Republican Jackass of the Week

Meet Edgar Starnes.

Here is a man who is so full of Christian love and Christian goodwill that he just can't help himself -- he wants to force his wonderful Christian religion on everyone in his state.

Yep. Welcome to North Carolina, the only state in the history of the USA that will have its very own, official, state religion.

I'll wait until you stop laughing.

Okay now? On with the story.

Seems like Ol' Edgar here never heard of that there dern ol' Constitution, pro-hibitin' the establishment of religion.

(Sorry. Whenever I think of one of these old redneck types, all I hear in my head is that old commercial where a hillbilly yells, "Yahooooo! Mountain Dew!" Nonetheless, I'll get back to writing in regular English now.)

See, Edgar done thunk -- er, Edgar thought he could get around the "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" clause because Congress wasn't establishing a religion on a federal level, the state of North Carolina was. See? Isn't that clever?

I guess Edgar never got up to the 14th Amendment, which basically says that no state shall make or enforce any law which would abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the country, or their life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, blah blah blah.

It means no local Jackass can overrule the US Constitution, plain and simple.

It had zero chance of ever passing.

It had zero chance of being deemed Constitutional, since, for over 100 years, the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment does indeed cover state governments.

And the bill was withdrawn yesterday by the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives.

But it was fun while it lasted. 

Edgar Starnes, Republican Jackass of the Week. Now back to regular programming...

Typical NRA Hypocrisy

This should surprise no one.

Wayne LaPierre

A full week after the NRA's stunning silence on the mass gun murders at a Connecticut elementary school, their extremist mouthpiece, Pepe LePew, or whatever his name is, blamed everything but guns for the gun massacres. Yes, we were told 20 first graders were splattered with gunfire because of music, video games from the '90s, television shows, movies, even the President somehow, but not guns and bullets.

That would be like weighing 500 pounds and blaming everything but the Sara Lee cake you continually stuff in your face.

So after putting most of the blame on video games, what did the NRA do just yesterday? Released a violent video game app for iPhones. Shoot at coffin-shaped targets right on your iPhone!  Appropriate for ages 4 and up according to the NRA.

If these fringe nutjobs weren't so dangerous, they'd be funny. "Violent video games are the problem! Not guns! So here's a new violent video game for your kids to play!"

You can't make this stuff up.

Hopefully, enough clear thinking members of congress will pass reasonable, common sense legislation that will stem this gun-massacre epidemic.  Those who want to protect themselves, and those who have the sick need to kill animals, will still be able to have their guns. Nobody's taking anything away. But we need to ban military style semi-automatic assault weapons, designed to kill dozens of people in seconds. And those 30-round clips and 100-round drums. No self-protector or animal-killer needs those. We need to make sure guns aren't sold to the insane. And we need to close gunshow loopholes.

I have yet to hear what's so "controversial" about those common sense restrictions.

Let's remember that WORDS have never killed anyone. Yet the First Amendment, all about Free Speech, has reasonable restrictions. You can't slander someone or you'll get sued. You can't incite violence. You can't lie in a court of law. There are punishments for those who do.

Yep, it's okay to have restrictions on the First Amendment -- about words -- but not on the Second Amendment -- which is all about guns and bullets that kill over 10,000 Americans every year. This is the twisted logic spewed by the NRA. Funny thing, polls show that the vast majority of NRA members actually want reasonable, common sense gun laws. But the NRA doesn't represent them. It represents the gun manufacturers. It's all about profit and selling a product.