Dave's Verse

Adam Serwer and Tim Murphy have the reporting. First, just in case you didn't think Herman Cain was really as crazy as he appeared, there's this: One private intervention came during the summer of 2011, when then-GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain attended one of Norquist's weekly, off-the-record breakfasts, a gathering for DC's conservative elite. The assembled big-shots were disturbed by some of Cain's comments on the campaign trail about Muslims. A Think Progress reporter had captured him boasting that he would never appoint a Muslim as a member of his cabinet. Weeks later Cain had argued that cities like Murfreesboro, Tennessee—where activists were attempting to block a new Islamic center—should be allowed to outlaw the construction of mosques. "It really bothers me when you say this, because that's scary," Norquist recalls one of the participants, who was Jewish, saying. Cain sought to reassure his hosts that only Muslims would be subject...