Liberal in the Land of Conservative

Brandon Lerch, who has been press secretary to King, is departing to head up the re-election campaign for Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican elected in 2006.

A transcript of King's comments made at a Republican fundraiser in Boulder's Conference Center showed he compared illegal immigrants to stray cats that wind up on people's porches. King said at first stray cats help by chasing mice, so people feed them. King added that the stray cats then have kittens, which are liked for their cuteness, but eventually the strays, fed by the people, end up getting lazy, just like illegal immigrants. King would not comment on what he said on that day. Sioux City Journal, 10-13-2006

Mr. King said about the recently killed al-Zarqawi, "There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he's at. And if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas." Helen Thomas was an 85-year-old award-winning journalist at the time. Most Iowans don't insult old ladies. (The quote is from a recording transcribed by Radio Iowa at the 2006 Iowa Republican convention.) Sioux City Journal, 6-22-2006

"... My wife lives here with me, and I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, she's at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington, D.C., than an average civilian in Iraq." Of course, King is completely wrong and is comparing apples and oranges -- the city of Baghdad has a murder rate about three times higher than the city of Washington D.C. June 6, 2006 on the floor of the House of Representatives

"I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name, whatever the religion of their father might have been." Said Congressman Steven Arnold King in a radio interview March 7th, just before he disparaged Senator Barack Obama's race, ethnicity, name and father's religion. He continued, "I'll just say this, that when you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected president of the United States, I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does this look like to the world of Islam?... And I will tell you that if he IS elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al Qaida and the radical Islamists and their supporters will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11th." Specifically regarding Obama's middle name: "It does matter. His middle name does matter. It matters because they read meaning into that and the rest of the world, it has special meaning to them. They'll be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They'll be dancing in the streets because of who his father was ... So there are implications that have to do with who he is and the positions that he has taken ... There will be dancing in the streets if he's elected president and that has a chilling effect on how difficult it will be to ever win this global war on terror." Odd, isn't it, that middle names are so very important to a man apparently named after a famous American traitor? You can watch the interview here. You can see the AP story here, and you can see Congressman King defend his remarks on FOX News here.