PETA currently holds a death grip on the Nutty Interest Group Crown. The Nutty Interest Group Crown is worn proudly by the political entity that shows the most skill at saying ridiculous and outrageous things, nominally to advance its interests but possibly just to get attention under the "all publicity is good publicity" theory. They're sufficiently nutty to make one pause on occasion and wonder if it's all intended to be satire of activists, like a decades-old live-action Landover Baptist thing.

PETA is the champ. But don't count out the NRA. They came to play.

Case in point: Florida's chief NRA lobbyist, who as a result of dramatic and narrative convention is named Marion Hammer (see how the "Marion" sets off and therefore emphasizes the hyper-aggressive "Hammer"? It's exquisite. It's like "Leslie Mangler"), has GRAVE CONCERNS about the selection of Florida's new state bird. It's not because the proposed state bird is the pink-collared assault-weapon-banning Brady-caller. No, it's because the bird suggested by Florida's schoolchildren is a bird of low character, and possibly a threat to the security of that great state:

In 1999, more than 10,000 schoolchildren signed a petition to change the state bird to the Florida scrub jay. Supporters boasted about how it will eat peanuts right out of a person’s hand.

Hammer was unmoved. “Begging for food isn’t sweet,” she testified in a committee hearing. “It’s lazy, and it’s a welfare mentality.” Scrub jays had lots of other bad habits that disqualified them to represent Florida, she contended. “They eat the eggs of other birds,” she told lawmakers. “That’s robbery and murder.”

Scrub jays are only able to engage in such conduct because of repressive gun laws and a pro-criminal judicial system. Hammer knows what bird she wants — the bird that engages in muscular home defense:

She also likes the fact that mockingbirds are willing to fight other birds, even larger ones, that might threaten their nests.

"They are very protective of their family and of their territory," she said.

Hammer is in favor of a "Nest Doctrine" amendment to Florida law that would allow mockingbirds to peck to death any bird with suspicious-colored feathers that wanders into its general vicinity.

Given this is Florida, I submit that the appropriate bird would be the Nuthatch.

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