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The California ballot initiative system is a progressive direct democracy plebiscite. However, it allows everyday Republicans with deranged views nurtured by the GOP noise machine to propose crackpot shit such as the "The Sodomite Suppression Act". This initiative, if enacted, would call on all Godly Californians to kill homosexuals. As such, the initiative is a tidy glimpse into the mind of the modern Republican. It also gives us a view of what complete GOP control of the government might look like.

"The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha," it begins. "Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God's just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating-wickedness in our midst, the People of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method," the proposal continues.

If I had to give the GOP a motto that encapsulated their mission, it would be the one above. In the latest act of, "we don't give a shit about…

A new CNN/ORC poll "finds 53% saying things are going well, 46% badly. That's the highest share saying things are going well that CNN/ORC polls have found during Obama's time in office...Assessing Obama's presidency overall, 50% consider his time in office a success, 47% a failure. And for those who say his time in office has been a failure, 37% say that's been because of his own actions, while just 9% attribute it to Congress blocking the President from action...Nearly two-thirds (63%) disapprove of the Democratic leaders in Congress, while 74% disapprove of the Republican leadership. That's worse than in March 2011, when 64% said they disapproved of GOP leadership a few months after the party took control of the U.S. House of Representatives."

Well, would you look at that. The Delaware General Assembly has gone and updated their webpage with a sleeker design and easier navigation. I'm still figuring it out, but the one bug I see right away is that when you click on a particular piece of legislation, you are not taken to that legislation's URL landing page, but instead you view it in window on the main page. Now, individual URLs for specific legislation are still available and are provided as a link in the Vote Tracker below. You simply click on the Bill number and your browser will take you to that page. We have finally the first voting action on one of the bills we are following. The Senate unanimously passed Senator Sokola's Senate Bill 31 to continue to enable Teach for America to recruit and train teachers to teach in Delaware. It moves over to the House. Senator Poore's SB 33 was voted out of the Senate Education Committee on its merits, and then laid on the table in the Senate yesterday, March 24. Laying on the table does not necessarily kill a bill, but it suspends or postpones consideration of it. So I guess we need to know why, since the Bill would have implemented one of the many task forces' we turn to in this state whenever we have a problem. And the problem here was reforming the individualized education program (IEP) process, which is the way educational programs and services for students with diagnosed disabilities in Delaware public schools are determined. I have seen no explanation yet in the media as to why we are postponing considering this bill. Sen. Robert Marshall (D) has introduced legislation that will increase the minimum wage up to where it should be: $10.25 an hour. The bill calls for 50-cent, per-hour increases over the next four years until minimum wage hits $10.25 an hour by June of 2019. I'd prefer we just increase it straight away to $10, whatever games we have to play to get legislators onboard, let's play them. Most importantly, Senator Marshall has introduced SB 39 to increase the minimum wage to $10.25; and Senator Peterson has introduced SB 40, the repeal of the Death Penalty in Delaware.

In their most recent act of bipartisanship, "Democratic" Senators Coons and Carper voted in favor of a Republican amendment that sets the stage for Social Security benefits cuts.

Bill Boyarsky at TruthDig writes that the GOP is planning to use a desired War with Iran as a campaign strategy for 2016:

The Republicans want to frighten the voters into believing that the Democrats will sell out Israel and the United States. Selling this phony message is tremendously important to them as they get ready for the 2016 election. Domestically, their arguments against the Democrats are vanishing. Obamacare is increasingly popular as signups become more efficient. The deficit—the Holy Grail for Republicans—is shrinking. Unemployment is declining. All they can do is complain that Obama and the Democrats are surrendering to Islam.

House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) claimed Tuesday that ObamaCare will cost $5 million per enrolled person. Sessions cited an overall estimate from House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price…

Alternate title to this post: ::Get your Popcorn:: As you know, the right wing has lied for years that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, and was instead born in Kenya. This lie has continued despite the fact that both the short form and the long form birth certificate from the State of Hawaii have been released proving that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, and despite the fact that a birth announcement regarding the young President's birth was placed a couple of days later in the Honolulu Advertiser. Anyway, the right wing could not handle the fact that a non-white man had been elected President, and they reacted by making the President an "other," an "alien," literally. Well now their tea party champion, Ted Cruz, has decided to run for President. But he really wasn't born here. But the right wing has no problem with that. Well, all except The Donald.

The New York Times says that the "roughly 300 emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private account that were turned over last month to a House committee investigating the ]Beghazi] attack showed the secretary and her aides closely monitoring the fallout from the tragedy[, but] they provided no evidence that Mrs. Clinton, as the most incendiary Republican attacks have suggested, issued a ‘stand down’ order to halt American forces responding to the violence in Benghazi, or took part in a broad cover-up of the administration’s response, according to senior American officials.” I always wondered what Republicans thought Hillary did. That she personally ordered the attack? That she ordered a stand down order to prevent Marines or other military from responding to the attack? I suppose that is akin to those on our side of the aisle that believe that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney personally ordered the 9/11 attacks. The difference is, our crazies don't control a political party or Congress.