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I don't really have any words for this one. Bachmann was speaking yesterday at Patrick Henry College, an evangelical school in Virginia. Her comments on her ridiculous attempt to secure the Republican nomination really don't need further comment.

via Salon

“You have to be a virtual Wikipedia,” she said of preparing for the debates, because, “You can be asked anything. You could be asked, who’s your favorite contemporary singer?” Later a student asked that very question and Bachmann replied that it was Beyoncé, whose Super Bowl show she enjoyed, though she also thought Michael Bublé is “pretty cool.”

Asked if there were any questions she would have answered differently if given a chance to do over again, Bachmann said she wished she had gotten John Wayne’s birthplace and Elvis Presley’s birthday correct.

In June of 2011, Bachmann noted that she was from Waterloo, Iowa, “just like John Wayne.” As it turns out, it was John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer, who lived in Waterloo. The actor was born in a different part of the state.

As for Elvis, she wished him a happy birthday on the day he died.

But those were the only questions she wants to do over, “because I was right about all the others.”

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A bill introduced by nine Republican state lawmakers in Iowa on Wednesday would define abortion as "murder," sending doctors and raped women who terminate pregnancies to jail.

State Rep. Tom Shaw says that he authored House File 138 to protect human life, whether “you’re a zygote, an infant, a teenager or an adult.”

The bill defines a "person" as "an individual human being, without regard to age of development, from the moment of conception, when a zygote is formed, until natural death."

"Murder includes killing another person through any means that terminates the life of the other person including but not limited to the use of abortion-inducing drugs," the measure states without making any exceptions for rape or incest.

Republican state Rep. Rob Bacon, who is co-sponsoring the bill, told the Ames Tribune that he wanted to "protect the life of the unborn" because "[t]here’s still some of us that believe life begins at conception."

During a Wednesday interview with Denver Bible Church pastor Bob Enyart, Shaw explained that defining a fertilized egg as a "person" in Iowa's murder statute "just simplifies everything."

"So when anyone has any questions towards us -- the war on women, are you doing this, are you doing that? -- no, it's a simple response," he insisted. "We are only defining who a person is."

"There was a lot of concern with former bills about who would be charged, what would they be charged with... This puts it in the hands of county attorneys, just like any other murder investigation. A person is a person."

According to Democratic state Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, the new definition of murder would mean that women were jailed if they had an abortion after being raped or to save their own lives.

"We’re talking about the victim of rape would go to prison along with her rapist," she told the Tribune. “It’s very hard to understand the feeling behind it. It’s a health care issue, I mean, sometimes in order to save someone’s life a woman could possibly need an abortion. When we talk about being pro-life, my new question is ‘whose life?’”

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland President Jill June called the effort to restrict abortion rights "the most extreme yet."

"This bill would imprison a woman and her doctor for attempting an abortion," June said in a statement on Wednesday. “A victim of rape or incest would be forced to carry a pregnancy or be put in jail, just like her assailant. Extremists pushing this bill are blinded by their ideology to eliminate abortion, and do not realize how this bill could hurt women and families in our state.”

Even if Shaw's bill makes it out of committee, it would have virtually no chance to pass in Iowa's Democratically-controlled Senate.

(h/t: Political Wire)

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Never mind that Mitt Romney and his running mate, Lyin' Ryan just both got their asses handed to them by Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, the lying went on undeterred the day after their convention ended by Willard. Here he is in Iowa, repeating the lie about "Obamacare" robbing Medicare, and pretending the $700 billion savings is going to harm seniors instead of helping to keep the program solvent.

And of course you can add to that the steaming pile of hypocrisy it takes for someone to sit there and claim they'd repeal a law based on something they passed themselves at the state level, and pretend that it's somehow evil incarnate now that a Democrat passed the same plan at the national level.

Steve Benen has another update with the latest list of Romney's lies from his weekly series here: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXIII.

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A curious thing happened this morning, probably by complete accident, but nevertheless occurred: NBC's Chuck Todd called out a Republican Governor for his blatant lying. The interview started out innocently enough, discussing the effects of the drought in the mid-west with Iowa's Terry Branstad, but took a turn when Branstad veered off into wingnuttery that the increase in the food stamp program, coupled with the "gutting" of the welfare reform law by getting rid of work requirements have contributed to the lack of a Farm Bill. None of which is true of course, but as a current republican talking point Branstad felt compelled to insert it into the discussion. Chuck Todd, perhaps jarred by this offnote, committed an uncharacteristic act of journalism by calling out Branstad with this mild rebuke.

h/t Think Progress

BRANSTAD: We reformed welfare in the 1990s, now the Obama administration’s trying to undo the work requirement.

TODD: Wait a minute, Gov. Branstad, I can’t let that go. They haven’t done that. [Crosstalk] You leveled a charge about the welfare work requirement. It turns out that’s not true. Where did you get your information?

BRANSTAD: It absolutely is. I was one of the governors that helped get it, and when we passed it, it was designed not to be waived. And now the President of the United States has, by executive order in July, weakened that which was very effective.

TODD: The waivers are for state governors. The waivers are for you. [...] If governors weaken it to a certain point, the federal government yanks the waiver. [...] Nothing about this issue, every charge that has been leveled about this welfare reform order that the president signed, every accusation that has been leveled by some Republicans have been proven to be not true.

BRANSTAD: Well, the fact of the matter is that the president did it. He didn’t have to take this action to weaken the strong work requirement that was passed.

TODD: It doesn’t weaken it…The works still there, governor, it’s still there.

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Speaking from the same stage in Iowa where Mitt Romney once declared that "corporation are people," presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan found himself on Monday being interrupted by protesters who accused him of waging a "war on the middle class."

During an stump speech at the Iowa State Fair, Paul paused to call out several women near the front row who were heckling him.

"You know, it's funny because Iowa and Wisconsinites, we like to be respectful of one another and peaceful with one another and listen to each other," he said. "These ladies must not be from Iowa or Wisconsin."

"You see this one here?" Ryan said, pointing out one of the women to law enforcement and security personnel. BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller reported that several of the women were later arrested.

Throughout the remainder of the Wisconsin Republican's speech, protesters in the audience chanted, "Stop the war on the middle class!" and "Stop the war on the common good!"

But Ryan continued his speech, seemingly unfazed: "My guess is the reason President Obama isn't making it here from Council Bluffs is because he only knows left turns."

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Rep. Steve King (R-IA) recently speculated that President Barack Obama's family could have conspired to fake his citizenship by announcing his birth with a "telegram from Kenya."

During a tele-townhall event recorded last week, King was asked why he wasn't "investigating Obama's ineligibility."

"Before he was sworn in for the presidency, we went down into the Library of Congress and we found a microfiche there of two newspapers -- only two newspapers in Hawaii -- each of them had published the birth of Barack Obama," the congressman explained. "It would have been awfully hard to fraudulently file the birth notice of Barack Obama being born in Hawaii and get that into our public libraries and that microfiche they keep of all the newspapers published."

King added: "That doesn’t mean there aren’t some other explanations on how they might’ve announced that by telegram from Kenya. The list goes on."

But the Iowa Republican concluded that there was no point "drilling into that now" because "even if it turned out that Barack Obama was conclusively not born in America, I don’t think we could get that case sold between now and November."

During his 2008 run for president, Barack Obama released his certificate of live birth. After so-called birthers continued to question his citizenship, the White House made the president's long form birth certificate available in 2011.

"I have to say that over the last two and a half years I have watched with bemusement, I've been puzzled at the degree to which this thing just kept on going," the president said last year. "We've had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital."

"We've posted the certification that is given by the state of Hawaii on the Internet for everybody to see. People have provided affidavits that they, in fact, have seen this birth certificate. And yet this thing just keeps on going."

(h/t: Think Progress)

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Doubtless this sounds like eminently sound advice to many people of the republican persuasion. Checking their teeth and bone structure, musculature and so on, all part of a modern immigration plan.

Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon.com has more:

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, compared immigrants to dogs at a town hall meeting yesterday, telling constituents that the U.S. should pick only the best immigrants the way one chooses the “pick of the litter.”

King told the crowd in Pocahontas, Iowa, that he’s owned lots of bird dogs over the years and advised, “You want a good bird dog? You want one that’s going to be aggressive? Pick the one that’s the friskiest … not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner.”

King suggested lazy immigrants should be avoided as well. “You get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. Well, we’ve got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet,” King said. “We’ve got the vigor from the planet to come to America.” The liberal research group American Bridge captured the comments:

Full transcript by American Bridge below the fold.

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Despite the fact that he claims to be a libertarian, it looks like Sen. Rand Paul shares the same views as his dad when it comes to staying out of other people's bedrooms and his views on gay marriage:

Sen. Rand Paul on Friday brushed off Barack Obama's recent reversal on same-sex marriage by saying he didn't think the president's views "could get any gayer."

The remarks from the Republican senator from Kentucky scored laughs among those attending an event held by Iowa's Faith and Freedom Coalition, a video uploaded on Saturday to the conservative website "The Iowa Republican" shows.

"The president, you know, recently weighed in on marriage. And, you know, he said his views were evolving on marriage," the first-term senator said Friday evening. "Call me cynical, but I wasn't sure that his views on marriage could get any gayer."

Paul, who is the son of GOP presidential longshot and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, made the comments two days after Obama announced that he supported same-sex marriage, which he had previously opposed, while adding he thought the issue should be left up to the states to decide. [...]

The senator criticized Obama's explanation that the Golden Rule - to treat others how one wants to be treated - and his faith led to his evolved understanding of marriage. The Golden Rule has its roots in biblical verses.

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When these nine didn't vote for Santorum, they changed history.

From the people at Jest.

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From this Saturday's coverage of the GOP candidates out on the campaign trail in Iowa on CNN, Mitt Romney introduces his youngest son Craig who shares what is supposed to be an "endearing" story about his father and a family tradition of theirs where they hold a little triathlon every year. I don't think I can sum this up much better than Ron Brownstein did when Candy Crowley, who also looked a bit shocked, asked him to react to the story:

BROWNSTEIN: Just what America needs, a president who can be a new mother in a triathlon. Who knew?

Transcript via CNN:

CROWLEY: Welcome back to "Contenders 2012." We're taking the time this afternoon to let you hear from the 2012 presidential contenders, basically unfiltered, uninterrupted and in their own words. Sometimes live, sometimes on tape, but always unedited. We want to go first and give you a sort of a little bit of an idea of what Mitt Romney has been doing today. He woke up in New Hampshire and he touched down not too long ago here and was in Le Mars, Iowa, giving a little bit of his campaign speech.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY: This is also Plymouth County, right? This is a republican county. This is a county that had the wisdom in the last general election to vote for John McCain. Don't we wish the entire state and the entire nation would have done that? But that didn't happen. I can tell you this, though, if I'm the republican nominee, I'll be back in Iowa to win the general election and we will win Iowa. We'll go to Washington with a mandate to make sure we get this country back on the right track. I'm going to be back in Iowa.

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