Today, the Buffalo News is reporting on a controversy stirred by local businessman Jack Davis, who is collecting signatures to run as the Tea Party candidate in the primary for the seat formerly held by GOP scandal-boy Rep. Chris “Bare-chested on Craigslist” Lee. It turns out that a couple of weeks ago, Davis came up with this brilliant plan: Deport all of the upstate New York area’s Hispanic farmworkers, and replace them by busing in inner city blacks to pick the crops instead. (There is no confirmation of a rumor that Davis is changing his name to Simon Legree.)

Meanwhile, a 91-year-old Republican state representative in New Hampshire, Martin Harty, recently told a constituent who manages a mental health center that "the world is too populated" and there are "too many defective people” such as “You know, the mentally ill, the retarded, people with physical disabilities and drug addictions — the defective people society would be better off without." Harty’s solution? "I wish we had a Siberia so we could ship them all off to freeze to death and die and clean up the population." A GOP leader in the state stated that he "does not condone Harty's comments on any level, but he takes into account that he’s a World War II vet and he’s in his 90s” — which, to my ears, puts Harty dangerously close to that “defective people” category he’s so concerned about.

Nothing, though, tops comments from Republican Kansas State Rep. Virgil Peck who “joked” yesterday that the best way to deal with illegal immigrants is to shoot them from a helicopter, the same way Kansas deals with feral hogs. Now, it’s a fact that there are plenty of Democratic office holders and candidates who won’t pass an ethical smell test. But for sheer ignorant gall, the conservatives are in a class by themselves. Clean up your act, guys – or would that mean sacrificing all that Tea Party support?

• Virgil Peck, seen here wearing his nicest suit, thinks it'd be funny to shoot Latinos from a helicopter. That Virgil — what a character.