Two Minnesota politicians have announced that they will travel to Crawford to join Cindy Sheehan and join the media circus surrounding her protest. State Senator Becky Lourey joins FBI whistle-blower and Congressional candidate Coleen Rowley to garner some publicity and to take part in Sheehan's grandstanding:

Rowley, now a Democratic candidate for Congress, and Sen. Becky Lourey will join a protest initiated by Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq last year. Sheehan started the vigil Aug. 6, coinciding with Bush's summer vacation. She has said she won't leave until the president meets with her.

Rowley said Tuesday that she and Lourey would leave Thursday and stay at least through Sunday, sleeping in a tent at the site. They are paying their own way, she said.

Lourey's son died in Iraq three months ago in an attack on his helicopter. The theme of the protest does make a certain amount of sense for Lourey and the loss to her family, especially as she has been a vocal critic of the war even before losing her son. However, the idea to participate in the event did not originate with Lourey but with Rowley, who suggested that they both go to Texas to make their presence known:

Rowley met Sheehan earlier this month at a Veterans for Peace convention in Dallas, where both women spoke. At that meeting, Sheehan shared her plans to stake out Bush's ranch.

A few days later, Rowley said, she called Lourey — whom she'd never met — and suggested a trip to Crawford to lend support to Sheehan. Rowley said Lourey had already considered making the trip.

Rowley said she wants to "stay in the background" and offer moral support to Lourey, especially since the vigil has drawn critics and counter-demonstrations in recent days.

The two Minnesota politicians won't stand alone with Sheehan, of course. Among the people who have come out in support of Sheehan recently have been luminaries such as white-supremacist David Duke and Michael Moore, an odd pairing indeed. Sheehan's rhetoric created the opportunity to bring this Odd Couple together:

Sheehan continued, “9/11 was Pearl Harbor for the neo-conservatives’ agenda” and declared the U.S. government a “morally repugnant system.” Then she raged:

"We have no Constitution. We’re the only country with no checks and balances. We want our country back if we have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog sh-t in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq. It’s OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but we are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country. It’s not OK for Syria to be in Lebanon. Hypocrites! But Israel can occupy Palestine? Stop the slaughter!" ...

"America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for..."

Or this:

"The other thing I want him to tell me is 'just what was the noble cause Casey died for?' Was it freedom and democracy? Bull---t! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We're not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism," she says."There, I used the 'I' word -- imperialism," the 48 year-old mother quipped. "And now I'm going to use another 'I' word impeachment because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny . . . you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me for back taxes and we'll put this war on trial."

Except for refusing to pay taxes, Sheehan has every right to protest in this manner. My reason for quoting her so extensively is to ask Coleen Rowley -- who will run against Congressman John Kline in my district -- exactly how she supports these contentions. This rhetoric is what Rowley and Lourey have flown to Texas to support and amplify on Sheehan's behalf. Will Rowley issue a joint statement of support for these arguments with David Duke and Michael Moore? Will she also stand with Sheehan to promote the notion that this country deserves no sacrifice and stands for nothing but killing?

Sheehan lost her son and appears to have gone seriously off-balance with grief. Lourey has also lost a son. Rowley has no excuse, and Minnesotans will demand to know why she went out of her way to leech off of Sheehan's publicity to align herself with the most virulent band of America-haters seen since the last election. She must really miss the media attention she got from her 15 minutes of fame for pointing out that the FBI ignored Zacarias Moussaoui, in part because of tenderness over his Arabic ethnicity.

Minnesota went blue in the last election, but they didn't go ultraviolet. Minnesotans will want an accounting from both politicians as to their support for the vile rhetoric coming from Camp Casey in the next election cycle. Rowley will soon learn that in politics, not all publicity is helpful.

UPDATE: Rowley should address her support of statements like this as well:

“Cindy, I was reading some of the essays that you’ve been writing about the war over the last couple of months,” Cooper began. “In one you say the war is blatant genocide and you go on to say, and I quote, ‘Casey was killed in the global war of terrorism waged on the world and its own citizen by the biggest terrorist outfit in the world, George and his destructive neocon cabal.’ Do you really believe the president of the United States is the biggest terrorist in the world?”

The answer was yes. “I believe that he’s responsible for the needless and senseless deaths of more people than any other organization right now,” Sheehan said. ...

Last week, Sheehan took part in a conference call with antiwar bloggers. She thanked them for their support and added, “Thank God for the Internet, or we wouldn’t know anything, and we would already be a fascist state.”

One party controls the government, Sheehan continued, “and the mainstream media is a propaganda tool for the government.”

That's what Coleen Rowley will travel to Texas this week to support. The voters in my district should demand to know why Rowley has gone a thousand miles to support this kind of rhetoric. If that's what she believes about this country and her government, then former Marine and current Congressman John Kline will certainly have no problem convincing voters in our district that Rowley has no business serving in the government in any capacity.

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