Via Twitter:

briannieves ‏@briannieves

Tonight we sent THREE of my pieces of legislation to the governor’s desk! Property Rights, American Laws, & 2nd Amendment Preservation Act!! 10:14 PM – 8 May 13

That would be to keep the United Nations black helicopters from seizing vehicles with Gadsden Flag license plates (Agenda 21), to curtail the epidemic of court cases influenced by Kenyan born office holders (Sharia Law), and to spend millions of dollars re-litigating the constitutionality of the North’s victory over the South in the Civil War (nullification! guns!).

We’re all aquiver with excitement at the prospects for the future.

briannieves ‏@briannieves

[….] Thnx Brother! I NEVER Brag about Senator stuff BUT… I just passed the most Hard Core 2nd Amendment Bill, perhaps in the country 10:20 PM – 8 May 13

Well, someone is.

Previously:

SJR 45: Sen. Brian Nieves (r) – same tune, different concert hall (January 11, 2012)

SB 265: if you didn’t want the black helicopters to track you down… (February 6, 2013)

Well, yeah (February 7, 2013)

“…political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize…” (May 8, 2013)

…will it make a sound?

A bill, introduced this week:

FIRST REGULAR SESSION

SENATE BILL NO. 266 [pdf]

97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

INTRODUCED BY SENATOR NIEVES.

Read 1st time February 6, 2013, and ordered printed.

TERRY L. SPIELER, Secretary.

1451S.01I

AN ACT

To amend chapters 191 and 571, RSMo, by adding thereto two new sections relating

to privacy concerning firearms.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Missouri, as follows:

Section A. Chapters 191 and 571, RSMo, are amended by adding thereto two new sections, to be known as sections 191.238 and 571.068, to read as follows:

191.238. 1. No health care professional or health care facility licensed under chapter 197 shall intentionally enter any disclosed information concerning firearm ownership into a patient’s medical record if the professional knows that such information is not directly related to the patient’s immediate medical care or safety.

2. For purposes of this section, a “health care professional” shall mean a physician or other health care practitioner licensed, accredited, or certified by the state of Missouri to perform specified health services for the diagnosis, treatment, cure, or relief of a health condition, injury, or disease.

3. Any violation of this section shall constitute grounds for disciplinary action under sections 334.100 to 334.103, section 197.070, section 197.220 or any other applicable provisions of law concerning the licensing, accreditation, or certification of other health care professionals by the state of Missouri.

571.068. 1. No employee of a school district, or private or charter school shall ask a student under the age of eighteen whether such student’s parent or guardian, or anyone residing with the student, owns a firearm.

2. A violation of this section is punishable as an infraction.

[emphasis in original]

Is anyone surprised?

Previously:

Well, yeah (February 7, 2013)

…you shouldn’t have put those Gadsden vanity license plates on your car.

More world order paranoia legislation, introduced today in a bill by (you guessed it)…:

SB 265 Prohibits the state and political subdivisions from implementing policies affecting property rights and from entering into certain relationships with organizations

Sponsor: Nieves

LR Number: 1330S.01I Fiscal Note not available

Committee:

Last Action: 2/6/2013 – S First Read–SB 265-Nieves

[….]

Current Bill Summary

SB 265 – This act prohibits the state and any political subdivision from implementing any policy recommendations that infringe on private property rights without due process and are traceable to Agenda 21 adopted in 1992 by the United Nations or any other international law or ancillary plan of action that contravenes the federal or state constitutions.

In addition, this act prohibits the state and any political subdivision from entering into an agreement with, expending any money for, receiving funds from, contracting services from, or giving financial aid to any organization accredited and enlisted by the United Nations to assist in the implementation of Agenda 21.

[….]

From the Southern Poverty Law Center (March 14, 2012):

….In the world of far-right extremists, Agenda 21 is demonized as a sort of Trojan horse, part of a larger scheme to shatter Americans’ liberties and institute a totalitarian, one-world government known typically as the “New World Order…”

…to the John Birch Society (JBS), one of the main groups promoting the conspiracy theory about Agenda 21, it represents the end of America as we know it. This is the same group, of course, that claimed President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a secret communist….

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a secret communist? Interesting.

Previously:

HB 42: first, they came for the black helicopters and I did not speak up (December 5, 2012)

HB 383: the black helicopters won’t need GPS when they can just use Gadsden license plates (January 31, 2013)

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C010594 11/13/2012 CITIZENS FOR NIEVES CNS CORPORATION 500 E. 9TH ST KANSAS CITY MO 64106 11/13/2012 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

Yes, that Brian Nieves.

When I was about thirteen years old, I used to faithfully watch the TV series Leave it to Beaver. The series centered on a family, the Cleavers, who, according to Wikipedia, exemplified “the idealized suburban family of the mid-20th century.” I, however, watched because I thought Beaver’s big brother, Wally, was the cutest boy ever. My crush didn’t last too long, but I can still remember all the characters on the show. Which is why I had a real aha moment when Jonathan Bernstein noted the resemblance between a character on the show, Eddie Haskell, and GOP Veep candidate Paul Ryan. After some thought, it occurred to me that both Eddie and his sidekick on the show, Lumpy Rutherford, foils to the too-good-to-be true Cleaver boys, have a lot in common with many members of today’s Republican Party.

For those of you who are too young to have watched Leave it to Beaver, which aired between 1957 and 1963, this description of Eddie captures the critical points:

Eddie’s two trademarks are his unctuous politeness to adults and his weasly, sharp-tongued meanness to everybody else. He is a model white-collar delinquent, a creep who goads people into trouble rather than perpetrating the crime himself. He was a born shirker, not worker, and a strain on any parent, especially his own long-suffering mother and father, Agnes and George. […] but really, when it comes to Eddie, when you’ve said “creep,” you’ve said it all.

Just think of Ryan trotting his 78 year old Mother out before the old folks in Florida, talking up the need to keep Medicare safe from Obama, with nary a word about his plan to destroy the program in all but name. Or think about all his smarmy lies during the Republican convention. Pure Eddie. Missouri’s Roy Blunt also has his Eddie Haskell moments, kissing up to rich, corporate types, sidestepping the hard questions with GOP talking points and pious bromides, delivering a swift kick in the behind to those who have nothing he wants, while pretending, after years as a Washington socialite, that he’s still a down-home boy. Romney, himself, the etch-a-sketch king of mendacity, surely qualifies as the archetypal Eddie.

Clarence “Lumpy” Rutherford, the second Leave it to Beaver character that comes to mind, is an equally common type in the GOP. Lumpy has been described as follows:

… he is the first bully that the Cleaver boys must deal with. Pretty soon his true cowardly, lumbering self shows through, and they see him for a kind of harmless buffoon. As he continues to “swell up,” everybody gets a good laugh at Lumpy’s expense, but as long as he’s getting his three squares and a few snacks in-between and his father is not yelling at him to much, he’s a happy enough boob, sporting a silly sort of dodo’s grin. When things are going poorly, which is most of the time, he still whines for his “Daddy.

Although Lumpy happily carried out Eddie Haskell’s mean-minded schemes without a thought, he never really understood the goals of the underlying plan. He just wanted to hang with the guys and be accepted.

We’ve got lots of Lumpys here in Missouri. If Ed Martin were fictional, I’d have suspected that the author based his character on Lumpy. Jim Lembke? Maybe. Brian Nieves is perhaps a tad too angry, potentially violent and unstable, but otherwise he fits the criteria – although on second thought, he’s actually more like a Lumpy who thinks he’s an Eddie.

On the national scene, I’d suggest politicians like Joe Walsh, who thinks the way to answer Sandra Fluke’s critique of the GOP is to tell her to get a job, and Steve King. They’re both mean, not too bright, and more than willing to do the dirty work that comes their way. King actually tried to come to Todd Akin’s rescue until he figured out that the big guys weren’t heading in that direction and it was wiser to back off. Romney recently endorsed his re-election effort, declaring that “I want him as my partner in Washington!” Eddie and Lumpy, together again.

There are, of course, folks in the Republican Party who aren’t conniving or bullies, people more like the Cleaver boy’s parents. They’re conventional, kind, if a bit smug, not at all evil, but just somewhat blinkered when it comes to reality. For example, just like Wally and the Beaver’s dad who was always kind to the hapless Lumpy, elder GOP statesman John Danforth endorsed Ed Martin. While these folks seem to find the Eddie Haskells and Lumpy Rutherfords in their party distasteful, they are also mostly unwilling to risk the wrath of these new GOPers who have usurped the more genteel Republican party of yesteryear.      

Talk about getting hoist with your own xenophobia.

Antonin Scalia in Warrensburg, part 4 (March 7, 2008)

[Do you believe that there is a right to privacy under the United States Constitution?]

   Oh, there certainly is and it us, uh, contained in the Fourth Amendment. And it says “that the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Period. There is not a generalized right of privacy, whatever that means. What is a generalized right of privacy [garbled]? One of our, one of our, one of our opinions says it means “the right to be left alone”. [laughter] Right. This is anarchy…

   …[wire tapping] So, there is no, what should I say, exclusion from democratic debate of – conversations. It’s something for the people to decide whether you should have wiretapping or not….[as practice now]…This generalized right of privacy which comes from, what is it, penumbras and emanations from the Fourth and a lot of other ridiculous stuff. Uh, you know the consequences of that? Surely one of the major policy issues around these days is whether, uh, the Federal government can listen in on these international phone calls to find what the bad guys are doing. It used to be up to the Congress to decide whether the danger was high enough and the risk of invading people’s privacy high enough to permit that. No longer. It’s a question for me now. It’s a question for me. That’s what happens when you, when you read more and more stuff into the Constitution – you reduce democracy.

“…There is not a generalized right of privacy, whatever that means…” That’s what Nino said.

Senator Brian Nieves (r) filed SB 676 yesterday. The bill summary:

Current Bill Summary

SB 676 – This act creates the Civil Liberties Defense Act. This act mandates that any court, arbitration, tribunal, or administrative agency ruling shall be unenforceable if based on a foreign law that does not grant the parties the same rights as the parties have under the United States and Missouri constitutions.

The act makes contracts that choose to apply a foreign law to contractual disputes or to have disputes settled in another country void and unenforceable in Missouri, if the foreign law would not grant the parties to the contract the same rights as the parties have under the United States and Missouri constitutions.

In some cases, a court may refuse to take jurisdiction over matters, where the court believes there is a more appropriate forum for the dispute. This act requires that the court hear the case in Missouri, if a state resident brings the case and if the court finds that not hearing the case in Missouri violates or would likely violate the rights of the person who brought the case.

The act does not apply to a business entity that subjects itself to a foreign law in a jurisdiction outside the United States. The act does not authorize courts to adjudicate religious matters.

This act is similar to SB 308 (2011).

There’s an interesting detail in the actual bill language [pdf]:

….The Missouri general assembly finds that it shall be the public policy of this state to protect its citizens from the application of foreign laws when the application of a foreign law will result in the violation of a right guaranteed by the constitution of this state or of the United States, including, but not limited to, due process, freedom of religion, speech, or press, and any right of privacy….

[emphasis added]

Right of privacy. That’s a very interesting choice of phrase.

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965):

…The Connecticut statute forbidding use of contraceptives violates the right of marital privacy which is within the penumbra of specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights…

[emphasis added]

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973):

….State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother’s behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman’s qualified right to terminate her pregnancy….

[emphasis added]

Lawrence et al. v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003):

….It does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. Petitioners’ right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention….

Is SB 676 an endorsement of all those penumbras and emanations? Just asking.

We’ve seen this before: HJR 88: a veritable thesaurus of tenther drivel (April 8, 2010)

Senator Brian Nieves (r), nothing, if not consistent, filed SJR 45 on January 9th. The bill summary:

Missouri State Senate

Introduced

SJR 45 – Upon approval by the voters, this constitutional amendment prohibits the Missouri legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government from recognizing, enforcing, or acting in furtherance of any federal action that exceeds the powers delegated to the federal government.

The state also shall not recognize, enforce, or act in furtherance of any federal actions that: restrict the right to bear arms; legalize or fund abortions, or the destruction of any embryo from the zygote stage; require the sale or trade of carbon credits or impose a tax on the release of carbon emissions; involve certain health care issues; mandate the recognition of same sex marriage or civil unions; increase the punishment for a crime based on perpetrator’s thoughts or designate a crime as a hate crime; interpret the establishment clause as creating a wall of separation between church and state; or restrict the right of parents or guardians to home school or enroll their children in a private or parochial school or restrict school curriculum.

The state is also required to interpret the U.S. Constitution based on its language and the original intent of the signers of the Constitution. Amendments to the U.S. Constitution shall be interpreted based on their language and the intent of the congressional sponsor and co-sponsors of the amendment.

The amendment also declares that Missouri citizens have standing to enforce the provisions of the amendment and that enforcement of the amendment applies to federal actions taken after the amendment is approved by the voters, federal actions specified in the amendment, and any federal action, regardless of when it occurred, that the general assembly or the Missouri Supreme Court determines to exceed the powers enumerated and delegated to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution….

Some of the language from the bill:

….(2) Not recognize, enforce, or act in furtherance of the following:

(a) Federal actions restricting the right of private citizens to bear arms;

Guns. Check.

(b) Federal actions legalizing or funding abortions, or the destruction of any embryo containing human DNA from the zygote stage onward through all stages of development;

Abortion. Ban stem cell research. Double check.

Of course, there’s more:

(c) Any federal action requiring the sale or trade of carbon credits or imposing a tax, fee, fine, or penalty on the release of carbon emissions;

[emphasis added]

Unlimited air pollution. Cough. Check.

(d) Federal actions involving a public option for health care, mandating end of life counseling, rationing health care, dictating or limiting the type of treatment a doctor may provide to his or her patient, authorizing or mandating the collection of a patient’s medical record into a database, covering illegal aliens under health insurance or prohibiting enforcement of laws regarding coverage for illegal aliens, mandating the benefits health insurance must cover, requiring insurance providers to cover abortion services, restricting the ability of patients to purchase health insurance in another state, or assessing fees, fines, or penalties on employers who do not provide health insurance to their employees or Missouri citizens who do not purchase health insurance;

No access to health care, death panels, immigration, abortion (again), etc. Check, check, check, check, etc.

(e) Any federal action mandating the recognition of same sex marriage, civil unions, or any relationship other than the marriage of one man and one woman;

[emphasis added]

Teh gay. Check. Is friendship out? Just asking.

(f) Any federal action increasing the punishment for a crime based on the thoughts of the perpetrator or the designation of the crime as a “hate crime”;

Love is bad, hate is good. Check.

(g) Any federal action regarding the establishment clause based upon a “wall of separation” between church and state;

Uh? Would this cause an infinite loop in the Missouri Constitution? Just asking.

(h) Any federal action restricting the right of parents or guardians to home school, enroll their children in a private or parochial school, or placing restrictions on curriculum;

Wha? Okay, this is just paranoia.

And then, just for good measure:

(3) Interpret the Constitution of the United States of America based on its language and the intent of the signers of the Constitution at the time of its passage. The several amendments shall be interpreted by their language and the intent of the congressional sponsor and co-sponsors of the amendment. Any interpretation of the Constitution based on an emerging awareness, penumbras or shadows of the Constitution, a theory of the Constitution being a “living, breathing document”, or any interpretation that expands federal authority beyond the limited powers enumerated and delegated to the federal government, without an amendment to the Constitution, shall be deemed to exceed the limited powers enumerated and delegated to the federal government.

Marbury v Madison (1803), out?

….It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each….

Oopsie.

Over two hundred years of stare decisis out. Check.

You’ve got to love this definition in the bill:

….(2) “Public option”, any health insurance plan passed after January 1, 2009, operated by the federal government or its agent that competes directly or indirectly with private health insurance providers;

For anyone keeping score, that would be the “let’s not touch Medicare or every senior in the state will vote for the other party in the foreseeable future” clause.

….Any ruling by a court of competent jurisdiction in violation of subdivision (3) of subsection 2 of this section shall be invalid and not recognized, enforced, or otherwise furthered in the state of Missouri….

Nullification. Jackpot!

In the best day-late-and-a-dollar short style that I seem to be cultivating lately, I began today to make a list of what we all now know about Rep. Brian Nieves (R-26) in the wake of his recent efforts to browbeat and then malign constituents who had the temerity to approach their state congressperson with their concerns. It doesn’t make for a pretty picture and it raises some serious concerns about what it takes to get elected to statewide office.

I’m not talking about the obvious conclusion which Sarah Jo aptly summarized in the title of her recent post on the topic, “Brian Nieves is a ticking bomb.” I myself played around with the idea that Nieves was possibly on the verge of a meltdown after the incident in which he went gunning for Shawn Bell. His lack of equilibrium in that incident netted him one of TPM’s Golden Duke award nominations for best local scandal of 2010. In case you’re not familiar with these awards, they are handed out annually to the “best purveyors of public corruption, outlandish behavior and The Crazy.” So far as I know, Nieves is not especially corrupt.

No, the character traits that Mr. Nieves has most recently revealed are different, perhaps corollary to his generally over-heated disposition, but certainly equally damming in an individual who is supposed to act as a representative of the people:

1. Nieves is, by his own admission,  intellectually incapable of rational argument. He implies that when he abused the elderly constituents who visited his office, he was justified because they are the type of folks who try to “bait” him into a situation where “there’s no way to win the argument.” In other words, if someone makes a point he isn’t capable of refuting, Nieves throws a tantrum. Of course, bolstering the inference that Nieves is a bit too dim to be an effective pol, there’s also the fact that he actually admitted this intellectual failing on video – you can see his musings on the topic here. Sadly, he doesn’t even seem to realize how damming his words are.  

2. Nieves plays fast and loose with the truth. As this video shows, he explicitly tried to coax the co-host of his radio show into falsifying facts. As Adam of St. Louis Activist Hub describes it:

Prior to yesterday’s show, Nieves can be seen coaching Moore to claim that three letters about him acting like a schoolyard bully were from “liberal blogs.” In fact, each of the three letters about Nieves’ bullying was printed in the Missourian, the newspaper for Washington, Missouri. Nieves tells his co-host that, “from a strategy standpoint,” he doesn’t want people to know about the letters in the Missourian and that “there are a lot of old ladies” who “want him to be nice all the time.”

3. Nieves may find elderly men terrifying (see 4 below), but he clearly holds elderly female constituents in contempt, all but labeling them weak-kneed old fools whose persnicketiness would keep a manly man from blowing his top from time to time in the way manly men do. His solution? What the old biddies don’t know, won’t hurt them – or, in this case presumably, Nieves. Proof? See above.

4. Nieves is a coward. Who but a coward would use his family to avoid taking responsibility for his boorish behavior? He also seems to be terrified of an elderly man whose only crime is that he expressed his displeasure at the ugly treatment he received from his state representative.  

5. Nieves just doesn’t know when to stop digging (see also here) – which is, I suppose, just more evidence that the first point about his intellectual capacity was well-made.

Surely, these character flaws can’t come as a total surprise to folks in his district who, presumably, know something about Mr. Nieves. Since he is generally acknowledged to be a Tea Party boy, one has to assume that his personality, bizarre though it may be, strikes a sympathetic note with that particular group.

There certainly seems to be an equivalence between what recent events suggest about Nieves  and what one can infer about the Tea Party based on its rhetoric. Over-inflated bombast? Check. A sense of perpetual grievance at a world that refuses to recognize his/their superiority? Check. Swagger and threat as the preferred means to prevail over others? Check. A very vague understanding of the grandiose abstractions that he/they throw around so liberally? Check. Impatience with demonstrable but inconveneint facts? Check. A possible impediment to the peaceful solution to our real problems? Check and double check.  

That’s the rationale behind blaming Nixon if unemployed workers don’t get that extension to 99 weeks from the federal government. Four state senators–Lembke, Nieves, Schaaf, and Kraus–are filibustering to prevent Missouri from accepting free federal funds for the long-term jobless. If they succeed, we’ll be unique: the only state stupid enough to send its federal funds to some other state.

But the senators aren’t unreasonable. Oh no. If they can get Nixon to turn down other stimulus funds, they’ll give up the filibuster against jobless benefits. And if Nixon doesn’t kowtow, then:

“he’s more interested in paying for pet projects and pork than helping the families in Missouri that on Friday he said were his priority,” said Sen. Brian Nieves, R-Washington.

Republicans have a nasty habit of holding somebody’s kid at gunpoint and making ransom demands. That’s bad enough, but then they blame the kidnapping on the parents (or on Obama or on Nixon).  

And they ain’t honest in other ways as well. When a reporter asked them about their assertions that these workers are “gaming the system”, Nieves got hot. (Well, that’s Nieves.) “Which one of us have EVER said anything remotely similar to that?” Lembke, who was standing next to Nieves at the podium didn’t say a word about this published quotation of his: “‘People need to get off their backsides and get a job.'” Furthermore, the reporter quoted Schaaf, 13 minutes earlier, saying that it’s outrageous to take money from one worker and give to another who should be working.

I’m past being surprised at wingnuts being wingnuts.

No.

They argue that cutting off unemployment benefits at 79 weeks for Missourians could help the employment picture in the longterm because it would force those the idlers collecting it until 99 weeks to get off their bums and find a job.

Let me explain it one more time: One job = six applicants. It’s true even at Wal-Mart, so let’s not hear any more about PhDs who won’t work in nursing homes. Lembke can just drop the anecdotal nonsense:

Lembke said some employers–such as a home-health care company and a Jefferson County manufacturer–have told him they have trouble finding workers willing to take $10- to $15-an-hour jobs.

Every fifth grader, not just the smart ones, can tell you that if you give money to a person who is desperate for it, he will spend it. And store owners who are desperate for customers will be glad to see the poor man come in with cash. Thus, the economy gets happier.

That’s fifth grade economics. I don’t see Lembke qualifying this June for a promotion from fourth grade.

Previously: Of cigars, port wine, and arrogant state senators