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When Jake Burris got home with his four kids Sunday night, his 5-year-old son got a shock when he reached the porch. The family’s cat was dead — its head smashed and its eye hanging out — and some sick person had scrawled “liberal” on the side of the body with a marker.

Burris is the campaign manager for Ken Aden, a Democrat who is running against Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Womack in Arkansas’ Third District. Police are investigating as a case of animal cruelty. (You can see a picture of the dead cat at this blog, but I’m not posting it here.)

Aden has pretty much no chance of winning. Arkansas’ Third District is overwhelmingly conservative and Womack received 72 percent of the vote in 2010. Although Aden is certainly pushing his views, this isn’t a hotly contested seat that could go either way. To put it more bluntly, Aden doesn’t have a chance.

Still, someone is taking the race seriously enough to murder a family’s pet cat. Why?

In the two decades I’ve worked in politics, I’ve known people cold-blooded and evil enough to do this sort of thing if they calculated that it would give them a political advantage. Almost anybody who’s been in the business for very long has known of certain sick individuals who you can call on for dirty tricks. There’s a slimy underbelly to the system that’s so evil that nobody wants to believes it’s there. So when I hear a story such as this, I know that I’ve known people who would have been capable of doing it.

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What if the United States has just spend almost a decade in Iraq — wasting trillions of dollars, killing thousands of Americans and killing maybe as many as 100,000 Iraqis — and accomplished absolutely nothing? A new report from Human Rights Watch suggests that might be the case.

The Middle East director for Human Rights Watch told the Washington Post that the Iraqi government installed by the United States through its accepted democratic processes seems to have a lot in common with the dictator we supposedly freed Iraqis from.

“Iraq is quickly slipping back into authoritarianism as its security forces abuse protesters, harass journalists and torture detainees,” said Sarah Leah Whitson. “Despite U.S. government assurances that it helped create a stable democracy, the reality is that it left behind a budding police state.”

Before the United States invaded Iraq, we were given conflicting stories about why. The administration of George W. Bush talked darkly about the certainty that Saddam Hussein’s regime had “weapons of mass destruction.” When U.S. troops invaded, Bush talked about bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq. The things happening in Iraq today show the folly of “nation-building” and they also show the fallacy of assuming that democracy has to lead to individual freedom.

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In South Carolina, Ron Paul finished in last place — fourth out of the four remaining candidates. This isn’t exactly the “revolution” that my friends have been expecting. So how are they dealing with this dose of cruel political reality? And where do libertarians go from here?

If you’ve read much here, you know that I believe Paul has no chance of winning. None. Zero. Nada. It’s not that I don’t like him. He’s probably my favorite statist. But he can’t win, because he’s advocating things that the majority just plain don’t want. After the complete collapse in the first southern primary, I thought I’d skim through what my Facebook friends were saying about the situation. Without calling any names, here are the sort of things that were being said Saturday night among my Paul-supporting friends:

— “Obama must go, so no matter who our nominee is, he’s far better than the current occupant of the White House.” Really? In what ways is Mitt Romney — the father of RomneyCare — an improvement over Barack Obama? In what ways is Newt Gingrich — the man who wants to attack Iran — an improvement over Obama? As bad as Obama is, when it comes to substantive issues — not rhetoric — how are any of the other GOP choices an improvement over Obama?

— “The MSM [mainstream media] is silencing Ron Paul’s message, so that’s the only reason he’s not winning.” Actually, Paul has gotten a tremendous amount of television time over the last year or two, especially compared to the percentage of the electorate that supports him. He’s had plenty of chance to make his case and he’s spent millions of dollars on ads, too. Anyone who believes he’s being silenced isn’t paying attention. It’s just not true.

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