Washington--Get out the banjo and tune the fiddle. In what is seen as a concession to the religious right wing of their party, Republican leaders have appointed a snake handling fundamental Christian, House Chaplain when the 112th Congress convenes in January.
Reverend Longstreet Lee Tubwater of the Eastern Tennessee Synod of the Church of Doublewide Glory will open the session with five minutes of clog dancing, involving two timber rattlesnakes, one semi-dormant water moccasin, and, of course, prayer.
"There's going to be some versifying that great getting-up morning," said Reverend Tubwater, "Whoo-hoo. I'm telling you. Boy-howdy.
"Let the smiting begin."
After opening the session, Reverend Tubwater will adjourn to the Chaplains Office and dance himself into a trance to thank the Almighty for delivering the nation from "Pharaoh Pelosi." Once in the trance, he will seek further divine guidance regarding which issues the House should take up and what priorities to establish.
"The Lord has already spoken to me," says Reverend Tubwater.. "He wants us to start by repealing evolution. Then He wants us to ban all earmarks north of the Mason Dixon Line. We got to get that runaway spending up north under control."
Tubwater reports other items under Almighty consideration include a bill to impose a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution upon the House. If signed into law, the House would count the Congressional Black Caucus as only 3/5ths of a caucus. Legislation requiring everyone in the Western Hemisphere to speak English fluently, and a bill defining a woman's right to choose as, "Whether you're going to iron my shirt before or after you rustle up supper," may also be introduced.
In order to strengthen families, marriage is to be defined as between one man and one woman. Gays, lesbians, and transgendered Americans will be confined to internment camps, until such time as they are prayed straight by a contrite, formerly gay fundamental TV minister.
Tubwater says God wants America to loosen restrictions on mining, drilling and other forms of mineral extraction. "The only mineral He doesn't want extracted is his own rockbound foot from the fanny of Liberal America."
"Reverend Tobwater is proof of a theory long secretly posited in elite northern academic circles," said noted Harvard historian H. B. Stowe, "it seems the South did indeed win the Civil War."
Stowe's book on Reverend Tubwater and the Republican Congressional agenda is due in bookstores in early March. The book is entitled, "What Hath God Wrought?"