25 May 12
e
interrupt reality to bring you Arizona, once known as the Grand Canyon
state. So glorious, this home to sublime cacti and ugly javelina, an
outdoor stage for the high histrionics of geologic time, but so very,
very crazy. Even a spate of recent temperatures in the 105-degree range
cannot explain the latest doings of government by crackpots.
Let’s start with the secretary of state, a wide-eyed
fellow named Ken Bennett. He is Arizona’s chief elections officer. He
is a Republican. He is also co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s campaign in
Arizona. Recently, a few hundred people who probably spend their
lives searching the Internet looking for proof that the moon landing
was fake asked Mr. Secretary of State to investigate the birth
certificate of the president of the United States.
Bennett got right on it. He put the full force of his
office to work on a nonissue that was resolved for all but the
looniest of tunes months ago. And, at the height of his
“investigation,” just last week, he threatened to keep Obama off the
ballot if his questions were not answered to his satisfaction.
In response, more than 17,000 people this week put
their names on an online petition asking the secretary of state to
investigate whether Mitt Romney is a unicorn. Surprisingly, Bennett
has not been sniffing around rainbows, nor recruiting maidens with
expertise in medieval folklore to crack the unicorn question.
By midweek, Bennett had folded the circus tent, after
Hawaiian officials pointed him to the same public documents proving
the president’s American birth that have been around since baby
Barack took his first step. “If I embarrassed the state, I
apologize,” Bennett said Tuesday night.
A headline in the Arizona Republic - “Once Again,
Arizona is the Nation’s Laughingstock” - was too kind. A reader,
Steve Lagin of Phoenix, commenting on Bennett’s foray, said he
planned to order his new personalized Arizona license plates: “The
Dumb and Dumber State.”
Dumber is another duly elected official, Sheriff Joe
Arpaio. You know Sheriff Joe - he’s on Fox News constantly, providing
a balance to the conspiracy theorists who don’t have a badge. He is
Maricopa County’s top law enforcement officer.
Arpaio is now spending taxpayer money doing what a small group of Tea Party birthers have asked him to do. The sheriff sent a deputy, along with his volunteer “posse,” to Hawaii to look into what he believes is a conspiracy to dupe the American people into believing that their president is an American. The sheriff knows better.
“We feel that document is a forgery,” he said of
Obama’s long-form birth certificate, in an interview with the
Republic. “We’re trying to figure out who did it. That’s good police
work.”
Good police work and Sheriff Joe Arpaio do not go hand
in hand. For years, his office has been flooded with complaints
about terrible response time by deputies and his mediocre record at
solving major crimes. He is also under investigation by the Justice
Department for targeting Latinos and those who speak out against his
extracurricular crusades.
Arpaio was Bennett’s inspiration. Bennett wants to be
governor in the worst way, and for that he can look at the top of the
electoral pyramid in Arizona to Jan Brewer. She once blanked out in
dead-air silence when asked during a televised debate what she would
do for the people of Arizona. They rewarded her with the governor’s
office. Brewer was last seen on an airport tarmac wagging her finger
at the commander in chief.
A few days ago, Brewer vetoed a bill aimed at
promoting community service by high school students. This proposal
would have allowed kids who do more than 200 hours of good deeds to
receive an official commendation on their transcripts - a way to
boost their chances of getting into college, supporters said. Brewer
does not think government should be rewarding students this way, but
she does think government should be able to stop people and ask them to
prove their citizenship.
She’s gone to France now, on a taxpayer-funded mission
to convince Europeans that Arizona is a good place to relocate.
Brewer thinks that going to Paris on the public’s dime is something
that government should do, especially when it’s 110 degrees in
Phoenix.
There’s no mystery what a nation run by the Tea Party
and talk-radio zealots who’ve taken over the G.O.P. would look like.
It would be Arizona. This state used to have a very popular governor,
Jan Napolitano, who held back the wackos. But once she left to
become secretary of homeland security, the statehouse was left
without a stronghold of sanity.
The voters occasionally say they’ve had enough.
Russell Pearce, the man behind the show-your-papers immigration law,
was ousted in a recall last November. That election was an anomaly.
The people who now control the state are proof of the old saying that
in a democracy, voters get what they deserve.
1 comment:
Sadly, most of these Wacos are uneducated. Did they attend Arizona schools?
A nut case named Anonymous recently claimed here that the U.S. Constitution requires that a candidate for President must heve been born of U.S, citizens.
The problem is that there are so many outlets available today for these people to babble away. They play with media like a play-pen toy.
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