NOT THAT YOU ASKED
One thing that I'll say about our current Legislature, it sure is a lot more entertaining than any other in recent memory. Unfortunately, that entertainment is more of the type you get from a horror movie rather than a comedy.
I also sometimes get the idea I'm in a time warp when I read about some of the things this bunch is up to. In one week they held two votes that you might have expected to come from the 1955 legislature rather than one in 2015.
In one vote, a bill to end the joint celebration of Rev. Martin Luther King and Gen. Robert E. Lee was killed in committee. The fact that Arkansas remains one of three states that continues the joint celebration of two polar opposites like King and Lee is embarrassing enough, and the arguments in favor of continuing to do so just added to that embarrassment.
As I told you last week, the argument used by the Democrat-Gazette saying that separating the celebrations of King and Lee was the same thing as the separate but equal racial policies used by the Jim Crow South was echoed by the legislators in favor of killing the bill. Supporters of the bill pointed out the absurdity of honoring a man who spent his life trying to get black Americans the basic rights guaranteed to all Americans with a man who turned his back on his country, and lead a war to keep the ancestors of those black Americans enslaved.
As usual, logic lost out to stupidity, and we are left to continue this idiotic dual celebration for two more years. It looks like the Democrat-Gazette can continue to run that editorial cartoon honoring Lee on that day.
Later that same week the Legislature passed and sent to Gov. Hutchinson a bill that would ban counties and cities from passing anti-discrimination laws. This bill was conceived in the wake of attempts in Fayetteville and Eureka Springs to enact anti-discrimination laws. Hutchinson has said he won't sign the bill, but allow it to become law without his signature. That way he can distance himself from it while keeping the Tea Party Crazies happy at the same time. It would have been much more honorable and courageous for him to have vetoed the bill and forced the Legislature to override him, which it would have. I guess that was just expecting too much from him.
Aside from the fact that this law is blatantly unconstitutional, it goes against one of the core beliefs of the people who supported it. The Tea Party Crazies usually go bat crap crazy over federal laws like Obamacare that forces states to do something they don't want to do. Their brains also spring a leak when a state takes over a local school, yet here they happily vote for a bill where the state can tell local communities they can't ban discrimination. Somewhere George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Lester Maddox are smiling.
There's no doubt that this law will be challenged in federal court just like a similar state embarrassment, Creation Science, was 30 years ago. Like back then, this law will be overturned, but the damage will already be done. The rest of the country will have one more reason to believe that all Arkansans are like those depicted in that TV show filmed in Hardy.
There's no other way to put it. Some of our legislators are out and out crazy. They should shut down the Capitol and finish this session at the State Mental Hospital.
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