Islamophobia and isolationism aren't just alive and well in the presidential race. They are consuming the Tennessee General Assembly.
Volunteer State senators on Monday overwhelmingly approved a resolution directing Attorney General Herbert Slatery to sue the U.S. government over the federal refugee program. And if Slatery persists in his tepid disinterest in wasting Tennessee tax dollars to do so, the Senate bill also allows lawmakers to hire their own attorney to file suit without him.
Republican Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey's controversial measure passed 27-5 with only one GOP lawmaker voting no (not one of ours) and just one Democrat voting for it. The bill now goes to the House for consideration. If approved, Tennessee would join Alabama and Texas in suing the federal government over the issue.
The action comes in the same week that national news sources are reporting that more than 100,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Europe in the first two months of this year - more than eight times the rate seen during the same period in 2015.
But Tennessee senators are turning their backs on the desperation that drives mothers and fathers to carry their young children thousands of miles in hopes of survival. Instead, our so-called leaders are fear mongering both on the grounds of safety and money.
The backlash against the Syrian refugees fleeing the ISIS and civil war violence in their own country - coming soon after the Islamic State-inspired Paris attacks - continues to sound alarms in a number of Republican-run states and is driven by vote-seeking fear mongerers running for the GOP presidential nomination.
But added to that, Ramsey's resolution charges the federal government has refused to meet its legal requirements to consult and collaborate with Tennessee over the resettlement of refugees in Tennessee. The specific challenge sought by Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, R-Memphis, is pegged to requiring Tennessee to spend state tax money on refugees in areas such as TennCare without the say-so of the state legislature, as required by the Tennessee Constitution.
Neither argument is on the level. Refugees - Syrian or otherwise - are far better vetted and watched over than the home-grown mass murderers we saw in San Bernardino, here or even in Charleston, S.C.
And as for money, a 2013 Tennessee study - launched after an earlier attempt in the legislature to give local communities the ability to enact one-year bans on refugee resettlement - found just the opposite of Ramsey's claim.
The study estimated refugees and descendants of refugees (fewer than 58,000 were living in Tennessee in 2012) provided $1.4 billion in revenue for the Volunteer State between 1990 and 2012, compared to requiring $753 million in state support.
The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union-Tennessee condemned Monday's Senate vote. And Republican Gov. Bill Haslam raised questions about the need for such legislation.
Haslam said last week Tennessee routinely gets information from the federal government about "all the refugees who have come in, where they're from, age, gender. I don't think at this point in time that this is something that's stressing our system."
But once again, our Tennessee legislators - almost all Republicans - are quick to cry wolf. They're also quick to cry the federal sky is falling on them and on "states' rights" while they themselves continue to play their own petty control games on the rest of us and our local communities.
On Monday, before turning their ire on the federal government, senators passed two bills limiting what local cities and even local voters decide.
Senators voted on a bill to override a Metro Nashville voters' referendum decision requiring that certain percentages of government contractor hires be from within the county. So, Nashville voters telling their city and county to hire local is state senators' business?
Senators also voted on another bill that would prevent local governments from barring contractors who require job applicants to report criminal convictions. In other words, senators are telling cities and counties that they cannot institute local "ban the box" rules.
Last year, the whole General Assembly gutted local towns' and counties' ability to make certain parks or buildings gun-free.
Funny, isn't it? Our lawmakers are afraid of refugees, afraid of the federal government, afraid of local workers and afraid of peaceful parks. Who knew we elected such a bunch of wimps?