STILL dumb as an iguana

It’s not news to anyone who has even remotely followed politics in the last twenty years that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a schmuck.

Yesterday I briefly mentioned that Gingrich has recently been trying to rally support within the republican ranks for Sen. McCain and, in an interview with GQ magazine, compared McCain’s effort to rally support around his indefinite commitment to staying in Iraq to “what Lincoln had to do in the Civil War.”

While that has to be one of the grossest mis-statements ever uttered by Newt (and there are many), he outdid himself yesterday.

During a Q&A with 20 political science majors of Drew University in New Jersey, a student asked him how the government could justify stripping rights from Americans in such pieces of legislation as the Patriot Act and Gingrich responded by saying that the government has a “right to defend society” and when under threat people “will give up all their liberties.”

Excuse me??