Denton's Anti-Fracking Protester Violet Palmer Is A Jeffersonian American Hero

Carved on his Washington, D.C. memorial is one of the third American President's most remembered quotes.

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

What would Thomas Jefferson think of the 2015 version of the country he worked so hard to found?

On the day Jefferson replaced John Adams he immediately moved to correct Federalist abuses of power by freeing everyone who had been imprisoned or was being prosecuted by Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson freed everyone without asking what the accused had supposedly done or against whom they had supposedly offended.

The Federalists were sort of a precursor to modern day reactionary conservatives. Thomas Jefferson was the first Democrat president, though at the time his party was known as the Democratic-Republicans.

What would Jefferson think of Texas? And the Republican controlled Texas legislature, with the Republicans controlled by the gas and oil industry lobbyists who got their stooges to pass HB 40, banning towns like Denton, Texas, or any other town in Texas, from enacting local regulations regulated gas drilling activity in their towns?

Denton's voters had voted to ban gas drilling and fracking in their city limits.

But, in modern day Republican controlled Texas you can not have that sort of citizen empowered democracy determining what happens in your town.

Well.

Denton has given us a new American Hero.

A 92 year old woman named Violet Palmer, hard of seeing, but strong of conviction.

Violet Palmer, a woman Thomas Jefferson would be proud to call an American, believes it is ones moral responsibility to disobey the law when the law is wrong, when the law is impinging upon ones right, when the law is corrupted by a corrupted system.

Violet Palmer staged a protest at a Denton gas pad site that was back fracking after the Republicans took away Denton's right to self determination.

Violet Palmer was taken into custody and booked into jail on Tuesday.

What would Thomas Jefferson think of American police arresting a 92 year old partially blind woman engaged in peaceful protest, that being one of the rights Jefferson labored to have included in the American Constitution?

I suspect Thomas Jefferson would have suggested that the Denton police and other citizens of Denton join Violet Palmer in her non-violent protest.

Arresting any person engaged in exercising their right to peacefully protest anything their beliefs compel them to protest is anti-American in the Thomas Jefferson version of America.

To arrest a peacefully protesting 92 year old semi-blind woman, is, well, evil and embarrassing.....

Texas Governor Abbott Thinks He Is Doing A Profound Job Protecting Property Rights

Looking at the group photo, above, does that not look like a group of men up to no good?

The men standing behind the man with a pen in his hand look like henchmen forcing the signer to sign something.

The thing the signer is signing is HB40.

That would make the signer the new governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.

I do not know who the henchmen are standing behind Abbott sporting evil grins and multiple chins.

Maybe they are oil and gas industry lobbyists, pleased with themselves for having managed to get the Texas legislators, whom they control, to pass a bill taking away the right of a Texas town to have a say about what the oil and gas industry does in their town.

Denton was the Texas town which pushed the gas drillers too far by voting to put an end to the poking of holes in their town's ground, followed by fracking.

Denton had experienced some of the results of sloppy gas driller's operations, which have resulted in gas fires, explosions, leaks, noise pollution and earthquakes in various locations in Texas.

When Abbott signed the bill he said that local regulations threatened gas production.

And that the new law did a “profound job of protecting property rights.”

Recently dozens of Arlington residents were forced to evacuate their homes due to a poisonous leak leaking from an Arlington fracking operation.

It seems the latest Texas governor does not think any Texans, other than gas drillers, have any profound right to protect their own property rights by voting to not allow gas drillers to operate close enough to do them and their property harm.

When was the last time Texas elected a governor who did not end up being a national embarrassment? Was it Ann Richards?