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Noem Civics Agenda in Trouble? One Bill Down, Two Lingering

Governor Kristi Noem got to sign the “guns in your pants without permission” bill yesterday, thus dedicating her first big signing ceremony to a lie (concealed weapons are not “Constitutional carry“—Justice Scalia said the Second Amendment doesn’t cover hidden weapons).

But while she was busy choosing trumpet music to play over her first bill signature and hiring a videographer to record her dramatic walk from her office to the temporary Rotunda desk, was she letting her civics education agenda slip? She hired her interim Education Secretary Ben Jones to work specifically on forcing kids to study more civics. She heralded civics education in her opening address to the Legislature. But the same day that the House sent the permitless concealed carry bill, SB 47, to her desk, the House also killed plank #1 in the civics agenda, House Bill 1051, Rep. Fred Deutsch’s silly civics stickers bill.

Plank #2, Noem’s civics graduation test, HB 1066, hit the rocks in House Education Monday, with Kristi’s dear friends the home schoolers and Christian Home Educators testifying against it. The chair deferred HB 1066 to Wednesday and again to next Wednesday, February 6.

Plank #3, Senator Jim Bolin’s mandate of another half-credit of civics for graduation, SB 52, creaked out of Senate Education last week on a 4–2 vote in the face of strong opposition from the K-12 schools. SB 52 is now stalled in the Senate. (Funny that Senator Kris Langer is worried about the fiscal impact of $5,500 worth of drug tests but hasn’t moved to send this bill to Appropriations to analyze the cost of requiring 150 school districts to run 130,000 kids through a new civics course.)

Dang, maybe Governor Noem needs to call the Senate and House leadership into her office and tell them to keep her better informed on the progress of her bills. Or maybe, if Governor Noem really means what she says about improving civic engagement, she needs to spend less time on bill-signing pageantry and more time on her own civic engagement to press her professed policy priorities.

8 Comments

  1. mike from iowa

    We have a lot to get done, but I’ve never been afraid of hard work. As your former congressvarmint I could sit and watch people work for hours and have found no need to change my work habits as yer guv.

  2. Donald Pay

    She actually had a signing ceremony, and hired a videographer to film it? Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The “Kristi Sh*tshow has begun. It’s like RuPaul’s drag show: totally fake, but it’s like a car wreck. You gotta watch. Four years of this drag show and you’ll be screaming, “I shoulda voted for the cowboy!”

  3. bearcreekbat

    Just a detail – there has been no ruling by the SCOTUS deciding whether or not the 2nd Amendment protects concealed carry by restricting the power of local government to require permits.

    And although a later SCOTUS decision on concealed carry seems implied by Justice Scalia’s comment in dicta that “the Second Amendment doesn’t cover hidden weapons,” this comment could just as easily be rejected as incorrect by a future SCOTUS, or limited to the government’s authority to keep guns out of specific venues, such as the courtrooms. And while there have been some lower rulings allowing governmental concealed carry restrictions, as cited by Scalia, they are not binding beyond each lower court’s particular juridictional boundaries. And as noted below, such rulings could easily be reversed by another court in that same jurisdiction.

    Thus, although folks who argue that the government may regulate concealed carry in public unhindered by the 2nd Amendment may currently have the better argument, they could easily be proven wrong since nationally the matter remains an open question. Although state governments may regulate pretty much anything absent a binding contrary court ruling, there is no SCOTUS ruling that prevents any lower court, whether SD circuit court, SD supreme court, SD federal district court or the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, from ruling the 2nd Amendment restricts that power in South Dakota.

  4. Next time you’re out with your family and someone with a weapon shows up, leave immediately. You are endangered. Don’t stop to pay the check (come back tomorrow), just gather your stuff and vamoose. This applies double to any establishment serving alcoholic beverages.

  5. Roger Cornelius

    Bucko Bear
    If I see anyone packing heat in a public place I will immediately call 911 for they are a clear and present danger.

  6. leslie

    Kristi can’t speak English much less understand Scalia’s limitation. In her SOTS speech she misunderstands those big words “manner” and “matter”, and a true big word “facilitate”. Over and over. Stace too on Public radio can’t explain why permitless concealed carry has any rational relation to the public good and further argues for drug tests because he had to in his gunning career.
    Same with DiSanto. She’ll do it if the disenfranchised have to clear another unmeaningful hurdle. Con job thru and thru to maintain power nationally and in the state legislatures.Weak Republican minds along with idiocy of republicans in the state who think we need to limit teachers ability to teach what they are up to. This is systemic GOP strategy to boot the throat of the undoctrinated.

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