Montana state Rep. Steve Lavin (R) has introduced a bill that would allow property owners in Montana to vote and run for office in municipal elections even if they are not residents of the municipalities in which they’re voting, James Conner reports.

Even more startling, Lavin’s bill can be construed as giving the out-of-state corporate owners of property a vote.

“Like many high-profile politicians, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) gives few on-the-record interviews. But there may be one person who questions him publicly more than anyone else–Andrew Cuomo,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“During his two years in office, Mr. Cuomo has developed a habit of answering reporters’ queries by asking his own questions. He sometimes engages in a lengthy back-and-forth, asking four or five questions and replying in a single response.”

“It is a classic rhetorical tactic known as ‘anthypophora,’ a device found in Shakespeare, the Bible and the speeches of former presidents, linguistic scholars say.”

A group of Republican state representatives in Georgia would like to repeal the 17th
Amendment and return the election of U.S. Senators to the state legislatures, the Douglas County Sentinel reports.

The proposal requests that the U.S. Congress “begin action to repeal the 17th
Amendment. The process would require a two-thirds approval by both the
U.S. House and Senate, then ratification by at least three-quarters of
the states. Political pundits give the move little chance of success.”

A video of a Colorado lawmaker talking about rape while debating a gun bill involving college campuses has gone viral, the Denver Post reports, with Republicans and Second Amendment activists likening state Rep. Joe Salazar (D) to failed Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin (R).

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“I’m not much different from Andrew Cuomo. I probably agree with him on 98% of the issues.”

— Chris Christie (R), quoted by the Glen Falls Chronicle, in a conversation with a union organizer.

“When a physician removes a child from a woman, that is the largest organ in a body. That’s a big thing. That’s a big surgery. You don’t have any other organs in your body that are bigger than that.”

— Alabama state Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin (R), in an interview with the Montgomery Advertiser, defending her sweeping anti-abortion bill.

New Jersey Assemblyman Charles Mainor (D) “is in hot water again over his Facebook page, with constituents wondering if it’s appropriate for one of their state legislators to have ‘liked’ Facebook pages such as Big Bootie Freaks and another page that posts videos of physical assaults,” the Jersey Journal reports.

Mainor said “he planned to un-like the page as soon as his daughter showed him how.”

The Clarion Ledger looks at how Mississippi finally officially ratified the 13th Amendment banning slavery this month, after a University of Mississippi professor saw the movie “Lincoln” and started digging into the history of the legislation’s ratification.

“Bucking a trend in which states have been seeking to restrict abortion, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is putting the finishing touches on legislation that would guarantee women in New York the right to late-term abortions when their health is in danger or the fetus is not viable,” the New York Times reports.

Cuomo’s proposal “would also clarify that licensed health care practitioners, and not only physicians, can perform abortions. It would remove abortion from the state’s penal law and regulate it through the state’s public health law.”

North Carolina state Rep. Rayne Brown (R) is defending her proposed legislation which define women’s nipples as indecent, WRAL-TV reports.

Said Brown: “We’ve had the most fun with this bill for about the past week and a half, and that’s OK. You need to laugh sometimes. But there are communities across this state, there’s local governments across this state, and also local law enforcement for whom this issue is really not a laughing matter.”

The bill was prompted by annual topless protest and women’s rally in Asheville, NC.

Illinois Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon (D) told WLS-TV that she will not seek reelection with Gov. Pat Quinn (D), the latest political trouble for the increasingly embattled governor.

A new Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Poll in New Jersey finds Gov. Chris Christie (R) with an approval rate at 70% and just 17% disapproving.

Christie even has a 58% job approval rating from Democrats and 60% from public employees.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) “has veered sharply away from the reform and pro-business policies he followed during his first two years in office and is ‘adrift’ on a course of murky proposals, frequent indecision, and political obsessions focused on re-election next year and the presidency in 2016,” insiders tell Fred Dicker.

“The insiders, some of whom have known Cuomo for decades, said the governor has become so obsessed with maintaining what until recently were record-high job-approval ratings that he has refused, for fear of alienating politically potent liberal voting blocs, to make tough decisions to cut costs for fiscally troubled local governments, reduce regulations to attract businesses, and approve hydrofracking for natural gas.”

Jon Ralston reports that Nevada Assemblyman Steven Brooks (D) has been arrested for domestic battery and making a false statement to obstruct a police officer.

Brooks was arrested last month for threatening the life of the House Speaker.

Virginia Del. Robert Marshall (R) introduced a bill to “study the feasibility of a metallic-based monetary unit,” ABC News reports.

Its preamble is rife with damnations of the Federal Reserve and its “unprecedented monetary policy actions” and “activist intervention in
banking and credit markets,” the point being that Virginia can no longer
trust federal fiat money, and might need “a more stable money unit
consistent with limited government.”

The bill easily passed the heavily Republican House of Delegates, 65 to 32.

Iowa State Rep. Rob Bacon (R) and eight of his colleagues introduced legislation to alter the definition of a person in murder cases to “an individual human being, without regard to age of development, from the moment of conception, when a zygote is formed, until natural death,” the Ames Tribune reports.

“Those charged with murder, under the bill, would include a mother who takes abortion-inducing drugs or a doctor who performs an abortion. It also grants no exceptions for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother.”

The Virginia Speaker of the House William Howell (R) “has ruled that the surprise changes that the Senate made to redistricting legislation are out of order, dealing a blow to GOP hopes to redraw districts,” the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

“Senate Republicans pushed through the plan on a 20-19 party-line vote on a day when Democrats were down one member because Sen. Henry Marsh III (D) attended inauguration ceremonies for President Barack Obama in Washington on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. ”

Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield (R) told TMZ that teaching people how to protect themselves from HIV was an attempt to push the gay agenda “down everybody’s throats.”

Said Campfield: “You know, you could say the same thing about kids who are shooting heroin. We need to show them the best ways to shoot up. No, we don’t. Why do we have to hypersexualize little children? Why can’t we just let little kids be little kids for a while? Why do we have to have little kids be…?”

Daily Beast: “Don’t say gay” is back.