With the GOP being all about Small Government, the GOP-led legislature of the Lone Star State has some interesting new legislation for people. Read the whole bill here, which is really an amendment to current statute (the new stuff is underlined, and IT’S A DOOZIE):

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED AN ACT relating to the offensive touching of persons seeking access to public buildings and transportation; providing penalties…. if the person intentionally or knowingly touches the anus, sexual organ, or breasts of the other person, including touching through clothing, or touches the other person in a manner that would be offensive to a reasonable person.

That’s right! In Texas, the TSA wouldn’t be allowed to perform searches in the horridly 4th-amendment-right encroaching way that they currently do. So, how would the TSA respond to this?

“If HR [sic] 1937 were enacted, the federal government would likely seek an emergency stay of the statute,” the letter read, on U.S. Department of Justice, Western District of Texas, stationery. “Unless or until such a stay were granted, TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights for which it could not ensure the safety of passengers and crew.

Upon learning that the Justice Dept would come in and shut the law down several months ago when this was originally brought up in the Texas Legislature, the amendment immediately went down. If it did pass, cancelling all flights in and out of the state would kinda suck for the already failing economy and massive budget shortfall of Texas. But, because of some flak he’s been getting recently about running for POTUS, Rick Perry, Governor and God Fearing Man has decided that this issue is just too important not to be reconsidered. He’s put the measure back into the state’s special legislative session. It’s a perfect fight for him. It shows him that he can fight the big ‘ol federalist government trying to encroach on our freedoms to choose who touches our junk and when! AMEN GOVERNOR!

(H/T Rachel Maddow)