Jim Hightower

Let me begin by thanking God for Katherine Harris.

She is such a picture-perfect example of ultra-right-wing looniness, theocratic hubris, raw Republican partisanship, and big-money political corruption that she serves as a sort of burning bush, warning us never to let such people gain high office.

Harris, of course, was the Florida secretary of state who did Bush's bidding in 2000 to pervert the election results and hand him the presidency. Rewarded with White House backing for a congressional seat, she promptly got cozy with corrupt Pentagon contractors and is now under FBI investigation for taking illegal campaign donations. She is also this year's GOP nominee for U.S. senator from Florida.

But at least, unlike some Republican officeholders, Harris does not even try to sugarcoat her extremist theocratic views and intentions. In an August interview, she made a most alarming declaration, asserting that, "God is the one who chooses our rulers."

Say it's not so, Katherine! God chose you? And Tom DeLay? And Dick Cheney? Good lord, what a vindictive and destructive god that would be!

Then she unleashed her inner Taliban, declaring that America's doctrine of separation of church and state is a "lie," that the U.S. should not be a "a nation of secular laws," and finally, this stunner: "If you're not electing Christians, then in essence, you are going to legislate sin."

Ah, yes – those diabolical Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Unitarians, and probably even Presbyterians are all engaged in a grand conspiracy to dictate that all people must engage in adultery, murder, thievery, and other godless scourges. Thank God no Christians like Katherine Harris do such things.

This is Jim Hightower saying... Keep being our example, Katherine. You're doing the lord's work – and you are proof that he works in mysterious ways, indeed.