Yesterday morning, while the city of Boston and surrounding suburbs were being locked down, its citizens told to stay indoors while massive numbers of police officers searched for a dangerous terrorist, Arkansas State Rep. Nate Bell (need I tell you, a Republican) sent out this tweet:
I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine?
Yes, he really is that stupid.
To answer your question, Rep. Bell, none. Bostonians don't cower, liberal or otherwise. They followed the instructions of the authorities to stay in their homes so the police wouldn't have to worry about the safety of the law-abiding public, and so they could concentrate on finding the S.O.B. that perpetrated a terrorist act.
It was Senators from your party that made it easy for terrorists such as these, and other criminals, to get guns without any background check. Or maybe you forgot that already. I can tell from your Tweet that you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer to begin with.
If you think any citizen would rather confront a determined, gun-wielding, explosive throwing terrorist than have a trained SWAT team do it, then you're a bigger idiot than I thought.
My suggestion to you is to stick to worrying about naming post offices and leave the real legislating to people who have a grip on reality.
Yesterday the Senate voted down every common sense gun safety measure brought up for a vote. Scared of what the NRA would do to them in their next election, 54 Senators voted not to close gaping loopholes that allow terrorists, murderers, rapists, and other criminals from buying weapons at gun shows and online without background checks.
The NRA has flat-out lied about what's contained in this legislation. They know that this was carefully crafted to allow weapons to be passed from family member to family member, or neighbor to neighbor, without background checks. But they managed to use their propaganda machine to scare gullible people into believing otherwise. The Senators who voted against this also know what was contained in the bill, and they knew the NRA was lying about its contents to make people jittery about whether the government was going to create a national gun registry (even though the bill specifically forbids it), or whether Obama was "going to come and get their guns." Think about it, people... there are millions of homes in America. How many troops would the President need to pull this off? Duh.
Four Democrats sided with the 50 Republican Senators who voted this down. The Huffington Post has a list here of the Senators who voted against this common sense legislation in order to save their political hides. These are the folks we need to make sure get voted out in the next election cycle. If the Senate can't vote for legislation to keep terrorists and criminals from being able to buy any gun they want carte blanche, then we need to change the people who make up the Senate. We need to vote in people who give a damn about those kids and teachers who were killed at Sandy Hook. We need to vote in people who care more about doing what's right than saving their own careers. Only then will the people who have been killed by those who should never have been able to buy and use guns get any justice.
As outlined here in The Nation and here in The Charlotte Observer, the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature is working on passing not one, not two, but seven different ways to suppress (presumably Democratic) voting. At least one of these is obviously un-Constitutional.
- Voters will now be required to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls. The only good provision here is that they will accept drivers' licenses that have expired within the last 10 years, and people who are 70 and over don't need to get new IDs. Of course, they put these exceptions in because the GOP base tends to be older people.
- The early voting period would be cut from two and a half weeks to one week, and no voting would be allowed on the Sunday before Election Day. That Sunday, of course, is the traditional day for black churches to gather folks by bus to go to the polls.
- The provision of the bill that is obviously un-Constitutional is one that the Republicans really had to contort themselves to come up with. I mean, this really took some creativity on their part, I have to say. The provision involves eliminating the $2,500 tax credit parents can claim for their children if that child votes at the college he or she attends. That's right, folks... the GOP wants to tax parents of kids who vote at their college $2,500. That's called a poll tax, and it's illegal as hell.
- Straight-party voting will be ended. How the GOP thinks this will help them is beyond my imagination, but nonetheless this is part of the bill.
- No more same-day voter registration. After all, you wouldn't want to make it easier for people to vote now, would you? I guess the Republicans are assuming that since the bulk of their base is old, white and male, they're registered as Republicans already.
- Former felons would have to wait five years after serving their sentences and go through a lot of red tape to get back their right to vote. They would have to apply to the Board of Elections, get a unanimous vote from them that they can get their rights back, and supply two affidavits testifying to their "moral character." No, I'm not kidding.
- People with mental disabilities judged to be "incompetent," even if they are capable of understanding the issues, the candidates and the voting process, would be unable to vote.
Republican Governor Pat McCrory has said he will sign the bill if it passes.
I find it incredibly sad that North Carolina, which is a state that has such wonderful scenery, from mountains to the ocean and everything in between, has had its legislature taken over by the extreme right-wing nutcases who now control it. North Carolina will be hurt by this, from companies that will refuse to move jobs there because of this extremism, to the best and brightest people who will leave or never move to the state.
Eventually North Carolina will be blue, and permanently so, no matter what the Republicans try to do to stop it. The demographics are inevitable. In the meantime, instead of showing themselves to be reasonable and intelligent people, the right-wing extremists who now control the state are making it obvious that they are willing to stoop to any sleazy trick in the book -- and a few new ones they'll make up as they go -- to at least temporarily hang onto power. It's pathetic. There is no voter fraud problem, and they know it just like everyone knows it. If they're willing to put together a vote-rigging scheme like this just after their party lost so overwhelmingly on a national basis a few months ago, then they deserve for the Democrats in the state to do everything in their power to run them out of office.
It's just too bad tarring and feathering are illegal, because that's what these guys deserve.
[UPDATE: After getting a lot of blowback, this bill has been pulled. However, the GOP-controlled North Carolina state government is not done making up unconstitutional legislation. See the next post.]
I used to think that North Carolina was a bastion of semi-liberalism in a sea of Southern conservative states. Now I'm really beginning to wonder. When new Republican Governor Pat McCrory got rid of the Latino outreach group (such a great idea right now, McCrory) I had a hint that things were leaning too far right. But I would have never expected this.
Republican state legislators have proposed an official state religion. No, I'm not kidding! I do seem to remember that the Pilgrims came here in order to avoid such a thing, and that our Constitution prohibits it, but nonetheless the idiots in Raleigh, namely Rep. Carl Ford of China Grove and Harry Warren of Salisbury have put together a bill to create this "official state religion". According to them, states can exempt themselves from the parts of the Constitution they don't like and create their own laws.
Kind of like seceding from the Union, without all the bullets and gunpowder.
Co-sponsors are House Majority Leader (!) Edgar Starnes of Hickory and Rep. Larry Pittman of Concord.
North Carolinians, these are the folks you need to vote the hell out of office at the earliest opportunity, along with anybody else with an "R" after their name.
The Republican Party needs to go the way of the Dodo bird if this is what they stand for. I really think that religion (and possibly Rush Limbaugh) has twisted their minds to the point that they no longer make any logical sense whatsoever. It really is just mind-boggling what they come up with these days.
