State Sen. David Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, is a real piece of work.
His latest Tancredo-like embarrassment came on Nov. 10, when he decided it would be a good idea to post a message on Twitter saying that President Barack Obama “is flying the U.S. plane right into the ground at full speed. Let’s roll.”
OK, so the obvious reference to what is believed to be the last words of Todd Beamer before he and other passengers of United Flight 93 tried to take over their hijacked jet on Sept. 11, 2001, is, at best, a mixed metaphor. At worst, it is a threat to the president.
After catching heat over his tweet, Schultheis backpedaled, claiming that he didn’t mean to compare Obama to the hijackers. He told The Denver Post that “Let’s roll” has become a common phrase now. “I can see it now. But you’re busy doing jillions of things during the day. You sometimes don’t analyze every word.”
Yeah, right. If you’re a state senator making any sort of public comparison between the president and 9/11, you better analyze every word.
This is the same guy who vehemently opposed the idea of issuing public service announcements in Spanish advising people to buckle their seat belts.
Give me liberty!
Speaking of wingnuts, there seems to be a movement, or several movements, afoot to overthrow the federal government.
Apparently, almost 150 “citizen delegates” representing all 50 states have convened for something they are calling the Continental Congress 2009, in St. Charles, Ill. They arrived on Nov. 11 and won’t disband until Nov. 22.
The goals of this Continental Congress are to “document for the world for the first time the Constitutional violations and the devastation to America’s freedoms and liberty,” as well as provide America “a blueprint for civic action that everyone can use to Restore [sic] our lost Republic,” according to materials promoting the event.
“Where’s your line in the sand?” Congress organizers from the We The People Foundation ask in a news release. “Beyond elections. Beyond tea parties. It’s time to exercise your fundamental right to popular sovereignty. Billion-dollar bailouts, federal spending into debt that enslaves our children, trillions spent on wars in places most Americans can’t find on a map or tell you why we are there, the Bill of Rights — intended to protect our God-given individual rights as a free people — now ignored on a daily basis, have eroded our Republic.”
Not sure about you, but we’re getting pretty lathered up by this point. Let’s march on Washington!
But wait, there’s more! “Your First Amendment solution has been denied. All three branches of government refuse to respond. What IS the next step for a free people?” Apparently, call a meeting.
Medical association: Reconsider pot The American Medical Association’s (AMA) recent recommendation to reconsider the federal status of marijuana is another step toward legalization of pot, no matter how much the group denies it.
In its Nov. 10 statement, the AMA “urges that marijuana’s status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines.”
Of course, that statement is quickly followed up by this one disclaimer: “This should not be viewed as an endorsement of state-based medical cannabis programs, the legalization of marijuana, or that scientific evidence on the therapeutic use of cannabis meets the current standards for a prescription drug product.”
Oh, of course not. We wouldn’t even consider reading any of that into the statement. But at the very least, changing the federal definition of marijuana could be a step toward eliminating the conflict that currently exists between laws in states like Colorado, which allow the use of medical marijuana, and federal law, which continues to criminalize weed completely.
If the federal definition were changed, maybe it could keep municipalities from slipping in a medical marijuana ban simply by requiring businesses to adhere to federal laws.
