In most of your local and regional races, when a Republican group wants to assail its Democratic opponents, it's a good bet that it will lead off by mentioning support for tax increases. Not so in Alabama! In that state, taxes take a back seat to your opponent's claim that science is real.

That's what's going on in the Alabama gubernatorial race, where Republican candidate Bradley Byrne -- who switched from the Democratic Party to the GOP in 1997 -- is running in the GOP primary against about a half dozen others, including Ten Commandments fetishist Roy Moore and C-list xenophobe Tim James. But the latest bedeviler of Byrne is the True Republican PAC, which has released an ad criticized Byrne for supporting evolution.

Actual adults did this:

Of course, Byrne has degrees from Duke University and the University of Alabama, and he most recently served as the Chancellor of Alabama's Community College System, so I'm sure that he is going to respond to this nonsense in a manner befitting a modern educator who matriculated at some serious academic institutions, right?

As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God. As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books.

Well, fantastic.