give us liberty or give us another drink

I read the news today, oh boy... "When Anthony Dahm visited Champps Americana restaurant and bar Thursday, his menu of options had doubled: Thanks to a change in Virginia's gun laws, he could carry a semiautomatic handgun hidden behind the pouch holding his children's allergy medicine -- as well as the one worn openly on his hip -- without fear of committing a crime." Well isn't that special? What the Washington Post left out, what the Washington Post egregiously omitted, was the fact that when Anthony Dahn finally did get to proudly walk into Champps American with a semiautomatic stealthily hidden behind his sickly child's medicine and another semiautomatic on his hip... At least I think his other gun is a semiautomatic, it's kind of hard to tell, the way that particular sentence is written, but for the sake of the argument let's say that it is. But that's about all we know for sure, even though we don't really know that for sure. Donald Rumsfeld would say that it's an unknown unknown. Our known unknown is that we know we don't know the make of either gun, nor the caliber, or even the number of bullets in each weapon. Damn those hacks at the Washington Post and their shoddy reporting. I'm rambling. I'm cogent and succinct, but I am rambling. Back to the point, when Anthony Dahn finally did walk into Champps Bar with whatever type of firearms he was carrying, he was immediately treated as a second class citizen and denied his rights as guaranteed by the Constitution - the freedom to knock a few back. Unbelievable isn't it? With one hand the government begrudgingly grants him his 2nd amendment rights and with the other hand it yanks away his 21st amendment rights. That is not what I call progress. Virginia is a state where not only ex-felons and the mentally unstable are allowed to name their poison, but even those accepting unemployment or welfare are free to imbibe. Just not if they're packing heat. What the hell are you going to do in a bar if they won't let you get hammered - have a Coca Cola or a glass of ice tea? I suppose that you could play the pinball machine for a while, but even that would quickly grow boring without the aid of a few bourbons. What the state is doing is creating a situation where people will have to stay outside in their vehicles to get loaded, and then when they come inside, risk becoming so enraged by the denial of their rights that they're likely to seek a second-amendment solution to that outrage. That's crazy. I mean, most gun owners are law respecting people, but you can only push a man so far. You know what else is crazy? Anthony Dahn walking into a bar with two semi-automatics. Listen to me, Tony, if you think you're going to need more than one semi-automatic weapon when you venture into a tavern, you probably need to find somewhere less dangerous to wet your whistle. I've personally never been to Champps, but the warning signs are blazingly clear - they don't even know how to spell their own name, for chrissake.

Virginia felons get new writes

As part of the celebration of Confederate History Month, Governor Bob McDonnell has introduced new requirements for nonviolent felons trying to have their voting rights restored, requirements that are nostalgically reminiscent of the literacy tests from the good old days of yore. Virginia, which is one of only two states that require the governor to sign off on the restoration of voting rights, will now become the first ever to require that felons submit an essay detailing their contributions to society since their release from prison. "After suffering through two Democratic governors, this state has become a little too... sissified, for lack of a better word," explains McDonnell. "You know, Virginia is for lovers and all that. I want to put some teeth in that - Virginia is for gun lovers, Virginia is for God lovers, and Virginia is for lovers of the Confederacy, but no way is Virginia for criminal loving liberals, and from now on, if you're going to do the crime, you're going to write the essay." "Five hundred words, 12pt Times New Roman, double-spaced on bonded paper," chuckles McDonnell. "Spelling counts. Each essay should be accompanied with an 8x10 glossy of the felon looking really sorry, and a fifty dollar processing fee." The governor dismisses black leaders and civil rights groups who say this is a method of disenfranchising black voters and poor people in general. "We take it as a given that any ex-con trying to get a job in this state is going to be poor, and there's no way on earth we have of knowing whether an essayist is black or white. Except for the photos. And we're only looking at those to see whether they look sorry or not." McDonnell also brushes aside concerns that evaluations of the essays might be somewhat subjective. "We've hired a group of Carmelite Nuns to read these essays. They're the most objective Nuns in the world, so there shouldn't be any problem. They'll be ranking the essays on four factors: grammar, plausibility, continuity, and spirituality. And a word to the wise, here. I would suggest foregoing the use of any profanity."

Virginia devolves some more

In February, Virginia's newly elected stealth-theocratic Governor Bob McDonnell, as one of his first acts in office, signed an executive order which removed sexual orientation from state non-discrimination laws. Protests quickly broke out across Virginia, as critics rightly pointed out that for all practical purposes this ruling would only impact GLBT workers at the state and municipal level. "This does nothing at all for the business owners, landlords, and millions of ordinary Virginians who want to discriminate against the gays," said Congressman Bob Goodlatte, echoing the sentiment expressed by many of his constituents. "Course I guess we can always just assume the law is on our side, cause I'm guessing that it probably is." The McDonnell administration has now taken it's first step to bring the order into focus, with state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli telling Virginia public colleges and universities to rescind policies that ban discrimination on sexual orientation, saying they have extended these protections 'without authority'. "I know our state slogan is 'Virginia is for lovers'," said Cuccinelli, making a yucky face, "But I don't even want to think about what some of these perverts are doing on the campuses of our fine Virginia schools. Or even off campus. It doesn't matter. These are our schools and these are our rules. And furthermore, the state assembly is readying a bill to change our state slogan to 'Virginia is for gun lovers'." Many of the schools are balking at the order. "As of today, our nondiscrimination policy stands as it is," says Virginia Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski. "We've got to get approval from our Board, and they don't meet all that often. And whoa, look at this, our agenda for the next meeting looks pretty filled up." "Look, we're telling the schools to stop non-discriminating, not to start discriminating, at least right now," states Cuccinelli. "If they want to give me any lip about it, well, I don't know, the order doesn't give me any enforcement mechanism, so I guess I'll just have to ask the Governor." "I know what we'll do," McDonnell said brightly. "We'll cut their budgets... Oops, I forgot, we've already done that."