An email popped up recently that chilled me to the bone. Just one sentence long, it said: “Occasionally, Kansas legislators make Texas legislators look like sages.”
Friends, if that’s true, America is in a heap of hurt. For years, I have lived with, dealt with, and reported on the insane asylum that Molly Ivins dubbed the “Texas Lege” – goofier than which I thought you could not get. In just the past couple of months, for example, I reported to you that two towering figures in our Lege had been routinely double billing on travel expenses for luxury hotels, fancy restaurants, and such. In the midst an ongoing budget crunch, they were illegally collecting tens of thousands of dollars from Texas taxpayers, even as they were demanding that programs to help poor people be slashed. When caught, these goobers essentially said, “Well, gosh, no one told us it was wrong.”
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Now that sets a high bar for low IQ, doesn’t it, and I thought it also established a low mark for bottom-feeder ethics. However, my Kansas correspondent found a lawmaker in his legislature who is a legitimate contender to top our duo. Virgil Peck is the name. A state rep, he sits on a committee that was recently considering ways to deal with a spreading wild boar problem. It was suggested that the solution might be to put sharpshooters in helicopters to thin the roving herds.
That sparked a synapse between Virgil’s two brain cells, and next thing you know his tongue was moving and these words gushed out of his mouth: “Looks like to me, if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works, maybe we have found a solution to our illegal immigration problem.”
Hoo-boy, that’s Texas-class doofusness, alright! Maybe we need to have a national “State Lege Worst-off.” Send your nominees to me: info@jimhighower.com.
“Email from Ralph T. of Kansas,” March 22, 2011.
“Virgil Peck Hurts Kansas with feral swine remark,” www.kansascity.com, March 17, 2011.
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