Hat tip to Nolan Dalla for awarding Congressman Frank Wolf The Worst Person in the Universe award. Dalla writes:

Rep. Wolf is a longtime Republican congressman from Virginia.  He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives way back in 1980, riding the cozy coattails of Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory.  Since then, Rep. Wolf has been as faithful as a potted plant, deeply rooted to every corporate-funded, neoconservative, right-wing cause.  Like a slice of cold stale pizza, he’s one of the final leftovers of the late Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority,” a witch-hunting political movement of Bible-thumpers who once professed to know what’s good for us all, and was dedicated to transforming America into a modern theocracy named “Jesusville.”

In his so-called retirement, Wolf will continue to work with the worst theocratic elements in American society. His retirement statement says, emphasis and annotations mine:

“As a follower of Jesus, I am called to work for justice and reconciliation, and to be an advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves [fertilized embryos].  I plan to focus my future work on human rights [certain exceptions apply] and religious freedom [special exemptions from discrimination law, medical standards and more] – both domestic and international – as well as matters of the culture [silencing dissenting voices] and the American family [promotion of patriarchal authoritarianism, punishment of all other families].  My passion for these issues has been influenced by the examples of President Ronald Reagan, former Congressmen Jack Kemp and Tony Hall, Chuck Colson [tax-payer funded “Christian conservative” propaganda produced by the Colson Center in Lansdowne], and the life of 18th century Member of Parliament William Wilberforce [more funding for the Colson Center’s sub-par scholarship aimed at appropriating the legacies of such historical figures as Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer].

And Frank Wolf is getting started before he leaves office, with a $1M stipend that no doubt will be funneled into the pockets of theocratic scholars. Here’s an excerpt of his latest appropriations bill press release:

Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections. The bill provides $1 million to create a bipartisan task force aimed at reforming our nation’s prison system.  The group will be named after the late Chuck Colson,..

Here’s what the Colson Center, through its Prison Fellowship Ministries arm, does with such funding when it is allowed to engage in “prison reform”: It creates a program designed to reward religious and ideological conformity to PFM’s worldview, illegally discriminates against adherents of minority faiths, and cooks the data to justify its own existence.

Most Loudoun residents and others only know of the late Charles Colson’s organization because of its holiday “Angel Tree” charity, but the vast bulk of its activity the rest of the year is dedicated to political advocacy on issues unrelated to prisoners or prison reform: Attacks on the foundations of science and health education, the promotion of pre-modern “traditional” gender roles, and opposition to civil equality for LGBT people and women are repeated topics.

People often wonder why Loudoun County is embarrassed on the national stage so frequently. Why are there so many crazy extremists attacking everything evidence-based and humane? Perhaps the reason is hidden in plain sight. Perhaps it’s because Frank Wolf has been earmarking tax dollars and providing political advice and cover to these groups for his entire career. He may not be the absolute worst person in the universe, but he is an effective patron of the ugliest elements of local politics.