North Carolina Keeps Coming Up With "Interesting" Politicians For Some Reason

Larry Pittman, a North Carolina state GOP rep, says
Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant on par with Hitler. 

I've been watching for the past year with a mix of fascination, horror and amusement as North Carolina politicians keep coming up with the strangest legislative initiatives.

For the past year, for instance, they've been strangely obsessed with who uses public restrooms with them, which resulted in those weird 'bathroom bills" in which they try to keep transgendered people using rest rooms that correspond to the gender with which they identify.

Like it would be an improvement that a beareded redneck guy must share a restroom with the fine ladies of North Carolina. Or something like that.

The inspiration for these kinds of weird laws or proposals seems to come from a bench of mostly Republican North Carolina lawmakers who have rather, um, interesting viewpoints on history and the world around them.

One of these clowns is Larry Pittman, who, according to the Raleigh News and Observer recently introduced a bill trying to get North Carolina to defy the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

The bill will go nowhere and this isn't the most interesting thing about Pittman.

In a Facebook discussion, somebody who noticed Pittman's obsession with gay marriage told him to "get over it."

Pittman won't. He responded, breathtakingly: "And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort of tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional."

Well, that's certainly in interesting take on history.  There was that little matter of freeing the slaves the Lincoln was involved in, and why the Civil War was fought.

I dunno. Maybe Pittman thinks that slavery wasn't such a bad idea?

Somebody asked him on Facebook. No answer. The Raleigh News and Observer tried to ask him. No answer. Oh well.

By the way, Pittman, unlike other extreme right wing wackos, doesn't think former President Barack Obama is a traitor because "he didn't harm any Kenyans."

Ookie Dokey then!

Moving on:

The wife of former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory had a pretty reasonable legislative request last year: Why not require so-called "puppy mills" to treat animals humanely. Many such puppy mills have a reputation for abusing animals, so the legislation made sense and the idea had bipartisan support in North Carolina.

Then came Rep. Michael Speciale, who apparently hates puppies, indicates Slate.  The legislation called for animals at "puppy mills" to get exercise daily. Speciale asked: "If I kick (a puppy across the floor, is that considered daily exercise?"

Mrs. McCrory's proposal would also require that if euthaniasia was necessary, that it be performed humanely. That seems straight forward enough. But not to Speciale "'Euthanasia performed humanely' - so should I choose the ax or the baseball bat?"

Lovely.

The point Speciale was trying to make (I think) is that he thought the language of the bill was too vague. But really? Sounds like this dude likes the fact that some puppy mills abuse animals.

Slate, in the same articles that cited Speciale, also brought us Rep. Carl Ford, who wanted to establish a state religion in North Carolina.

Yes, I know the First Amendment of the Constitution says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

Ford says this only applies to Congress, not states. Of course, Ford is ignoring the 14th Amendment, which applies most of the Bill of Rights to the states.

Even so, Ford tried to forge ahead, promoting a bill that would have allowed prayers and creationism in public schools, and allowed lawmakers to steer tax mone to the churches they especially liked.

The bill went nowhere, and the courts would have overturned it anyway, but nice try, Mr. Ford!

I guess it's become a tradition among extreme right wing politicians to wage Quixotic political battles in the imaginary belief they can create a world that suits them perfectly and forces the rest of us into that world, kicking and screaming.

The danger, of course, is that they do often succeed in lurching us a little closer to these bizarro worlds they want us all to live in. But at least they're too dumb and stubborn to fully make us go there.

Damn Americans have a habit of rebelling against being told what to do and who to be just because some wacko politicians says so.

Anti-Gay County Clerk Is Milking The Martyr Bit For Fun And Profit

Rowan County Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis
is enjoying her role of rubbing her
"religious" convictions in all of our faces.  

UPDATE: 

This dumb clerk said she would wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule all the lower courts that have in recent weeks ruled against her efforts to not issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.

The U.S. Supreme Court basically blew her off Monday, so now the ball is back in her court. She has vowed to go to jail rather than comply with court rulings.

The Martyr Complex again.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

A county clerk in Kentucky named Kim Davis is really milking her 15 minutes of fame, extending that 15 minutes longer and longer for the fun and profit of martyrdom.

Her schtick: Refusing to obey orders to marry same sex couples along with straight couples to comply with the June U.S. Supreme Court ruling saying there is a Constitutional right to gay marriage.   

True, not everybody likes that ruling, but if you're a sworn government official, you have to uphold the law.

Davis said God's law is more important, or at least her interpretation of it is. It goes against her religious beliefs to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.

Fair enough. If her religious beliefs bar her from issuing such marriage licenses, then she shouldn't. However, even though she considers God's law more important, she still has to comply with U.S. law.

The solution would be to resign as county clerk if her religious beliefs conflict with her job. Several clerks across the nation have taken that route. Those clerks, I support. I don't agree with their stance on gay marriage, but they took the honorable way out. They can't do their job because of their religious beliefs, so they found other jobs.

The clerks who resigned stayed honest and true to themselves. Can't argue with that.

I CAN argue with Davis. Courts have repeatedly ordered her to issue licenses, but she still won't.

(In a funny side note, Davis recently issued a marriage license to a straight couple. But what she didn't know was the male half of the couple is transgender. His birth certificate lists him as female, and Davis failed to check it. Ha Ha!!!)

Still, Davis is having her fun with her anti-gay lawyers.

As Michelangelo Signorile notes, Davis' intractability is a win/win. She gets to be part of the Conservative Martyr complex, in which you win notoriety and probably money for being "persecuted" by those "awful homo-fascists"

The right wing politicians win, too. Because if Davis ends up facing criminal charges or is forced out of her job as county clerk, they can point to the false notion that Christians are being persecuted in this country, religious liberty is under assault, yada yada yada.

Which is bullshit, of course.

Judge David L. Bunning of the U.S. District Court for Kentucky's Eastern District said this about Davis' religious rights:

"The state is not asking her to condone same sex unions on moral or religious grounds,  nor is it restricting her from engaging in a variety of religous activites. ....She is even free to believe that marriage is a union between one many and one woman, as many Americans do. However, her religious convictions cannot excuse her from performing the duties that she took an oath to perform as Rowan County clerk."

An editorial in the Lexington, Kentucky Herald-Leader said it best about Davis and her lawyers from the conservative Liberty Counsel:

"Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver continues to insist that elected public officials have a constitutional right to pick and choose which of their government duties they will perform based on their religious beliefs - in other words, that public officials can use religion to discriminate against certain citizens. 

Nothing could be more un-American. What he is advocating would destroy the rule of law, a foundation of our republic. And imagine the chaos, given the wide range of religious beliefs."

But Davis, the Liberty Counsel and their minions don't believe in America as it is. They want us to live in a theocracy, fashioned on their stilted, weird Biblical beliefs. They will not be happy unless everyone in the nation has the same religious beliefs that they do.

That means Davis and the Liberty Counsel really are un-American, as that Kentucky newspaper suggests.

However, most Christianists never take not for an answer, so Davis and the lawyers backing her will keep pestering us.

Sigh.