The Times has an article...

...this morning about Todd Akin, the latest in what can only be called the Republican Party Freak Show (my emphasis): 

William Todd Akin was born in New York on July 5, 1947, but grew up in St. Louis, near where his family had a steel business. He is, in some ways, an enigma. 

While he home-schooled all of his children and is appealing mostly to a working-class constituency, he graduated from an elite suburban St. Louis prep school, John Burroughs. He got a degree in engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute before earning a master’s in divinity from the Covenant Theological Seminary in Missouri. 

He worked as a manager at now-bankrupt Laclede Steel, the company his great-grandfather founded and served at as president, succeeded by Mr. Akin’s grandfather and father. Mr. Akin’s great-grandfather, grandfather and father all attended Harvard. 

Oh, and again, Congressman Akin is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. 

What has happened to this country?