Why Do We Keep Sending these Chuckleheads to the Statehouse?

Is it to get them the hell out of town and away from us decent folk? Molly Ivins thinks the Texas statehouse is amusing. Well Molly, you should check out Jefferson City some time. Our politicians will have you in stitches! Only in the Missouri House of Representatives can a dull-as-dirt debate about eminent domain turn into a shouting match about gun control and the propriety of stem-cell research.

As the house debated eminent domain, Representative Belinda Harris, a Democrat from Hillsboro, offered an amendment to exempt any house of worship from seizure under eminent domain. The amendment passed 154-0.

The success of Representative Harris’ sensible amendment inspired Mike Frame, a Eureka Democrat to do a bit of political pandering by grandstanding on the firearms issue and throw some red meat to the good ‘ole boys road huntin’ back in the district by offering a patently silly amendment that would exempt any property operating as a gun shop from the power of eminent domain, claiming that gun shops should be exempted under the second amendment. I am a big fan of the entire Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment. In fact, you won’t find a bigger fanatic about it this side of George Mason. But c’mon! Nobody is so thick that they don’t get that gun shops are commercial ventures whose doors would close the minute they stopped making a profit. The product is protected, yes. But not the building the business operates out of. By Representative Frame’s logic, the back pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine are as sacred as a church.

Representative Shannon Cooper, a Republican from Clinton, who actually owns a gun shop, opposed Frames amendment, stating that as much as he loved his business, he couldn’t quite see it on the same level as a church, and that gun shops didn’t need a special class that exempted them from rules other businesses have to follow, they have no historical memory as a general rule, and if need be, hell, he would just relocate.

Re-enter Representative Harris, who proposed expanding the gun shop exemption amendment to prohibiting the seizure under eminent domain of any property that would be developed for use as research facilities where stem-cell research could take place.

(In my opinion, that is where the wheels came off the bus.)

Representative Bryan Stephenson, a Webb City Republican tried to restore sanity, pointing out that the language of the bill already did that, as it prohibited seizures solely for economic development, and that was always the driving force behind such developments. He went on to speculate whether Rep. Harris’ proposed expansion of the gun shop amendment might prevent the future development of a hospital or a fertility clinic on property acquired through eminent domain.

Representative Cooper took the floor again to denounce Harris’ proposal as shortsighted and an attempt to block research into potentially lifesaving cures. But Harris prevailed in getting her proposal added to the gun shop amendment. And a fat lot of good it did…The combined stem-cell/gun shop amendment (rightly) went down in ignominious defeat, 129-23 when it came to the floor for a vote, after five hours of wrangling and stretching, bending, and twisting logic into all sorts of unrecognizable forms.