Capital punishment is Godâs gift to America! Hillary Clinton is such a sure thing, people already want to impeach her! Welcome to âThis Week In Crazy,â The National Memoâs weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Ted Cruz
Iâm perhaps expanding the purview of âThis Week In Crazyâ a bit here. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) didnât exactly announce that he saw Jesus in his freedom toast, nor did he run through an Iowa cornfield screaming that Sharia law was in the water.
But he is displaying a curious doublethink â contradicting himself, saying one thing, then saying the opposite. This might cause alarm among medical professionals if Cruz were just another joe. But since heâs a politician campaigning for the highest office in the land, itâs basically par for the course.
You see, Cruz has done another FEMA flip-flop of the kind weâve grown used to seeing from Texas pols. On one hand, they hate and fear the feds. On the other hand, they declare more emergencies than any other state in the union, so sometimes they need a hand.
This is how Cruz can have absolutely no qualms about voting no on a federal aid package for the victims of Superstorm Sandy in 2013, and then a few months later rally for such assistance when disaster befalls his own state in the form of a factory explosion.
So it was again on Tuesday, when Cruz went on the air to address the stateâs response to the flooding wreaking havoc in Central Texas. The senator said he was making sure the federal government would âfulfill its statutory obligations.â
You see, itâs okay to play the fiscal hawk and pretend that disaster relief is wasteful government spending. Until tragedy occurs on your home turf. Then itâs the governmentâs obligation to spend money on disaster relief â and as quickly as possible.
Next: Scott Walker
4. Scott Walker
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, possible GOP presidential candidate, loves him some ultrasounds. And you should too. Thatâs why he made them mandatory two years ago.
The conservative-backed measure required all abortion clinic doctors to have hospital admitting privileges; Walker signed it into law in 2013. And just last week a federal judge ruled that it was unconstitutional, saying any dubious benefits of the law were âsubstantially outweighed by the burden this requirement will have on womenâs health outcomes due to restricted access to abortions in Wisconsinâ â restricted access being, you know, kind of the idea in the first place.
But what Walker apparently doesnât understand is the animus against another clause of the law, which requires women seeking legal abortions to have ultrasounds. The nominal reason for this requirement, as Walker explained in a radio interview, is that ultrasounds are âa lovely thingâ and âjust a cool thing out there.â But then he went on to say:
We just knew if we signed that law, if we provided the information that more people if they saw that unborn child would make a decision to protect and keep the life of that unborn child.
So the law Walker championed was really just smokescreens within smokescreens. It wasnât about health; it was about limiting access. And itâs not that ultrasounds are âlovelyâ or âcoolâ â itâs that theyâre really effective tools for guilting women into doing what you want them to do.
Right Wing Watch has the audio:
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ViaWonkette andRight Wing Watch
Next: Pat BooneÂ
3. Pat Boone
American singer and conservative chatterbox Pat Boone is deeply concerned about America, and the Boy Scouts thereof.
Specifically, he is outraged that Boy Scouts of America president Robert Gates signaled that the organization was going to change its homophobic tune, and allow Scoutmasters who are openly gay into the fold.
What Gates describes as an evolution that will allow the organization to adapt to the âworld as it is,â Boone describes as the âsurrender of the Scoutsâ founding principles to the encroaching, virulent campaign of militant homosexual activists!â
Writing in WND Commentary Tuesday, Boone warns that the allowing gay Scoutmasters will âleave Scouting permanently marred, totally changed into something the founders would be appalled by â and that will inevitably bring about the collapse and demise of Scouting itself.â
Boone goes further, and rolls out the musty canard that America was âconceived in liberty, dedicated to Judeo-Christian biblical principlesâ (emphasis Booneâs). What this means, in Booneâs schema, is that âpeople, all people, could be free to live and serve God however they chose.â
So Pat, just so I have it straight⊠in America, you can be free to live⊠just as long as you serve God, the right God⊠in the right way, which is your wayâŠ. Is that about right?
Boone concludes: âOur whole society, our very way of life, is on the line.â
ViaRight Wing Watch
Next: S.O.S.
2. Special Operations Speaks
Special Operations Speaks (S.O.S.) is a political action committee with one Big Issue: the impeachment of Hillary Clinton â before she is even elected. In pursuit of this end they claim to have gathered 33,000 signatures.
You might reasonably ask how they expect to impeach Clinton, who currently holds no office. Hereâs their sneaky loophole: Theyâre trying to impeach Clinton for what she did as Secretary of State â an office she left over two years ago. Their position is that if they can impeach her, she can be precluded from holding any higher office.
(There were those on the left who suggested W. could be impeached after he left office. See how far that went.)
This comes to our attention via Americans Prosperity, a conservative newsletter. (Despite the similar name, it does not appear to be affiliated with the Koch Brothersâ PAC, Americans for Prosperity.) Among the morass of comments on the post enjoining people to sign the petition is a plea to censure âHITLARY CLINTONâ and to make sure âthat See You Next Tuesday will NEVER be Presidentâ (say it out loud).
The power of the ballot is wanting, apparently.
ViaAmericans Prosperity
Next: Bryan FischerÂ
1. Bryan Fischer
Capital punishment is not only good, itâs good for you, itâs God given, and â by God â itâs American!
This is the position of Bryan Fischer, spokesman for the anti-gay lobbying group American Family Association. (Despite the fact that AFA is already recognized as a hate group, itâs worth noting that they recently had to repudiate some of Fischerâs claims, which were too vile even for them.)
Fischer was responding to the news that Nebraska recently repealed capital punishment, the first Republican-controlled state to do so since North Dakota in 1973. The concurrence of the âpro-lifeâ party also supporting the death penalty is one of those perennial American ironies.
Turns out opposing the death penalty is just about the worst thing a conservative can do.
Fischer writes in the AFAâs blog this week that the death penalty is âGodâs idea, and he has delegated his authority to man to carry it out.â Whatâs more, âcapital punishment had been prohibited prior to the flood.â Turns out when we stop righteously executing each other, our species descends into a pit of evil and chaos that can only be washed out by a genocidal flood. âIt was as if God was saying, letâs try it your way as an experiment, and ban capital punishment, and see what happens.â
And Fischer has an answer ready for anyone brazen enough to invoke that peskiest of commandments: âThe best translation of the Hebrew verb is not âkillâ but âmurder.'â So, really, the Bible should translate the commandment as âThou shalt not murder,â in order to clarify that, in Fischerâs words, âthe prohibition is against the taking of innocent human life, not against the taking of all life under all circumstances.â
Fischer doesnât account for the several people who have been killed by the state who, it turned out, were innocent. Which is 1 out of every 25 inmates put to death, according to a recent study. So perhaps what God really meant was: âThou shalt not murder. But I shall give thee a 4 percent margin of error.â
Fischer concludes:
Bottom line: capital punishment is biblical, it is conservative, it is necessary, and it is quintessentially American. It is a tool God has given to us for our own good, in order that we may establish a society that is orderly, peaceful and just.
Our national pledge includes âjustice for all,â including the loved ones of murder victims. Letâs make sure they get the justice that is their due.
And letâs make sure that that âallâ doesnât include black defendants who are disproportionately sentenced to death, mentally disabled defendants who often canât mount a decent legal defense, or people who suffer protracted, agonizingly painful deaths due to botched executions.
Photo above: Jay Malone via Flickr