Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
What is it with morons from Utah getting all up in other people’s business? Here’s the latest stupidity to emanate from that part of the country, from Raw Story:
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) offered an amendment Tuesday that would require drug tests for those who seek welfare and unemployment benefits. States have the authority to enact drug testing requirements for their welfare programs under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton, but they are not mandated to conduct tests under current law.”
Now it was lame enough that the moderate Republican (no, he WASN’T a Liberal), Bill Clinton, allowed this invasive nonsense to be pulled on welfare recipients (Why in hell aren’t we drug-testing bankers? You MUST be high to think some of the gambles those idiots took were a great idea.) just to placate the insane-o hard right Republicans. However this Orrin jerk from Utah wants to expand it to say to millions of law-abiding citizens who are merely down on their luck that, “If you’re poor, unfortunate, or unemployed even due to circumstances beyond your control, you’re obviously a drug addict as well, and should be treated as such.
There is so much wrong with this idea, I hardly know where to begin.
It violates the notion that you are innocent until PROVEN guilty, but rather compels a portion of society (thereby also violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment) to prove its innocence, in violation of our basic notions of jurisprudence.
Its a privacy nightmare, because there is no guarantee that the samples will not be used for anything else, such as DNA testing, or that the information about you will remain with the government, and not make its way out into the corporate world, thereby preventing you from ever again obtaining gainful employment, or affecting your insurance rates should you test positive.
Moreover, it does nothing to address the inherent FALSE positive rate that is a part of such idiotic privacy invasions on a regular basis. Some goober here in L.A. just made the news for losing a gig because unbeknownst to him, the herbal tea he was drinking had hemp powder in it, and he gave off a false positive. He’s not a drug addict, just an herbal tea drinker, and it cost him a job. That’s beyond messed up. Eat a poppy seed muffin? No unemployment aid for you. Clearly, you’re a heroin addict, and because you have a medical problem, you should be punished for that, and also made homeless.
This is what passes for logic in the Republican-controlled/warped Senate these days.
Just when you think Republicans can’t come up with any more DAFT ideas, they surpass themselves with something even more boneheaded.
The “Drug War” is over you fool. It didn’t work. We should be discussing how to legalize drugs, heavily regulate and tax the hell out of them to help with the national debt, and to fund RATIONAL drug treatment programs for people who have a REAL problem, not the imagined one in Orrin’s tiny cranium.
