How does your state representative spend money?

ProPublica and The Sunlight Foundation can tell you here. I’d strongly suggest this explainer first, though.

UK doctors will soon record presence of guns in patients’ homes

You can read more about that here. Think we’d ever do that here in the U.S.? Having just watched on CT-N one of the most ignorant debates I’ve ever seen on the toxic mix of guns and domestic violence, I can predict that even here in blue-state Connecticut, this would be a tough sale. (The …

A militia of toddlers

(Leftover keeps sending these great subject lines and links, and I steal ’em all): On Tuesday, the Iowa House of Representatives passed a bill this week that would allow children of all ages to have guns. Under parental supervision, of course. Said state Rep. Kirsten Running-Marquardt, who opposes the bill: “…allows for one-year-olds, two-year-olds, three-year-olds, four-year-olds …

Because war and hunger and homelessness are really only trifling affairs:

The House of Representatives has introduced a resolution defending Christmas — which is really kind of stunning, considering Christmas has been just fine for eons without their support. My God. Can this session end quickly enough? The resolution’s 35 co-sponsors of this benighted waste of time have managed a two-fer: They’ve made Santa sad, and they’ve …

An addition to the prayer list: Mo. Rep. Rick Brattin

Rep. Brattin has submitted a bill in Jefferson City that would remove, among other things, fish and steak from the list of food people could acquire with food stamps in the Great State of Missouri. Another bill would remove porn from the list of things welfare recipients can buy with their benefits. The porn? Well, …

So while we’re on the issue of “religious freedom”…

(Which of late has been a legal notion best interepreted as “screw you, my religion is better than yours“): (With a side order of “My religion tells me to hate you.”) (To which the only response is: “Baby Jesus is crying, yahoos.”) The Republican-controlled Indiana House of Representatives has passed a bill that would, as …