not strange at all why his mother named him after a reptile !
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — John McCain on Tuesday brushed aside derogatory comments made by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who called the Republican presidential field a "pathetic" bunch of "pygmies."
"I see the former member of the House of Representatives as a person who has many, many comments to make and he's made many, many comments critical of me in the past," McCain told reporters Tuesday after attending a fundraiser in Grand Rapids. "We had a fundamental disagreement about the role of money in politics."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2007-07-24-mccain-gingrich_N.htm?csp=34
Quite the family values man!
Newt Gingrich has been married three times. He married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old (she was seven years his senior at 26 years old).[6][7] After an alleged affair with Ann Manning in 1977, Gingrich sought a divorce from Battley[8]. In 1981, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther[9], to whom he remained married until 1999, the same year Gingrich had an affair with a then 33-year-old Congressional staffer, Callista Bisek. He and Bisek were married in 2000 and currently reside in Virginia. Gingrich has two daughters, Kathy and Jackie from his marriage to Jackie Battley, two sons-in-law and two grandchildren
Newtie also:
Although a source of friction in the conservative wing of the GOP (and some pro-union "blue dog" democrats), Gingrich supports a "guest workers program" for Mexican citizens, meaning that an undetermined number of Mexican citizens would be allowed to come to the United States and work for a period of time, then return to Mexico. Gingrich also supports the idea of allowing some of these guest workers to become citizens. In his book Winning the Future, he says:
"Along with total border control, we must make it easier for people who enter the United States legally, to work for a set period of time, obey the law, and return home. The requirements for participation in a worker visa program should be tough and uncompromising. The first is essential: Everyone currently working in the United States illegal must return to their home country to apply for the worker visa program. Anything less than requiring those who are here illegally to return home to apply for legal status is amnesty, plain and simple."
and THIS is where the Anti-Environment came from, his so-called contract with America:
The Contract was criticized by the Sierra Club and by Mother Jones magazine as a Trojan horse tactic that, while deploying the rhetoric of reform, would have the real effect of allowing corporate polluters to profit at the expense of the environment;[17] It was referred to by opponents, including President Clinton, as the "Contract on America".[18]