Virginia

For all their talk about keeping government out of our lives and pursuing freedom, the Republican Party sure has a funny way of proving it. First up is this story out of Georgia:

The City Council of Nelson has approved an ordinance that requires each head of household to own a gun. The legislation passed unanimously and goes into effect in 10 days. Nelson, population about 1,300, is about 40 miles north of Atlanta.

So the government shouldn't have the right to force citizens to purchase healthcare, but they should be allowed to force citizens to purchase guns? Something seems funny there.

Then we had east to North Carolina, where this is the news of the day:

A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.

Republicans. They love the Constitution, until it interferes with their true ideals of tyranny. But this is nothing new. We saw the same thing happen a couple of years ago when plans were out to build a mosque in New York City. Apparently "freedom of religion" should only apply to Christians.

And finally:

Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli has filed a petition with the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond asking the full 15-judge court to reconsider a decision by a three-judge panel last month that overturned the state’s sodomy law.

Here's an interesting cavaet to add to the entire debacle that has lead to Newt Gingrich and three other Republicans from appearing on the Virginia GOP primary ballot. It turns out that Virginia requires you to give your registered address when signing the petition and that's what excluded a lot of signatures:

A Gingrich campaign official prior to the move by the RPV said the problem is how the rules are set up, arguing that the party is, for apparently the first time, cross-checking the addresses that signature-givers gave against the electronic voter database file for accuracies. A name without a proper address match was tossed, the official said.

“What one needs to ask is ‘what percentage of valid, registered voters self-identify a current address that matches voter rolls that the voter might not have updated since 2008”? Are you 100% certain that your address you and all of your neighbors matches current voter rolls? It strikes me that this is not an accurate means to identify registered voters signing for ANY candidate, not just Gingrich,” the official wrote.

Sound familiar? Well it should because this is pretty much the same thing as the voter ID requirements the GOP has been pushing throughout the country. The only problem is that this time it didn't get the minority or Democratic voters like they intended and instead cost them their own voters. That makes Newt's excuse I posted earlier a little more ironic:

In a contentious primary season news like this can really throw a monkey wrench into the planning:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry will not appear on the Virginia primary ballot after submitting a petition that didn't meet the commonwealth's requirements, the Virginia Republican Party announced Friday.

In an announcement on their Twitter feed, the Virginia GOP wrote, "After verification, RPV has determined that Rick Perry did not submit the required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary."

Perry was one of four candidates who submitted ballot petitions Thursday to the Virginia State Board of Elections. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also submitted petitions.

Romney and Paul have already been approved. No word on Gingrich yet.