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" (Permanent Musical Soundtrack To This Post) Welcome back to our weekly survey of what&amp;#039;s goin&amp;#039; down in the several states where, as we all know, the real work of governmentin&amp;#039; gets done, and where they built a fire on Main Street and shot it full of holes. If state government does it better than the federal government because the state government is closer to the people, then it must needs follow that local government must do it better than state government for the same reason. So we begin our tour this week in Monroe, North Carolina, where city government is all kinds of zany fun. While all municipalities have issues, the blistering report paints an unusually detailed portrait of Monroe&amp;#039;s problems. For instance: The report found &amp;quot;credible and objective evidence&amp;quot; that Police Chief Debra Duncan secretly recorded former City Manager Wayne Herron without his consent. Some employees are so convinced that City Hall is bugged that the report recommended the building be swept for listening devices. The report stated that &amp;quot;nepotism exists.&amp;quot; For instance, council member Dottie Nash&amp;#039;s husband, son, the son&amp;#039;s fianc\u00E9e and an ex-girlfriend of the son were hired by the city. &amp;quot;City staff felt they had little choice in the decision to hire&amp;quot; the former girlfriend, the report stated. The report by lawyers with Parker Poe Adams and Bernstein details a divided City Council with two factions who often ignore the manager to get their way. As one interviewee stated, nobody can handle the council, and &amp;quot;if Jesus himself wanted to be the City Manager of Monroe, he would have been fired in 6 months.&amp;quot; Yeah, but three days later, He&amp;#039;d have been back on the job. And Mom hired not only the son, but the son&amp;#039;s fiancee and his ex-girlfriend? This is asking for trouble at the local bowling alley, let alone the halls of government. It must have set the toner cartridges flying around the ol&amp;#039; office. The report was released this week. The council had commissioned it to learn why Monroe has trouble keeping city managers.  Because nobody wants to work in crazy nuthouse town? Just guessing here. Or learn sign language, which is apparently the only safe way to communicate official business in crazy nuthouse town?  For the first time publicly, the report detailed what it described as a secret recording of Herron by Duncan, the police chief. The former city manager quit after council members had strong closed-door debate over his decision not to give Duncan a performance bonus. Meanwhile, an anonymous call by a woman threatening the chief was traced to Herron&amp;#039;s home. Duncan&amp;#039;s conduct does not appear to violate police policy against recording another member of the force without their knowledge because Herron is not an officer, the report said. But in an apparent reference to the recording, the report stated it may bring the agency into &amp;quot;disrepute or ridicule and may impair the performance of official duties and obligations&amp;quot; of city employees, and &amp;quot;may constitute unbecoming conduct of a police officer.&amp;quot; In an email statement, Duncan denied any wrongdoing. &amp;quot;My reputation has been built on honesty and my employees are aware of the consequences of being untruthful. I hold myself to that same standard. &amp;quot;I did nothing illegal, unethical or against policy. My actions were undertaken with the knowledge of the majority of city council members.&amp;quot; She declined further comment. So, to recap, in Monroe, it is against policy for a cop secretly to wiretap another cop, but a cop can pretty much covertly record almost everyone else in city hall. I believe we have found a place for the extended family of the late Kim Jong-Il to land if they still want a career in public service. As much fun as it would be to hang around Monroe to see that comes next, we have to be moving along now, down south to Alabama, where there is a state senator named Shadrack McGill, and we should pause here for a moment and appreciate the name, &amp;quot;Shadrack McGill,&amp;quot; and ponder the profound truth that Walt Kelly died much too soon. (pause) We continue. Senator Shadrack has issues with ladyparts and the uses to which the ladies with ladyparts put them. He has proposed the kind of &amp;quot;personhood&amp;quot; legislation for Alabama that was so tetched in the haid that even Mississippi voted against something very similar. What makes Senator Shadrack different is his impatience with secular euphemism. He takes his Old Testament whiskey straight, sir. No chaser. And it has brought him to a creative solution. The senator said that, after prayer, he thinks life begins at the moment of fertilization, be it inside the mother or &amp;quot;creatively outside the mother&amp;#039;s womb.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That union between the sperm and the egg is where life begins, and maybe where God places his spirit inside that child, so to speak,&amp;quot; McGill said. &amp;quot;Therefore, I would hope that the legislation that we push in the future would state that all the eggs fertilized need to be placed in the mother&amp;#039;s womb.&amp;quot; I am uncomfortable with the singular noun in that last sentence. Is McGill suggesting that there will be only one mother in whom all the eggs will be placed? There aren&amp;#039;t that many female Duggars. Or is he simply asking for volunteers? The Alabama Womb Squad. I see the ABC action series already. As we travel north, to the reformed state of Michissippi, where there are no legislators named Shadrack, as far as we can tell, but where all the screwy rules that have caused problems elsewhere get another lap around the track, and where the state legislators are going all-in on the state-mandated hoo-hah spelunking that caused so many problems in Virginia. It is, of course, all about the health of the ladiesm because that&amp;#039;s all that state Representative Joel (On The Job) Johnson cares about. And hitting what he aims at, of course. Let us hope On The Job is not aiming at us, as we flee again to warmer climes and find ourselves in Tennessee, where meddling with the ladyparts is seen as quite the career move among the politically ambitious. A woman who wants an abortion in Tennessee could soon be required by state law to visit a doctor for an ultrasound 24 hours before the procedure, where she would also be offered a printed copy of the ultrasound image, and be made to listen to the audible sounds of the fetus&amp;#039;s circulatory and respiratory systems. The bill was introduced by Tennessee State Sen. Jim Tracy, who has announced plans to run for Congress in 2014. Critics are accusing Tracy of introducing the legislation solely to bolster his primary bid against scandal-scarred incumbent Rep. Scott DesJarlais, a physician who had an affair with one of his patients and then pressured her to get an abortion, according to a report in the Huffington Post last year. If you&amp;#039;re keeping score at home, this is how you get ahead in Tennessee politics. You pass a law mandating that a woman get an unwanted medical procedure, and sit through a intrauterine special-effects demonstration, because that is the way you beat your fellow &amp;quot;pro-lifer&amp;quot; who knocked up the mistress and made her get an abortion. No wonder Davy Crockett went to Texas. It isn&amp;#039;t all about the ladyparts, however. We have state legislatures also rising up in resistance to the tyranny of the president&amp;#039;s executive suggestions concerning our firearms. The latest defense of freedom is in Louisiana, where four bills are circulating, at least two of which are aimed at nullification, which was a terrible idea the last time, and looks even worse in retrospect. Introduced by State Rep. Jim Morris, R-Oil City, House Bill 5 aims to prohibit the enforcement of federal restrictions regarding ownership or possession of semi-automatic firearms. The bill is also called &amp;quot;the Louisiana Preservation of Individual Gun Rights of Citizens Act&amp;quot;...Morris&amp;#039; bill is only the latest in a slew of legislation written in multiple states by a group calling themselves the &amp;quot;Tenthers,&amp;quot; a movement of mostly Tea Party members who say the 10th Amendment allows them to pass state legislation in direct opposition to federal law when they believe Washington has overstepped its constitutional mandate...While not saying how much support he expects his bill to get during the session, Thompson said he &amp;quot;expected there&amp;#039;s going to be a great deal of debate regarding the Supremacy Clause [and] of what in fact is constitutional.&amp;quot; Sure. It&amp;#039;s all fun until someone starts a civil war. As we leave Louisiana for Utah, and as culture shock slowly settles into our etouffee-riddled metalbolisms, we find that people are the same everywhere, and it&amp;#039;s a small world, after all, and we should be ready and able to kill deer and people to make it less crowded. Freshman Utah Rep. Brian Greene, R-Pleasant Grove, on Tuesday unveiled HB114 - a measure that would make any new federal legislation on guns void and declare Utah&amp;#039;s existing gun laws supreme. But the bill faces some high hurdles - namely a lengthy constitutional note written by the Legislature&amp;#039;s legal counsel declaring the measure is likely in violation of the supremacy and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution...Greene said the measure is necessary because Obama&amp;#039;s firearms agenda that includes tougher background checks, reduced magazine capacity for ammunition and a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban are direct attacks on the Second Amendment. He strongly disagreed with the constitutional note attached to his legislation. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s incomplete and incorrect,&amp;quot; Greene, an attorney, said. &amp;quot;I was just disappointed in it.&amp;quot; Because the Second Amendment is the trump card of the Constitution. Turn it over and everybody has to sigh deeply and give you their money. Representative Greene, however, is a full-service nullifier, having cut his teeth in the resistance to the dark powers of the Affordable Care Act. If things go bad in Utah, I predict a great career for him in Alabama, if he changes his name to Shadrack. We all live in crazy nuthouse town now. This is your democracy, America. Cherish it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17392/the-labs-and-shadrack/>