From the Pork Barrel: Presidential Finding

* While working tirelessly to provide empirical evidence for the Colbert Bump, President Obama unearths a disturbingly more powerful force of nature.

* CPAC 2012: Gays out! White supremacists in!

* Ron Paul gets support from the purest (and oldest) form of free market capitalists.

* This is something. According to a new poll, people actually hate Congress so much these days they're willing to put Democrats back in charge. I'm assuming Cover the whole thing with gasoline and drop a match was not offered as an option.

Tags: Barack Obama, Colbert Bump, Conservatives, CPAC, Crime, Democrats, Haley Barbour, House of Representatives, LGBT, Michelle Obama, Mississippi, Polls, Pork Barrel, Racism, Senate, Stephen Colbert, Twitter

Haley Barbour Wants to Let Convicted Murderers Go Hunting

Mississippi governor and onetime possible presidential candidate Haley Barbour wears his cholesterol-filled heart on his sleeve. He's a true compassionate conservative, not like those other southern governors who execute children for sport.

So before leaving office on Tuesday, Barbour made sure to pardon some murderers…

A Mississippi judge barred the state Wednesday from releasing prisoners newly pardoned by former Governor Haley Barbour, a conservative Republican who outraged some by granting clemency to more than 200 convicts as he was leaving office…

Among those pardoned were four murderers who had been allowed to work at the governor's mansion doing odd jobs because of good prison behavior…

"The pardons were intended to allow them to find gainful employment or acquire professional licenses as well as hunt and vote," Barbour said in a statement.

See, that’s all. Barbour just wants to let a few convicted murderers roam around a desolate forest with their friends, carrying rifles and slaying large mammals. I can't imagine what all the fuss is about. Denying a killer the right to hunt would be like denying a shoplifter the right to wear baggy clothes, or a rapist the right to use Axe body spray. It's just not fair.

And as Barbour himself said, hunting and voting are practically the same thing. Preventing convicted murderers from shooting animals is a violation of their civil rights. Remember what the great Martin Luther King Jr. once said: Men should be judged not by the color of their skin, but the color of their deer hide.

Photo by Bill Clark/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Tags: Crime, Haley Barbour, Mississippi, Pardons, Prison

Mississippi Rejects "Personhood" for Inseminated Eggs

A funny thing happened to pro-life activists' attempt to define life as beginning at fertilization, potentially criminalizing all abortion, many forms of birth control, and in vitro fertilization treatments. Turns out, even conservative Mississippi voters blanch at the prospect of smuggling Plan B pills across state lines from such liberally enlightened jurisdictions as Louisiana and Alabama…

The so-called "personhood" initiative was rejected by more than 55 percent of voters, falling far short of the threshold needed for it to be enacted. If it had passed, it was virtually assured of drawing legal challenges because it conflicts with the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion. Supporters of the initiative wanted to provoke a lawsuit to challenge the landmark ruling.

For this surprising foray into sanity, we have the Mississippi Democratic Party establishment to thank, right? They must have pulled out all the stops to defeat Initiative 26…

[Gov. Haley] Barbour was prevented from seeking re-election because of term limits. The Democrat and Republican candidates vying to replace him both supported the abortion measure.

Basically, the (failed) Democratic strategy involved ignoring the majority of their constituency — most women and Democrats opposed the ballot measure — in favor of seeking votes from, who, the zygotes? Everyone who has taken a high school biology class knows cells are evenly divided.

Besides, those womb-voters are unlikely to meet the stringent voter identification requirements approved by Mississippi voters on Tuesday. Unfortunately, nor will thousands of real Mississippians,  because while pregnant women might still be persons with more rights than fertilized eggs, citizens without government-issued identification — and according to the Brennan Center, as many as 11% of American citizens, including up to a quarter of African-Americans, lack such ID — are still of questionable "personhood."

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Tags: Abortion, Democrats, Haley Barbour, Health, Health Care, Mississippi

Mitt Romney Forgets About Three of the Three Non-Wars Were Not Un-In

Fort what it's worth, I don't think that what Mitt Romney said about the U.S. currently being in "peace time" was a gaffe. I believe the phrase is "system error"…

The Colbert Report airs Monday through Thursday at 11:30/10:30c.

Tags: Afghanistan, Economy, Haley Barbour, Iraq, Libya, Military, Mississippi, Mitt Romney, Primaries, Republicans, Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, Video

Jon Stewart on the Battle for the Republican Base

This year's GOP race should be some super excellent stuff. I'm really looking forward to the part when Michele Bachmann severs Rick Santorum's head with a broad sword and then absorbs his energy via a lightning bolt. Also when Haley Barbour gets asked if he believes in evolution…

Coverage continues after the jump.

The Daily Show airs Monday through Thursday at 11/10c.

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Tags: Abortion, Atheists, Birthers, Donald Trump, Haley Barbour, Herman Cain, Islam, Jon Stewart, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Primaries, Religion, Republicans, Rick Santorum, The Daily Show, Video