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.....

Induct Sister Camella Menotti Into The National Cowgirl Hall Of Fame

When I saw this week's Fort Worth Weekly's cover article titled HABITS ON HORSEBACK: A South Texas rodeo queen became a hardworking nun, educating children from California to Tanzania  I did not think the subject would be of interest to me.

I thought wrong.

Sister Camella Menotti is an 84 year old Texas cowgirl, a long time nominee for entry into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, located in Fort Worth.

Reading the history of the life of Sister Camella Menotti I really do not see how adding the Sister to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame is not already a done deal.

A blurb from the Fort Worth Weekly article.....

"More than a decade has passed since Unsworth nominated the 84-year-old for the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Menotti wondered aloud about whether there’s still a chance she might someday join the more than 200 women who have been inducted into the prestigious circle — women such as Cynthia Ann Parker, Sacagawea..."

Sacagawea and Cynthia Ann Parker are famous cowgirls?

While both are historical figures, I am completely bum puzzled as to why either would be in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Sacagawea helped Lewis & Clark explore the Louisiana Purchase after Thomas Jefferson bought the land from Napoleon.

How is Sacagawea a cowgirl?

Cynthia Ann Parker's claim to fame was being kidnapped by the Comanche, eventually marrying Comanche chief Peta Nocona, with whom she had a son, known as Quanah, with Quanah Parker being the last war chief of the Comanche. Cynthia Ann Parker was eventually "rescued" from the Comanche, brought back to Texas, to Fort Worth and Tarrant County, where she soon died, some say from a broken heart, brought on by the trauma of being taken from what she considered to be her Comanche family.

How is Cynthia Ann Parker a cowgirl?

Now, Sister Camella Menotti, that is a cowgirl. That and the youngest, best looking 84 year old I have ever seen. Looking good, and young, whilst fighting the awful cancer known as multiple myeloma.

I hope the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame inducts Sister Camella Menotti soon. It's  the right thing to do....