(insert Jim Nabors reference here)

There is, if you look at the middle of these United States, right at the bottom, a godforsaken oozing sore of a state known as Texas. It is not a good place to live - it's a black hole of humanity and common sense, and it's where televangelists and crooked politicians go to die.

I was born there. And I would rather be castrated with a hammer than ever go back.

But I'm not going to run down the entire state; I don't have that kind of time right now. I'm just going to focus on one unique example of the kind of venal bundles of manure in a suit infesting the Texas legislative offices. He's a member of the US House of Representatives from East Texas, and his name is Louie Gohmert.

It is quite possible that he is the second stupidest Aggie in the history of Texas (tied with Rick Perry), but he is so much more than that. This man is a particularly special kind of crazy - put him in a room with Michele Bachmann and a bonobo on meth, and it's a tough call to say who will come out looking like the sane one.

He is (it almost goes without saying) a full-on birther: he, in fact, co-sponsored what came to be known as the "birther bill" (HR 1503), to "require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate..."

At one point, he became enthralled with "terror babies." You've heard of "anchor babies," where a pregnant illegal immigrant waits until her water breaks, then dashes across the border just in time to spew out her spawn, who then, under the 14th Amendment, is a American citizen. (It is, of course, a myth.)

Well, that paranoid fantasy wasn't bad-ass enough for our boy Louie! No, sirree Bob! He began openly coughing up the idea that terrorists were impregnating women, sending them to the US to have their "anchor babies," flying them back to wherever they came from, and then waiting twenty to thirty years to send them back as glassy-eyed kamikaze assassins who could gain easy entry into ANYWHERE and destroy ANYTHING!!! We're DOOOOOOMMMED!!!!

He successfully proved that he has less evidence for this than a UFO buff has of real illegal aliens by going on Anderson Cooper 360 and ranting incoherently.


But don't go thinking that's the worst conspiracy Louie can come up with. See, apparently, Obamacare, combined with our minor assistance in the Libya conflict, will inevitably lead to Obama ending up with a private army that only HE controls!! (cue sinister music)

"But then when you find out we're being sent to Libya to use our treasure and American lives there, maybe there's intention to so deplete the military that we're going to need that presidential reserve officer commissioned corps and non-commissioned corps that the president can call up on a moment's notice involuntarily, according to the Obamacare bill!"

And, of course, being a good Texas lawmaker, Louie isn't afraid to ignore that whole "separation of church and state" thing. The realization that California's Proposition 8 was unconstitutional made him a little cranky.

Said Gohmert: "The court, as I understand it today, struck down a law that said marriage is between a man and a woman. It's interesting that there are some courts in America where the judges have become so wise in their own eyes that they know better than nature or nature's God."

Gohmert then brought up the Supreme Courtjustices in Iowa who were ousted last year after a vicious campaign by anti-gay activists over their support for marriage equality:

"Nature seemed to like the idea of an egg and a sperm coming together because of pro-creation. Apparently [the judges] thought the sperm had far better use some other way biologically, combining it with something else. But the voters of Iowa came back and said you know what, if you're not smart enough to figure out actual plumbing...then perhaps we need new judges, and that's what they did."

(Youtube pulled the video from the original link, so I substituted one from ThinkProgress, where they also point out that Proposition 8 had nothing to do with procreation, because it didn’t even mention whether same-sex couples could raise children.)

So, that's our boy Gohmert. Not the brightest of all possible lawmakers, but certainly one of the more entertaining. But I think that Louie outdid himself this week.

See, Gohmert sits on the House Natural Resources Committee (because presumably all the members with functioning brain cells want to avoid that one), and his biggest interest this week? Making sure that Alaskan caribou get laid. Of course, to do that (and this, ladies and gentlemen, is the genius of Louie Gohmert), he needs to make sure that we spend more money on the Alaskan Pipeline.

It seems that Gohmert is also something of an expert on animal husbandry. Here's his theory: The caribou very much enjoy the warmth the pipeline radiates. "So when they want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline," he informed his colleagues. It's apparently the equivalent of being wined and dined. And that has resulted in a tenfold caribou population boom, he concluded.

"So my real concern now ...if oil stops running through the pipeline...do we need a study to see how adversely the caribou would be affected if that warm oil ever quit flowing?" he asked.

Because god only knows how they mated before there was a pipeline in Alaska.

People of America, I give you... Louis Buller Gohmert, Jr. Humanitarian, father, and caribou fucker.