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It pains us, but big props must go out to Governor Jan Brewer, who today vetoed one of the most ridiculous, conspiracy-based, purely symbolic pieces of legislative garbage to pass through the Arizona Legislature: the humiliating “Birther Bill.”
Check out some of the other nutty legislation the governor vetoed today here in Feathered Bastard.
The bill was Arizona’s far-right-wing response to the continuously debunked conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama is not an American citizen. It required that presidential candidates prove to Arizona election officials that they were born in the United States before their name’s allowed on the ballot in the Grand Canyon State — despite it’s already being a federal requirement to land the job.
Sounds ridiculous, we know — but it gets worse.
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The original bill called for a long-form birth certificate to prove a candidate is a natural-born citizen, which was a little too much for some GOP lawmakers. So they made some amendments: if you can’t find your birth certificate, and you have a penis, a document describing your lack of foreskin will suffice.
A circumcision certificate — a document given to the parents of a male Jewish child after his foreskin is snipped off during a circumcision ceremony — is not a legal document (see an example of one here), but if you have one, under the amended bill, it would have been enough to prove you’re a U.S. citizen and your name can be permitted on the ballot in Arizona.
A description of a candidate’s penis to get on the ballot is crazy, even by Jan’s standards, which is part of the reason she vetoed the bill.
“I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for president of the greatest and most powerful nation on earth to submit their ‘early baptismal or circumcision certificates’ among other records to the Arizona secretary of state,” Brewer writes in a letter to House Speaker Kirk Adams, provided to New Times by the governor’s office. “This is a bridge too far.”
Brewer also opposes designating one person (the secretary of state) to act as “gatekeeper to the ballot for a candidate.” She says doing so could lead to “arbitrary or politically motivated decisions.”
Again, kudos to Governor Brewer for making a level-headed decision that’s not going to score her any points amongst Arizona’s far-right-wing-nuts. As for the state’s esteemed legislators, they just achieved a seemingly impossible task: making Jan Brewer look like the sane one.
