There are vetoes, and there are particularly hot vetoes. Last week, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, took a branding iron to a bunch of Republican-drafted bills, including one that would have imposed new limits on schools’ ability to provide sex education to students. I’m not kidding; read about it in the Billings Gazette. There’s even a video.
The governor noted that castrations often accompany brandings, and cast himself as a merciful guy for restricting himself just to the fiery vetoes.
The sex-ed bill that Schweitzer nixed, HB456, would have required students to have written parental consent to participate in sex-education classes. It also would have forbidden schools from accepting course materials from abortion providers.
Apparently Schweitzer had local-control concerns about interfering with schools’ freedom to teach; he had no local-control qualms, apparently, in vetoing another piece of legislation that day: he also branded a measure that would have let counties weigh in about the relocation of wild bison.