Arizona Loco

If you’ve been following the House Republican Follies since the Tea Party takeover, you might be forgiven for thinking that Washington has become the new rabid-bat-crazy center of the political universe, but you’d be wrong. With so much competition coming from the federal level, Arizona has decided to ramp up its claims to being not yet ready for democracy with a flood of new legislation, all of which is aimed at anything but its hopelessly out-of-balance budget. Arizona legislators have apparently decided if they ignore it, the budget deficit will go away—or maybe they could just bury it in the Grand Canyon—but in the meantime, there are a lot of issues more important than a silly operating budget, such as:

In light of its recent mass-murder tragedy, it’s time to do something about Arizona’s ultra-liberal gun laws; we need to make them even more liberal, so one proposal, for example, would allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus. I wish I could have carried a gun when I was a faculty member because it would have cut short a lot of student griping about grades.

And if Arizona students or faculty stop in for a drink after a tough day in the classroom, they can also take their guns into the bar with them, as long as they are not legally intoxicated. In which case I don’t know what. I wouldn’t want to be the bar tender who had to tell someone he was now legally intoxicated and had to turn over any guns he might be carrying. Here in Arizona that might be considered a completely unreasonable request. But could you call me a cab?

Also, Arizona will always resist federal efforts to curtail their gun rights, so they’ve passed a resolution not to comply with new ATF regulations that would require gun dealers to report purchase of more than two assault weapons in a given week. Lots of legitimate gun owners might want to purchase assault weapons for all their friends and family at Christmas. They make great stocking stuffers.

ATF is upset because thousands of assault weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities in their war on drug cartels turn out to have been sold in US border states, with some buyers making purchases in the hundreds. Arizona, with full support from the NRA, says it won’t comply because such reporting would be burdensome on gun dealers.

But what about illegal aliens? It’s been literally a couple of months since Arizona did something to crack down on illegals, so now a new law says that any illegal alien stopped for any traffic violation at all will serve one month in jail for illegally driving in Arizona. Also, they lose their car, confiscated and sold to help reduce the budget deficit. (See, I was wrong about the lack of concern over the budget deficit.) And only then do they get sent back to Mexico.

I assume all illegals are sent to Mexico, even if they’re from, say, Iceland. Let the Mexicans sort it out.

More on illegal aliens: schools are now responsible to check the legal status of suspicious students, such as students who speak Spanish or English with a Spanish accent or have skin darker than Jimmie Smits. Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that schools cannot deny an education to any students based on citizenship, Arizona assures us that this law is only intended as record keeping. Although school administrators who don’t report suspicious students to Immigration are committing a crime. Maybe they could lose their car.

Speaking of varmints, a new law now allows Arizonans to shoot varmints at night within city limits, because, of course, most varmints only come out at night so you can’t shoot them during the day. Varmints include skunks, jack rabbits, coyotes and raccoons and the like, although since coyotes are the single-best population control for jack rabbits, it’s unclear if you can shoot a coyote while it’s actually eating another varmint. But safety is always the first concern, so you can’t shoot varmints within ¼ mile of a residence. Which strikes me as a little overly restrictive because most people bring their kids in before dark anyway, so if it’s moving around the neighborhood after dark, it’s probably a varmint.

How about those darn abortions? If a woman wants an abortion for reasons of genocide, the doctor must refuse or go to jail without collecting his two-hundred dollars. Genocide by abortion would include, for example, having an abortion because you don’t like your embryo’s race or gender. So doctors I guess would have to ask “What race would your baby be if it actually became a baby?” and then if the woman said maybe “Chinese,” the doctor would have to say “And how do you feel about that?” and if the woman gave the wrong answer the doctor would have to tell her she would have to have the baby after all and maybe try to adopt it out to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But if she said she actually liked the Chinese, which is how she got pregnant in the first place, but still wanted the abortion, then that would be okay.

Speaking of babies, Arizona has repealed birth-right citizenship by declaring that babies born on American soil are no longer automatically American citizens, but only in Arizona I guess because the Constitution still confers birthright citizenship on anyone born on American soil, although lots of people don’t like that. Thus, you might be an American citizen in Texas, for example, but not in Arizona. Then, if you got caught speeding in Arizona, they could put you in jail and sell your car to lower the deficit and send you back to Mexico, even if you’re from Texas.

You can see how this would be a good deal for Arizona. But still, there are all these burdensome federal laws and regulations, so Arizona has now declared that it no longer has to abide by any federal dictates it finds to be unconstitutional. Is it just me, or does this amount to about ninety percent secession from the union?

Which brings me back to an idea I first expressed here some time ago, which is that states should be legally allowed to secede. At first I thought we could revisit the whole civil war thing, but now I can see it should be on a state-by-state basis. Where in the Constitution does is say you can’t decide you don’t want to be a state anymore? After two hundred years you still can't change your mind? This is like the worst ever cell phone plan. No one would stand for it.

Seriously, I think we’d all be better off if a few states like Arizona and Texas and Alaska could just drop out. Then all the tea partiers who don’t like it here any more could move to one of the new sovereign republics and the rest of us could get serious about everything else again.

Stupid idea? Let’s float it in the Arizona legislature.