An Orange County lawmaker [Mike Duvall] who inadvertently broadcast explicit remarks about his sexual conquests over an open microphone during a lull in a Sacramento hearing abruptly resigned from office this afternoon.

The famously conservative Republican Assemblyman was just having a little pre-hearing banter about his sexual exploits with a couple of much-younger lobbyists , when unbeknownst to him the whole conversation was picked up by a nearby mike. Awkward!

Even more awkward is what it must have been like to be the conversational victim of such a gross overshare (courtesy of the OC Weekly):

“She wears little eye-patch underwear,” said Duvall, who is married with two children. “So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And
 so, we had made love Wednesday–a lot! And so she’ll, she’s all, ‘I am going 
up and down the stairs, and you’re dripping out of me!’ So messy!”

So many questions, so little time. First of all, what the hell is “eye-patch underwear”? How come the person Duvall is talking to doesn’t stop him at that point to figure that out? Oh right, because he’s THROWING UP IN HIS MOUTH.

You can check out some of the actual footage courtesy of the hilariously dopey KCAL news report that broke the story here.

-AS

And so here comes his latest masterpiece, in which he kinda sorta but not really accuses Ruth Bader Ginsburg of supporting eugenics. In a recent NY Times Magazine interview with Emily Bazelon, Ginsburg says she was surprised that the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law outlawing the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions because she thought some people supported abortion rights out of a concern for population growth, “particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Now, a more shameless right wing hack like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter would have ignored the distinction between positive and normative statements and blasted Ginsburg for calling for a holocaust of poor minority children. But Goldberg has intellectual scruples, so instead he just insinuates that Ginsburg might support eugenics because she doesn’t make clear whether or not she endorses the view she believed others held 29 years ago. (I’ve never met Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but I think I can safely answer Goldberg’s question: no, Ginsburg is not in favor of using abortion to limit poor and minority populations.) It’s weird to imagine a world in which every time someone made a descriptive or predictive statement they would then have to explain whether or not they were in favor of the circumstance they were describing; it would certainly make weather forecasts more interesting.

But, for kicks lets examine Goldberg’s basis for even suggesting the Ginsburg might be pro-eugenics. You see, almost 100 years ago, some prominent people did see abortion as a tool for controlling minority and/or poor populations, one of whom was a woman (like Ginsburg!) and one of whom was a Supreme Court justice (like Ginsburg!)

Of course, like a good conservative, Goldberg makes clear that the real villain is the media, with their unfair double standards, giving liberals a free pass while bullying poor conservatives. Bazelon didn’t even ask Ginsburg if she was pro-eugenics or anti-eugenics! And I bet Goldberg is right that none of those cowardly senators will ask Sotomayor if she’s pro- or anti-eugenics. Of course, the only reason one would think that such questions need to be asked is if one believes that all liberals are in fact Nazis. . . or owes 95% of his income to pretending he does.

-AR

This discussion demonstrates part of what makes Palin such a frustrating public figure. There are many fascinating questions about sexism and elitism surrounding the media’s coverage of and the country’s reaction to Sarah Palin, but she was so spectacularly and uniquely unqualified for the position to which she was nominated that these issues are almost impossible to analyze. There’s simply no basis for comparison: even Dan Quayle would have had more engagement with most issues of national importance in his first week in the Senate than Palin appears to have had in her entire life up to the time of her selection.

This reveals what a deeply cynical choice Palin’s nomination was in the first place. I suspect one reason the McCain campaign felt it could choose Palin without doing anything close to a proper vetting is because it thought it could answer any attacks on her, regardless of the merits, by charging sexism. This would have the added benefits of portraying liberals as hypocrites (since, you know, liberals are supposed to care about sexism) and maybe winning over some disaffected Hillary voters. Which just shows how poorly conservatives understand racism and sexism: only someone who sees all charges of sexism as equally meritless could fail to see a distinction between the treatment of a highly qualified and accomplished public servant like Clinton and an incompetent like Palin.

-AR