It was on this date in 2015 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” had a profile of Bobby Franklin, a former member of the Georgia House of Representatives who in 2008, he wrote an opinion editorial in the Georgia Journal where he said President George H.W. Bush was “worshipping pagan Gods”, and that we didn’t has much to fear from Obama bin Laden as we did “God’s coming wrath”. Over the course of a month in late 2010 and early 2011, Franklin was pushing for a law to require taxpayers in Georgia to pay their state taxes in gold or silver coins, only and then campaigned for Georgians’ rights to erect 40-foot-tall walls around their houses, and f attempting to resolve Georgia’s metaphysical issues, by proposed the “Freedom of Choice and Security Act” which sought to legally define the nature of evil within Georgia. He would still go on to argue against the issuing of Driver’s Licenses in Georgia, trying to use the Magna Carta as his justification, and used the Book of Corinthians as his argument to try to prevent the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” from being enacted. On women’s rights, Franklin sought to change the legal definition of the “victim” in a rape or sexual assault to the “accuser”, and to charge the accuser with the cost of the trial if the defendant was found not guilty (because that would TOTALLY encourage victims to come forward). Franklin also submitted a bill that would criminalize miscarriages if it could not be proven that the mother did nothing to be part of the cause, and the punishment for not carrying a child to term successfully would be… THE DEATH PENALTY. Which is pretty terrible when you consider one in four pregnancies result in a miscarriage, and now, 25% of pregnant women, already devastated that the baby they were hoping for was not to be, would also be the subject of a police investigation with their own life in the balance. For whatever reason in March 2011, he criticized the United States for establishing a “No Fly Zone” in Libya to aid its rebels in overthrowing Qaddafi in a bizarre way because he apparently sympathized with the dictator’s regime, and compared it to our own country’s tolerance of abortion. Bobby Franklin died of a heart attack suddenly in July of 2011.
In 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” presented profiles of Richard “Dickie” Bell, a Republican representing District 20 of the Virginia State Assembly since 2009, when he was appointed to his seat by disgraced former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. Bell, who not coincidentally is a church deacon, got everyone’s attention when he forgot about that whole separation of church and state and sponsored a creationist bill, HB 207. That might be putting it mildly, as Bell’s legislation looked a lot like it was cut-and-paste written based on the “Academic Freedom Act”, which would allow students to question scientific discussion based on their faith. Upon a lot of voices getting raised in caution at what Bell was pitching, he actually tried arguing that his bill was just “misunderstood”, which was hard to believe, when he started citing how the debate would center around discussions on evolution and climate change. The creationist effort failed, but maybe folks in Virginia should have been paying attention prior to that moment in 2014 (and since), because there’s a lot of “WTF?” in Dickie Bell’s legislative record, that contains some extreme policy stances on top of some support for downright insane bills, including the time he submitted HB 154, which would have placed everyone in Virginia on an organ donor list, unless they placed themselves on an “opt out” registry. And he was surprised… SURPRISED that people got online to complain about Dickie Bell trying to turn the state into a bad version of “Repo: The Genetic Opera”. A smattering of examples from the rest of his voting record includes votes for a ban on human microchip implantation, to prevent something that’s only happening in dystopian science fiction novels, that he voted for HB 505, which authorizes citizens to carry concealed firearms in establishments that serve alcohol (because booze does such wonders for impulse control, and gun added to the mix is a winning combination), voted to bring back the electric chair as a method of execution in Virginia, voted for HB 189, which would allow adoption agencies to refuse to allow people to adopt for “religious reasons”. Y’know, like if the adoptive parents are gay and voted for Virginia’s HB 1, which if passed, would have defined life at conception, and thus made not just abortion, but using most methods of contraception murder. After the mass shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, their state legislature voted to remove the Confederate flag from being displayed at the state grounds. Going the opposite direction, Dickie Bell decided to co-sponsor and vote for HB 587, to make it HARDER to remove Confederate iconography from around Virginia. Nice priorities, Dickie. Dickie Bell did not have to face a Democrat in an election in 2011, 2013, or 2015 and the GOP hasn’t had anyone oppose him in a primary since he was appointed to office back in 2009. Bell finally retired prior to the 2019 elections at the age of 82.