The Republican Party continues to amaze with its capacity for cruelty and caprice, especially when dealing with the most hard-pressed of our fellow citizens.
The latest outrage is the attempt to link continued funding of emergency unemployment benefits to the requirement that people collecting benefits submit to drug testing -- and to require anyone who is collecting benefits and not a high school graduate to show that they are pursuing a GED. Isn't it bad enough to be without a job in the midst of the worst recession in the post-World War II period? Who feels the need to harass and demean people who are in many instances facing economic ruin -- or at the least tremendous insecurity?
This sort of thing just confirms my sense that to be a Republican these days is to not be fully human. (Even those who try reveal themselves to be sporting a heart that is three sizes too small.) One has to have some kind of hole in one's soul to really embrace this sort of punitive thinking.
