GOP Contender In Iowa: Microchip Illegals Like Dogs

Posted by | April 27, 2010 21:55 | Filed under: Top Stories


By The River Wanders

Microchips were once the provenance of computer geeks, pet-tracking, and women with fancy manicures.   Not any more; enter the Grand Old Party.

The state of Virginia passed a law recently, HB53, making it illegal for insurers and employers to implant a microchip – referred to as “human tracking devices” – in citizens against their will. While this might seem to be an element of comprehensive privacy protection for Virginia’s citizens, its basis is far less benign.  The bill’s sponsor,  Delegate Mark L. Cole, gave a strange and rambling reason for HB53: the Biblical “mark of the beast.” He added that,

“the growing use of microchips could allow employers, insurers or the government to track people against their will and that implanting a foreign object into a human being could also have adverse health effects.”

Cole concluded with “I just think you should have the right to control your own body.”

In Georgia, another anti-microchip implantation bill just passed: SB235.  What is notable about this law is that its debate spawned a presentation from a Georgia resident who claimed that the Department of Defense implanted a microchip in her pubic area.  At the House hearing, the woman told the bill’s sponsor, Ed Setzler, that she had the

“right to work without being tortured by co-workers who are activating these microchips by using their cell phones and other electronic devices” and “microchips are like little beepers. Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission.”

Apparently Georgia lawmakers were persuaded that DoD might implant chips in their nether regions, too, because they passed SB235 shortly thereafter.

At this point the GOP has clearly demonstrated its objection – for better or for worse, even with its bizarre justification – to the involuntary implantation of microchips in human beings, and this very delusional story should be over.  But it’s far from over.

In an offensive display of ignorance coupled with a flagrantly hate-based anti-immigration stance, the GOP’s 3rd District challengers in Iowa take the integrity of the party to unplumbed depths. The hopefuls seeking the seat of Leonard Boswell (D) discussed immigration issues with racist, bravado-tinged disdain: send illegal immigrants back on “the bus,” build a fence along the southern border, and deny amnesty.  However the most heinous suggestion came from the mouth of physician Pat Bertroche who said,

“I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going…I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal? That’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under.”

So what shall we conclude from the GOP’s dissociative position on the “involuntary microchipping” of human beings against their will?  First, we conclude that it is not acceptable for Americans who don’t want to be victims of Big Brother, Big Government, or The Beast.  Second, we conclude that it is acceptable for undocumented immigrants – citizens of other countries – whose presence is deemed so onerous that they are to be treated like animals, to suffer the possibility of adverse health effects, and to have lost the right to control their own bodies.  Third, we conclude that the GOP’s right hand doesn’t know what the hell its left is doing.

This vulgar manifestation of ignorance, hate and hypocrisy lead me to pose two questions: one, do the people who proclaim the virtues of the less-than-grand Republican party even KNOW what virtues the party espouses, and two, how far does the Republican party have to devolve until it cleans its own house?

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity~Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Copyright 2010 Liberaland
By: TheRiverWanders

Independent parent, aspiring author and generally good egg with an occasional foul temper whose deepest curiosities lie in psychology, law, government, history, equal rights, animal rights and child development. Progressive. Allergic to stupid.

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