The entertainment factor and ongoing exposure of just how insane the Virginia GOP base has become just goes on and on in the form of GOP Lt. Governor candidate E. W. Jackson. The man is a train wreck. And what must remembered is that despite the efforts of Ken Cuccinelli and Mark Obenshain to distance themselves from Jackson, all three hold virtually the same anti-gay, anti-women and anti-modernity positions. They are the face of The Family Foundation and the religious extremists who hijacked the Republican Party of Virginia. In a press conference yesterday, Jackson admitted drug use in his past - and not just marijuana - filing bankruptcy and claimed to have taken course at Harvard that Harvard has no record of. Jackson is exhibit A as to why the GOP ticket needs to be thoroughly defeated in November. Here are highlights from a Virginian Pilot piece:
The Republican nominee for Virginia lieutenant governor acknowledged Wednesday that he used marijuana and experimented with other controlled substances in his youth, and that he was forced to file for bankruptcy.
Jackson sought to get out front on his past on Wednesday. He said during his speech that he used marijuana as a youth, and when questioned after the speech, acknowledged that he experimented with other controlled substances, but did not go into detail.
He spent a lot of time discussing his 1993 bankruptcy filing, which he said came after nine years of work to make a go of an AM gospel radio station in Boston. He said many of the difficulties came from extended battles with the Federal Communications Commission . . . .
He also talked about his transition over time from lawyer to minister. He said that while he graduated from Harvard Law School, he took several classes at the divinity school, even though Harvard apparently has no record of it. "They were not teaching what I believed to be orthodox Christian biblical theology but rather a liberal version of that. I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture; they did not," Jackson said of the Harvard divinity classes.
He acknowledged that he was asked to leave his first ministerial position in 1982, after two years at a Baptist church in Cambridge.
Jackson said many of his statements have been taken out of context to try to make it sound as though he believes that birth defects are caused by parents' sins or that yoga leads to Satanism.
"I do not believe that birth defects are caused by parents' sin unless, of course, there's a direct scientific connection between the parents' behavior and the disabilities of the child," he said, giving the example of birth defects that might result from a child born to a mother addicted to heroin.
He added, "I do not believe that yoga leads to Satanism. One of my ministers is a yoga instructor. What I said was that Christian meditation does not involve emptying oneself but filling oneself ... with the spirit of God. That is classic Biblical Christianity."
The uproar over yoga came last week when the National Review posted an excerpt of a book that Jackson had written in which he wrote, "When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana. ... The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself. (Satan) is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it."
The man is a nutcase and any party that could nominate Jackson for Lt. Governor is simply unfit to govern. Between now and November Virginia voters need to realize that Cuccinelli, Jackson and Obenshain are all cut out of the same cloth.
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