Representative Calamity Jane Cunningham (HD 86, Chesterfield) is running for SD 7, the seat John Loudon is termed out of. God help us. (It seemed appropriate to register a plea with God, even though–in fact because–Cunningham is convinced she has Him in her corner.)

She knows how much the Almighty hates activist judges, gays, and public education. Perhaps it is because of her pipeline to God on the education issue that the House leadership put her in charge of–what else?–The Education Committee.

There she has worked assiduously to deprive public schools of $40 million every year by trying to pass voucher legislation. Cunningham took pride in attracting hundreds of thousands of dollars in PAC contributions to Republican legislators from All Children Matter, a national pro-voucher organization.

And when the MNEA fought her on the voucher issue, she fought back:

Over the legislative spring break [2007], Queen of Bad Ideas Jane Cunningham and GOP friends Steve Hunter and Marilyn Ruestman spun the squeaky gerbil-wheels of their minds as rapidly as they could and came up with a gem of a bill. Their idea: stop public school teachers in the state of Missouri from participating in their democracy by visiting the state capitol to lobby legislators. ….

Their bill, HB 1222, reads simply…

no public school teacher shall lobby the general assembly unless such teacher makes arrangements to pay the salary of the substitute teacher for the teacher’s class.

Why this antipathy toward public education, an institution whose only sin is educating hundreds of millions of us? For the answer to that, be aware that Jane Cunningham has ties to the Christian Nationalism movement and dominion theology, which tell their adherents that Christians must come to control every aspect of American society, that in fact they have the right to rule non-believers. And those blankety-blank public schools aren’t getting with the program.

Specifically, public schools don’t hate gays enough. In January of last year, Cunningham spoke on the topic of “the homosexual agenda in our public schools” at the “Educational Policy Conference 18,” an annual event sponsored by The Constitutional Coalition. Check out the topics covered at the Coalition’s Conference. The catchiest title was: “Totalitarianism in Drag: The Connection Between Globalism, Phony Academics, Covert Data Collection & Mental Health Screening”.

When she spoke, Cunningham first introduced some of her favorite people in the audience, among them Allen TABOR Icet and Oklahoma representative Sally Kern. Now, that Sally Kern, she’s a caution. Let Ellen DeGeneres tell you about her:

Here’s one of my complaints about public schools: the ones Jane Cunningham attended failed to do their job. She learned how to read but assimilated no respect for the concept of democracy.

Before the lege’s spring break, Republicans tried to pass Pervez Jane Cunningham‘s bill to put a constitutional amendment on the fall ballot forbidding judges from raising taxes without voter approval–as if a Missouri judge ever had. Too many people had left early on Thursday for the spring break, so the Rs had to wait. They got the bill through the House this week.

Republican behavior both times was of a piece. On the Tuesday before the break, first round approval was considered:

After about 10 minutes of debate, Speaker Pro Tem Bryan Pratt, R-Blue Springs, called for closing remarks from Cunningham, even though several Democrats were standing and Rep. J.C. Kuessner, D-Eminence, says he was waving his hand, asking to speak.

For his part, Pratt said: “Nobody was seeking recognition. There wasn’t a single hand in the air.”

That statement was only part of the lying Pratt did. Jeanette Mott-Oxford wrote that:

Although the “no” votes clearly were louder than the “yes” votes, Pratt nonetheless declared the measure had won first-round approval.

This week, GOP legislators abandoned bald-faced lying in favor of what they had said they would eschew this session: PQ (moving the Previous Question to cut off debate). Again, they left several Democrats waiting in line at the mike, this time passing the bill–but with only the minimum number of yes votes.

Cunningham’s been a busy little beaver. Wednesday night, in the capitol rotunda, she and her guest, actor-producer Ben Stein, showed a film about intelligent design. Their point was that universities are shunning intellectual diversity if they refuse to teach intelligent design. Maybe Cunningham and Stein have a point. Perhaps while the universities are at it, they should also question whether the earth is round and rotates around the sun.

In any case, Cunningham sees no irony in cutting off debate on the bill while pleading for more debate in universities.

Mott-Oxford is understandably annoyed at having been left standing at the mike:

   Since the GOP has once again cut off debate with Democrats standing at the mikes ready to speak on a bill (and an important one that calls for amending our constitution at that), I thought I’d share with you what I wanted to say if I’d had the opportunity to speak before the PQ:

   1) What’s happened to the quality of work in this Legisalture? Last year’s crash and burn mess around the economic development bill had many editors speculating that it’s time to get rid of term limits down here because clearly unskilled novices are in charge. This is yet another example as Rep. Jane Cunningham and GOP-supporters constantly said “There are some problems with the language of this bill, but we’ll fix it on the Senate side. Trust us!” Whatever happened to getting it right the first time?

   2) The real agenda behind this bill is clear if you read Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, a respected book that was honored in recent years as one of the best examples of investigative reporting. I think the author is Michelle Goldman. The chapter on the courts spells out how groups with a radical theocratic agenda are working a coordinated plan to muzzle the courts until they can take over the courts.They are currently training students with the intent of moving them into positions as the legislators, judges, and Supreme Court justices of tomorrow. (Some of the groups involved – trusting my memory here since the book is on the table by my bed in St. Louis – are Generation Joshua, Focus on the Family, Jerry Fallwell’s organization, and Patrick Henry University.)

   Interestingly enough, numerous pieces of Rep. Cunningham’s legislative package (and that of other GOP sponsors) are profiled in other chapters of the book – like intelligent design (for which Cunningham honored Ben Stein and his movie that was shown in the Rotunda yesterday!) and the “intellectual diversity bill.” Many of her bills, including those that undermine public education, are based on model legislation in the christian nationalist playbook.This coalition of theocrats would re-write US history and initiate a government based on their religious and political doctrine, clearly violating the religious freedom clause of the Bill of Rights established by our nation’s founders (and clearly in contradiction to what many other christians believe as well).

   Hopefully HJR 41 WILL be fixed in the Senate – fixed by killing it dead as a doornail.

If Democrats gain quite a few seats next election without taking either house outright, some are bemoaning the gridlock that will result from a (barely) Republican legislature and a (presumably) Democratic governor. Yes, effective governance would be put off for another day two years. On the other hand, holding a bare majority might make it harder for Republicans to railroad through crap like HJR 41: always look for the silver lining.

What we get from this Republican legislature is so far from sensible, often with a subtext of threat, as to border on nutso. For example, the House just gave first-round approval to HB 1463, which bans enrollment at public Missouri colleges and universities for the entire .1 percent of illegal immigrants now attending them. Big whoop. As minority leader Paul LeVota pointed out:

“People don’t come to the state of Missouri so they can go to college, they come to work. This bill does nothing to solve these problems.”

Also in the sharkwatch on the Mississippi category of legislation is HJR 41, a bill for a constitutional amendment (another  in the plethora of useless, dangerous proposed amendments) that would ban Missouri judges from imposing taxes without voter approval.  As if they ever had. In some other states judges have done so, including in Kansas (omigod, right next door: the sky is falling, the sky is falling). And once, twenty years ago, a federal judge ordered the state to pay for teacher salary increases in Kansas City.

Undeterred by the lack of examples to prove the necessity of this amendment, Rep. Jane Cunningham (R-Chesterfield, running for the senate) said: “They [those treasonous judges, I presume] are on our doorstep. We have a clear and present danger right across the street.”

Her horror of judges would be laughable if it didn’t remind me so much of Pervez Musharraf kicking Pakistan’s chief justice off the supreme court. Naturally, I can’t claim that Cunningham has done anything as radical as that, but only because she can’t. She and her cohorts are still bound by due process.

Nevertheless, Pervez Cunningham and Rep. Pervez Lembke (R-District 85–running for the senate, pictured at left) are doing all they can to intimidate judges. Last January, Lembke proposed impeaching a judge in Osage Beach for ruling the “wrong” way in a child custody case. As a judge, Christine Hutson is bound by law to keep quiet about the case, but look who defended her:

Hutson’s defenders – including the Republican legislator from her town – say she is a respected judge who weighed mounds of evidence and followed the recommendation of the children’s court-appointed attorney.

“Any time you tear something apart, it can get ugly,” said Rep. Darrell Pollock, R-Lebanon. “Somebody’s a winner and somebody’s a loser. … I just question why we would be taking this two- or three-minute look at what this case was, and coming up with an idea that we could impeach this judge.”

Lembke may have abandoned the impeachment idea by now, for all I know. It doesn’t matter. The point’s been made. To anybody thinking of leaving private practice for the bench: think about it. If you’re not a Republican, do you want to take a cut in pay for the privilege of facing similar harassment? And if you’re already a judge, do you want to render a judgment that might get one of these pitbulls coming after you?

(On Wednesday, I’ll write about the centerpiece of this year’s attack on our judiciary, the Republican attempt to do away with the Missouri Non-Partisan Court Plan.)

But back to HJR 41. It looks to be headed for the ballot, and you can get an approximate sense of “justice” under Republicans by looking at how they conducted debate about the proposed amendment:

Legislators gave initial approval to the proposal Tuesday in a controversial move. After about 10 minutes of debate, Speaker Pro Tem Bryan Pratt, R-Blue Springs, called for closing remarks from Cunningham, even though several Democrats were standing and Rep. J.C. Kuessner, D-Eminence, says he was waving his hand, asking to speak.

For his part, Pratt said: “Nobody was seeking recognition. There wasn’t a single hand in the air.”

As usual, they notice no irony in telling judges what’s fair while exhibiting no clue about fairness themselves.

Senator Matt Bartle (R-Lee’s Summit) hates, hates, hates the sex industry.  In 2004 he got legislation enacted to prevent strip clubs and businesses that sell adult sex merchandise from advertising on billboards.  Two years and many legal briefs later, the courts ruled it unconstitutional.  The businesses are legal in Missouri, the court said, so it would be illegal to discriminate against them in the billboard industry.  The state wasted mucho dollars defending that law and yet Bartle plans to rewrite the legislation in hopes of getting it by those “activist judges.”  Bartle has also tried to pass legislation banning lap dances and full nudity in gentlemen’s clubs, as well as legislation adding an extra tax on stores that sell adult toys.

Representative Cynthia Davis (R-O’Fallon, pictured at left) wastes her time and that of the legislators trying to give school districts the option of teaching abstinence only sex education.  Any such law would gag teachers in districts that chose abstinence only from even mentioning contraception.  Her focus, unlike Bartle’s attempt to get rid of sexually suggestive billboards, is actually harmful.  Dozens of studies show that pregnancy rates are higher among students who don’t have accurate information about contraception.

Jane Cunningham (R-Chesterfield, pictured at right) is working herself into a dither over teachers guilty of sexual misconduct with students.  Between 2001 and 2005, 87 licensed teachers lost their credentials in Missouri because of such behavior.  What’s got Cunningham’s knickers in a twist is the sort of situation involving a teacher named Greg Crowley:  he quietly resigned from the Kingston District in 2000 after allegations of sexual misconduct, and he managed to work in three more districts before losing his license.

It’s not like I’m recommending that we ignore the Greg Crowleys, but it’s a relatively minor problem in the big picture of state issues, a minor problem that Jane Cunningham plans to exploit to the fullest.

The chairwoman of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee said she plans to file legislation and hold public hearings on teacher sexual misconduct after the Legislature reconvenes in January.

“We need to know the level and the breadth of the problem in Missouri,” she said. “We can’t turn our back on a situation like this.”

Missouri’s crotch legislators waste legislative time and money on the useless (banning sexy billboards), the counterproductive (abstinence only), and the mostly irrelevant (making sure that teachers guilty of misconduct lose their licenses immediately).

None of these three Republicans is going to approve of stem cell research or SCHIP or giving more money to the St. Louis City Schools.  I know that.  But still, they could spend their time on worthwhile issues that don’t involve forcing their moral agenda on the rest of us.

For example, Missouri is one of only eleven states not to pass a law yet to protect consumers from identity theft.  Hey.  Jane!  Forget about Greg Crowley.  Do something to protect me if somebody gets hold of my personal information and starts opening charge accounts in my name.

In 39 other states, a security freeze is mandated by law:

In one-third of the estimated 10 million cases of identity theft each year, crooks use stolen personal information like Social Security numbers to open new accounts in their victim’s name. A security freeze gives consumers the choice to “freeze” or lock access to their credit file against anyone trying to open up a new account or to get new credit in their name.

When a security freeze is in place at all three major credit bureaus, an identity thief cannot open a new account because the potential creditor or seller of services will not be able to check the credit file. When the consumer is applying for credit, he or she can lift the freeze temporarily using a PIN so legitimate applications for credit or services can be processed.

Another useful issue that the crotch reps could spend their time on is public transportation.  Willy Kessler just complained that Cynthia Davis ignores people like her who use public transportation.  Willy resents Davis’s flippant attitude about the need for more buses.:

Buses work best in high-density areas with streets laid out on a grid.  St. Charles County is distinctively different from St. Louis County.

Willy believes Davis could do better for St. Louisans:

This line of reasoning is, of course, highly specious since I can point to numerous SF bay area communities that are laid out similarly and are still served by numerous feeder lines that converge on main roads and highways.  Wouldn’t a real, far-sighted leader investigate and try to find out how places that have good public transportation solve these “problems”?

And given the Highway 40 construction that’s going to drive all of us crazy for two years, not to mention the effects of global warming that our many cars are exacerbating, Willy resents Cynthia’s solution:  not more public transportation, oh no.  But this:

I believe we have enough kind-hearted friends and family members who will give a ride to their neighbors who don’t drive.

Do you mean to tell us, Ms. Davis, that as a state legislator, you can’t do any better than that?  Maybe if you got your mind off everybody else’s crotch, your thinking processes would improve.