Paul Broun

Senator Saxby Chambliss is retiring at the end of his term next year, and already the vultures are circling. Representative Broun is one of the primary contenders for that seat. You may have noticed his signs cluttering local roadways.

I’ll say it bluntly: Paul Broun is utterly unfit to represent us in the Senate.

Broun holds a seat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Among other things, he’s in charge of funding for NASA and the Department of Energy. As such, I find it a little unsettling when he says things like this:

[The Bible] 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.

We’re talking about the same Bible that tells us Ï€ is exactly three.

That’s from a speech he gave late last year, in which he made his position clear on two theories that provide the underpinnings of our modern science:

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.

I’d like to see “scientific data” that proves the Earth is only 9,000 years old. I really would. I’d also like to see him yanked from any committee that has the word “science” in its description.

Among his other charming initiatives, he wasted everyone’s time pushing for a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as being only between a man and woman in 2008, and again in 2009. He’s also compared the President to Hitler and accused him of upholding “the Soviet constitution.” I’m sure these sorts of statements play well to the party loyalists, but they don’t speak well to his competence as a civil servant.

The primary race is going to be crowded and vicious. Karen Handel, who ran an almost exclusively negative campaign for governor in 2010, has thrown her hat into the ring. Jack Kingston, and Phil Gingrey, neither of whom are big fans of civil liberties, are also running. It appears Tom Price has opted out, and so has Blue Dog Democrat John Barrow. Michelle Nunn has been floated as a possibility.

Thus far, none of those choices are very inspiring, but if Nunn has inherited her father’s ideology, she might be the one to back.