<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" (Permanent soundtrack to this series...)      Welcome back to our weekly feature on what&amp;#039;s happenin&amp;#039; now in the various states, where, as we know, the real work of governmentin&amp;#039; gets done and where, occasionally, people vote for things that don&amp;#039;t exist, just in case they might. We begin our tour in New Hampshire, a state that exists in a perpetual state of agitation that it is relevant for longer than two months every four years. D.J. Bettancourt was a rising young phenom, the Steven Strasburg of Granite State conservatives, majority leader of the New Hampshire House before he was 30, kilt him a b&amp;#039;ar when he was only three. (I made that last part up.) He was bold enough to call a bishop of Holy Mother Church a &amp;quot;pedophile pimp&amp;quot; when said bishop criticized budget cuts for New Hampshire&amp;#039;s poor. D.J. had himself a ticket to ride, boy. And all this while attending law school at the University of New Hampshire. Except, well, no. One of the things our boy D.J. faked was an internship at a small law firm run by another state representative named Brandon Giuda, who blew the whistle on him when he saw Bettancourt standing up at the UNH graduation.... Giuda said that after he saw that Bettencourt had participated in the law school&amp;#039;s May 19 commencement in cap and gown, he obtained the internship records and learned that Bettencourt had submitted to the university 11 weeks of reports - with details such as court hearings, meetings, and talks with clients that had never happened \u2014 giving him the credits he needed to graduate. &amp;quot;When I saw those, I got a pit in my stomach,&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Giuda said. &amp;#039;&amp;quot;This wasn&amp;#039;t just cheating. This was premeditated at the same time he&amp;#039;s standing at the podium castigating other people on ethics.&amp;#039;&amp;#039; And, dammit, that&amp;#039;s Gingrich&amp;#039;s job. With no less celerity as that of thought, work, work your thoughts and see... (Wait. The Chorus from Henry V seems to have broken out momentarily. There, now, back in the trunk with you.) Let&amp;#039;s move along to Kansas, which this week armored itself against the encroaching international Caliphate, last seen chowing down on ribs at Arthur Bryant&amp;#039;s across the river in Missouri. Catholic god-botherer Sam Brownback signed a law that would ensure that, if Kansans are going to have theocratic laws then, by Jehovah&amp;#039;s thyroid, they&amp;#039;re gonna be our kind of theocratic laws. (To his discredit, Brownback seems to have signed the thing in the middle of the night at the bottom of a rainbarrel.) The remarkable thing, of course, is that the measure passed both houses of the Kansas legislature with only three total votes against it, even though it is designed to prohibit something that doesn&amp;#039;t really exist. But Sen. Chris Steineger, R-Kansas City, said a marketing campaign by supporters of the bill inundated him with materials that &amp;quot;explain why sharia law is coming and Muslims are trying to take over America.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I thought that was quite ludicrous at the time, and I still do,&amp;quot; Steineger said. &amp;quot;I pointed this out, because this was not presented as protecting the Kansas Constitution. The proponents of this measure, clearly by the literature they gave me and by the video link they directed me to, they presented this as protecting us against sharia law. Despite the fact that this doesn&amp;#039;t mention sharia, that&amp;#039;s how this whole issue was presented.&amp;quot; More hilariously, the Kansas legislature took a break from passing the most restrictive laws in the country curtailing reproductive freedom to campaign for this as a &amp;quot;women&amp;#039;s rights&amp;quot; issue.And thus are the good people of Junction City saved from having to pray three times, facing East, while fishing in Homer&amp;#039;s Pond. Beating feet out of Wichita before the Saracens set up shop there, we find ourselves in Alabama, and deep into the ongoing saga of the Let-The-Crops-Rot-In-The Fields immigration law, which is still turning the state&amp;#039;s government, and its politicians, into pretzels in an attempt to be both bigoted and have an economy. (That was a lot easier back in 1860, wasn&amp;#039;t it, fellas?) In the center ring this week is Governor Robert [Bob] Bentley, who performed a quintuple-lindy with a back-flip to the utter delight of practically nobody. It seems that the fact that the original LTCRITF Bill was so destructive and embarrassing that even the rockheads in the Alabama lege caught on eventually. So they proposed &amp;quot;revisions&amp;quot; to it. Unfortunately, in many areas, the &amp;quot;revisions&amp;quot; made the original even worse, mandating, among other things, that the state&amp;#039;s Department of Homeland Security \u2014 yes, Alabama has one \u2014 post online the name of every undocumented immigrant who appears in state court. Bentley originally said he wouldn&amp;#039;t sign the &amp;quot;revisions,&amp;quot; also citing the fact that the children of the undocumented also regularly get grilled by law-enforcement at their schools, which Bentley said revolted him. Undaunted, the people pushing the &amp;quot;revised&amp;quot; law \u2014 and some of them are swell fellows indeed \u2014 &amp;quot;revised&amp;quot; it again, making it even harsher, requiring, for example, that the Alabama DHS post pictures of the undocumented immigrants who come to court as well as their names, thereby presenting Bentley with the Mob Violence Enabling Act Of 2012. Bentley folded like a cheap suit and signed the original &amp;quot;revisions&amp;quot; a day after insisting he wouldn&amp;#039;t. Let&amp;#039;s leave Bentley to unknot himself and move along to Oklahoma, where the Tulsa World has discovered the fact that, to hell with Sharia, the Borg seems to have taken control of the state legislature. It&amp;#039;s just a government that can&amp;#039;t say no. Except, of course, for some people.... Rep. Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow, said that&amp;#039;s not good enough for him. Ritze said his pledge as a lawmaker is to put every bill to a four-pronged test: Is it constitutional? Is it burdensome to businessmen or his constituents? Is it moral and just? Does he understand it? Ritze, a physician with three college degrees, said he isn&amp;#039;t going to go for any bills he can&amp;#039;t read and understand or have explained to him by the author or a trustworthy source. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t do that in my regular life,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;If something is not explained to me or I can&amp;#039;t understand it, it&amp;#039;s a &amp;#039;no&amp;#039; vote.&amp;quot; This man has no future in national politics. None. Over in North Carolina, an enlightened place that depends vitally on research and technology, the legislature has determined that, if the Outer Banks disappear beneath the waves due to global climate change, the state plans to arrest the ocean, or god, or scientists, or someone. These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of seas-level rise may be extrapolated linearly....&amp;quot; It goes on, but there&amp;#039;s the core: North Carolina legislators have decided that the way to make exponential increases in sea level rise \u2014 caused by those inconvenient feedback loops we keep hearing about from scientists\u2014- go away is to make it against the law to extrapolate exponential; we can only extrapolate along a line predicted by previous sea level rises. Pull over, Archimedes, and keep yer hands where I can see &amp;#039;em. Drifting north to South Dakota, and ending on an up note, South Dakota has done something hyper-cool with an old gold mine located near the town of Lead. (And, yes, it is also cool that we live in a country which contains a town called Lead, South Dakota. The high school teams are called the Lead Golddiggers, in case anyone asks.) Deep in an abandoned gold mine, they&amp;#039;ve set up a lab wherein scientists will search for the elusive &amp;quot;dark matter&amp;quot; of the universe. The unveiling has been a long time coming: The Homestead mine opened during the Black Hills&amp;#039; gold rush in 1876 and outlasted many counterparts. In the late 1990s, it still employed about 1,000 people, but as the value of gold dropped, it became clear that the mine&amp;#039;s days were numbered. It shuttered for good in 2003. The science community seized on the closure. Dark matter is too sensitive to detect in normal laboratories, but one so far underground would help shield it from pesky cosmic radiation. Also, the LUX detector is submerged in water, further insulating it. Be careful, boys. Go down too deep and you might end up in Alabama, where any &amp;quot;dark matter&amp;quot; you find will have to be posted online by the state Department Of Homeland Security. This is your democracy, America. Cherish it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14225/d-j-bettancourt-fake-law-school-record-9312980/>