We want Justice to be politically independent

Kevin Drum had a nice post today about the fact that we very much want the presidency to be isolated from what happens at the IRS and the Department of Justice.  We absolutely to no want executive branch using these agencies for political gain.  Thus, in these “scandals” it’s not surprising that none of this has gotten anywhere near President Obama.  And that’s a very good thing.  Drum:

Chris Matthews, for example, was howling the other day about Obama’s ignorance of the AP phone record subpoena, which he thought was indefensible. “You don’t think Bobby would have called Jack?” he asked incredulously. And he’s right: Bobby would have called Jack. And that would have been wrong, which is why the Justice Department is now kept at a much greater distance from the White House. This is universally considered a good thing, which explains Jay Carney’s “Are you serious?” when he was asked about this by reporters a few day ago. Surely we haven’t forgotten so soon after Watergate exactly why we prefer for the president to be kept very far away from criminal investigations?

Ditto for the IRS, which for similar reasons is an agency that we’ve deliberately set up to be independent of the president. We don’t want the president to have any influence over the IRS, and we don’t want him kept apprised of the details of ongoing inquiries. It would have been a scandal if Obama had known any details about the IG investigation of the IRS’s tea party targeting.

Meanwhile, here in NC, the new Senate budget proposal is calling for taking the State Bureau of Investigations– which investigates public corruption among other things– and moving its oversight from the independent state Attorney General’s office (our AG is elected statewide, not appointed by the governor) and moving it to the state Department of Public Safety, which is overseen by a gubernatorial appointment.

The SBI supplied much of the manpower in the recent probes into the campaigns and administrations of former Govs. Bev Perdue and Mike Easley, both Democrats. SBI investigators helped build cases against Jim Black, a former Democratic Speaker of the House who went to federal prison on a public corruption charge, and Meg Scott Phipps, a former Democratic state Agriculture Commissioner who served time in federal prison for perjury and obstruction of justice.

The State Highway Patrol and Department of Correction also have been the targets of numerous investigations, as have other state agencies.

For 75 years, Cooper said, the SBI has “provided a check on power.” Prosecutors, courts and the public, he argued, have relied on the investigations because of the SBI’s independence.

“No matter who controls the state legislature, the governor’s office or the attorney general’s office, this system works best,” Cooper said. “Putting the SBI under any governor’s administration increases the risk that corruption and cover-up occur with impunity.”

To our governor’s credit, he opposed this.  The Republican Senator who proposed it said will save $2 million a year.  To which all I have to say, some times it actually costs money to do the right thing.  Deal with it.

How we trace guns in crimes

Great story on NPR this afternoon that clearly demonstrates the absolutely absurd hold the gun nuts have on our policy.  Due to their fear of gun registration being just a small step from gun confiscation (and yet giving government the power to levy income taxes has not led to 100% taxes and communism) the law makes it ridiculously difficult and arcane for law enforcement to track down guns used in crimes.  We pay government employees to literally sort through boxes and boxes of paper gun records because heaven forbid the government should actually have a computerized record keeping system for gun sales.  Obviously the second amendment means nothing and government is a tyranny if they have records of who purchased what gun.

Opponents of expanding background checks for gun sales often raise the fear that it would allow the government to create a national gun registry — a database of gun transactions. In fact, federal law already bans the creation of such a registry. And the reality of how gun sales records are accessed turns out to be surprisingly low-tech…

Many people assume that ATF has a massive database of gun owners at its fingertips and can instantly access that information. The reality is very different. It involves lots of phone calls — and often, manual labor.

Here’s how it works:

Local law enforcement sends ATF the particulars on the gun they’ve seized: the manufacturer, model, caliber, serial number. ATF then starts running that information back through the distribution chain, contacting the gun manufacturer — say, Glock or Smith & Wesson — and the manufacturer checks its records and identifies the wholesaler it sold the firearm to.

Then, ATF contacts the wholesaler and goes down the record chain until it finds the retail gun dealer. It’s that dealer who should be able to say who bought that firearm.

It’s up to the federally licensed gun dealer to keep the record of each gun purchase. It’s a three-page form called a 4473 that the buyer and dealer have to fill out before a sale…

On a recent visit, the center received a dozen boxes of records from an Alabama gun dealer who’s gone out of business. But these gun sale records can come in by the truckload — as many as 3,000 boxes at a time, hundreds of millions of pages in all. Those pages are stored in stacked cartons that line the walls and reach the ceiling. Boxes are everywhere. All of these cartons hold records of gun sales from businesses that have folded.

“On any given day, we will have to hand-search these records,” says ATF Special Agent Charles Houser, who runs the National Tracing Center.

That’s right, hand-search.

That means that if it’s a gun maker or seller who’s gone out of business, the workers here have to painstakingly leaf through these documents one page at a time looking for a match to the gun they’re trying to trace.

“The idea that we have a computer database and you just type in a serial number and it pops out some purchaser’s name is a myth,” Houser says.

This is just nuts!  The technology is simple.  The real chance that the government will use gun tracing to take away the guns of legitimate gun owner is zero.  The chance that a searchable database would lead to putting more bad guys in jail is basically 100%  Now, I always preach to my classes that there’s a reason we don’t let the police do whatever they want and that sometimes it’s even okay to let bad guys get away to protect an important principle like the 4th amendment– the alternative being a police state.  So, I’m not just idly saying this.  But if we just let the police search whatever they want without a warrant its pretty clear that the innocent will seriously suffer and freedom will massively erode.  But simply allowing the government to have a record of gun transactions in no way leads to an implicit reduction for legally appropriate people to own firearms.

God help us

Latest “scandal“?  Obama had marines hold umbrellas over him and the Turkish Prime Minister during an outdoor news conference:

It was a lighthearted moment in the midst of a grim few days for the White House. But in a week of Benghazi e-mails, Justice Department subpoenas and Internal Revenue Service targeting, some of the administration’s critics saw another example of overreach.

“Obama breaches Marine umbrella protocol,” read the headline on one conservative blog.

Per Marine Corps uniform regulations, the men are not allowed to carry or use umbrellas while in uniform. Female Marines can carry “an all-black, plain standard, or collapsible umbrella at their option during inclement weather,” and only with service and dress uniforms…

“Obama expects our troops to hold damn umbrellas rather than go inside: It’s disrespectful, inconsiderate, classless,” tweeted Lou Dobbs.

“Mr. President, when it rains it pours, but most Americans hold their own umbrellas,” former Alaska governor Sarah Palin addedon Facebook.

The conservative Move America Forward PAC likened the umbrella-holding to what conservatives view as Obama’s weak response to September’s attack in Benghazi, Libya. A fundraising e-mail from the group read, “Rain: ‘Hold My Umbrella.’ Benghazi: ‘Stand Down.’ ”

Just pathetic.  But, wow, I love that little anecdote about the gender divide within Marine regulations.  I had no idea holding an umbrella was so un-manly.  From now on I’ll just come to class soaking wet on rainy days and feel secure in my manhood.

Scandal in name only

Ezra takes a nice comprehensive look about what we know about all these “scandals.”  Actual common theme: there’s no there, there.  There’s simply absolutely no evidence of wrong-doing at the White House in any of these so-called “scandals.”   Not to say there couldn’t be in the future, but isn’t the whole point of a scandal that the president actually did something wrong, and not just “whoops” wrong, but subverting democracy wrong.  And, again, so far there is zero evidence of that.  I lie his conclusion:

And then, of course, there are all the other problems Congress is ignoring, from high unemployment to sequestration to global warming. When future generations look back on the scandals of our age, it’ll be the unchecked rise in global temperatures, not the Benghazi talking points, that infuriate them.

Meanwhile, EJ Dionne, more explicitly takes on the media narrative driving this:

I know, I know: This “confluence” of “scandals” spells “trouble” for the Obama administration. Well, sure, this has been hell week for the president. But what spells trouble for our country is our apparent eagerness to avoid debate about discrete problems by sacrificing the particulars and the facts to the idol of political narrative. It’s a false god.

And finally, on the IRS aspect, clearly there was wrong-doing, but it really is quite scandalous in itself what political groups are able to get away with due to lack of IRS enforcement:

The real scandal is not that the IRS made inquiries to ensure political groups were not benefiting improperly from 501(c)(4) status, it is that the agency fails to enforce the law even against the most blatant violators. Federal law states that these groups must operate “exclusively for purposes beneficial to the community as a whole,” but IRS regulations allow groups “primarily” engaged in social-welfare activities to take advantage of tax-exempt status. Based on this misreading of the law, many 501(c)(4) groups have interpreted this to mean they can spend up to 49 percent of their funds on political activities. Some groups, such as AAN, willfully violate even this standard with no apparent consequences…

Sadly, the byproduct of the IRS’ bungling efforts to follow the law likely will result in diminished enforcement. Opportunists will use this imbroglio to bolster arguments that a crackdown on social-welfare groups abusing their tax status is political; a weakened IRS will simply fold. We saw this in 2011, as social-welfare organizations began raking in secret donations made with the intent of influencing the 2012 elections. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, one of those leading the charge against the IRS now, railed against the agency for attempting to enforce a law requiring those who contribute to 501(c)(4)s to pay gift taxes. In short order, the IRS retreated, effectively allowing donors to ignore the law.

As Congress holds hearings and demands answers from the IRS, members on both sides of the aisle should consider a solution to this problem: banning political spending by 501(c)(4) groups. The effect of such a change would allow the IRS to get out of the business of attempting to ascertain the goals of these organizations, without impairing groups’ participation in the electoral process.

NC: the big picture

The N&O had a story earlier this week ostensibly about the legislature’s attempts to override local smoking bans, but it was really a nice take on the big picture of the over-reach of the Republican legislature:

The clash between state lawmakers and local governments had become readily apparent earlier this session.

Republican legislative leaders pushed to approve measures to void the city of Raleigh’s lease on the Dix property, transfer control of the Charlotte airport to a regional authority, redraw Wake County school board districts, give the state all environmental regulatory power and limit local governments’ ability to impose design standards on homes.

House lawmakers continued the effort this week, giving final approval Tuesday to a measure that limits the ability of cities and counties to ensure the safety of low-income housing and crack down on neighborhoods with high crime rates.

A day earlier, the House passed legislation 73-41 to prevent local governments from automatically deducting union dues from employees’ paychecks, a move that would affect firefighters and police officers.

Another provision in the bill restricts a locality from requiring a business to assume any liability for its carbon footprint. If approved, it would end Durham County’s commuter ordinance that requires businesses to implement plans to manage its employees’ transportation needs.

“There is no apparent limit to the micromanaging that this legislature will consider,” said Russell Killen, mayor of Knightdale, which recently voted to ban smoking at a 70-acre park it plans to open this summer. “I simply cannot understand why this legislature appears to want to remove all local control and have legislators from Manteo to Murphy making all of the decisions on how … self-reliant small towns shape their communities,” Killen said.

Municipal leaders for months have argued – to little avail – that local governments represent the will of their communities better than larger government bodies.  [emphasis mine]

And, of course, that’s an argument we’ve been hearing Republicans make for as long as I can remember.  The Wrightsville Beach case is quite instructive:

Wrightsville Beach leaders point to a recently passed anti-smoking referendum as a perfect example.

In November, Wrightsville Beach residents voted by nearly a 2-1 margin in favor of a measure to ban smoking on the town-owned shorefront.

“This wasn’t the decision of a board majority,” said Tim Owens, town manager for Wrightsville Beach. “This was the direct will of the people.”

The smoking legislation would affect 15 county governments, 41 municipal governments and 35 of North Carolina’s 58 community colleges that prohibit smoking on all outdoor public grounds, according to the state Division of Public Health.

Republicans often accuse the federal government of “arrogance,” but it is truly hard to imagine more arrogant government policy-making than what we’ve been seeing here in NC.

Ezra Klein: fiction writer

OMG, Ezra imagines (informed speculation) what Obama would say if he “went Bulworth.”  What results is an absolutely brilliant critique of the media, among other things.  Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.  Here’s my favorite part:

Q: Sir, you’ve been criticized in recent weeks for being overly passive. And as you say here, it’s your view the government isn’t doing enough on the problems facing the American people. Isn’t it up to you to lead?

OBAMA: Let me be clear. This kind of question right here is the problem. You have no idea what it actually is that you’re asking. If you did, you wouldn’t use the word “lead.” You’d be specific. You’d say, shouldn’t I be putting forward a budget that includes serious compromises on entitlement spending to show I’ll meet the Republicans halfway. But I did that. You’d say shouldn’t you be reaching out more to the Hill, trying to build some personal relationships with more congressional Republicans, maybe invite Paul Ryan to lunch? But I did that. You’d say, shouldn’t you just sign an executive order repealing sequestration. But I can’t do that, and you know that. You could say, why aren’t you ordering the army to march on Capitol Hill and simply take the place over? But I’m not going to stage a coup, and you don’t want me to.

So you use this word “lead.” And it gives you cover. It lets you say the fault here is on both sides. The Republicans, they won’t compromise, and they won’t work with me, and they keep threatening to shut down the government or breach the debt ceiling. But, on the other hand, I’m not leading. And so it’s all kind of even. And then no one can criticize you for being partisan. No one can say you’re taking a side. No one can criticize you at all because no one can argue with the word “lead” until you define it, which you never do.

But let me be clear, you are taking a side. You’re taking the side of this town not working again. You’re taking the side of the media backing off of its role as a neutral arbiter and becoming an enabler of whatever irresponsible political strategy one party or the other happens to pick that week. You’re taking the side of what’s easy for you over what your readers and listeners need you to do.

Look, I’m happy to lead. I’ve sent young men and women to die in battle. I ordered a raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound that, if it went wrong, could’ve destroyed my presidency. I made decisions to rescue banks and automakers that honestly turned my stomach. I’ve told my base things they really didn’t want to hear on entitlements and the public option and the Bush tax cuts. I pushed health-care reform over the finish line even after the polls had dropped and everyone was saying it would be my Waterloo. I’ve proven that I’ll lead. I need some Republicans to lead, too. That’s the only way this works. Yes, in the front.

Damn, that’s good.  Your turn President Obama.

No Sharia for us!

Hooray!  As a citizen of NC, it looks like I’ll be protected from the scourge of Sharia law, as the NC House has successfully passed a bill on this.  Apparently, our constitution is in real trouble, and only NC Republicans stalwart efforts to pass anti-Sharia laws, etc., can save us:

Bill sponsor Rep. Chris Whitmire, R-Transylvania, disagreed.

“Take it as fact that this is a very, very present threat that must be dealt with,” Whitmire said. “We are making sure that the most fundamental basis on which we exist is protected.”

Rep. John Blust, R-Guilford, disagreed with arguments that the state and federal constitution already protect citizens against foreign law. ”I’ve always wanted to depend on our own constitution. But we have seen that document put in, frankly, grave danger,” he said.

“In the United States, there is the Sharia law,” said Blust. “It is fundamentally at odds with U.S. jurisprudence. The two systems cannot be reconciled. Individual rights are not recognized.”

Blust said the “goal” of proponents of Sharia law is to infiltrate other cultures. He said Democrats should be aware of the threat.

“Some of the groups of people that are championed on the progressive side are absolutely trod upon under Sharia,” Blust warned. “For example, homosexuals are stoned. I don’t want to see that creeping here.”

Rep. Larry Pittman, R-Cabarrus, agreed, likening the threat of Sharia law to Pearl Harbor. That comparison is also frequently used by anti-Islamic activist Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy.

Good Lord!!  These people are elected damn representatives and living in some completely alternate reality!  How depressing.  And how embarrassing for the sane Republicans out there (who I’m still waiting to hear speak up).  I love how they are trying to get liberals on board because if we don’t, they’ll be out there stoning gay people on Hillsborough Street before you know it.  I totally accept that there’s plenty of crazies when it comes to politics.  I have a very hard time accepting the fact that they are now writing the laws for my state.  

Teen pregnancy

With the recent discussion of abortion, contraception, etc., I’m reminded of a recent and really good Atlantic piece about the nature of teen pregnancy.  The sub-head gets right to it:

Handing out contraception will only make dents around the edges of the problem. Giving girls a reason not to get pregnant in the first place could go a long way towards solving it.

Basically, getting contraceptives to teenagers (i.e., the Plan B debate) is not the problem.  The problem is convincing at-risk teenagers (i.e., impoverished socio-economic background) that they want to use contraceptives– crazy as that may sound to us successfull, delay parenthood, blog-reading types:

If we really want to combat teen childbearing, we need to present girls at risk of becoming pregnant with an attractive alternative. It is not enough to offer them contraception and to explain to how to use it. We need to convince them that they want to use it; that they and their children will be better off if they wait to become mothers.  [emphasis mine]

Even more challenging: We need that message to be true. This is a much more difficult proposition, but all of the evidence suggests that this is what is required — interventions that change the life trajectory of girls on the path to teen motherhood.

Ummm, I’m pretty damn sure the message is true, though.  Plenty of good evidence on that fact.   That part is actually easy.  So, what do we need to do?

Why don’t these policies [ready access to contraception] have more of an impact? We believe it is because they do not address the fundamental forces that drive most teens to have children. They focus on the immediate precursors to pregnancy, and miss a lifetime of behaviors and decisions that build towards it…

An alternative view [alternative to blaming the teenage brain] — the one we favor — is that teen childbearing is a symptom of living a life full of obstacles. Facing limited education and job prospects, as well as a slim chance of finding a suitable man to marry, some low-income girls simply ask, “Why not have a baby now?” Ethnographic work on young, single mothers supports this theory. So does economic research showing that the financial and social problems teen mothers and their children experience are mostly driven by the mother’s socio-economic background, not her decision to have a baby early in life…

We want to attack the cause — the lack of opportunity so many girls face… In general, improving educational attainment for young women seems to work.

To really drive down rates of teen childbearing, we need young women at risk of becoming teen mothers to see a reason to delay motherhood. They need to believe that they have reason to invest in their futures, and they need a viable way to do so. That is where we need to focus our efforts.

Okay, now that is hard.  But certainly well worth doing.  And we need to very much pay attention to this line of research in how we think about addressing teen pregnancy.  Until then, I still say, more IUD‘s.

What to do about Rhino horns

Really interesting NPR story on the dilemma of the best policy approaches to limit the illegal poaching of rhinos for their horns which will soon drives the species to extinction unless action is taken.

Among the suggestions, is to legalize the market, as that will give consumers an interest in actually protecting the rhino.  Downside?

This possibility worries conservationists like Ian Craig, founder of the Northern Rangelands Trust in Kenya. He says ending the ban will lift the stigma — and cause demand to soar. He predicts that horn-selling kiosks will crop up across Vietnam not unlike cannabis coffee shops in Amsterdam.

“All the economists I’ve met say that as soon as you place a value on the animal then people are going to look after it and its going to multiply,” Craig says. “They’re not recognizing that supply could never meet the demand, and the demand is what’s killing.”

Another option, burn them, to create a strong symbolic act and shame the buyers (honestly, people who are dumb enough to think rhino horn is going to cure their hangover aren’t going to be easily shamed).  I like this summary of the ultimate policy difficulty by an explicit comparison with drug policy:

Underlying this drug-policy debate about animals is a philosophical gulf about the best way to influence human behavior. Neither side really knows what would happen if you could legally buy a packet of rhino horn in the pharmacy like Tylenol. Would the poachers go out of business, or would they become more audacious, laundering their stolen horn as legitimate? Would we ever be able to see a rhino in the wild again? “If the world at large is happy about rhino sitting in pens and farmed for their horns, then the economists are right,” says Craig, the conservationist. “If the world wants wild, free-ranging rhino, then the economists are wrong.”

And, finally, a radical solution, not at all unlike what we used to do with alcohol during prohibition– poison it:

An organization called the will, for a fee, come to your land or conservancy and use a “patented process of high-density infusion” to put poison in your rhinos’ horns. It won’t harm the animal but will make any person who ingests it “seriously ill.” As a caveat emptor, they paint the horn with indelible ink, a warning label for any would-be poacher or airport security officer alerted to the meaning of its bright pink color.

It’s not surprising that African governments will not support the contamination of horns that people eat, however misguidedly, as medicine. But some private landowners in South Africa and Namibia have poisoned their rhinos’ horns. They’re willing to let the hazards of poaching trickle down to the consumer.

Sounds great to me.  I’m all for it until convinced otherwise.  Once it becomes clear that rhino horn = poison, people will stop taking rhino horn.  Ultimately, though, what clearly needs to change is the magical thinking in certain east Asian cultures.  Not easy, but certainly not impossible.  It’s not that long ago that western medicine thought that bleeding the evil humor out of people was the key to proper medical treatment.

No end to the crazy

Now, I really don’t much about B-corporations.  But I do know that when the legislature is voting on things out of a fear of Agenda 21, that the Republican caucus truly is pathetic:

State House lawmakers Wednesday night voted down House Bill 440, a proposal to create benefit corporations in North Carolina.

Benefit corporations, or “B-Corps,” are a hybrid of standard for-profit and non-profit corporations. They allow the corporation, while making a profit, to serve a primary “public benefit” purpose other than maximizing profit for shareholders.

Sponsor Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson, said “web chatter” on the bill alleges that it’s part of a secret conspiracy to promote the UN’s “Agenda 21″ sustainability efforts, which conspiracy theorists allege is actually a socialist plot.

“What I just find amazing is that there’s some perspective that this bill some sort of hidden ‘Agenda 21′ bill,” McGrady said.

“This is not a conservative or liberal bill at all. It’s actually an entrepreneurial bill,” he said, noting that similar laws in 14 states have been supported by Republicans, including the governors of South Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania.

“Those coming up younger than us – they want to make a profit, but they want to be about good things,” he said. “This lets them do that.”

“I think you’re seeing that capitalism would like to help those areas where it can,” said Rep. Leo Daughtry, R-Johnston. “People want to do good things.”

But critics of the bill said its goal is to move the corporate system and capitalism in general toward socialism by suggesting that there’s a higher, better purpose than maximizing profit. Members also received a handout from free-market think-tank Civitas, reinforcing that point.

Good God– we allow b-corps and the the next thing you know government is going to take control of all the industries and people aren’t going to love capitalism enough.  Again, nice to see that the Republicans are actually split on this and that there’s some remnant of sanity (and for the record, the contraception provision was pulled from the previous bill I wrote about).  Poor Laura Leslie deserves combat pay.

No contraceptives for you!

Those liberals and their contraceptives!

RALEIGH, N.C. — Virtually any employer in North Carolina could opt to but insurance plans that do not include contraception coverage under a bill that cleared the House Judiciary A committee Wednesday. The same bill bars cities and counties from offering health insurance plans that pay for abortions except in the case of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.

On the bright side, it shows that there’s still some sane Republicans in the legislature:

“To suggest in the 21st century that a woman could be prevented from having access to birth control, even as far to the right as I am, that’s going off the cliff,” said Rep. Bob Steinburg, R- Chowan. “This is going too far.”

Then again, my guess is Mr. “as far to the right as I am” Steinburg is probably onto some crazy stuff, just different (or not, but he does seem to have a bit of a temper).  Anyway, back to the bill:

North Carolina law already allows employers with religious affiliations to offer health plans with no contraception coverage. This bill extends the definition of “religious employer” to “include any employer, whether incorporated or not and whether for-profit or not, ‘that has a religious, moral, or ethical objection,’ to providing such coverage.”

So, in short anybody can simply deny contraceptive coverage to their employees.  Heck, why not allow them to have religious objections to health care in general.  Regardless, this is just dumb policy.

“This bill has the potential to cause great harm,” Rebecca Mercier, a Chapel Hill doctor, pointing out that contraceptive medications have uses outside of preventing pregnancy.

“This bill is based on some fiction that contraception is controversial in this country and morally ambiguous. It is not. It is an essential pillar of women’s health care here and throughout the world,” she said…

Rep. Deborah Ross, D-Wake, offered an amendment to pull the contraception provision from the bill.

“It’s simply not good policy,” she said, adding that preventing contraception coverage might lead more women to seek abortions.

Schaffer insisted the bill didn’t make much of a change to current law.

“We’re not attempting to change the law,” she said, pointing out that there are already health plans that allow some employers to opt out of contraception coverage. “We’re attempting to extend the conscience rights of religious employers.”

That drew a rebuke from Rep. Alma Adams, D-Guilford, who said the bill obviously changed the law because it would put more women in situations where they would not be able to obtain birth control.

“More women are going to be denied,” she said.

Again, I’m not exactly amazed, but sadly shaking my head that people who supposedly want there to be fewer abortions are making it harder for women to get birth control.  Hello, McFly?

NC needs laws against riding bicycles in supermarkets

Sure, there’s no evidence this is happening now, but you never know.  It could all of a sudden be an epidemic and then we’ll be glad we’ve got the laws on the books.  It is obviously unsafe to shoppers and we cannot expect store managers to enact or enforce reasonable policies against this– they might be liberals.

So, what am I getting at here?  The logic (or lack thereof) behind NC’s new stealth anti-sharia law proposal (they are smart enough to not call it that):

RALEIGH, N.C. — The latest version of a bill intended to protect the constitutional rights of North Carolinians from “foreign laws” is on its way to the House floor after a contentious hearing in the House Judiciary C Committee.

House Bill 695, entitled “Foreign Laws/Protect Constitutional Rights,” is the most recent iteration of legislation intended to keep courts from recognizing Islamic Sharia law in North Carolina.

Similar measures have been considered or passed in more than 15 other states.

The first version of the legislation was passed by ballot initiative in Oklahoma. It specifically named Sharia and was promptly blocked by a judge who declared it unconstitutional because it singled out a religion.

Since then, newer versions of the measure in states from Arkansas to Florida have been more carefully worded. House Bill 695 makes no mention of religion at all, and it wasn’t mentioned in committee.

Also, some great reporting from Laura Leslie by putting this in the proper context of what’s really going on rather than relying solely on the text of the law.  So, why do we need this law?

After House Rules Committee Chairman Tim Moore signaled that the bill was unlikely to pass, Cleveland and co-sponsor Rep. Chris Whitmire, R-Transylvania, agreed to amend it so that it would apply only to family law and child custody issues under sections 50 and 50a of state law.

Moore, R-Cleveland, who crafted the change, said it should reduce the chances of unintended consequences in the business community.

“I think this covers what the bill sponsors are trying to do. There’s no reason foreign law should be used in such matters,” he said.

After the meeting, Moore said he didn’t know of any cases in which North Carolina courts have allowed Sharia or any other foreign laws to infringe on anyone’s constitutional rights, but he said the sponsors were trying to prevent that from happening.  [emphasis mine]

That’s right– you never know!  And you never know, there might be an epidemic of bicycle riding in grocery stores or murderous squirrels or whatever!  This is not how a sensible legislative body makes laws.  Of course, there’s been little evidence so far that we are dealing with a sensible legislative body.