Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Skating Close to Sedition



Crackpot narcissist from the far-right fever swamps Sen. Ted "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz is reading some weird new meaning into the Second Amendment:
"The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn't for just protecting hunting rights, and it's not only to safeguard your right to target practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny…" (emphasis added)
"Tyranny," as defined by Tailgunner Ted, is anything his nutty followers don't agree with that the majority of voters have approved.

Granted this is a fundraising e-mail sent by Tailgunner Ted to his batsh#t crazy followers, but suggesting that there will come a time when his followers could use their weapons to overthrow the lawfully elected government hovers around the legal definition of sedition without actually nailing it.  As a Princeton/Harvard educated lawyer, the cynical Tailgunner Ted knows that the "keep and bear arms" element of the Second Amendment was meant by the Founders to provide for the defense of the new nation by its citizens, as organized in State militias, not as a means to revolt against the government they had created.  But this plays with the crazies in the Rethug base, who imagine imposing their own totalitarian, theocratic tyranny on the majority by force.

(photo:  Next stop, a Federal building?)