Friday Freakshow Roundup: Murdered Pets, the TSA, and Say Anything

In the political news system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the Republicans who do insane things, and this blogger who mocks them. These are their stories:

• The campaign manager for an Arkansas Democratic Congressional candidate returned home with his four children early this week to find: "The family pet, an adult, mixed-breed Siamese cat, had one side of its head bashed in to the point the cat’s eyeball was barely hanging from its socket. The perpetrators scrawled “liberal” across the cat’s body and left it on the doorstep of Burris’ house."  So that's special.

• Everyone's favorite soon to be ex-Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker may be in a bit of trouble for touting on his campaign website that he'd balanced the budget, while at the same time telling Federal officials that they still had a significant deficit.  Does he not get that his state already hates him?

• Newt Gingrich wants you to know that his history of affairs, ethics violations, and all around slimy-ness actually "make me more normal than somebody who wanders around seeming perfect and maybe not understanding the human condition, and the challenges of life for normal people."  Because let's face it, if you're not cheating on all three of your wives and involved in historic levels of corruption, you're basically just an inhuman robot.

• Earlier this week Senator Rand Paul was detained at an airport by TSA when he accidentally set off the body scanner and then refused to submit to a pat down because he felt it violated his right to privacy.  He was on his way to an anti-abortion rally in DC, though I suspect he does not see the irony.  Don't worry though, much like his father, Rand Paul is sure that it is all part of a secret conspiracy against him.

• With Gabby Giffords retiring this week, Colorado Republicans felt that now would be the perfect time to push for legislation to allow guns to be brought into elementary schools.

• If you need something to cheer you up though, we will still have Michele Bachmann to kick around, because she's announced she's going to seek reelection to Congress.

• Romney's wife thinks it's unfortunate that he had to release his tax returns at all.  Meanwhile Romney's claiming that: "Well, actually, I released two years of taxes and I think the average is almost 15 percent. And then also, on top of that, I gave another more 15 percent to charity. When you add it together with all of the taxes and the charity, particularly in the last year, I think it reaches almost 40 percent that I gave back to the community."  So putting aside the absurdity that you can just add together your tax rate and charitable contributions (including to anti-gay advocacy groups) to create some new kind of "real" tax rate, I think the fact that Romney thinks that 15 + 15 = 40 puts to rest anyone who wondered if, like Santorum, Romney did his own tax returns.  He also joked to a group in Florida that, “I don’t think people would think I’m being honest if I said I was Mexican-American, but I would appreciate it if you could get that word out.”  

• In completely unrelated news, 61% of the country agrees with the statement "Mitt Romney will say anything he has to to get elected."