Has the Donald finally met his match?
Let’s hear it: Pope Francis for President!
Last week in a thinly veiled reference to Trump, the Pope said pushing for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is “not Christian.”
Trump with his ever quick-draw Twitter finger, shot back, calling the Pope’s comments “disgraceful.”
“No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith,” Trump said in statement.
Wait, wait, wait!
This from the guy who would ban Muslims from America based on their religion?
This from the guy who as far back as 2011 was questioning President Barack Obama’s religion, saying “He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim.” (For the record, Obama has a perfectly valid U.S. birth certificate, and he’s a Christian.)
This from the guy who recently tweeted: “How can Ted Cruz be an Evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest?”
This from the guy who in October attacked Ben Carson’s religion by saying, ” in all fairness, I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about, I just don’t know about [it].”
On the Pope, Trump eventually toned down his rhetoric, but not before peddling a little extra fear:
“If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president,” Trump said.
What a guy.
Showdown at Capitol Corral
House Speaker Beth Harwell came to her senses. Late last week she said she changed her mind on allowing handgun-carry permit holders to bring their weapons into the state Capitol.
And, she offered the perfect excuse to the National Rifle Association-owned GOP: Cost. Harwell claimed Tennessee Highway Patrol officials told her the change would carry a $1 million price tag for new security screening.
“I concluded that with the additional costs it’s not wise to move forward at this time to try to retrofit this building,” Harwell said.
Just a week before, Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, told reporters he and Harwell, R-Nashville, had agreed to allow permit holders to go armed in Legislative Plaza and War Memorial Building where lawmakers have their offices and committee hearing rooms. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam and Safety and Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons, who oversees the Highway Patrol, objected, citing security. Haslam and Gibbons argued four state laws gave the executive branch control over Legislative Plaza and War Memorial. Ramsey disagreed, saying the Tennessee Constitution gives the speakers control over the buildings.
Thus the showdown at Capitol Corral where NRA pandering was outdrawn by conservative penny pinching.
But we’d best watch out for an ambush. The NRA might pay for the retrofit.
Saving our bigoted past
Twice in the past year, Tennessee state lawmakers wouldn’t allow something as important as Insure Tennessee out of committee for a full vote, but last week they took the time to pen, debate and pass a House bill that will make it harder for Tennessee Historical Commission members to approve the removal of monuments like one honoring slave trader, Ku Klux Klan founder and Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Steve McDaniel, R-Lexington, a Civil War buff and battle re-enactor, said the bill is an update to his 2013 Tennessee Heritage Act, which sought to put the brakes on cities’ and counties’ ability to remove monuments or change names of streets and parks.
But last year’s shooting deaths of nine members of a historically black church in Charleston, S.C., at the hands of a white supremacist, along with several very public removals of Confederate battle flags and similar statues from public places, prompted McDaniel to try again. This time he rewrote the legislation to lift the bar so high that removals are virtually impossible. And the Tennessee House went for it.
Really? Do our lawmakers think they have nothing better to do than live in our bigoted past?