IN DEFENSE OF COCKFIGHTING AND "CHICKEN BOXING": SIGNS THAT THE APOCALYPSE IS NEAR

Matt Bevin, who is the Tea Party candidate trying to have Mitch McConnell for lunch in the Kentucky GOP primary, was caught attending---wait for it!---a pro-cockfighting rally a bit over a week ago.

No, I did not have a seizure while my fingers were on the keyboard---it was, indeed, a pro-cockfighting rally. 

Let that sink into your mind:  Over 700 people gathered in Corbin, Kentucky on the last Saturday in March to attend a pro-cockfighting rally sponsored by a group that calls itself the Gamefowl Defense Network.

EXCURSUS:  Yes, the name of the group is a bit misleading. While it sounds as if it is the moniker for a crowd that actually defends/protects "gamefowl"---or, as we know them around these parts, "Gamecocks"---it is actually the name of a group that defends/protects the "rights of citizens to engage in animal fighting" and sponsors such events.  

Bevin initially denied knowing the nature of the event, claiming that he thought it was a states' rights rally---one supposes he didn't notice the signs carried by rally-goers or the sounds of crowing roosters emanating from boxes in the backs of all those pickup trucks.
However, organizers of the event said there was "never any ambiguity" about the purpose of the rally, which was to generate support for changing state and federal laws that ban cockfighting.
On the one hand, Bevin kinda', sorta' ducked the question of whether he supports animal fighting in general and cockfighting in particular, offering instead his opinion that the legality of the practice should be a state and not a federal issue.
EXCURSUS:  Owing to the unwillingness of some states to outlaw animal fighting and the unwillingness of some others---Kentucky being amongst them---to actually enforce laws already on the books, the federal government moved earlier this year to enact legislation that makes attending an animal fight a federal offense that comes with some potentially stiff penalties.

On the other hand, groveling for votes from a bunch of people still wearing Michael Vick replica jerseys, Bevin actually used the GOP's default position for justifying absolutely anything---the Founding Fathers!!!---to kinda', sorta' defend animal fighting: "It's interesting.  When you look at cockfighting and dog fighting...this isn't something new. It wasn't invented in Kentucky, for example.  I mean, the Founding Fathers were all---many of them---very actively involved in this and always have been."

EXCURSUS:  It is possible that using the Founding Fathers to calibrate one's moral compass might, on occasion, lead one awry.  Benjamin Franklin, used by Bevin as an example of a Founding Father who engaged in animal fighting, was also a slave-owner.  By Bevin's logic, well... 
Bevin then engaged another GOP default position---First Amendment rights!!!---to wonder aloud if laws that made animal fighting illegal might compromise an individual's First Amendment rights.

EXCURSUS:  They might, if one belonged to a funky Haitian voodoo religious cult and, arguing before John Roberts, claimed that the threat of arrest for animal cruelty/fighting constituted a significant burden on his/her First Amendment right to properly practice his/her religion. 
In a related matter, Republican State Senator Elbert Guillory of Louisiana, fighting back against efforts to close loopholes in cockfighting laws, argued that what he called "chicken boxing" was neither violent nor bloody.  He went on to describe "chicken boxing" as involving not attached blades nor exposed spurs, but actual boxing gloves worn by the chickens.  It is, he said, "quite safe."
The Associated Press later reported that, other than in cartoons seen on television, there is no such thing as, uh, "chicken boxing."
EXCURSUS:  When I first heard that a state senator in Louisiana was talking about "chicken boxing," how did I immediately know his party affiliation?