McConnell’s “Kapitolpolizeitruppe”

We’ve known for a long time that S.C. Senate President Glenn McConnell a) has a fetish for men in uniform and b) hates the Executive branch of government, but we didn’t know these twin obsessions would lead to him to create his own private militia  – on the taxpayer dime, no less.

As much as we wish we were joking about this, McConnell has actually filed a bill that would lead to the creation of a legislatively-controlled police force – and believe it or not this fascist garbage actually passed a Senate Judiciary subcommittee yesterday.

No really.

It’s called the “Capitol Police Force,” or Kapitolpolizeitruppe, and its powers and responsibilities – all of which would be stripped from the executive branch’s Bureau of Protective Services – can be explored further by reading McConnell’s legislation, S. 576, which may or may not have been co-written by Heinrich Himmler.

In case you thought this was merely some dispute between the Legislative and Executive branches over who gets to guard the State House grounds (oh, and they’ve roped Jean Toal’s Supreme Court building across the street into this, too), think again.

McConnell’s bill was amended yesterday to give the Kapitolpolizeitruppe the power to arrest anyone, anywhere in South Carolina. For anything.

That’s unbelievable … and should send a chill up and down the spine of anyone even remotely familiar with our state’s petty, vindictive and corrupt General Assembly.

Aside from the fact that we can’t afford this nonsense, law enforcement in South Carolina is splintered enough as it is. Adding another agency to the mix is only going to further complicate things.

It’s also going to needlessly drain dollars away from legitimate law enforcement priorities – although we don’t know exactly how many dollars it will drain away because McConnell’s legislation doesn’t give us a price tag for his new army.

What we do know is that state lawmakers continue to put our protective forces into increasingly precarious budget predicaments.

That’s largely because McConnell and his cronies have proven incapable of a) setting spending priorities that define the core functions of government and b) funding those priorities at a responsible level.

Now we’re going to add another agency that will further dilute our scarce law enforcement dollars?

Please.

In proposing his Kapitolpolizeitruppe, McConnell is exploiting the ludicrous fantasy that the S.C. State House is somehow an important terrorist target.

It’s not, and he knows it.

McConnell just wants power – and the ability to play “pretend General” with his own little army of soldiers.

Seriously, what’s next “General McConnell?”

Are you going to outfit your troops with gray uniforms from your Civil War shop in Charleston? Maybe put Confederate flag patches on their shoulders? Or give them little Hunleymobiles to ride around in?

Sheesh.

We can think of a lot of cataclysmically stupid things that the state of South Carolina could do right now, but believe us – at the very, very, very top of that list is giving the incompetent inbreds that run our legislative branch control of their own police force.

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