In Reuters today, Delaware Representative Michael Castle launches his effort to land a Senate seat next year by recasting himself as a Republican “moderate.” This effort is a more than bit strained: reporter Thomas Ferraro justifies the “moderate” label by noting Castle’s public willingness to state that no, President Barack Obama was not born in Kenya.

Rather than assess candidates by anecdote, we’ve been tracking the legislative behavior of Mike Castle and his colleagues in the House of Representatives for some time now, from the 109th Congress through the 110th Congress and continuing through the 111th Congress. As a brief review below reveals, Rep. Castle’s decisions do not bear the mark of moderation.

Mike Castle voted for the Military Commissions Act, H.R. 6616 in the 109th Congress. The Military Commissions Act installed undemocratic executive committees to designate citizens and noncitizens alike as enemy combatants without standards for proof or review. The Military Commissions Act granted George W. Bush amnesty for his violations of federal law regarding indefinite detainees. It granted the President supreme authority to decide whether an interrogation technique qualified as torture. It allowed hearsay evidence to be used to convict an accused person. The Military Commissions Act is not a moderate law, and Michael Castle voted for it.

The Patriot Act is a law that encourages the government to spy on the legal, personal activities of Americans who have not broken the law, without obtaining a warrant. The Bush and Obama administration are using the power they’ve gained under the Patriot Act to mine information from public databases and indidividuals’ private affairs, assembling them into a central database through which the private affairs of every American citizen can be tracked by government officials. That’s not moderate activity. In the 109th Congress, Rep. Castle gave his support to it by voting YES on Patriot Act reauthorization.

Section 102 of H.R. 418 (the REAL ID Act of the 109th Congress) authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to nullify any law she or he deems necessary to build roads and fences in the vicinity of a national border. Furthermore, Section 102 of H.R. 418 makes it legally impossible for any court or agency of the government to review the Secretary of Homeland Security’s decision to nullify any law. In short, Section 102 places a presidential administration untouchably above the law.

The Farr Amendment, proposed back in the 109th Congress, would have stricken this language and only this language from H.R. 418. Voting for the Farr Amendment and reintroducing at least some judicial review over the nullification of American laws would have been a moderate act. Michael Castle voted against moderation when he voted against the Farr Amendment.

Mike Castle voted “no” on the Scott Amendment to H.R. 27 in the 109th Congress, and by doing so he allowed religious organizations that take government money to engage in religious discrimination when hiring with that money. Using government money to prop up religious discrimination is not a moderate act.

The FISA Amendments Act, passed last year during the waning months of the 110th Congress, sets up a system of warrantless surveillance in which the federal government has been spying on you electronically, reading your email, listening to your telephone calls, watching you surf the web, tracking your purchases. Under the FISA Amendments Act, the government can do even more, searching your home, your office, or your car… all of this without any warrant from a judge, without the ability of a judge to stop it, without congressional oversight, and with proactive and retroactive legal immunity for corporations that help the government do it, even if they do so illegally. Even if it turns out that the government has been wildly abusing this authority (which violates the 4th Amendment to the Constitution), under the FISA Amendments Act the government can keep whatever information it obtains. Voting for the FISA Amendments Act was an extremist act by Michael Castle, not a moderate one.

The McKeon Amendment of the 110th Congress allowed religious organizations using government money to run Head Start centers to refuse to hire workers solely on the basis of their religious views. Head Start centers aren’t religious centers. They don’t do religious work in providing Head Start child care. There is no reason that a job applicant’s religious affiliation would matter to an organization hiring for a job using government money. No reason at all… but religious bigotry. By voting for the McKeon Amendment, Mike Castle voted to support government-funded religious bigotry. That’s not a moderate action.

Michael Castle’s discriminatory proclivities don’t stop with religion. Rep. Castle has some odd views about women as well. In voting against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act at the start of the 111th Congress, Castle voted in favor of corporations giving unequal pay to women for equal work, and voted to prohibit women from fighting back against pay discrimination. Sexism might have been considered moderate back in the 1950s, Mr. Castle, but the rest of us are not living in the 1950s any more.

The Corporate and Financial Institution Compensation Fairness Act (H.R. 3269 in the 111th Congress) lets shareholders — who own a corporation — have a say over the size of big corporate executives’ pay packages. For the owners of a corporation to determine how employees are paid is a very moderate, sensible proposition. Mike Castle voted against this moderate measure.

Should a woman be able to obtain insurance coverage for a legal practice, paying with her own money, when an insurance company is willing to cover that legal practice? Or should the government interfere and tell the insurance company and that woman what legal acts can and can’t be covered? The former stance is moderate and respectful of both legality and liberty. The latter stance is patronizing, intrusive and disrespectful to corporate and individual freedom. By voting for the Stupak Amendment to health care legislation during the first session of the 111th Congress, Mike Castle rejected moderation and respect, choosing the path of extremist government intrusion instead.

In the Senate race of 2010, Mike Castle can go ahead and call himself a “moderate.” It’s a free country and anyone can say what they like. But Castle’s record of extremism as a U.S. Representative speaks louder than Castle’s words.