Rick Perry Rides Again

The governors of all 50 states are being asked by the Justice Department to sign a form on guidelines about the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).  They aren't being required to follow the guidelines, mind you, simply asked if they are following them -- and if not, whether they're using 5% of grants that the Justice Department gives for merely trying to follow them.

It seems like a no-brainer.  And of course when it comes to no-brainers, you have to figure that Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) is lurking about somewhere in the tall grass.

“I will not sign your form," Gov. Perry wrote to to Attorney General Eric Holder.

No, really, that's what he wrote.  "I will not sign your form."  A form that simply asks about whether there have been any efforts to follow anti-rape guidelines.  "I will not sign your form."  And then he urges other governors not to do so either.

And, gee, the Republican Party wonders why Democrats suggest that the GOP has a War on Women.

The thing is, while Gov. Perry might think that this will gain him Republican Game Points for looking tough standing up to President Obama, the reality is that the law was signed in 2003, passed unanimously by Congress (I repeat, unanimously) and signed by...President George W. Bush.

By the way, I'll go a step further.  The Texas governor who preceded Rick Perry was...yes, you got it -- George W. Bush.

This doesn't make Rick Perry look tough.  It makes him look like a cold-hearted, misogynistic idiot.

Mind you, it's not like Texas has such a swell record with prisons to start with and couldn't use even just a touch of help.  According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey , MSNBC reports that "three out of the top five male prisons in the country for inmate-on-inmate sexual violence were in Texas.  A Texas prison also ranked in the top four in the nation for staff sexual misconduct."

And Rick Perry petulantly says, as only Rick Perry can say petulantly, "I will not sign your form."

Actually, I believe that his full quote was --

I will not sign your form
here or there.
I will not sign it
anywhere.
I do not like
it, thank you, ma'am.
I do not like it,
Rick-I-am

I will not sign it
in a house.
I will not sign it
with my mouse.
I will not sign it
here or there.
I will not sign it
anywhere.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
And I don't like it, Rick-I-am.

“It’s a thumb in the eye of the president,” Margo Schlanger told MSNBC.  With all due respect to Ms. Schlangers, a law professor at the University of Michigan who worked on writing the PREA regulation, I think she's totally wrong.  This is a fist in the eye of Rick Perry.  It's an insult, also, to George Bush, and makes the Republican Party look even more Neanderthal towards women than it already does.  But mainly -- it's Rick Perry punching himself in the face.

I would say that I look forward to other Republican governors denouncing Gov. Perry -- or any leading Republicans, period, but I don't have vision that can look that far forward.

No word yet on whether Mexico is still willing to take Texas back.  But hopefully that eternal threat by Texas to secede can't come to fruition soon enough.

"Don't Mess with Texas," we always told with sashaying faux-bravado. Oh, tosh, Texas is so messed already on its own that the word "mess" has almost lost all meaning.