The Washington Post Editorial Board, under the paper’s collective byline published a scathing take-down of AZ’s idiotically partisan Secretary of State, Gomer Pyle Ken Bennett, who also happens to be the Romney campaigns co-chair in the state.
Think Bennett’s biased or just dumb? Or both?
Look deep into his eyes…
Imagine waking up and reading something like this about yourself as you’re rubbing the sleep from your eyes? It’s not often that a major newspaper chooses to mock someone this harshly, but I think a colossal fuckwit like Ken Bennett deserved it with both barrels.
IF ONE-FIFTIETH of 1 percent of Arizonans demanded that Ken Bennett, the state’s Republican secretary of state, go to work in the nude, would he comply? Not likely. After all, Mr. Bennett, the former Republican president of the Arizona Senate, is planning to run for governor in two years. It wouldn’t pay to pander to crackpots — and humiliate himself in the bargain. Or would it?
The question arises because Mr. Bennett, allegedly in response to e-mailed requests from 1,200 Arizonans, has demanded that Hawaii provide him with verification of President Obama’s birth certificate. If he doesn’t get it, he says, he might strike the president’s name from the state’s ballot this fall.
Never mind that Hawaii has confirmed publicly and repeatedly, since before the 2008 presidential election, that Mr. Obama was born there; that the Hawaii Department of Health has released both the short and long forms of the president’s birth certificate; and that all this information, along with clear-as-a-bell explanations, is available to the public online. Mr. Bennett insists that none of that is sufficient proof for the Show Me Your Papers State.
Remember that the Washington Post isn’t exactly what you’d call a liberal newspaper… They’re still just sharpening the knives at this point:
Mr. Bennett hastens to add that he is no birther. Of course he isn’t: Everyone knows that birthers — the few that remain against the overwhelming facts of documentary evidence — are half-baked clowns who live for their pet conspiracy theory. And Mr. Bennett, an energy company CEO and plausible gubernatorial candidate in a midsize state, couldn’t really be one of those. Could he?
Charity overcomes us, so we assume not. More likely, he is simply throwing a bone to the birthers, who in most states constitute a laughable fringe of the Republican Party.
Hawaii may yet furnish Mr. Bennett with the already-public documentation he wants. So far, in compliance with state law, it has invited him to provide the legal authority under which the request was made.
Fine. Let the buffoonery play through its final act. We’re confident that, in the end, Mr. Bennett will ensure that Arizona’s ballot includes the name of the president of the United States, all the while insisting, disingenuously, that his actions were merely an instance of due diligence.
But by threatening to exclude Mr. Obama from the ballot, Mr. Bennett transformed what should have been a farcical sideshow of the 2012 election into an actual menace to democracy. He legitimized the lunatic leanings of the United States’, and his party’s, most extreme elements. He put it in the minds of radicals everywhere that elected officials, for the shabbiest reasons (or none at all), can float the idea of bending ballot rules and suffer no adverse consequence.
In the process, he shamed Arizona on the 100th anniversary of its statehood, giving it the appearance of a banana republic that’s come unhinged under the influence of partisan fever.
Hilarious and justly deserved. That must’ve hurt.
Here’s how Bennett has responded to some of the more, uh, rabid emails of support his asshattery has received. I wonder if he’s feeling proud of himself now?
With all due respect, the MCSO investigation has not proven anything other than raised probable cause that the birth certificate posted on the Whitehouse website “may be” a forgery. The next lawful step would be for the Sheriff’s office to turn their findings over to the County Attorney for prosecution. Evidence would be brought on both sides and a judge should issue a decision. Whether or not that happens, if Hawaii can’t or won’t provide verification of the President’s birth certificate, I will not put his name on the ballot.
I can tell from the tone and language of your letters that the only acceptable outcome for you is that his name not be on the ballot, period. That may be what happens, but under my watch, it won’t happen based on opinions, petitions, probability or pledges to support or oppose me in the 2014 Governor’s race. My oath of office is to uphold the Constitution and laws of our State and country, and I’m going to do that by following the law. I look forward to continuing to work this issue under those parameters. Otherwise, I will respectfully agree to disagree.
So now he’s getting all coy??? Clearly AZ Romney co-chair Ken Bennett is a man of integrity! Why, to even suggest that he’d leave the PRESIDENT OF THE FUCKING UNITED STATES off the ballot in his state for A FRIVOLOUS REASON, is just beyond the pale!
Someone hit this guy on the head with a heavy wrench!
HARD.
Draw some blood!
But equally as good as the total drubbing that WaPo’s editorializer wrecking crew dropped on his dumb ass this morning was the oh-so-polite reply he got over the weekend from Hawaii’s Assistant Attorney General, Jill T. Nagamine, who demanded that Bennett provide his own qualifications before he wastes any more of her time. It’s pretty genius:
From: Jill T. Nagamine
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2012 3:38 PM
To: Bennett, Ken
Subject: RE: Request from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office
Dear Mr. Bennett:I am in receipt of your email dated May 17, 2012. As I have informed you and Mr. Drake, Hawaii law requires that for verification of a vital record the requestor must satisfy the requirements of section 338-18(g), Hawaii Revised Statutes, which provides:
(g) The department shall not issue a verification in lieu of a certified copy of any such record, or any part thereof, unless it is satisfied that the applicant requesting a verification is:
(1) A person who has a direct and tangible interest in the record but requests a verification in lieu of a certified copy;
(2) A governmental agency or organization who for a legitimate government purpose maintains and needs to update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities;
(3) A governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks confirmation of a certified copy of any such record submitted in support of or information provided about a vital event relating to any such record and contained in an official application made in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities by an individual seeking employment with, entrance to, or the services or products of the agency or organization;
(4) A private or government attorney who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record which was acquired during the course of or for purposes of legal proceedings; or
(5) An individual employed, endorsed, or sponsored by a governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record in preparation of reports or publications by the agency or organization for research or educational purposes.I asked you for legal authority that establishes your right to obtain verification, and your email of May 17, 2012 provides me with references to Arizona Revised Statutes 16-212, 16-301, 16-502, 16-507, and unnamed others. These statutes seem to deal with election of presidential electors, nomination of candidates for printing on official ballot of general or special election, form and contents of ballot, and presentation of presidential candidates on ballot, but none, as far as I can tell, establish the authority of the Secretary of State to maintain and update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of his activities. I researched other sections of the Arizona Revised Statutes and was unable to find the necessary authority.
If I have missed something, please let me know. My client stands willing to provide you with the verification you seek as soon as you are able to show that you are entitled to it.
Thank you,
Jill T. Nagamine
Deputy Attorney General
State of Hawaii
Ken Bennett may not have set out to make his name (and dumbshit dipsy-doodle Republican face) the definition of “moron,” but he sure did succeed spectacularly!
Below, Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett sings “Thank God I’m Republican” at the March 17, 2012 Fountain Hills Republican Club meeting: