When I wrote yesterday about West Virginia political leaders and their response to the departure of Obama EPA chief Lisa Jackson, I noted that Rep. Shelley Moore Capito looked pretty silly when she compared the administration’s regulatory efforts to “a punitive imperialistic hammer.” Well, it turns out that’s nothing … check out what fellow West Virginia Republican David McKinley told Greenwire (subscription required – thanks to John Walke at NRDC for tweeting about this) about whether Jackson’s leaving will change the regulatory landscape at EPA:

I don’t want a repeat of what happened in Libya when we helped topple [Muammar] Gadhafi and then we wound up having al-Qaida.

The story continues:

Asked to clarify, McKinley said, “I’m saying sometimes the known is better than unknown. Let’s make sure that we have the right person [at EPA]. And let’s see whether we want to go to the mat against them; maybe it’s someone we can work with.”

Maybe the known is better than the unknown. But comparing Lisa Jackson to a brutal dictator who, among other things, was linked to the deaths of 270 people in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland? Seriously?