Secessionists on the ballot

Of all the tea partiers running for Senate in 2014, Greg Brannon, a GOP primary candidate hoping to topple vulnerable North Carolina Democrat Kay Hagan, is one of the most extreme. He opposes public education, claiming it “does nothing but dehumanize” students. He doesn’t believe that states have to follow Supreme Court decisions. He contends bipartisan compromises in Washington “enslave” Americans. He hails the late Sen. Jesse Helms – who died in 2008 without ever renouncing his support for racial segregation – as a “modern hero.” He claims that “all ten of [Karl] Marx’s planks of Communism” – including the abolition of private property – “are law in our land today.”In October, Brannon cosponsored and spoke at a rally supporting nullification – the notion that states can invalidate federal laws at will – that was cosponsored by the League of the South, a secessionist group seeking “a free and independent Southern republic.”