The General Ass-embly

Jeez oh man! as we say here in the 'burgh, what's gotten into the Pennsylvania legislature lately. Could it be the prolonged budget fight? Are the minority Democrats so deflated that they've turned on each other? Yesterday, during debate on a law that would compel condominium associations to permit the year-round flying of United States, Commonwealth, and U.S. military flags, but would not have provided any protection for flags of other nations or organizations, all hell broke loose.

Evidently, Tom Yewcic (D-Cambria County), responded to protests about the bill's exclusion of all flags with this unsettlingly revanchist and ungrammatical statement: "If they want to fly a [foreign] flag, go back to their ethnic origins and fly it there." And they say the Dixiecrats are gone. Zell? 'Zat you?

Needless to say, the party didn't want for someone ready to take this bull by the horns. John Myers (D-Philadelphia County) flew into a barely restrained rage, and said, "Those types of remarks would come from a cracker."

So yes, just to distil the issue, a rural PA Democrat thinks that people of other nationalities who dare to have pride in their origins can just go home, and a Philadelphia Democrat is flinging racial slurs (and let's not pretend that cracker is anything but) around the state house.

Read the whole sordid affair here. Oh, and while you're at it, read about how the state senate think legislators deserve a 15% pay raise here.