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That guy was a jerk-face. All I did was say that Todd Akin is a good man who made a mistake. Unfortunately, it might mean that Senator McCaskill will win re-election. I said I would pray she picked up an economics textbook (among other things) should she be fortunate enough to win. Well, this guy didn't like that at all. I may have speculated that she would switch parties if she did that. Whereupon this guy pointed out that Akin voted against raising the debt ceiling, as if that was the equivalent of putting puppies in blenders. I said maybe we need a default to wake up our whole political class. At which point, he consigned me to whatever mental holding-tank he has for storing his subhuman political opponents. He said, "I don't think you have any idea what a sovereign default would entail, so I can see why you feel right at home with the Republican party, where knowledge is weakness." I added the period for the aid of my readers and for him, since he was so full of sputtering rage that he couldn't finish his sentence. But I wanted to tell my friend Cole Williams, Professor of Philosophy at Moberly Area Community College, that your friend Jory Hansen is a real gem.

I know that Cole is kinda liberal, and I'm kinda not, but we became friendly acquaintances years ago, and we've kept in touch through Facebook. I love that he teaches philosophy, because he has the mental equipment not only to reason through things, but to reason about reasoning. I'm not a philosopher, but I'm trying to pick it up here and there. Since Cole is a spiritual man--though less defined than I would like--we can always talk theology if the politics gets too heated.

If you show me a flash of humanity amidst the fracas of politics as an elected official, I'll probably like you, even if you're not on my side. Russ Feingold used to be the Democratic Senator from Wisconsin. I've always sorta liked him. Why, you ask? Because he was a real progressive, all the time. Not when it was advantageous or popular. He wasn't a liberal for sport; he was a liberal by conviction. Same with Paul Wellstone, may he rest in peace. I liked Feingold when he had the guts to ask now-Justice Alito about the morality of the death penalty, in light of what we know about wrongful convictions and the like. He asked it because he wanted to know what Alito thought, and he wanted to raise the awareness of the national audience during a confirmation hearing about an issue where liberals are 1000 percent right. And it's not cool to be an anti-death penalty crusader.

It may well be that our friends at the Innocence Project are the commiest commies ever to live, but they do good work. So other than letting you know that I may not be warm and fuzzy with all of Cole's friends, I wanted to add that I am a pro-legal reform, anti-death penalty Republican.

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