President Obama's emotional plea for action on gun control early this week gained plaudits from sane people and sent the right into paroxysms of idiocy as the world got its first taste of Obama tears trutherism. The end of the week brought Ted Cruz bragging about committing child abuse, while also creepily sexualizing it, and Ben Carson humiliating a child who had the misfortune of attending his rally. These were just two of the outstanding moments in the right-wing's noxious idiocy this week. Read on.

1. Ted Cruz proudly proclaims he spanks his 5-year-old daughter, as if that's a good thing.

Ted Cruz was trying to make a dishonest point about Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail this week, using the discredited canard about her handling of Benghazi. And of course he did so in his uniquely creepy Cruz-like way, by talking about how he spanks his 5-year-old.

"You know I'll tell you, in my house, if my daughter Catherine, the five-year-old, says something she knows to be false, she gets a spanking," he said. "Well, in America, the voters have a way of administering a spanking."

Nothing disturbing, or disturbingly simultaneously sexist and child abusey there.

Actor Wil Wheaton responded appropriately on Twitter, saying: "Ted Cruz: 'I hit my child. Hitting children is GREAT! I'm not a shitfuck at all. Vote for me!'"

Note to Ted Cruz: Evidence suggests spanking children can result in cognitive setbacks, mood disorders and addiction problems. It also makes it more likely that they will abuse their own children and attempt suicide. So, good parenting Ted!

Another fun, warm-hearted thing the new presumed GOP frontrunner did this week? He told a Mexican immigrant who works with special needs people that he would deport her. Presumably after he spanked her.

2. Ben Carson demonstrates what an ass he is again.

Ben Carson cleverly got fifth-graders to humiliate a classmate this week. Now that’s leadership!

He was stumping in Iowa in front of 500 people, when he told one of his favorite autobiographical stories about being a “horrible student” as a kid, and being called a “dummy.” Why, he even has a chapter in his book titled “The Dumbest Kid in Fifth Grade.” How charmingly self-deprecating. Then, because his mother told him to buckle down, he did, and voila! Look where he is today.

On the stump, he decided not merely to repeat the story, but to get the audience to participate. “Anybody here in fifth grade?” Carson said. “Who’s the worst student?”

First there was silence, perhaps of the stunned variety. Then the kids in the audience decided to accommodate the good doctor and point out one of their peers. A student reportedly from Isaac Newton Christian Academy — which has the motto: “Developing Christlike character and academic excellence” — was identified as the “worst student” by about a dozen classmates.

Good one Dr. Ben. Carson ran with it, later meeting with the 10-year-old to helpfully tell him how he has no choice but to be a neurosurgeon.

Later Carson blamed the liberal media for “making too much” of the incident. He said he would “absolutely” do it again.

Maybe he and Cruz will also administer a public spanking for good measure.

3. Andrea Tantaros' jackass Obama-tears theory.

The hosts of Fox News’ “Outnumbered” had one of their more idiotic discussions after President Obama’s speech about taking action to limit gun sales and expand background checks. The president had the audacity to display emotion in his speech when he talked about the slaughtered first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut and the fact that too many children and others are losing their lives in Chicago as a result of guns.

Man, that really made the Fox Newsians mad.

Melissa Francis: “What was really upsetting was the tears that he wiped away again and again. You want that for — I mean, we feel frightened about what’s going on with ISIS. And he can’t pull that kind of passion for anything about this.”

“I feel bad about those kids in [Newtown,] Connecticut,” she said, indicating that though she may be a tear truther, she’s not a Sandy Hook truther. “Your heart breaks for them. But it’s only about this that he gets so upset about. And never about terror!”

Fox helpfully played the clip of Obama’s tear-streaked face.

Andrea Tantaros, who has made a career out of saying awful things, as well as awfully dumb things, wasn’t buying it. She speculated on how the president might have achieved this maddening bit of stagecraft, since he can’t actually have any real human feelings.

“This is how many years?” she sputtered. “Almost eight years, he’s almost at the end of his term. And you haven’t heard him go to Chicago and really speak out about this issue. So, I would check that podium for like a raw onion or some No More Tears,” Tantaros quipped.

Oh, hahahahahaha.

“It’s not really believable," she continued. "And the award goes to… we are in awards season.”

Her equally astute co-host Meghan McCain agreed, though she was not as sure: “It just didn’t seem horribly authentic. And maybe it is, I don’t know him at all.”

But reassuringly, Donald Trump told Fox he thinks the tears might be real. This brief outburst of the appearance of sanity is exactly why the right-wing needs this whole Trump campaign to shut down now.

4. Sean Hannity goes full sexist jackass.

Hannity convened an enlightening panel early in the week to discuss whether Bill Clinton’s sexual misbehavior was fair game in the presidential campaign despite the fact that he is not running for office.

What Hannity really hates is how Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton keeps playing the “woman card.” No one is actually sure what this mysterious card is that Clinton is said to hold, apart from the fact that she is a woman, but everyone is very annoyed that she keeps playing it.

Like when she stubbornly insists she is not actually the same person as her husband.

Hannity was determined to connect the whole topic to how mean everyone was to Mitt Romney when he mentioned the fact that he had “binders full of women.” Wasn’t that unfair, he asked his token Democratic guest, radio host Leslie Marshall.

“No, I don’t. I don’t think it was unfair,” Marshall replied. “Speaking to Donald Trump and all of his hiring of women, Bill Clinton appointed the first female secretary of state. Bill Clinton appointed one of our still-sitting Supreme Court judges who is female.”

This apparently gave Hannity the chance to lay the card he was holding in his back pocket: “I guess you could argue that Bill Cosby probably helped women in their careers.”

We guess Hannity did just make that argument, didn’t he?

5. Rick Santorum makes another super-creative analogy for gay marriage.

Santorum may not have achieved anything resembling relevance in the presidential campaign, but he’s still out there swinging. In a radio interview in Iowa, Santorum came up with yet another creative way to express his distaste for gay marriage. He told Iowa radio host Simon Conway that allowing states to expand marriage to same-sex couples is like saying, “the states have the right to redefine the chemical equation for water, it can be H3O instead of H2O,” according to Right Wing Watch.

Ooh, good one.

Santorum made it a point to stake out a position that is even to the right of Ted Cruz, the presumptive frontrunner in Iowa, and that is no easy feat. Here’s Santorum’s bid:

“Look, I’m very proud of the conservative record I’ve put together,” he said. “There’s no one who’s fought more on moral and cultural issues. I’m not a libertarian. There are people in this race that want the states to decide whether there should be same-sex marriage or polygamy or marijuana use. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that the states have the right to redefine something that’s not capable of redefining.

“For me, when you say the states have the right to define marriage, it’s like saying, well, the states have the right to redefine the chemical equation for water, it can be H3O instead of H2O. Well, the states can’t do that. Why? Because nature dictates what water is, nature dictates what marriage is, and the states don’t have the right to violate what nature has dictated.”