By @BGinKC

You know what’s even worse than having a contingent of total flippin’ morons in the state legislature?

I’m going to tell you what’s worse.

Having presumably-well-meaning liberals get all het up over stupid shit that is mentioned/introduced in the state lege that hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of ever making it out of committee, let alone into law, that’s what.

I first ran headlong into this phenomenon back in 2009 when someone from a part of the country where they don’t have to deal with a wide expanse of Mississippi in between two big, blue cities with libertine as well as liberal streaks a mile wide vying for the heart and soul of the state took then-Representative Emery and his anti-woman agenda seriously. (Seriously!) I rolled my eyes at the stupidity of anyone taking Emery seriously, because no one in Missouri ever did, that’s for sure. But then P.Z. Meyers picked up on it, and it became a fire worthy of putting out.

Then this morning I had a feeling of “deja vu all over again” when the normally-excellent Addicting Info had somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 breathless words on a bill in the Missouri legislature that would put creationism on an equal footing with evolution and actual, peer-reviewed science.

I found this curious. I am a member-in-good-standing of several scientific organizations, and if this bill was a threat to my profession, they would each and every one have been sure to fill my inbox and let me know. Hell, for that fact, I have actual not-just-on-Facebook friends who serve in both chambers of the state lege, and they would have been blowing my phone up if it was even a remote possibility that such a bill would see the light of day.

But I’m a trained scientist, and I assume nothing.

I went looking for evidence of this nefarious scheme to legislate science into submission.

First I went to the bill tracker page and searched first by number (1227) and then by name (Missouri Standard Science Act).

Well, you can just imagine the panic that rose in my throat when nothing came up…but on I pressed, bravely clicking on the complete, hundreds-long list of legislative items introduced thus far in the 2012 session (most of which was dead on arrival). Scrolling down, I located this dastardly piece of would-be forced-christianity, and clicked on the actual bill.

Check out what I found:

This odious bill is so nefarious and so stealthy that it has no hearing scheduled and isn’t on the calendar.

Clearly, it’s the greatest threat the state has faced since 1863.

On a serious note, we appreciate help battling wingnuts, but only if it’s actually, yanno, helpful.

But when you get all het up and start shrieking about stuff better left ignored, you aren’t helping.

So stop it.