranoids in the bag for the election...
...and there's good news for Bachmann on the Christian right, too. She has accepted an invitation to join the board of the Thomas More Law Center.
"I am pleased to join forces with the Thomas More Law Center," Bachmann said Thursday. "They are in the courts aggressively fighting the internal threat to America posed by radical Islam."
...
"She understands the threat of radical Islam," (said Richard Thompson, the center's president and chief counsel)...
Thompson was referring to what he and some other conservatives say are quiet ways in which some Islamic organizations are trying to take control in the West.
Now you think, hey, that's nuts. When Bachmann talks about the "internal threat to America posed by radical Islam," she is indeed channeling McCarthy. Because the "internal threat" she's referring to is not the very real threat posed by Islamic terrorists (the FBI is already on that.) She's talking about the internal threat of radical Islam
inside the US government.
Now that is nuts, but you gotta understand that there's a lot of nuts out there. I was up north in Republican Congressman Chip Cravaack's Eighth District of Minnesota last week. I saw the signs and billboards by the roadsides. These guys are convinced that Bachmann's conspiracy thinking is the way to go; they think the US has already gone "socialist," all that crackpot stuff. And many of them really do believe that radical Islam has "deeply penetrated" US government policy.
These views are constantly reinforced by what they hear from right wing broadcast and conservative Christian radio. If you go by that stuff--Bachmann is right; we are being governed by a White House that has been penetrated by globalist, socialist, pro-radical Islam forces. And there are a lot of voters who claim to believe that; they just lap that stuff up.
The GOP is trying to keep Bachmann and these other nuts off camera in the run-up to November--but Romney cannot win if he pisses them off by telling them there is no internal pro-radical Islam conspiracy affecting US government policy. He is playing "Eisenhower Republican" to Bachmann's "McCarthy"--profiting politically from the nuthouse lies about conspiracy inside the government.
LINK:
KARE on the suit against Bachmann. The info about the lawsuit is way down there in the body of the story, which is about the fallout from Bachmann's prez campaign:
http://www.kare11.com/...
LINK:
Scheduled speakers at the GOP convention.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
LINK:
Bachmann joins Thomas More Law Center.
http://www.freep.com/...