Rep. Chris Shays unveils his new campaign slogan: "If I only had a brain!" It's like, you know, he's actually daring people to vote for him

"I know the speaker didn't go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day. Dennis Hastert didn't kill anybody."
--Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays (R), in remarks published in yesterday's Hartford Courant

For you youngsters out there, the congressman is referring to the 1969 incident in which Sen. Edward Kennedy drove a car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island and did not promptly report the incident. His passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. (The senator is presumably on his mind since he has been in the congressman's district recently campaigning for the Democrat who will be replacing him--not a minute too soon!--in the new Congress, Diane Farrell.)

One assumes that the congressman is now safely ensconced in a mental institution undergoing exhaustive testing to see whether there is any possibility of ever releasing someone so clearly and dangerously insane back into the general population. At this point, there would seem to be only one honorable course for him: swallow the cyanide no doubt being distributed by the House Republican leadership as a one-capsule-fits-all solution for its several dozen most serious "problem" members.

Before poor Chris breathes his last, it would be nice if he scribbled a simple note of apology, like: "I'm sorry I turned into such a degraded, disgusting, worthless pile of maggot-infested shit. At least somehow or other I finally found the guts to do the right thing."

Now let's hope Connecticut voters have the sense to make sure that none of their slimeball, nutjob Republican legislators--Sen. Joe Lieberman and the House Three--return to Washington, at least not on the federal payroll. (Did someone say "lobbyists"?)