Utahn Lunacy

John M. Browning: He had a dream too.

Inspired by the Arizona "Papers Please" legislative debacle, TPM posts an article on other nutty laws Republicans have passed at state level throughout America.

While they're all as impressively pointless and non-PC as you'd expect, the one bill that really sticks out is Utah Senator Mark Madsen's now abandoned effort to commemorate John Moses Browning - Utah native and inventor of the machine gun - with a public holiday.

It might seem a tad weird to celebrate a guy whose machine guns were responsible for upgrading slaughter to an industrial scale during WWI and, indeed, for helping start the war by producing the pistol used to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But Madsen went the extra nutty mile and actually proposed to inaugurate John M. Browning State Holiday on what is currently MLK day.

When asked about doubling up Browning and King days, Madsen said there was no incongruity because he saw them as "as complimentary". Consider your mind well and truly boggled.