Shiny 10 Commandments Sure To Distract Arkansas From Godly 'Rehoming' Kid-Dumper Guy

Hey, how about we take a short break from the loathsome child-abandoning Arkansas state Rep. Justin Harris, so we can bring you another completely different loathsome member of the Arkansas House, state Rep. Jason Rapert? Mr. Rapert apparently worries that there might be some folks out there who haven't heard of the Ten Commandments, so he's helpfully introduced a bill to place a big ol' Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Arkansas Capitol. You know, for purely secular reasons  (wink-wink-wink!):

Rapert said he did not believe his bill would promote religion.

“It’s not a religious statement at all. It’s more historical from my perspective, because of the incorporation and the well-known and well-discussed and well-documented fact that much of our judicial system today is based off of the 10 Commandments,” he said.

Indeed! We were at the county courthouse just the other day, and we saw a lady getting stoned to death for not keeping the Sabbath. Or maybe it was for covetousness; we missed the details while we were picking out a rock.

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If Mr. Rapert sounds a little familiar, it's probably because he's the strategic genius who recently suggested taking out ISIS with nuclear weapons, and castigated liberals for not loving America enough to protect it by lobbing a few carefully targeted nukes into the Middle East. A couple years ago, he also sponsored a bill that would make abortions illegal from the moment the wet spot on the sheets dried, and followed that up with a speech to some teabaggers in which he promised to "take this country back for the Lord" and pledged, "we’re not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in!”

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He's still big on letting majorities have the final say, as he explained in a recent interview where he noted that the Constitution was passed by a majority, so while political minorities do have rights, they can't "force their viewpoints" on the majority, duh. (Check the 10-minute mark in the video).

Rapert has also built into his Ten Commandments bill a couple of provisions that will make sure Arkansas won't have to spend a lot of money on the monument, or on defending the precious historical teaching aid from lawsuits. The thing would have to be paid for with private funds -- don't worry, there'll be donors -- and if the monument's constitutionality is challenged in court, the law empowers Arkansas's attorney general to either defend the case on the state's dime or to farm out that defense to the "Liberty Legal Institute," a rightwing Christian outfit that happily helps defend entanglements of church and state.

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Not that there should be any challenges. Rapert was very careful to include a line in the bill that explains the monument "shall not be construed to mean that the State of Arkansas favors any particular religion or denomination over others." Why, that would just be silly! It's only endorsing the religions that revere the Ten Commandments, which is all of them, right?

We're looking forward to seeing what those wonderful First Amendment trolls at the Satanic Temple come up with in reply.

[ Arkansas Times / Arkansas News / TalkBusiness ]