The only female life that ever mattered to wingnuts....

...isn't that of Mary of Nazareth. It isn't even that of Terri Schiavo -- at least not until they need to flog her corpse for political gain.

No, it's that of Mary Jo Kopechne -- or so you'd think from reading some of the comments among the Usual Suspects about Sen. Edward Kennedy's sad diagnosis. SteveAudio braved the fetid sewers of Wingnuttia and reports on his findings.

No Democrat has ever defended Kennedy's conduct on that night in 1969. Chappaquiddick has hung around Kennedy's neck like a millstone ever since, as well it should. But as SteveAudio points out, there's precious little sympathy in Republican circles for Michael Dutton Douglas, who was killed in 1963 when Laura Welch, better known to Americans by her married name as Laura Bush, ran a stop sign and broadsided his car. And there's even less sympathy for one Lori Klausutis, the 28-year-old office worker who was found dead in then-Rep. Joe Scarborough's office on July 20, 2001 from a blow to the head -- a story that gained nowhere near the coverage given to the similar death of Chandra Levy the year before. Gary Condit, who had been linked to Levy, was hounded out of office, whereas Joe Scarborough did not run for re-election and now, as we all know, is a well-paid newsotainment-bot for MSNBC. Nor do they have a whole lot of sympathy for Carol Sue Shields, who was raped and murdered by one Wayne Dumond after Dumond was granted clemency by that good Christian™ Governor Mike Huckabee (who may be in the running for the VP slot next to John McCain this fall). As Tristero pointed out earlier this year, Dumond was a cause célèbre in wingnut circles because one of his rape victims that landed him in prison was a very distant cousin of Bill Clinton, which in the Minds of Wingnuttia meant that by definition Dumond was innocent.

If we're going to start exhuming the past misdeeds of politicians on their way to exiting from the American political scene, then let's take another look at George W. Bush's substance abuse history, or that National Guard AWOL thing again, shall we?

Sauce for the goose, baby.