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" Welcome back to our semi-regular weekly survey of what&amp;#039;s happenin&amp;#039; in the states, those wild and free places to which conservative politicians will tell you we should ship COD most of the functions of the federal government because that&amp;#039;s where the folks do governmentin&amp;#039; the best, by cracky. We begin in Tennessee, where Davy Crockett was born on a mountaintop so that Willard Romney one day would have something to talk about besides being a rich guy who we should all allow to buy the country. Many years ago, Tennessee had a law forbidding the teaching of evolution in the public schools. A guy named John Scopes broke the law, and his trial so embarrassed both Tennessee and fundamentalist Protestantism that they both largely disappeared from national politics for almost 60 years. Undaunted, however, and sensing that the country had not been amused by Tennessee for a long time, the state senate this week passed a bill apparently aimed at producing a sequel to Inherit The Wind, thereby bringing an economic boost to the local economy: The bill was approved in the House last year but now must return to that body for concurrence on a Senate amendment that made generally minor changes. One says the law applies to scientific theories that are the subject of &amp;quot;debate and disputation&amp;quot; \u2014 a phrase replacing the word &amp;quot;controversial&amp;quot; in the House version.  Ah, the old &amp;quot;teach the controversy&amp;quot; dodge, fairly defined as &amp;quot;The voices in my head have a First Amendment right to be heard!&amp;quot; This nonsense passed the state senate 24-8. If Tennessee enacts this law, somebody will sue. A federal court will chuck it into the Tennessee River, and there will have been a lot of anger and expense wasted for nothing. Also, there&amp;#039;s a bill moving through that same legislature that would allow the Ten Commandments to be posted in public buildings because they are &amp;quot;historic documents.&amp;quot; Doesn&amp;#039;t this pretty much make any representation of the Ten Commandments a &amp;quot;graven image,&amp;quot; which is specifically forbidden by the Second of them? Oh, sorry, I forgot. The Second Commandment is the right to bear arms. My bad. Elsewhere on and about good old Rocky Top, the Tennessee legislature produced bills that would make it mandatory to publish the names of doctors who perform abortions in that state, because absolutely nothing bad could ever come of that. (Cooler heads have prevailed, however briefly, on that one.) And it sent out a bill that would put the very right to choose up to the voters in 2014 by way of constitutional amendment. Remember this last part the next time a &amp;quot;reasonable centrist&amp;quot; tells you that there will be no problem if Roe v. Wade is repealed, and the question is &amp;quot;sent back to the states&amp;quot; where, naturally, we will all find &amp;quot;common ground.&amp;quot; Soaring high on great updrafts of barely recognizable human thought, we find ourselves circling Idaho, where the legislature was considering one of those Dildos Mandating Dildos proposals, and where State Senator Chuck Winder of Boise found himself doing some cogitating on the subject: &amp;quot;Rape and incest was used as a reason to oppose this. I would hope that when a woman goes into a physician, with a rape issue, that that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage, or was it truly caused by a rape.&amp;quot;  Chuck Winder: Definer Of Rape. Alas for Chuck, the rest of the Idaho legislature failed to be convinced by the searing logic of his position, and the bill is pretty much dead. For the moment. (This is an important point. Last night, on her show, kindly Doc Maddow and Chris Hayes were talking about how political pushback had foiled for the moment some of the more egregious laws that had come sliming out of Republican state legislatures around the country. The one thing to remember in all these discussions is that these people simply do not quit. The Scopes Trial, after all, was in 1925.) The great winds of idiocy blow us south, then, to Florida, where we learned only this week what happens when you pass a law (because the NRA wants it passed) putting guns in the hands of every Tom, Dick, and Zimmerman in the state. (Again, we cite Philip Bosco as the town judge in the great movie, Nobody&amp;#039;s Fool: &amp;quot;Ollie, you know my opinion on arming morons. If you arm one of them, you have to arm them all. Otherwise, it&amp;#039;s not fair.&amp;quot;) (And let&amp;#039;s pause for a moment and congratulate Willard Romney for gaining the oh-so-very-well-timed endorsement of Jeb Bush, the former governor who signed the arm-the-morons bill. Well-played, the both of you.) Under the leadership of Rick Scott, the bald-headed Medicare scam artist that Florida chose for its governor, Florida&amp;#039;s state government pretty much has turned into such a profitable whorehouse for plutocrats that Scott might as well put up velvet wallpaper in the legislative chamber and hire a few dozen piano players. This presents us with another problem with the theory that governments are best left to the states. State governments are cheaper and easier to buy. The strong tropical breezes carry us north to Indiana, where the state&amp;#039;s value-sized governor, Mitch (Presidential Kindling) Daniels signed a law that gives citizens the right to resist physically any activities by law enforcement that the citizen believes to be against the law. Now, the war on drugs, to name only one theater of conflict to which this law likely will become relevant, is idiotic and savage, and no-knock drug raids are a blight on the Constitution. But am I the only one here who believes that this thing has the potential to turn every traffic stop into the OK Corral? Governor Daniels assures us that&amp;#039;s not the case, arguing convincingly, as only he can, that he signed a law that nobody ever is going to use anyway: &amp;quot;Contrary to some impressions, the bill strengthens the protection of Indiana law enforcement officers by narrowing the situations in which someone would be justified in using force against them,&amp;quot; Daniels said. &amp;quot;Unless a person is convinced an officer is acting unlawfully, he cannot use any force of any kind. In the real world, there will almost never be a situation in which these extremely narrow conditions are met.&amp;quot; One of the bill&amp;#039;s main supporters, however, is more sanguine about the average Hoosier&amp;#039;s right to open fire when he sees his inalienably rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of jaywalkers threatened: State Rep. Jud McMillin, R-Brookville, a co-sponsor of the law, said the high court&amp;#039;s decision went too far because &amp;quot;everybody should have the right to resist anything that&amp;#039;s unlawful from anybody.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m sure that the first time a black defendant exercises his rights under the new law against, say, a white cop, Representative Jud will be there for the defense. I&amp;#039;m also sure that unicorns graze on my hedges in the misty morning light. Luckily, the stratospheric currents of unbridled eccentricity waft us up and out of the range of the good citizens of Indiana, and they carry us down to our usual landing ground in Arizona, where the legislative foozling with ladyparts reached a crescendo this week. Let&amp;#039;s chat with state representative Terri Proud \u2014 &amp;quot;Are we just proud? Hell, no. We&amp;#039;re Terri Proud!&amp;quot; \u2014 shall we? She has a modest proposal for women who are thinking about exercising their constitutional right to choose while Ms. Proud is around. &amp;quot;Personally I&amp;#039;d like to make a law that mandates a woman watch an abortion being performed prior to having a &amp;quot;surgical procedure&amp;quot;. If it&amp;#039;s not a life it shouldn&amp;#039;t matter, if it doesn&amp;#039;t harm a woman then she shouldn&amp;#039;t care, and don&amp;#039;t we want more transparency and education in the medical profession anyway? We demand it everywhere else. Until the dead child can tell me that she/he does not feel any pain - I have no intentions of clearing the conscience of the living \u2014 I will be voting YES.&amp;quot; Terri will be voting yes until dead children tell her not to do so. And don&amp;#039;t bring your conscience around her to be cleared. TERRI DOESN&amp;#039;T DO CONSCIENCES! This is your democracy, America. Cherish it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13309/tennessee-evolution-law-7529437/>