I’m not sure I understand why poor J.D. Hayworth — who, because he is running in a Republican primary against John “Gramps” McCain, and running from the far-right, to boot, is required to speak at least twice as much nonsense as McCain does — is getting so much flak for warning the nation that the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s casual definition of marriage is inevitably going to lead to some man marrying his horse.

Everybody knows that if you talk about love and marriage, horses are always going to come up. There’s something about a horse that just goes together with love and marriage (yes, a carriage too, but not even right-wing extremists without any scruples who are running for the Senate against senile, unprincipled imbeciles are ready yet to start talking openly about men or women marrying their carriages; that day will come, no doubt, but it just isn’t here yet).

And I don’t rest my case just on how ubiquitous the lyrics of the Frank Sinatra song are in the American consciousness. There’s also the small matter of the word hitch. Just a coincidence, is it, that it’s used both for marriage and for horses?

Poor old J.D. is also being given a hard time because it seems that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has never actually defined marriage as “the establishment of intimacy”. And that matters why? Is anybody seriously denying that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has a cavalier attitude towards the definition of marriage? That, no matter how they do or don’t define marriage, they’re going to willy-nilly end up encouraging marriage between men and horses?

Besides, isn’t it ludicrously unfair to change rules in the middle of a legislative session, and start holding Republicans to the standard that their public pronouncements must be actually true? And what’s the threat, anyway? That, otherwise, we will mock them mercilessly, and not just on late night TV?

Yea, we will mock you mercilessly, even as your lies continue to serve the purpose they were intended to serve—whether it is taking us to war against the guy who did your Daddy bad, or telegraphing to the Republican base that you and only you share their world view, you do, or derailing healthcare reform, or obstructing financial reform, or smothering student-loan reform, or sabotaging climate change legislation, or stonewalling any and all attempts by Democrats to take arms against the sea of troubles that the country inherited from the last Republican president.

On the bright side, the way the Republican party is functioning right now — the fratricidal lurch to the lunatic right inspired by Tea-Partyism, the absolute lack of even any pretense of having any political agenda beyond nihilistic obstructionism and resurrecting the failed and discredited policies of George Bush — Georgie Porgie may very well be the last Republican president ever.