Los Angeles  President Obama’s quote on the governmental shutdown saying essentially that it “would be funny, if it weren’t so crazy,” comes to mind again with the latest bulletin on the anti-democratic rants of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, also famous as the legal creator of various voter suppression and anti-immigrant measures like those famous in Arizona.  I first came to the Kobach-watch when he was declared in a press conference in Salina, Kansas and subsequently throughout the state as he waged continuous hater-ation that he was running for office in order to stop ACORN from voter registration chicanery and election chaos, even as I knew, and he must have known, that ACORN had no active operations in the fine state of Kansas.

In Kansas, his career seems founded on not only that falsehood but a string of others as well.   Unable to find ACORN behind his woodshed, according to the Times, he now seems to have invented “a bus full of individuals believed to be aliens” that somehow upended a county ballot measure 16 years ago and a 2010 election he claims was hijacked by “50 votes illegally cast by citizens of Somalia.”   It simply takes the breath away!

But aside from the pure, unproven fabrications that fuel his politics of hate, his anti-democratic rationales for why Kansas should be able to blatantly suppress or “suspend” potential voters so that they are not allowed to cast ballots is even more outrageous.   In 2013, 17,000 Kansans, more than one-third of those who have registered are on a “suspense list” because they failed to have with them some form of citizenship document, not required for federal elections, but essentially of Kansas own invention.   Are these just more Somalian terrorists or Mexican drogas?   No, “state officials have acknowledged that a majority of those on the list may be there because of confusion over conflicting state requirements.”   Just some confusion, ma’am, but nothing they seem able to solve.

Is this a problem?   Not for Secretary of State Kobach!   You know why?   According to Kobach these were “mostly casual registrants, many of whom do not intend to vote.”    The shocking and transparent arrogance and deceit in that sentence is an indictment of this whole gang of ballot busters.   What in the world might a “casual registrant” be?  An American who just stumbled by a polling place?   Someone who found a registration form lying about and blowing in the wind? And, even if we can’t know them well, how can Kobach know that they “do not intend to vote.”   He can only know that because this is a self-fulfilling prophesy.  Many “do not intend to vote,” because Kobach and his antics along with his radical acolytes around the country are all about keeping them from voting.

There ought to be laws to stop people like Kobach.   In fact there are.  There’s no place for this in America.  How can anyone allow this kind of behavior to continue?   Even in Kansas.