22 January 2017

Sunday roundup, continued

The gall and the grouse of the Montana House’s Usher. At the Last Best News, Ed Kemmick has the lowdown on this lowdown attempt to banish bicyclists, pedestrians, and wheelchairs and their occupants, from most two-lane roads in Montana. Usher (R-Billings), who owns a motorcycle dealership, claims he’s just trying to make everyone safer. But the first draft of his bill, LC2196, which is being rewritten, strikes me as an attempt to clear the roads of slow moving objects that annoy Montana’s leadfoots who think they have a divine right to zoom down the turnpike at warp speed.

“Property damage is not violence,” he said. “Violence against other people is violence.” Those are the words of Henry Hughes, 61, of Marblemount, WA. Hughes, like other left wing scofflaws, apparently believes that burning down a church is not a violent act as long as the parson and parishioners escape unhurt and the church mice aren’t too badly singed.

Hughes was in Washington, D.C., yesterday, blocking law abiding citizens from an entrance to the inauguration. According to the Washington Post, Hughes was not arrested for his misbehavior. But more than 230 were, many of them rock throwers and fire setters; some were rightly charged with felonies. Their lawlessness was not spontaneous, reports the Post. It was carefully planned. Premeditated. Conceivably, the miscreants from out-of-state could be charged with conspiring to cross state lines to commit felonies.

There’s no defending these left wing thugs, some of whom may be trying to incite political repression in the crackpot belief that the more freedom is crushed, the greater the likelihood the liberating revolution will succeed.

Robbins defends free speech. As I noted yesterday, Richard Spencer, the man who’s wildly in love with white skin, was busted in the eye by a black clad thug, who then hightailed it down the street to escape accountability. That’s not civil disobedience. It’s assault and battery of the jackboot genre, and a threat to everyone’s right to free speech. I’m glad that at Montana Cowgirl, Justin Robbins explained why punching Spencer satisfies some souls but threatens everyone’s First Amendment rights.

Montana never will pass a primary seatbelt law while Republicans control the legislature. And it’s not just Republicans who oppose the law. In past legislature, Democrats representing reservation districts have voted against primary seatbelt bills. At Logicosity, Edward R. Burrow describes the especially cruel and irresponsible way this year's primary seatbelt law, carried by Sen. Richard Barrett (D-Missoula), was shot down by libertarian zealots.