Only in Prince William County, VA

Anyone who follows the immigration issue should be familiar with Prince William County VA. For the past two years it's been ground zero in the debate over whether local governments should be passing punitive measures intended to drive out immigrant populations. With a board of supervisors controlled by ardent anti-immigrant hardliners, Prince William Co. passed some of the harshest anti-immigrant measures in the country.

Last month the board voted 5-3 to appoint Robert L. Duecaster to the county's Strategic Goals Task Force, a panel that crafts the county's human services policies and oversees budgeting.

So who is this Robert Duecaster, who'll be in charge of human services policies for the county

….. He's this guy:

When residents questioned Duecaster's appointment and suggested that perhaps guidelines need to be established to determine qualifications to serve, Supervisor W.S. Covington III replied that he was "very disquieted over the recent public discourse over whether or not a citizen is qualified to serve as an appointee of this body on behalf of Prince William County based solely upon a transcript of words, whether written or spoken … I don't think anyone proved he was so outrageous that he shouldn't have served on an advisory committee"

According to Sonia Scherr of the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Duecaster, a 57-year-old lawyer, was nominated to the human services task force by County Supervisor John T. Stirrup Jr., who said criticisms of Duecaster's appointment amounted to "character assassination." In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Duecaster didn't retract any of his controversial past statements. "At the time the comments were made, we were living in a threatening and inflammatory environment," he said, adding that he hoped to serve "the interest of legal residents of this county." Duecaster has been even more flagrant in his remarks under cover of a pseudonym, according to the Post, which reported that on Black Velvet Bruce Li, the blog of Help Save Manassas founder Greg Letiecq, Duecaster has posted blatantly bigoted comments using the screen name "Advocator."

In January 2008, Advocator called for an investigation into "whether or not illegal aliens have a preferred breeding season." In April, he responded to a comment someone had posted using the pseudonym "Truth" with this gem: "An' thass right, Trufe, I am bitching about ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] as classes. Those anchor babies be costing me money."

Undocumented immigrants aren't his only targets. "What's even more ironic is the fact that el Pape [the Pope] will be here bemoaning how some jurisdictions have 'treated' the illegals," he wrote in April. "He'll be pandering to them to gather members to replace those who left the Church due to the institutionalized approval of his priests' penchant for little boys' behinds." (In a subsequent post, Duecaster insisted that despite his words he wasn't smearing Catholics, just criticizing the Catholic Church as an institution for its cover-up of sexual abuse by priests.)

In a 2005 post on the Muslim-bashing website danielpipes.org, he claimed that having many children was a strategy of "Islamists. ... They have always emphasized overpopulation and irresponsible procreation as a weapon in the Culture War."

AlterNet

So tell me again Supervisor Covington III, if this does not constitute something "so outrageous that he shouldn't have served on an advisory committee" … what does?