One election result that makes me really happy: Virgil Goode, the conservative Republican congressman who represents the Virginia district that includes Charlottesville, where I went to school, appears to have been defeated by Democrat Tom Periello in a very close race.

Virgil Goode raised a fuss two years ago when Keith Ellison, a House member who is a Muslim, used a Koran in the ceremonial re-enactment of his swearing-in. (All members of the House are officially sworn in together, without the use of any religious text, but apparently they have ceremonial re-enactments in which they can use a Bible or whatever they want.)

At the time, Goode issued a statement that read in part:

When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. …I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

In addition to being bigoted, the statement is also a non sequitur. Ellison is not an immigrant; according to Wikipedia, his family has been in America since 1742, and he was born and raised a Roman Catholic before converting to Islam.

I am so happy to see Goode go.

Dahlia Lithwick writes about the race here. And here are two of Periello’s ads that are particularly funny.