A reader posted a link last night to this article from ThinkProgress.org on my Facebook page.  When I read it, I felt physically ill.  It’s about New Hampshire Republican State Senator Martin Harty and a phone call he took from one of his constituents, a community health care center manager from Stafford, New Hampshire.  She is concerned about the state budget cuts to mental health programs and programs for the homeless.  What Senator Harty said next – comments he admits he made – are unbelievable: 


Barrington Republican Martin Harty told Sharon Omand, a Strafford resident who manages a community mental health program, that “the world is too populated” and there are “too many defective people.”


 Harty then stated, “I wish we had a Siberia so we could ship them all off to freeze to death and die and clean up the population.” Omand said Harty appeared to be serious. After Omand responded that his idea sounded like what Adolf Hitler did in World War II, Omand said Harty responded, “Hitler did something right, and I agree with (it).”


The Republican State House Speaker William O’Brien said that “at Harty’s age [90 years old], he has earned the right to say what he thinks, but ‘he needs to appreciate that as a representative, he will be held to a higher standard.’”


I’ve been staring at that for 20 minutes.  I have no idea how to respond to this.  Maybe if we replace the word “defective” with “elderly,” a la Senator Harty:


“The world is too populated,” and there are “too many elderly people.”  


Would ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox have picked up the story if he’d said that?  Would Speaker O’Brien have been more outraged?