In the just plain idiotic category goes S6779, a bill written by Republican New York State Senator Thomas F. O’Mara. The law would give any person, business or organization the right to force the removal from a web site of an anonymously written piece of material unless the true legal name, IP address and street address of the writer is posted along with the original written material and confirmed by the owner of the web site where the content is posted.

The law is necessary, says Senator O’Mara, to protect “a person’s right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting”. Who says people have a legal right to know what other people are saying about them? The Constitution of the United States has no such provision in it, and neither does the Constitution of the State of New York.

In fact, the Constitution of the State of New York may prohibit pieces of legislation of the sort that Thomas O’Mara has introduced. The state’s constitution declares, “The legislature shall not pass a private or local bill in any of the following cases: Changing the names of persons…” It seems to be that there’s a good argument to be made that S6779 is a law that forces people to change the names people use for themselves, and is therefore unconstitutional.

Our national Constitution has a little old thing in it that’s called the First Amendment. The First Amendment guarantees both the right to free speech and freedom of the press, both of which would be denied by the censorship facilitated by S6779.

If the New York State Assembly and Senate pass this bill, what’s next? Is there going to be a law prohibiting a spoken conversation without the prior exchange of drivers’ licenses?

Thomas O’Mara justifies his censorship legislation by saying that bullying online must be stopped. Why must online bullying behavior receive especially harsh treatment, while offline bullying gets a free pass?

This legislation seems like an attempt to stifle all speech online. It contains no provision requiring proof of bullying, or restricting the censorship to cases in which bullying is even alleged to be involved.

Besides, the legislation is poorly written, with a loophole a mile wide. It only applies to web sites that enable interactive discussion: “a web site including social networks, blogs, forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages”. So, even if this bill was passed, “cyberbullying” could go on as before, using web sites where there is no comment or discussion function.

Another idiotic flaw in the legislation is that it contains no restriction on the original date of publication of material. That means that, if Senator O’Mara’s legislation were signed into law, if a person published this poem…

I walk in loneliness through the greenwood
for I have none to go with me.
Since I have lost my friend by not being good
I walk in loneliness through the greenwood.
I’ll send him word and make it understood
that I will be good company.
I walk in loneliness through the greenwood
for I have none to go with me.

…on a blog with a comments section, then anyone could legally force the censorship of the poem. The poem, you see, was created by an anonymous writer over 800 years ago. It would be impossible to find the street address of the writer, and so the poem would have to be removed.

For that reason, I hereby rename S6779 as The Thomas O’Mara Medieval Poetry Censorship Act.

If writing bills like this is how Thomas O’Mara chooses to spend his time in the New York State Senate, why don’t the voters in his district just send him home to avoid further embarrassment?

I don’t even know what a bordeaux room is, but whatever it is, Chateau Carolands has several of them.

Chateau Carolands is a gigantic California mansion, one of the largest private homes in all of the United States. The palace has 65,000 square feet of floor space – enough to encompass between 30 and 40 average-sized family homes. The chateau is home to just one family, though, or part of one family… the children come to visit every now and then.

Right now, the median family income in the United States is $50,000 per year. The latest home renovation project on Chateau Carolands cost over $20,000,000 – the amount that the average American family would earn in four centuries. Expenses are going up as wages stay flat, though, so most Americans just don’t have the chance to save.

It’s in these circumstances that the Mitt Romney for President campaign is having its latest big campaign fundraiser, not at the average house on your corner, but at Chateau Carolands, a week from tonight. This won’t be a party where the riff raff like us are invited, either. The price of having dinner with Mitt and Ann Romney at Chateau Carolands will be $50,000 per person – which just so happens to be the amount of money that a typical American family earns by working hard for an entire year.

As Mitt Romney devises his economic plans, it’s people who can afford to buy dinner at a price of fifty thousand dollars per plate. Romney doesn’t surround himself with people who cook their own dinners in cramped apartment kitchens with ingredients that cost a few dollars. So, it’s no wonder that Mitt Romney’s economic policies provide special perks to millionaires and billionaires, while making working American families pay more for the scraps they depend upon.

There’s one thing we the 99 Percent have on our side, however. Even as the One Percent feast upon their luxury meal at Chateau Carolands, they’re a tiny minority – one out of a hundred. We have the numbers, and we still have an advantage at the ballot box – one vote per person.

This November, unless you were one of the lucky few who could buy a seat at the dinner table at Chateau Carolands, you just don’t have any business voting for Mitt Romney.

The problem is that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. Federal courts have ruled DOMA unconstitutional. It’s unconstitutional on more than one count.

1. Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution mandates that “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” But under DOMA, this clause is directly contradicted, declaring that “No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State…”. This gives same-sex marriages and different-sex marriages are given separate and unequal status. The marriages of different-sex couples must be recognized at the federal level in all 50 states, no matter in what state they were married. The marriages of same-sex couples are denied that recognition. That brings us to…

2. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution has an equal protection clause making it unconstitutional for any state to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Under DOMA, Indiana is required to acknowledge the marriage of straight couples in Massachusetts, but is allowed to reject the validity the marriage of same-sex couples in Massachusetts. That is unequal protection under law. I’m not just saying that. Federal Judge Jeffrey White made that ruling in February of this year.

People talk about how much Ron Paul loves the Constitution and supports the Constitution and defends the Constitution. But in supporting the Defense of Marriage Act over and over again, in forbidding the Justice Department to take a stance against the Act, Ron Paul subverts the very same Constitution that he frequently waves in the air and claims to value so deeply.

Mr. Constitution, my foot.

These long periods of vacation for the lower house of Congress, when ordinary Americans are working, are justified as an opportunity for U.S. representatives to go back home from Washington D.C. and meet with constituents in their home district. Mostly, however, these free days are used by members of Congress to go meet with corporate lobbyists and political action committees, begging for money and offering legislative favors.

That’s what Congressman Paul Ryan will be doing this morning. Five hours from now, Ryan will attend a fundraising breakfast in San Francisco at the headquarters of Gap, Inc. Gap, Inc. is a company that specializes in making profits by taking jobs that could be held by American workers and sending those jobs to sweatshop factories in foreign countries. Paul Ryan happens to promote a legislative agenda that keeps the door open to corporations that set up shop overseas instead of creating jobs in the USA.

So, it’s a very tight relationship between Paul Ryan and the executives at Gap corporate headquarters, which is why the company is helping Ryan meet with lobbyists and take their money this morning. The advertised price for the privilege of sitting at Congressman Ryan’s table and having a nice leisurely legislative conversation with him is $5,000.

Do you have enough money to attend that breakfast?

Inevitably, destiny starts looking like it’s going to be late, if it ever will come at all, and signs of deviation from the certain future start appearing. These signs make the believers in destiny to look a little bit stupid, and so the believers start to stomp and fume. Instead of re-examining their beliefs, they rage against the people and events that dare to dissent from their vision of a certain future.

That’s just what’s happened with a group of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. They’re members of a political cult called American Exceptionalism, and they’ve identified a threat to their cult in the Obama White House: Lack of a clear mission for the USA in outer space.

Yesterday, this group of Republican politicians introduced H. Con. Res. 124, a resolution “expressing the sense of the Congress that President Obama’s delays in implementing a clear mission for the American space program represent a clear threat to American Exceptionalism”.

The names of the members of this pouting little group of congressional believers in outer space destiny are:
Randy Hultgren (Republican-IL, District 14)
Sandy Adams (Republican-FL, District 24)
Rob Bishop (Republican-UT, District 1)
Mo Brooks (Republican-AL, District 5)
Jason Chaffetz (Republican-UT, District 3)
John Culberson (Republican-TX, District 7)
Steven LaTourette (Republican-OH, District 14)
Pete Olson (Republican-TX, District 22)
Steven Palazzo (Republican-MS, District 4)
Ted Poe (Republican-TX, District 2)
Bill Posey (Republican-FL, District 15)
Tom Price (Republican-GA, District 6)
Lamar Smith (Republican-TX, District 21)
Allen West (Republican-FL, District 22)
Frank Wolf (Republican-VA, District 10)
Kevin Yoder (Republican-KS, District 3)

There’s a little flaw with their legislation, of course. American Exceptionalism is the belief that the United States of America has a predetermined destiny: To become greater than all other nations and to spread its influence far and wide. The cosponsors of H. Con. Res. 124 clearly believe that space travel has a central role in America’s destiny. They believe that there’s something necessary about space ships owned by the United States in whatever the future holds.

Maybe they grew up watching Star Trek. Maybe they believe that outer space is the home of the gods. Maybe they’re still waiting for the gadgetry of The Jetsons to show up. I don’t know what their vision of America’s destiny in outer space is, specifically, other than to say that they believe that America’s destined greatness is being interfered with by a failure to come up with outer space missions that have what they deem to be sufficient pizazz. Buck Rogers has not yet arrived, and someone must be held accountable.

If these astro-politicians would take a minute to calm down and think things through, they would realize that there’s really no point to H. Con. Res. 124. There’s no use in battling over destiny. If there is such a thing as destiny, it is by definition destined to come true. Nothing so trifling as a lack of focus on spaceships by the President of the United States can prevent true destiny from coming true.

If there really is a predetermined plan for greatness of the USA through journeys into outer space, then it will come to pass, and doesn’t need the help of a congressional resolution. If, on the other hand, there is no real outer space destiny of American Exceptionalism, well, what’s the big fuss about? Members of Congress can still get out toy spaceships and Star Wars action figures and play with them after all the interns have gone home.

Doesn’t this loose spending of government money contradict Republican claims that their political party is dedicated to fiscal responsibility? Not according to Congressman Joe Wilson. Yesterday, Representative Wilson rose to give a speech to his colleagues in Congress, telling them that military spending is somehow different than all other government spending. Representative Wilson declared that military spending “does not contribute to our growing national debt.”

How does that work? How could it be that dollar spent on schools for America’s kids increases the national debt, but a dollar spent on bombs and bullets used to kill people in America’s wars does not increase the national debt? Are there different economic rules that govern military spending and domestic spending?

Joe Wilson, you lie. A dollar of debt is a dollar of debt, regardless of the way that it’s spent. Republicans can’t expect us to believe that they’re against big government spending, after voting for a big government spending bill like H.R. 4310.

Yet, last week Congressman Coffman said something that made a lot of sense. Coffman called for the withdrawal of American soldiers from Europe. In a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Coffman said, “In January, the Pentagon announced that two U.S. Army combat brigade teams would be withdrawn from Europe. I don’t think that goes far enough. The current proposal is only a step in the right direction. We should retain only the headquarters and support infrastructure necessary for expeditionary capabilities, and we should withdraw all four combat brigades from Europe. In order for the U.S. military to modernize and move forward towards a more agile strategy, we must close bases in Europe. There is no longer a strategic reason to maintain nearly 80,000 troops in Europe.”

Coffman is right. It’s been almost 70 years since Adolph Hitler was a threat. The Soviet Union has been gone for an entire generation now. So, why should the American people keep paying to support a massive American military infrastructure on the European continent?

Europe won’t fall apart if the American military leaves, and back here at home, government support for schools and hospitals is being drastically reduced due to draconian budget legislation. It would be unforgivable for Congress to maintain our country’s outdated military presence in Europe while forcing people here in the USA to make sacrifices in order to support the extra expense.

If we could see more Republican legislation for cuts in military spending of the sort that Mike Coffman has offered, it would make the GOP claim of standing for fiscal responsibility a lot more believable.

“I believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman,” he said. “The President and the Democrats can talk about all this all they want but the fact is that the American people are focused on our economy and they’re asking the question, ‘Where are the jobs?’”

Where are the jobs? The jobs are at the weddings, Speaker Boehner.

Weddings drive employment. Most weddings include activities that provide work for a huge number of people, including jewelers, musicians, dress designers, bakers, florists, stationery suppliers and photographers. Then there are all the jobs in the travel industry associated with honeymoon trips. Finally, when reality sets in, jobs for marriage therapists are created in every community across the nation.

Legalize gay marriage, and you’ll provide a ten percent increase in jobs in all these sectors. Still, John Boehner doesn’t want these jobs for America, simply because he has a personal problem with gays and lesbians.

That’s the kind of selfish attitude that the American economy can’t afford.

Representative Dold talks a lot about creating jobs for American workers, but just yesterday, Dold introduced two separate pieces of legislation that create an economic incentive for jobs to be exported to foreign countries instead of being made in the USA. What’s more, Dold is doing it for the sake of fake drugs.

Dold’s bills, H.R. 5357 and H.R. 5358, will give a special exemption from import fees for two placebos that will be used only by a corporation called Astellas, in clinical trials to required to give two of its pharmaceuticals access to U.S. markets. Now, guess who has received more money from the Astellas political action committee than any other member of the U.S. House of Representatives? That’s right, it’s Bob Dold.

Astellas isn’t the real name of the corporation that Bob Dold is shilling for, by the way. The corporation just uses the assumed name of Astellas while doing business in the United States, in order to avoid making Americans feel uncomfortable. The real name of the corporation is Asuterasu Seiyaku Kabushiki-gaisha. It’s a Japanese-run multinational corporation, headquartered in Tokyo. Astellas Pharma US Inc. is just a subsidiary.

Voters in Dold’s Illinois district don’t have to put up with this kind of pay-to-play politics. This year, Brad Schneider is running to replace Dold in the House of Representatives.

In order to prevent violence at the protests, local ordinances have been created that ban people in Tampa from carrying glass bottles, sticks, and toy water guns. However, people will be allowed to carry concealed guns – guns that fire real bullets. If you’re caught with a bottle of old-fashioned Coca-Cola, you could be thrown in jail, but if you pull a handgun out of a hidden holster, the police will leave you alone.

Bob Buckhorn, the mayor of Tampa, asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to create an exception, for downtown Tampa, to a statewide executive order that allows for the carrying of concealed guns. Rick Scott refused, writing to Buckhorn: “It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right of self defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach.”

Consider what Governor Scott is proposing as a plan for the GOP National Convention: When protesters start breaking the law, that’s when people secretly carrying guns should spring into action. Scott is suggesting that the protesters outside of the Republican National Convention this year may need to be shot, describing anti-Republican protests as just the sort of situation that concealed firearms are called for. The Governor isn’t merely stating that the second amendment must always apply, while hoping that no one brings a gun to the protests. He’s encouraging gun owners who don’t agree with the protests to arrive in response, ready to use their guns against the protesters.

An odd thing about Governor Scott’s letter is that, while he’s encouraging the use of guns against protesters, and demanding that the second amendment right to carry guns be protected, he doesn’t seem to care at all about whether other weapons are prohibited. The ordinance against sticks and glass bottles is in place because of concerns that they could be used as weapons. But, as weapons, they would be constitutionally protected objects.

The second amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It does not mention guns specifically, but weapons as a general category. The idea of “arms” has always carried with it the inclusion of improvised devices of violence. People can be thought of as arming themselves with sticks and stones, with umbrellas, forks, chains, and all sorts of objects.

It seems quite clear that, if the second amendment does not apply only to militias, but to individuals as well, that it must protect the right of individuals to carry any object as a weapon. There’s no justification in the second amendment for giving guns a special protected status that no other weapon enjoys. So, if carrying guns at protests is to be given constitutional protection, so should carrying sticks and glass bottles.

Yet, Rick Scott won’t stand up for the right to bear weapons that aren’t guns. Why? Probably, it has something to do with the fact that there is no group of lobbyists and political action committees that give large amounts of money to political candidates who defend the right to carry sticks and glass bottles. Gun lobbyists, on the other hand, are quite powerful, and carry a lot of cash.

Even on the level of gun rights, though, Rick Scott and his Republican colleagues aren’t consistent. They support the right of citizens to show up and intimidate protesters with guns, but they won’t support the right of people to carry guns within the Republican National Convention itself. The Republicans have created a ban on carrying guns within the building where the Republican National Convention will take place – and Governor Rick Scott supports that ban on guns.

Why? If guns really make people more secure, rather than presenting a security risk, and if Republican really support the constitutional right to carry guns, why won’t they allow people attending the Convention to bring guns? Why won’t they encourage attendees to bring guns, to make Mitt Romney more safe? It looks like the Republican Party only wants to have guns around at other people’s events, not their own.