Good news, everyone!

They want to have a civil war. I say we just call them up and let them have Texas.

Well, if we can keep Austin. I kind of like Austin.

But it's not a deal-breaker.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-broden_22tex.ART0.State.Edition1.33278a9.html

WASHINGTON – Republican congressional candidate Stephen Broden stunned his party Thursday, saying he would not rule out violent overthrow of the government if elections did not produce a change in leadership.
In a rambling exchange during a TV interview, Broden, a South Dallas pastor, said a violent uprising "is not the first option," but it is "on the table." That drew a quick denunciation from the head of the Dallas County GOP, who called the remarks "inappropriate."

 You don't need to have an armed rebellion, unless you want to convince the "liberal elite" states to go with you. Hell, take the whole Confederacy. We won't miss it.

...and read only what I want you to read

We go now to rural South Carolina, where a jail has a particularly interesting idea for its inmates - you can read anything you want, as long as it's the Bible. No, not that one, the Christian one. Not only is this an obvious freedom of religion issue, but as the article points out, it limits prisoners' rights to things like a fair trial, as they aren't even allowed to read about their social-contract-given rights...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100604933.html?hpid=sec-religion

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the policy on behalf of Prison Legal News, a monthly journal on prison law. The 16-page complaint says officials at the Berkeley County jail in Moncks Corner, about 100 miles southeast of Columbia, are violating several of the magazine's and inmates' constitutional rights including free speech, freedom of religion and right to due process.
Since 2008, the publishers of Prison Legal News have tried to send magazines, letters and self-help books about prison life to several inmates at the jail, the complaint says. Some were sent back, and in July a jail official wrote an e-mail to the publishers referencing the jail's policy.
"Our inmates are only allowed to receive soft back bibles in the mail directly from the publisher," First Sergeant K. Habersham noted in the e-mail. "They are not allowed to have magazines, newspapers, or any other type of books."

Freedom of speech, as long as you say everything I make you say

Mississippi, the worst-educated, most obese state in the union, checks in with a little gem in their messed-up court system. Some judge unilaterally decides he is going to say the Pledge of Allegiance in his courtroom, and everyone's going to play. Fine, I guess, it's your courtroom. Oh wait - you mean to arrest anyone who doesn't do what you tell them to, on some shaky contempt-of-court grounds? Hmm.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/07/danny-lampley-arrested-pledge-of-allegiance_n_755074.html

TUPELO, Miss. — When a Mississippi judge entered a courtroom and asked everyone to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, an attorney with a reputation for fighting free speech battles stayed silent as everyone else recited the patriotic oath. The lawyer was jailed.
Attorney Danny Lampley spent about five hours behind bars Wednesday before Judge Talmadge Littlejohn set him free so that the lawyer could work on another case. Lampley told The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal he respected the judge but wasn't going to back down.

And in a two-for-the-price-of-one update, let's see what other stupid things happened in Mississippi in the last 20 years...

"I thought he was a disgrace to the United States," Bobby Martin, a 43-year-old self-employed maintenance worker, said of Lampley. "If he can't say that in front of a judge, he don't deserve to be here" in this country.
Others voiced support for the attorney.
"I'm speechless. The judge needs a reminder copy of the First Amendment," said Judith Schaeffer, a Washington attorney who, along with Lampley, successfully sued the Pontotoc school district in northern Mississippi in the 1990s to stop students from praying over the intercom.

The rest of the country figured out separation of church and state a long time ago. It's still confusing for the Confederates. They're still too busy separating their black and white proms.

It's like Russian Roulette, but every Friday night

Apparently, four states - we'll include Arizona as honorary Confederacy, as they're certainly trying to move that way in the short run - have taken the time in their busy state legislative calendar to explicitly allow the carrying of loaded handguns into bars. I'm never going to a bar in Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, or Tennessee. That shouldn't be too difficult, as I don't intend to find myself in any of those four states anytime soon...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/us/04guns.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

NASHVILLE — Happy-hour beers were going for $5 at Past Perfect, a cavernous bar just off this city’s strip of honky-tonks and tourist shops when Adam Ringenberg walked in with a loaded 9-millimeter pistol in the front pocket of his gray slacks.

Mr. Ringenberg, a technology consultant, is one of the state’s nearly 300,000 handgun permit holders who have recently seen their rights greatly expanded by a new law — one of the nation’s first — that allows them to carry loaded firearms into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol.
“If someone’s sticking a gun in my face, I’m not relying on their charity to keep me alive,” said Mr. Ringenberg, 30, who said he carries the gun for personal protection when he is not at work.

Drowning the government in a bathtub

... or when that doesn't work, just burn it to the ground.

The Tea Party mindset is already alive and well in South Fulton, Tennessee, where "don't tax me, bro" has led to serious cutbacks in such unnecessary government waste as schools, police, and fire protection. Because of this, the nearby town's fire department cannot afford to cover outlying areas; citizens are required to pay a $75 fee if they want to be protected. This is what local control looks like - you wanted the government out of your lives, here you go.

What blows me away about this story is that the fire department still responded, and then sat there watching the house burn down. Only in the Confederacy would they go ahead and waste the time and resources to drive out there, defeating the whole purpose of the fee.

http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/internal?st=print&id=104052668&path=/news/local

It was only when a neighbor's field caught fire, a neighbor who had paid the county fire service fee, that the department responded. Gene Cranick asked the fire chief to make an exception and save his home, the chief wouldn't.
We asked him why.
He wouldn't talk to us and called police to have us escorted off the property. Police never came but firefighters quickly left the scene. Meanwhile, the Cranick home continued to burn.
We asked the mayor of South Fulton if the chief could have made an exception.
"Anybody that's not in the city of South Fulton, it's a service we offer, either they accept it or they don't," Mayor David Crocker said.

 And this one went international. This is what the British learn about us. Swell.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8039814/Tennessee-Firemen-ignore-burning-house-over-unpaid-subscription-fee.html

About three hours after the fire began, Mr Cranick's son Timothy allegedly arrived at the South Fulton fire station and asked for Mr Wilds, the fire chief.
It is alleged that when Mr Wilds came forward and asked if he could help, Mr Cranick punched him. "He just cold-cocked him," Mr Crocker said.
Mr Cranick allegedly had to be pulled off Mr Wilds by other firefighters, after having knocked him to the ground. The 44-year-old is said to have been taken to hospital after injuring his hand committing the alleged assault.
Mr Wilds was said by officials to be "doing OK". The Cranicks are temporarily staying in a mobile home.

Every sentence of that anecdote reminds me why I don't live in the South.

The swine flu is part of God's plan. Vaccines, on the other hand...

A quick Google reveals that this sign hung at the "Cross J Cowboy Chapel" in Asher, Oklahoma. I wonder how Jesus fares against the control group....

How can they tell it's theirs?

Here's an interesting fundraiser idea: we'll dump a toilet in your yard, and you can pay us to remove it. For 50% more, we'll put it in the yard of your least favorite neighbor.

But in Bath County, Kentucky, the cheerleading squad is banking on the idea that their toilet may be the first to sit in some random Southern yard. Is this an actual attempt at raising money, or a political statement that our schools have literally run out of reasonable fundraisers?

http://bathcountynews.com/toilet-in-the-yard-problem-cheerleaders-have-solution-p3101-1.htm

Have you noticed a toilet sitting in an unusual place…such as someone’s front yard? The Wildcat Potty will be traveling around town, so come out and help the BCHS Cheerleaders “flush” the opponent! If the toilet lands in your yard, the cheerleaders will remove it for a fee of $10. If you want it delivered to someone specific, $5 more will do it. Want to make sure it never comes to your yard again? Just pay an additional $5. Join the Wildcat Spirit and support the BCHS Cheerleaders! Stop by our booth at Friday night’s game for more information!

Was Pythagoras a secret Communist too?

It's no wonder that Texas sees no harm in politicizing its educational system; they clearly weren't using it for anything else. Even the dumbest math student knows that a^2 + b^2 = c^2, although they may need some prodding to remember what it means. I will say, though, that I'm confident that none of my journalist friends would make this mistake:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/outdoors/stories/091610dnsposasser.291bac0.html

I watched hunters fire at doves at ranges I'm sure were 55 to 60 yards. In all likelihood, these particular hunters don't hunt doves other than opening weekend, but we all owe it to the game to become more proficient to judging distances and understanding our own capabilities. As Dirty Harry once noted, "a man's got to know his limitations."
If you own a spinning wing dove decoy, you can set up the decoy, which is about the same size as a live dove, at various distances. Try your hand at estimating the range to the decoy, then measure it with a laser rangefinder or by stepping off the actual distance.
Remember your old geometry lesson about the long side of a triangle being equal to the two shorter sides. That means a dove 40 yards out and 10 yards high is 50 yards from the gun and clearly out of range.

Nope. Fail #1: you can't even make a triangle with sides of 10, 40, and 50 (try it). Fail #2: it's got to be a right triangle for any such property to hold.

Journalists like to make fun of themselves for not knowing much math, but only in Texas would that extend all the way down to the sixth grade.

How to Keep Power

Step 1: elect morons to your state board of education
Step 2: breed until your state is populous enough to force textbook companies to do your bidding
Step 3: have the board of education set up a system guaranteed to create an infinite supply of unthinking, unquestioning footsoldiers

So it's pretty well known that Texas's state board of education has been having quite a kerfluffle about rewriting their history standards - they've already pretended that Phyllis Schlafly accomplished something, that Hispanic-Americans don't exist at all, and strategically selecting words such that kids won't think that there's even a ghost of a chance that a good capitalist (like Houston-based Enron) could possibly be doing anything but fulfilling the noblest American Dream.

But their assault on facts in an ideological struggle hasn't stopped yet. And, as I often say, when only one person thinks it's a competition, that person's likely to win. Mainstream historians aren't accustomed to fighting for their worldviews, so they will lose every time to an organized far-right moron brigade. Their latest game? Pretending that the US history curriculum has somehow been "anti-Christian", and that the existence of anti-Christian facts in history somehow makes that history incorrect.

A good article summarizing the original issue, for those who've been under a rock:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

I hear math's pretty conservative, though, so maybe we can call it even?

And on the new stuff:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/23/national/main6893460.shtml

Texas' State Board of Education - following a long history of throwing itself into "culture war" issues - is set to vote Friday on a resolution calling on textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books.

The resolution cites world history books no longer used in Texas schools that it says devoted more lines of text to Islamic beliefs and practices than Christian beliefs and practices.

"Diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts," reads a draft of the resolution, which would not be binding on future boards that will choose the state's next generation of social studies texts.

It couldn't be that we assume that kids who grow up in this country already get a pretty fair understanding of Christian practices, beliefs, and celebrations, and don't know crap about religions which predominate in the rest of the world. Nope, we counted the pages, and it turns out that McGraw-Hill hates Christians.

"The biggest problem I saw was their overreach not to be 'ethnocentric,"' McLeroy said of an Advanced Placement world history book approved in 2003 and still in use. "It's a very, very, very, very biased book. Christianity didn't even make it in the table of contents."

That's okay. McLeroy didn't make it PAST the table of contents, or I'm sure he'd see lovely bits about Christianity throughout the book. At least they don't want to cut out the Crusades.

Yet.

Why can't the church just be the state? Wouldn't that make it easier?

Our first winners come from the great state of Tennessee, where a local media outlet has picked up on a movement by the Alliance Defense Fund [I'm not linking that crap, you can Google it if you like] to encourage ministers across The South (actually, the whole country, but I'm assuming most of the takers are here) to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, claiming freedom of speech.

Someone forgot to tell them that freedom of speech doesn't equal freedom from the consequences of your speech. But hey, look on the bright side - they'll help reduce the budget deficit when they have to pay taxes on all those tithes for a whole year.

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=135560

"For governor, I'm going to encourage people to vote for Bill Haslam," said David Shelley, pastor of Smith Springs Baptist, one of seven Tennessee religious leaders who plan to take part in the pulpit protest. He also will throw his support behind Republican congressional candidate David Hall and Republican statehouse candidate Jim Gotto and urge his congregation to skip the spot on the ballot where state Sen. Thelma Harper, a Democrat, is running unopposed.
"My support for these candidates has nothing to do with their party or their skin color or any other non-biblically related issue," he said.
Haslam's campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the endorsement.
Shelley knows he runs the risk of provoking the Internal Revenue Service into revoking his 60-member church's tax-exempt status. In fact, he's hoping the IRS will try. But this is the second year he's baited the IRS from the pulpit, and still the agency has not risen to the bait.

Go go IRS! [how often do you get to say that and mean it?]

The South is Falling

Okay, so here's the deal. This is where we find stupid things The South (interpreted liberally) is doing, and we make fun of them for it. There's no overarching political purpose, although it will probably lean in whatever direction The South doesn't. Here to point out a logical fallacy? Go away. We're just having fun.