montana

We all know that our prison population is growing out of control, yet nothing is being done. Well leave it to a Republican to come up with a most awesome alternative to incarceration - spankings:

A Montana Republican state lawmaker wants to give criminals the option of choosing “corporal punishment in lieu of incarceration.” According to Think Progress, the legislation is being proposed by Rep. Jerry O’Neil and would apply not just to misdemeanor crimes, but to some felonies as well.

The law states that “(f)or purposes of this section, ‘corporal punishment’ means the infliction of physical pain on a defendant to carry out the sentence negotiated between the judge and the defendant.” The law states that the exact nature of that pain shall be “commensurate with the severity, nature, and degree of the harm caused by the offender.”

The proposed law stipulates that the punishment shall be carried out by local sheriffs if the defendant is avoiding jail time or corrections personnel if the defendant is choosing the option to stay out of state prison.

What could possible go wrong here? Well, save the deviants who actually enjoy pain and will break the law just to get their tushys whipped.

We always here Republicans talk about "state sovereignty" and an "overreaching federal government", but they really don't believe in what they say. Take this latest example from the conservative Supreme Court:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down Montana's century-old limits on corporate political spending, putting an end to the state's resistance to Citizens United and effectively expanding that controversial ruling to the state and local elections.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, decided in January 2010, struck down federal limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions as violations of the First Amendment. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing on behalf of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, reached the bold conclusion that "independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption," and therefore "[n]o sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations."

The vote was split along ideological lines. Basically the conservatives said "the sovereignty you have imposed for over a 100 years, Montana, well it's wrong".

This is also a perfect example of how the conservatives are willing to give our nation to the greedy corporations. It is one of the biggest insults ever leveraged against democracy and it's coming from those "democracy loving" chest thumpers on the right. Sickening......

A new study of online porn subscriptions reveal some interesting numbers:

The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," Edelman says.

Wow  - I wonder what Orin Hatch has to say about this? Also interesting is that the top states with porn subscribers were also states that voted for John McCain. Damn I can almost see those Nailin Palin videos flying off the shelves.