The Republican candidate for Virginia’s 8th District, Mike Webb, found himself in hot water the other day when he tweeted out a picture of his desktop – which included several tabs of pornography! The internet quickly discovered and the image went viral, accompanied by a tsunami of puerile but amusing jokes regarding his…work ethic.

The candidate released a statement today “explaining” his actions and, well, it’s quite a doozy.

“Curious by nature, I wanted to test the suggestion that somehow, lurking out in the pornographic world there is some evil operator waiting for the one in a gazillion chance that a candidate for federal office would go to that particular website and thereby be infected with a virus that would cause his or her FEC [federal election commission] data file to crash the FECfile application each time that it was loaded on the day of the filing deadline, as well as impact other critical campaign systems. Well, the Geek Squad techs testified to me, after servicing thousands of computers at the Baileys Crossroads location that they had never seen any computer using their signature virus protection for the time period to acquire over 4,800 viruses, 300 of which would require re-installation of the operating system.”

The full text of his response is apparently over 2,000 words long, and as far as looking-at-porn-at-work excuses go, this one is outrageous. Most likely the viruses he seems to have acquired – although it isn’t quite clear that he did – are from the pornographic sites in question. But a conspiracy by “evil operators” looking to “crash FEC files,” whatever that might mean, is just ridiculous.

It is not yet known if the Geek Squad “testified” under oath. Perhaps they had a hand in this secret plot to infect Webb’s computer with a virus, which implies that the “evil operators” were sitting and waiting for Webb to visit those particular pornographic websites in order to infect his computer – a devious plot orchestrated by Mensheviks or Satanic cultists or possibly the CIA that could have been foiled by simply not visiting pornographic websites.

The other posts that followed this reveal that Mike Webb is an extremely devout man who sees the world through Scripture, which is all well and good but extremely inappropriate for a man seeking public office in the United States Senate.

So, today, my very favorite question was “Mike, is the Lord against porn?” And, as a conservative with a strong faith tradition of Baptist, not Scientology as is now believed by at least one person new to the campaign, this was my reply: That is a very good question for a preacher, but I am a preacher man’s son, and for many years a prodigal son, at that. So, who do you call the Lord? Proverbs 6:25 in the Old Testament gives us the words of the God of Abraham: “Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.” Likewise, in Exodus 22:16, we are informed,”And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife.” In these verses, I construe an intent of the scriptures for the sexual union of a man and woman to be blessed in marriage. And, I am not a betting man, but I would bet a lot of money and the reward of salvation on the proposition that pornography is not sanctioned under the law of the God of Abraham.

While we thank Mr. Webb for his service to our nation, in all honesty we have enough religious extremists clogging up the gears of rational discourse and responsible governance in Congress as it is – especially one with such a… firm grasp on “technology”.