170 Comments

Ta, Robyn. Once upon a time, I had hope for NC. Not going to let their ass-backwards legislators ruin our honeymoon.

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Michigan had an anti-mask bill that applies only to masked people in groups, originally enacted against the KKK. It came up controversially a couple times sometime in the previous decade: one time was when Arabs in Dearborn were protesting an earlier Israel/Gaza conflict, with a large contingent of women in face-veils, who took advantage of their anonymity to throw rocks through the windows of some businesses displaying Israeli flags along their march route; the police were reluctant to arrest veiled women but when CAIR applied for a permit to march again they were persuaded to tell the niqabis to stay home. The other occasion was when this law was used by Scientology to get cops to chase away some protesters (including a friend of mine) who were in Guy Fawkes masks, as "Anon" protesters commonly were back then.

It was decided that the scope of the law was too vague, and the legislature repealed it.

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Missouri REGULARLY charges 15, 16 and 17 year olds as adults. They even charged a girl who was 14 at the time of her crime as an adult, because of course she didn't get to trial until she was 16 or 17. Some people wanted her executed.

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"[W]e have older gang members recruiting children to commit violent crimes" ... good thing adult prisons are famously known for being a 100% gang-free environment!

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It's pretty deplorable that states like North Carolina and Wisconsin are only spared from the ultimate Republican sadism by Democratis governors, and that their state houses are gerrymandered so hard as to make this extremism seem tenable in the short term.

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The one upside to the no mask law is that the Proud Boys can't hide their faces behind masks when they march.

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There's probably a proud boys exemption.

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The gleefulness with which they want to destroy the lives of young people because of their political activism is sickening.

Especially since these are the same people who are likely to cite the swim stats of a white youth who commits rape.

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“Several experts spoke out against the change during the hearing, explaining that juvenile offenders are far, far less likely to reoffend when placed in juvenile detention than in adult prisons,”

Hey, here’s a whacky idea. How about we require adult prisons to also do all the things that we know reduce recidivism?

Not that I think juvenile offenders should be in adult prisons under any circumstances. Even if tried as an adult, they should go to a juvenile facility at least until they turn 18.

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My mother lives in NC, we were talking about the sheer stupidity of the NC government doing this yesterday. I also said 'you know what I'm gonna do when I see you next month, right? and for a second, she's like 'huh?'. I'm wearing a mask, they can go ahead and do what they think needs to be done. It's infuriating, my mom is 76, she's had to have some (thankfully) small medical procedures on her heart in the past few months. She always wants me to move down there, to which I say 'hell no!' because while I love my mom and do want to spend time with her, I just won't move to that state. I want her to come home to Maryland, but she doesn't like our pension tax. But we both think this mask bill is super dumb, though, imo, NC seems to ENJOY passing stupid, hurtful bills.

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We visited NC beach last summer and Mrs. Monster started making noises about moving there after retirement. I said no fucking way. It didn’t help her case that we were there in what turned out to be the hottest, most humid week of the entire year.

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This may be the most depressing story of the day.

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Sen. Danny Britt (R-Robeson), the bill’s lead sponsor, explained that it was just very necessary on the grounds that "[W]e have older gang members recruiting children to commit violent crimes, knowing that a 15-, 16-, 17-year-old, a 14-year-old, is less likely to face any type of justice."

WTF did this asshat just watch 'The Wire' and come up with this shit?

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There are more than enough billboards along I-95 in North Carolina. And if they start cutting down even more trees around them, where are the cops going to hide?

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Conservatives are terrified of things they don't understand.

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NOT ALL NORTH CAROLINA FOLKS!! It's actually a purple-blueish state they just gerrymandered the daylights out of it.

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Same with Wisconsin, as noted in the article. But I wouldn’t want to live in either one now.

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If NC’s Lieutenant Governor wins his race for the governorship in November, we’re going to look at this as the good old days. That bastard’s stone crazy.

That said, the cops are going to have their hands full if 10,000 people show up to protest the mask law while wearing masks.

“Sarge, we got a little issue here.”

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What about all the Nazi marchers who hate masks for health reasons but are very quick to mask up when they go full Nazi in public. Do Klan hoods count?

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Oh, they would simply not be arrested. No need to make a carve-out in the law specifically to protect Nazis--the cops will ignore their mask-wearing.

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They might be wearing masks or hoods, but the cops know their coworkers when they see them.

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Howell, Michigan, in rural Livingston County on the road from Detroit to Lansing, was once one of the hot spots of the KKK (and later of the Michigan Militia), and an old guy from there once told me that when he was a kid in the 1920s he watched a KKK parade, all in their hoods, but he recognized the mayor from his distinctive wingtips.

But last cycle, Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin actually carried Livingston County, even though it was the reddest part of her district.

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That’s good. I’m from Flint and went to grad school in Ann Arbor, so to me Livingston county is tornado alley between the two.

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It's actually an update to a 50's era ANTI-klan law. But as usual, they are twisting it to their own purposes.

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