Earlier this week, the Virginia House of Delegates rejected Tracy Thorne-Begland, a former Navy pilot and top Virginia prosecutor, for a seat on Virginia’s lowest ranking trial court because, in the words of Del. Bob Marshall (R-VA), Thorne-Begland’s gay “lifestyle is exactly contrary to” his obligation to uphold the state constitution. On CNN this morning, Marshall doubled-down on this view, explaining that he blocked Thorne-Begland because the judicial candidate had the audacity to serve his country while gay:

MARSHALL: [Thorne-Begland] had to misstate his background in order to be received into the military in the late 1980s. There was a specific question, “are you a homosexual?” He had to say no. He took an oath of office which he had to defy. . . . Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks never took an oath of office that they broke. Sodomy is not a civil right. It’s not the same as the Civil Rights Movement. You have to look at the past, and, in fact, look, in late 2011 he was critical of the, you know, Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. He criticized our attorney general simply for explaining what the law of Virginia is with respect to certain protected classes.

Watch it:

First of all, “sodomy,” as Marshall so quaintly puts it, is a civil right. That was the holding of Lawrence v. Texas, which established that consenting adults have a right to be free from government interference in their “private sexual conduct.”

Additionally, while it may in fact be true that Thorne-Begland once misrepresented his sexuality in order to serve his country in the United States Navy, it is important to understand exactly what he signed up for when he told this potential lie. Tracy Thorne-Begland was a Navy pilot, and his superiors did nothing to hide from him the dangers inherent in this job. When Thorne-Begland was stationed at Virginia Beach, he was informed that 25 percent of pilots are killed in action over the course of a 20 year career. This was the job he might have lied in order to sign up for — to risk his life every day in defense of his county. Bob Marshall, by contrast, never served a day in the United States military.

Nor, apparently, did Marshall familiarize himself with civil rights history during all that time he spent not serving his country. Martin Luther King may not have taken an oath of office, but his entire career was rooted in a campaign to peacefully defy unconstitutional laws. And while there is some dispute over whether Rosa Parks’ famous decision to keep her seat on a Montgomery bus violated a city ordinance or merely a racist custom, her refusal to stand is widely perceived as an act of civil disobedience that triggered a movement of opposition to Jim Crow laws. A judge’s oath is to the Constitution, and Thorne-Begland acted with the greatest respect for our founding document when he fought back against the unconstitutional and now-repealed Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy.

The Republican Party of Greene County in Virginia published their monthly newsletter in March and in it, the editor suggested an “armed revolution” will be necessary if President Obama is reelected in November:

We have before us a challenge to remove an ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized. . . . The ultimate task for the people is to remain vigilant and aware ~ that the government, their government is out of control, and this moment, this opportunity, must not be forsaken, must not escape us, for we shall not have any coarse[sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November.

The editor of the newsletter, listed as Ponch McPhee, is the latest Virginian to threaten violence towards the president or his administration. Just this week, Christopher Hecker was charged with a felony for threatening to kill the president and other officials, as well as bomb landmarks along the east coast.

The eight page newsletter features remarks from the chairman of the Greene County Republican Committee alongside contributions from fellow members, and is heavy on generic tea party talking points on President Obama, socialism and the liberal media.

The Secret Service, which is tasked with investigating all threats made against the president, wasn’t immediately available for comment on whether they have — or will — conduct a similar investigation into McPhee or the county committee.

ProgressVA recently released a report on the legislative influence of the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — which began hemorrhaging donors in the wake of a campaign raising awareness of its efforts to disenfranchise voters and enact Florida-style “stand your ground” laws. The group noted that the Commonwealth of Virginia has spent $232,000 of taxpayer’s dollars over the past decade to send legislators to ALEC conferences and meetings.

Virginia House Speaker William Howell (R), himself a national board member of ALEC and its 2009 national chairman, took issue with the report and called it “inaccurate.”

In an exchange caught on camera, Howell berates the group’s executive director Anna Scholl, mocking the group’s website and her. Howell criticizes the Washington Post’s article about the group’s as “full of half-truths or un-truths.”

In a failed attempt to back up his accusation, Howell notes that while the Commonwealth paid about $230,000 on ALEC-related expenses, it spent even more on travel for the same and other legislators to attend conferences by the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislators.

When by Scholl pressed as to how omission of that irrelevant detail constituted an inaccuracy, Howell berated her:

I guess I’m not speaking in little enough words for you to understand.

When Scholl responded to the slight, telling him “I’m a smart girl, actually I went to the University of Virginia,” more than capable of understanding polysyllabic words. Howell curtly replied, “We’ll good for you.”

Watch the video:

On a day when Republicans desperately are trying to play down their “war on women,” this apparent sexism by the man who presided over and backed House passage of a forced trans-vaginal ultrasound bill so extreme that even Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) wouldn’t support, hardly helps their cause.