Montana State Rep. Jerry O’Neil (R) is sponsoring a bill to allow defendants to “bargain with the court” to receive “corporal punishment in lieu of incarceration.” The bill would apply to not just misdemeanor crimes, but also felonies — though the bill requires that the “exact nature of the corporal punishment to be imposed” be “commensurate with the severity, nature, and degree of the harm caused by the offender.”

John S. Adams, who covers the Montana legislature for the Great Falls Tribune, wrote : “The measure is already raising eyebrows and is sure to catch the attention of those on the lookout for ‘bat crap crazy’ legislation this session. Republican leadership has been doing its best to tamp down any potential bills the other side might use to embarrass the GOP as they work to craft a budget. This one apparently didn’t get tamped.”

Then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) observed, in a 2011 interview, that some Montana legislators “draft bills just to get an effect from the people,” but “unfortunately, it kind of makes some of them look bat-crap crazy.”

O’Neil, a long-time state lawmaker, has been the subject of controversy in the past: last November he requested to receive his legislative salary in gold and silver, incorrectly interpreting a provision of the U.S. Constitution that prevents states from minting their own paper currency. More recently, he said that the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy “came at an opportune time” for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), she has been working on an assault weapons ban for years.

Montana Rep. Jerry O'Neil

The Montana lawmaker who earlier this year asked to be paid his legislative salary in gold and silver coins said this week the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut “came at an opportune time” for Sen. Diane Feinstein, since she has been working on an assault weapons ban for years.

In an interview with the right-wing conspiracy theory site WorldNetDaily, state Rep. Jerry O’Neil (R) said he is proposing two amendments to the U.S. Constitution to block Feinstein’s proposal for an assault weapons ban. Neither proposal would affect the Second Amendment, but instead are attempts to shrink the federal government’s ability to solve national problems:

He said that in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution the word “among” would be replaced with “between” so that it reads, “Congress shall have power … to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and interstate commerce between the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” [...]

[R]eferring to firearms, he said, “It gives the states the right to make whatever guns they want so long as [firearms] stay inside the own borders.”

[I]n reference to national sovereignty and more specifically the Small Arms Treaty, he wants to insert in Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution the phrase “subject to this Constitution.” It would, therefore, state: “The president … shall have the power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, subject to this Constitution, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

O’Neil said the insertion is essential because of the growing power of international treaties and the fact that too often, in his opinion, international treaties are implemented and used to override the U.S. Constitution. [...]

Feinstein’s move was a reaction to the school shooting in Connecticut in which 20 children and six adults were victims.

O’Neil said, “The Connecticut shooting came at an opportune time for her.”

He added, “Sen. Feinstein has been working on an assault weapons ban for at least eight years.”

It goes without saying that there is nothing “opportune” about a mass shooting of small children, and that the “opportune time” for gun control reform would have been long before any violence occurred. What’s more, O’Neil’s proposed constitutional changes are, at best, nonsensical and, at worst, could profoundly cripple American democracy. The U.S. Supreme Court has already made clear that the Constitution trumps any treaty, and that treaties are void to the extent they violate the Constitution. So O’Neil’s proposed change to the federal treaty power would likely do nothing at all.

The same cannot be said, however, about his proposed change to America’s power to regulate its national economy. By enabling Congress to regulate commerce “among the several states,” the Constitution empowers the United States to enact economic regulations that “concern[] more States than one.” This is the basis for a wide range of essential laws, including the minimum wage, national child labor laws and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters. O’Neil’s proposal could potentially reduce this power into something that would only allow federal laws regulating transactions between one state government and another, endangering most of the progress of the last 100 years in the process.

At the very least, O’Neil’s proposals fan the flames of hysteria about gun control that have prompted some 21,000 people to sign a White House petition accusing Feinstein of treason for proposing to renew a limited ban on the most dangerous weapons that was passed by another Congress less than 20 years ago.

Citing a misreading of the U.S. Constitution and overblown fears of a collapsing U.S. currency, Montana State Rep. Jerry O’Neil (R) claims that he should be paid his legislative salary in gold and silver:

In a letter sent to Montana Legislative Services this week, O’Neil cites Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, which states in part that no state shall “make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.”

He said that in his 10 years as a legislator, he considered it a “trivial matter” and he “did not want to be branded as a fanatic over an issue of no consequence.” But now he says he is looking at the value of the dollar “in a new light.” . . .

In his letter, O’Neil points out that he does not want to be paid at the face value of $50 American Eagle gold coins or $1 silver American Eagle coins. He stipulates that he should be paid at their market values, currently $1,801 for the gold coin and $35.28 for the silver coin.

“Let’s say I made $1,800 in a month. They could give one gold American Eagle” or multiple silver American Eagles, he said.

Fears that the U.S. dollar is caught in a spiral of disastrous inflation are common among the tea party fringe, as are similar claims that the way to defend against such inflation is to horde gold and silver. Indeed, these misguided fears are widespread enough that scam gold dealers, such as Goldline, allegedly take advantage of them by selling overpriced gold to tea partiers and others gripped by false fears of inflation. In reality, inflation is currently both very low and quite stable — and it is well below the rate of inflation under most of President Reagan’s two terms.

Additionally, O’Neil’s reading of America’s founding document is constitutional gobbledygook. The Constitution does indeed provide that “No state shall . . . coin money; emit bills of credit [or] make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts,” a provision intended to prevent the states from printing their own paper currencies, but the key words in this constitutional provision are “no state shall.” Nothing prevents the federal government from printing currency which, as anyone who has ever read the front of a dollar bill knows, is “legal tender for all debts, public and private.” That includes the salaries Montana pays its lawmakers.