Congressman Akin

(After seeing the Akin interview on television a second time, I've changed my opinion, and am not willing to make any excuses for what he said. What follows is what I wrote yesterday.)


Strange as it may seem, I would like to say a word in defense of Congressman Akin. The congressman was interviewed on television yesterday, and made some very strange and offensive remarks about the crime of rape. Now everyone, except perhaps the right wing zealots on the radio, is calling for him to quit his race for the Senate, disappear from public life, crawl back into the woodwork, or what have you.

Most of this is in response to his use of the phrase, "legitimate rape." And what I suspect he meant was not that rape could ever be justified, but that police agencies investigating rape complaints do sometimes conclude that no crime has been committed. When I was doing law enforcement work, I remember hearing that in about two percent of rape allegations it turns out the sex was consensual or did not take place at all. This is about the same proportion of other reported crimes in which police conclude there was no offense.

This is another example of the "gotcha" kind of politics both parties play now. A recent prior occasion for the same thing was the feigned outrage over President Obama's "You didn't build that," remark, where the word "that" referred to infrastructure, not to a business. It's election  year, and everyone's trying for whatever advantage they can get, but this kind of campaign just yields a government divided into warring camps and unable to accomplish  anything.

Nevertheless, Congressman Akin's comment reveals an abysmal ignorance about human reproduction that the citizens of Missouri should consider when casting their ballots. And he's on the House science committee!