Worst Person In the World

Illinois political blogger Rich Miller has a little fun with MSNBC Keith Olbermann's designation of Illinois State Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) as the worst person in the world after her tirade at a House committee hearing investigating how a $1 million state grant wound up in the hands of a church-run school on Chicago's south side. Here's what Davis had to say to an atheist who testified at the hearing:

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous . . .

It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

Miller notes that another State House reporter, Scott Reeder, had a good retort to Davis' tirade against the atheist. "Illinois politicians have a long history of being tolerant of crooks, adulterers and liars — as long as they believe in God," Reeder said. Miller discusses in his post how state lawmakers make these kind of ridiculous comments so often that they are typically not written about by state house reporters. He then goes on to give an example of one of the dumbest things he recalls a legislator saying was during a discussion of a bill which would have required parks to close at dusk. Rising in opposition to the bill, Rep. Willis Harris Harris "said many of his constituents were too poor to buy a watch, so they wouldn’t know when it was dusk." Priceless!