MORE ON THE GUY WHO WANTS MANDATORY WEAPONS IN SCHOOLS

Perhaps you saw this story from Virginia:

Del. Robert G. Marshall is proposing a bill that would require some teachers or other school staff to carry concealed weapons in schools....

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) said this week that there should be a discussion about whether school staff should be allowed to carry concealed weapons to protect children against intruders.

... Marshall would not only allow staff with concealed handgun permits to carry them in schools, but require school districts to designate some staff members to do so....

That would be this Bob Marshall:

Western Prince William Del. Bob Marshall, R-13th, says disabled children are God’s punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy.

He made that statement last Thursday at a press conference to oppose state funding for Planned Parenthood.

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children," said Marshall, a Republican.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."

Oh, and he's also declared homosexuals "intrinsically disordered," in the course of opposing gay adoptions and gay appointees; he's declared that a woman who has an abortion after a rape is "a sin-bearer of the crime, because the right of a child predominates over the embarrassment of the woman"; and he's urged Virginia to mint its own gold and silver coins, in order to be prepared "in the event of a major breakdown of the Federal Reserve System."

Marshall isn't a back-bench outlier. Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's wingnut attorney general (who's now running for governor), considers Marshall a very close ally, as WAMU reported in 2010:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli plunged into controversy in recent weeks with a couple of major legal opinions, one saying it's okay for police to question people about their immigration status and another saying the state can more closely regulate abortion clinics.

If you look closely at those opinions, you’ll find a common thread: a guy named Bob Marshall.

In both cases it was a formal request from this Republican member of the House of Delegates from Prince William County that led Cuccinelli to issue his opinions....

This year's Virginia Healthcare Freedom Act, which paved the way for Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's lawsuit against the Obama administration's health care legislation, was Marshall's brainchild.

And where did Marshall learn how to work the legislative levers?

He can do [all] that ... because of his peerless grasp of parliamentary procedure, knowledge Marshall says he absorbed as a congressional aide to California Republican Bob Dornan in the 1970s.

Yup -- Marshall studied at the feet of B-1 Bob, who was a half-mad extremist long before every elected Republican was a half-mad extremist.

The Republican Party, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just so proud that it constitutes 50% of our nation's political establishment.