Citing Christianity, PA rep stops gay colleague from addressing House

By Dan Brooks in Epistemology 3 Comments
Pennsylvania Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R–Cranberry)

Pennsylvania Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R–Cranberry)

Last week, during the end of Pennsylvania’s legislative session, Rep. Brian Sims (D–Philadelphia) took the floor to speak about the Supreme Court’s DOMA ruling. Under PA house rules, legislators can speak about uncontroversial issues at the end of the session by unanimous consent. Sims, who is gay, had his mic cut a few seconds into his remarks, owing to the objections of Rep. Daryl Metcalfe. Indignant Democrats subsequently took the floor to speak about DOMA themselves, only to have their mics cut, too. It was a mess. In defending his maneuver, Metcalfe told Pittsburgh’s KDPA:

His talking about that on the House floor would have been an open rebellion against Almighty God and God’s word, against God’s law. And as a Christian, if I would have sat there and been silent, it would have violated my conscience because of my beliefs as a Christian.

Exegesis after the jump.

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Romney and Obama both claim to be winning

By Dan Brooks in lying 2 Comments

Cedric the Entertainer’s dad enjoys early voting in Florida.

Only one week until the election—have you gone insane yet? David Brooks has; today in the Times, he argues that given Republican intransigence, the best way to ensure bipartisan reform is to elect Mitt Romney. Brooks’s bold ideas for the future always involve universal Republican governance. He can be forgiven his quadrennial hysteria, however. Not even the candidates themselves know who’s winning—or if they do, they ain’t telling. Both the Obama and Romney campaigns have declared victory in the general election and unquestioned dominance of several swing states, where their own spending is going to work and the other guy’s is a sign of desperation. It kind of puts the voter in an odd position.

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Theory, practice to rematch in Rand Paul candidacy

By Dan Brooks in Reactionary Populism 3 Comments

Okay, not so much Rand Paul as Tommy Carcetti, but when you think about it...

Those of you who question the value of newspaper journalism should check out the New York Times’s torrential coverage of Tuesday’s midterm congressional primaries, which appear to portend a vast wave of anti-incumbent sentiment. The emerging narrative is one of Tea Party-style rage gone mainstream, at least in Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Kentucky—where GOP-chosen and Mitch McConnell-sponsored senatorial candidate Trey Grayson was defeated by Rand Paul. Yes, that Rand Paul. The man who has argued that the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education and pretty much all of the New Deal are unlawful infringements on the Constitution, who said in his victory speech that “capitalism is freedom” and declared himself a card-carrying member of the Tea Party, if only they issued cards, will now have to sell a specific, non yelling-based political platform to a general populace. Candidate Paul, welcome to compromise country, population: the rest of us.

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