Monarch and Theocracy Wednesday

Still playing golf and swimming down down in JEB country who, by the way, would be a "great president" according to W. The current Monarch Bush suggested Wednesday that he'd like to see his family's White House legacy continue, perhaps with his younger brother Jeb as the chief executive. The president said Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is well-suited for another office and would make "a great president." Remember this prediction is coming from a guy whose approval ratings are lower than the percentage of people who believe Elvis is still alive. But no matter. The government and the country have become merely a malfunctioning family business that awaits the next Bushie to simply declare, "I'm sort of bored. Maybe being president will give me something to do. Besides, I know it's what god wants."

After that cheery news that America, Inc. was grooming another CEO from the shallow end of the Bush gene pool, I caught two other stories that tell you all you need to know about where the state of the Republican Theocracy is today. Kelly Romenesko was teaching French at two Roman Catholic schools in Appleton when she and her husband decided to start a family using in vitro fertilization. After asking for some time off in September 2004 to complete the procedure, the lifelong Catholic gave her boss an update about a month later: She was pregnant. But only days after that, she said, she got a pink slip by the Catholic school system. Administrators, according to her lawyer James C. Jones, claimed Romenesko violated a provision of her employment contract saying a teacher has to act in accordance with Catholic doctrine.

Catholic teaching holds that the procedure is morally wrong because it replaces the "natural" conjugal union between husband and wife and often results in destruction of embryos. Even though Jones said the couple used their own eggs and sperm and none of the embryos were destroyed in the process, the church forbids such donations and condemns all forms of experimentation on human embryos.

Then there was this happy story of lawsuit fighting for states' rights. Unfortunately the right Wyoming is suing the federal government for is for allowing people who have misdemeanor convictions for domestic violence to win back their right to own guns. Wyoming was "thoughtful" enough to disallow people with misdemeanor convictions if it involved the use or attempted use of a firearm.

So the moral of the story is that the rightwing Republican Talibans running this country think it's o.k. to own a gun if you've just physically beat your wife but not if you merely threatened her with a gun, loaded or unloaded, but it's not o.k. to have a baby through in vitro fertilization and keep your job. It is of course eternally o.k. to have a Bush run the country (into the ground) in perpetual monarchical succession. Time for a swim.