This Is Just Too...Umm...Goode To Pass Up

What is it with Virginia? (motto: We care more about your pants than you do). We mean, if they aren't trying to pass a Christians Rule bill, or elect a senator who is a walking thesaurus of racially derogatory terms, they're getting all up in Minnesota's face for electing someone who manifests neither of the two most important characteristics for public service in a democratic society, namely being white and Christian.

Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., a Virginia Republican, stood by his demand for a racial purity test that he said would prevent Muslims from being elected to Congress and using the Quran during swearing-in ceremonies.

OK, first of all the guy's name is Virgil. Virgil Goode. We could stop right here couldn't we?

"I do not apologize and I do not retract my letter," Goode said, "I am a fully certified 100% American bonehead and I am for restricting immigration so that we don't have a majority of Muslims elected to the House of Representatives. They're all brown you know. And don't give me that 'Ellison's not an immigrant' hooey either. We're all immigrants or son's a daughters of immigrants. This is a country founded by immigrants, many of whom came here to escape intolerance and religious persecution. The diversity, imagination, and creativity that immigrants have contributed to America is one of the things that makes her great. Why, when it gets right down to it America owes her greatness to....Umm...I think I've lost my point."

Goode said that he wrote the letter in response to constituents who e-mailed him about Ellison's decision to use the Quran. In the letter, he said his own individual ceremony would be different. "People said, 'Virg.' That's what they call me in my district. They said 'Virg, we hear there's a brown man been elected by them yankees, and he's about to swear an oath on one of them heathen books, the Kubla Kahn or something. '"

Well, that's when I came up with the Virgil Goode position on immigration. See, I call it the Virgil Goode position on immigration because that's my name. Goode said he favored halting illegal immigration and strictly curtailing legal immigration. "And that's just phase one. After we stop them from coming here in the first place, then we can begin to send the ones who are here back to Arabistan or wherever."

"I fear," he wrote, "that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States. Either that or catholics.

"When I raise my hand to take the oath on swearing-in day, I will have the Bible in my other hand," Goode wrote. "I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way." When it was pointed out to him that, since he wasn't a Muslim, no one would expect him to swear an oath on the Quran, Goode replied that it didn't matter what religion you were "as long as the bible is your holy book."

An RNC spokeswoman said the committee had nothing to say about the issue. Neither outgoing House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, nor his staff was available for comment. "Look, we lost our first team of idiots when Santorum, Burns, and DeWine lost, and DeLay went down. This guy's a second stringer at best," the spokeswoman said.