...it is okay-dokay to smite God's creatures, manatees though they be, if they intrude upon your enjoyment of the waterways in thine gas-guzzling pleasure craft. So sayeth the scriptures according to the Citrus County (Florida - big surprise there) Tea Party Patriots.
She who has received divine messages from her tin foil hat, Edna Mattos, proselytized that it's against Bible teachings and that stuff in the Bill of Rights to "elevate nature above people." Mattos and her fellow "patriots" are protesting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to limit boating and other human activities in King's Bay that have been detrimental to the well being of manatees.
God has yet to speak to me about the manatees; I am assuming because She has more pressing issues. Since I am not a scholar of the Holy Book of Myths, I will have to give Mattos the benefit of the doubt on that one.
I pulled out my copy of the Bill of Rights, the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. The First Amendment gives Mattos the right to be a ball-busting idiot, with the Second allowing her to carry a gun. The Third says she can't be forced to house a military person, though for the life of me, after Iraq and Afghanistan, I can't image any soldier subjecting him or her self to that kind of torture.
Most of the other seven Amendments protect people from being dragged from their homes and lynched by foaming-at-the-mouth patriots without first receiving a fair trial. There is nothing in the Bill of Rights that gives you the right to run over those fat sons-of-bitches slowing down boat traffic in King's Bay, or anywhere else for that matter.
Mush for brains Mattos was probably thinking of the preamble to the Constitution where it is written that the Creator has endowed all men with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of manatees. Those rights are not guaranteed specifically by the Constitution, but by a higher law derived from moral reasoning.
Mattos and her self absorbed tea-bagger buddies should take a few moments to view the following video:
Happy boating, y'all.
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