What the fuck is in the drinking water? North Carolina edition

Ok so I gotta be honest, I was really hoping my Iowa edition of this really would be the only one. I should have known better,  especially since I did kinda do a Michigan edition and West Virginia edition of this before I came up with the catchy name. And now with the North Carolina edition, this looks like its going to be a regular thing.

Now like my other official edition, and the unofficial Michigan, the big take away here is that ALL of these very bad bills were introduced at the same time. Given enough time all states introduce a list of insane bills, its the shear quantity at once.

First up I will start with the one bill on this list that wont become law, because the backlash against the overwhelming amount of stupid already got the sponsor to pull it.

Heres the objectionable part of the bill

"The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.”
Now if you think the last part of that sounds familiar, your probably thinking of this

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

That would be the first amendment to the United States Constitution saying the exact opposite of what North Carolina is saying.

Now to be fair their is an argument to be made, and once this country as a whole used to follow. The 10th amendment was interpreted to mean the bill of rights didnt apply to the states, and the attempt to apply it to the states was part of the point of the 14th amendment in 1868.

The way rights are applied to the states is to link them through the due process clause of the 14th
amendment. As it relates to NOT establishing a state religion this was done in 1961 in the case
Torcaso v. Watkins. So they dont have much of an argument......

Problem of course is that, even if NC was sucessful in overturning that case and setting up a state religion, they would set a precedent to establish a Muslim state as well (which Republicans are terrified of) via the same law applied in another state, or even make it totally illegal to own a gun, via the same principal applied to a different amendment.

Again if it had continued on the path to become law, this bill would have been a brutal lesson in the laws of unintended consequences on top of the flat out insanity of trying to pass a law that intentionally uses langauge opposed to the Constitution.

The second crazy law the NC GOP is proposing this week goes a little something like this:
If your in college and you vote, your parents taxes will go up.

See as it stands if you move away to college and live there and try to vote, your legally allowed to do so. (Symm Vs US)

Well no more in NC. If your parents live in NC and you try to vote at your school address, NC will take away your parents tax deduction for you being a dependent, and make it impossible to for you to say your being claimed as a dependent which will raise your taxes as well.

Now this bill is being paired with a voter ID bill, which is part of the "trap". For example if you move to college, you probably want your mail delivered to YOU and not your parents house on the other side of the state. Well see if you change your address to get your mail, you cant vote because your address wont be the one you registered at, and when you show your ID at the poll, you'll be rejected.

Or you can change your address and see your taxes and your parents taxes go up. Or you can go home every week for your mail and bills and everything else.

It's just a good thing youth voter turnout in NC is 110% so we can and actually should discourage voting.....Oh wait thats right, its not actually that high. its just that young people tend to vote for one party, and SPOILER ALERT its not the party that controls the state at the moment.

Finally we get to our last crazy ass law of the week, or well crazy ass laws, because its another pair.

Both of these last two laws focus on education, by making sure the state is full of quality teachers and manageable class sizes. Err wait, actually its more the exact opposite of that.

See the first bill would eliminate the caps on classroom sizes. 50 kids in a class? well we gotta save money somewhere so why not lay off enough teachers and just increase the class size.

The second is not any better, as it would remove the requirement that teachers be licensed AND subject to background checks. Because we all know weeding out criminals and requiring competency in the subject your teaching arnt actually required for a good education. Plus it discriminates against high school dropout pedophiles who have every right to be allowed to be left alone with your kids.

The upside of course is that since none of these kids will ever graduate with teachers like that, it pretty much makes the second law (about college voting) irrelevant. So at least the GOP fixed that problem with their insane laws......