Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Last Call

Add Virginia to the list of GOP-controlled states that voted for President Obama in 2012, with Republicans now looking to make sure they can steal the election in 2016.

A Republican-backed bill that would end Virginia’s winner-takes-all method of apportioning its 13 electoral votes in presidential elections cleared its first legislative hurdle Wednesday.

A Senate Privileges and Elections subcommittee recommended Sen. Bill Carrico’s bill on a 3-3 party line vote Wednesday, advancing it to consideration by the GOP-dominated full committee next week. Republicans control the Senate and House in Virginia, and Gov. Bob McDonnell is a Republican.

The bill would apportion electors by congressional district to the candidate who wins each of the state’s 11 districts. The candidate who carries a majority of the districts would also win the two electors not tied to congressional districts.

Sen. Charles W. “Bill” Carrico, R-Grayson, said the change is necessary because Virginia’s populous, urbanized areas such as the Washington, D.C., suburbs and Hampton Roads can outvote rural regions such as his, rendering their will irrelevant.

Yes, it's so awful that we can't have Republican co-Presidents to represent the will of the people who lost a winner-take-all presidential election.  How terrible that in a democratic republic, a majority vote allows you to win.  We can't have that, so let's split the electoral vote specifically in a way that allows Republicans to win!

At some point this kind of nonsense has to end up in front of the Supreme Court, right?

Janie's Got A Gun, And A Rifle, And A Mortar, And...

Hello, Obama Second Term!  What have you for us today?  The Pentagon finally allowing women into combat, you say?

The U.S. military is ending its policy of excluding women from combat, and will open combat jobs and direct combat units to female troops, CNN has learned. Multiple officials confirm to CNN that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will make the announcement tomorrow, and notify Congress of the planned change in policy.

"We will eliminate the policy of 'no women in units that are tasked with direct combat, a senior defense official says.

But the officials caution that "not every position will open all at once on Thursday."

Once the policy is changed, Department of Defense will enter what is being called an "assessment phase," in which each branch of service will examine all of its jobs and units not currently integrated and then produce a timetable in which it can. The Army and Marine Corps, especially, will be examining physical standards and gender-neutral accommodations within combat units. Every 90 days, the service chiefs will have to report back on how they're doing.

Well about damn time.  I know and work with several women who are veterans and have served this country admirably, and frankly it's the 21st Century anyway.   It's a volunteer military, and if you can meet the physical requirements and can do the job, then you deserve to be able to take your shot at it.

Good on you, Pentagon.

And It Continues In Earnest, Part 6

More county mounties are pledging to ignore the USURPER KENYAN REGIME of President Shabazz Guntaker X, this time near Bon's neck of the woods in Missouri.

As President Barack Obama continues to push gun control proposals in Washington D.C., Sheriff Charles M. Heiss, R-Johnson County is asking fellow law enforcers to sign and send this letter to the president.

The letter expresses concern with the Obama administration and the president’s gun control laws he laid out before Congress last week.

“It appears to me and many Americans that there is a genuine desire on the part of your administration to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law abiding American citizens in the interest of curbing gun violence in our nation,” Heiss wrote. “Any attempt to restrict these Second Amendment rights through executive order is unconstitutional and tantamount to an all-out assault on the United States Constitution.”

Gosh, I had no idea everyone was a Constitutional law scholar and Supreme Court Justice.   Trying to think when Clinton, Reagan, and Bush 41 proposed gun laws (and in Reagan and Clinton's case, passed them and signed them) if we had law enforcement officials say "Nope, screw you.  We refuse to enforce your laws."

I'm guessing no.  What's different about this President, I wonder...

Oh yeah, that's right.  He doesn't count anyway in the eyes of tens of millions, so it's okay.

StupidiNews!