Meet Virginia

I guess this is the "real Uhmerika" Palin has been talking about. In Virginia they are more worried about microchips and the Antichrist, then a gaping hole in their budget.

Steven Benen:

Virginia's House of Delegates spent some time this week debating a bill to prevent employers or insurance companies from implanting microchips in Virginians' bodies against their will. There's no effort underway to actually impose involuntary chips on anyone, but lawmakers just want to be sure.

Part of the concern is based on privacy rights, and part of this is motivated by a desire to "save humanity from the antichrist." Seriously.

Del. Mark L. Cole (R-Fredericksburg), the bill's sponsor, said that privacy issues are the chief concern behind his attempt to criminalize the involuntary implantation of microchips. But he also said he shared concerns that the devices could someday be used as the "mark of the beast" described in the Book of Revelation.

"My understanding -- I'm not a theologian -- but there's a prophecy in the Bible that says you'll have to receive a mark, or you can neither buy nor sell things in end times," Cole said. "Some people think these computer chips might be that mark." [...]

[T]he growing use of microchips has collided with the Book of Revelation.... David Neff, editor of the magazine Christianity Today, said that some fundamentalist Christians believe that bar codes and implanted microchips could be used by a totalitarian government to control commerce -- a sign of the coming end of the world.

The legislation passed yesterday.

We are seriously doomed as a society. I used to think I would eventually move back and settle down in Virginia or at least the metropolitan area of D.C. I am almost certain that won't happen anymore. With a House of Delegates like this, I probably would be forced to live in Chinatown because of fear I might infect people's brain with North Korean terrorist sauce.

I am Frank Chow and I approved this message