You'd think Todd Akin, who nobody heard of until last month, was running on the Romney/Ryan ticket the way Democrats are using him as a cudgel to beat Republicans with. The congressman's face is plastered on attack ads coming from President Obama all the way down to Julia Brownley, to paint Republicans as women h,aters.

Two issues arise from this. First, what are Akin's "rape comments" exactly? Just the phrase sounds horrific.  But are Democrats being truthful about what he said? Second, is it fair to tie all Republicans to his comments?

What did Akin really say? Brownley's attack ad against Tony Strickland states:

We were all shocked when Congressman Todd Akin claimed that women don't become pregnant when they are "legitimately raped," and that women who are not raped "forcibly" should not be allowed to have an abortion when they are pregnant.

Here's what Akin said in the clip heard 'round the world.

"It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it's really rare."

Uh, that's totally different than what Brownley's campaign is telling voters he said. "Seems to be really rare" is not the same as "women don't become pregnant." Obviously he's saying they can become pregnant, it's just rare. So that's dishonest of Brownley.

As for his comment about "legitimate rape." He said:

"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down."

By "legitimate rape", Akin seems to have meant that if it were a "real rape" the body has ways of shutting "the whole thing down."  That implies that some things we call rape aren't really rape, either because they don't rise to the definition of "real rape" or because they are false accusations of "real rape." The Duke Lacrosse case is an example of a false accusation of rape, but what the heck does Akin mean by acts that don't rise to the definition of "real rape?"

Democrats, at least during this campaign, believe that rape is rape no matter how you slice it. With that, they'd have to believe that a man who has sex with a girl who consumed two beers at a party should get the same prison sentence as the man who holds a girl down at knifepoint in a dark alleyway. I wonder how many Democrats would be serving prison sentences if we held them to that standard.

It seems the Democrats took Akin's remarks out of context, and, in Brownley's case, said he said something he did not.

What about the link to connect Akin and Strickland?

Akin is a Republican...Strickland is a Republican. Mitt Romney is a Republican. That seems to be the only connection that's warranted for Democrats to go ballistic. After all, these are the people that call Romney a felon without any proof, make him out to be an evil guy because a long time ago he traveled with a dog kennel tied to the roof of his car, and when he was in high school he gave a guy a haircut.

Democrats would argue that Tea Party congressmen like Akin and Paul Ryan cosponsored a bill that would prohibit federal funds to pay for abortions except in the case of "forcible rape" (as opposed to just "rape") and therefore Ryan (and therefore Romney) has his own version of a "legitimate rape" comment.  Perhaps that was an attempt to discourage people from claiming a rape occurred when it didn't just so they can procure funds for an abortion.

In the final analysis, Democrats are being disingenuous when it comes to conveying Akin's remarks and are silly when trying to connect the dots from Akin to Strickland and from Akin to Ryan to Romney. Par for the course for election season.

Oh by the way, since very few people are willing to give it the objective analysis you'll find here, the attacks will work, whether they are "legitimate", or not.

A school district board member resorted to an ad-hominem attack against State Senator Tony Strickland during a phone conversation with one of his staffers, according to a source close to the Republican legislator.

The staffer said the caller identified herself as Ventura Unified School District Board Member Mary Haffner, and she wanted Strickland to support Governor Brown's proposed five-year tax increase.

After hearing the senator's anti-tax increase position, Haffner apparently said, "We all know he isn't the sharpest tool in the shed and everyone in Ventura knows it."

Strickland staked out a high-profile position as a deficit hawk, serving as the co-chairman of the newly formed Taxpayers Caucus, the members of which pledged to oppose any tax increases without corresponding tax cuts.

The insult is fairly mild, but still--is denigrating an elected representative to one of his staffers the best way for a school board member to behave?

Haffner did not respond to an e-mail that requested confirmation of the exchange, and thus passed on an opportunity to set a good example by owning up to or disavowing the insult, if she did in fact say it. That would have been something positive I could report on, especially with the growing tension nationwide between public employee unions and Republicans, a tension that will soon hit California and Ventura County.

Amusingly, while I was looking up her contact information to ask her if she wanted to comment on this story, I noticed that the main website listed on her campaign's Facebook page is a blog about a porn magazine.

That's right, it takes you right to "The Playboy Blog," which features articles such as Playboy Goddesses, Playboy: Art or Pornography, and The Interesting History of the Playboy Bunny Costume. Interesting indeed!

Additionally, her Students for Mary Haffner group page also accidentally features a link to the same porn magazine blog.

Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed...

...but I wouldn't think elected officials would have something like that for all the public to see, especially on a page geared toward students, especially if said official was fond of questioning the intelligence of other public officials.

Obviously, Haffner didn't know about this or she would have changed it immediately. Her domain name probably expired and it was picked up by someone who has an extreme interest in Playboy Magazine. There's a good chance she's already fixed it by the time you read this.

But somehow, I don't think this sort of thing would happen to Senator Strickland, despite what union callers might say to his staffers about his intelligence.