Between the ongoing 'Bridgegate' scandal of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the mass destruction of water supplies in West Virginia, and the Republicans in the U.S. Senate shafting more than a million Americans by not extending unemployment insurance, our attention has been a bit distracted over the last day or so.
Those stories have somewhat crowded out other critical domestic news, such as the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, DC killing internet neutrality, or the House passing its part of the $1.1 trillion federal budget bill. You also might have missed some critically important foreign news stories, like the "Imprison The Gays" law in Nigeria, the ongoing war in Syria, or the tentative and early stages of the nuclear peace deal with Iran.
While all these stories have been competing for our attention, the political clowns and bullies from our home state of Nebraska have also been pulling some significant focus of attention from our staff over the last day or so.
We've never been in favor of the kind of bill proposal Nebraska state Sen. Mark Christensen introduced Tuesday, to arm school teachers with concealed handguns. We thought it was a clownish approach to school security when Sen. Christiansen proposed a similar bill in 2011. After both Antoinette Tuff in Georgia in August of 2013, and John Masterson in New Mexico this week both stopped school shooters without being personally armed, our point is validated that schools do not need more guns to stop gun violence.
Sadly, we doubt any facts on this issue will prevent Sen. Christiansen from shooting his mouth off about the topic, on his way to another likely failure of his proposed legislation.
Returning to previously failed ideas seems to be a hallmark of Nebraska's political class of clowns and fake tough-guys.
In that vein, Nebraska's little bully of a Governor, Dave Heineman, was the perfect example of this personality defect as he gave his State of the State address on Wednesday. Regardless of the report that was just released last year - after months of study by the Tax Modernization Committee - that said the state of Nebraska should NOT give a deep tax cut, Governor Heineman is now insisting that Nebraska lawmakers ignore the facts of that study and toss a tax cut to the kinds of folks he likes best.
Likely, those people include the already incredibly wealthy and astoundingly ignorant scion of the family that created TD Ameritrade, Pete Ricketts. Ricketts, who is attempting to buy his way into the Governor's mansion this year, also received the kiss of death/political endorsement of Wisconsin's extremist teabagger governor, Scott Walker, on Wednesday - effectively sealing his fate one way or another.
With all of these crazy stories, and even crazier politicians, it's a wonder our editor Amy even had time to give birth on Wednesday afternoon to a healthy five pound, twelve ounce baby girl.
Congratulations Amy & Eric. You take care of your girls at home - we'll keep an eye on the clown show while you're away.
