Here Come the Body Police 

Conservative lawmakers and their constituents go bonkers and get a bad rash when transgender girls compete in high school sports—no news there. In Red State America, it goes against God's plan and it's just not right.

Now, there's a new wrinkle in our paranoid transphobia: If a girl is an exceptional athlete she could be investigated for being just too good. (Sound familiar ladies?) The Utah Body Police would swoop in if a female athlete is suspected of having a Y chromosome. Case in point: Disgruntled parents, who remain unidentified, bitched to the Utah High School Activities Association that a girl ran so fast at a track meet that she totally smoked their kids.

School sleuths probed the gender of the athlete "who wasn't feminine enough" without her parents knowledge. Call it a "warlock hunt." But school records back to kindergarten revealed she had always identified as a girl.

Utah is one of 18 states banning trans girls from high school sports. But last week, a state judge temporarily blocked the draconian law, saying, "This is plainly unfavorable treatment." Duh. The part that wasn't blocked creates a School Activity Eligibility Commission—Body Police—that will include a medical data statistician and a physician with expertise in gender identity. It's a Brave New World.

Don't Call Me 'Woke' Damnit!
Whatever you do, don't call a Republican "woke." It's as bad as "commie" and it's worse than that scorned epithet, "liberal."

Recently, Gov. Spencer Cox was ambushed when Time magazine ran a story about him with the headline, "The Red-State Governor Who's Not Afraid to Be 'Woke'." Oh man, what a nightmare—in Time magazine, no less. It'll follow him to the grave and he could get his fingernails pulled out at CPAC.

Here's how nasty things are: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop WOKE) Act, which will give businesses, employees and parents "tools to fight back against woke indoctrination."

Originally, "woke" was a primarily African-American term referring to awareness of social and racial injustice. But it was appropriated by white conservatives who needed a new weapon. Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson sees "wokeness" as a scary movement or a "religion" aimed at undermining American values: "It's not rational," he said. "It's utopian. It's crazy. It's superstition. It's witchcraft."

Yep, those sneaky progressives are brainwashing us and we don't even know it. Next thing you know, we'll be teaching kids about slavery and white privilege and then we'll all be woke and want stuff like health insurance and day care—as Tucker says, it's crazy.

Walking on the Great Salt Lake
Thank the Lord for great leaders like Utah's Sen. Mitt Romney, who has finally come up with a plan to save the Great Salt Lake: "We've got to find answers and then take action." OK, it may lack a few specifics, but it's the best plan yet since Gov. Spencer Cox said, "Pray for rain."

That plan, apparently, has fizzled. True, it has rained a little, but the Rain Gods are not really cooperating. We need Biblical rain—something between, say, Moses and Noah.

Rather than rely on prayers, Romney pushed a bill through the Senate for $10 million to seek solutions for the lake that is at a historic low. It's so low, that when Romney and Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson toured the lake last week, it appeared as though they were walking on water. We wouldn't kid about a thing like that.

On closer inspection, Romney's Great Salt Lake Recovery Act finances more studies—but no action. The lake bed, much of which is already exposed, contains deadly levels of arsenic that are now blowing into the lungs of Salt Lake Valley residents. Beyond that, a dried up lake means no stopover for 10 million migratory birds and the Wasatch ski resorts will no longer get the "lake effect" that is critical for the "Greatest Snow on Earth."

Better start prayin'. Or maybe do a rain dance—yeah, that's the ticket, a rain dance.

Postscript—That's it for another star-studded week here at Smart Bomb, where we keep track of Liz Cheney's kills so you don't have to. Good ol' Liz, the conservatives conservative, has emerged as the real patriot in the rotting GOP—think Annie Oakley—and progressives can't hide their glee.

So far, she has targeted: Former President Donald Trump as an insurrectionist; Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley as unfit for office; and minority leader Kevin McCarthy as devoid of the honesty to become speaker of the House. And she vowed to take aim at Republican candidates who back Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

For speaking up against the would-be autocrats, Cheney was crushed in the Republican primary last week by the MAGA cowboys and cowgirls—Magettes?—in Wyoming. Think Joan of Arc.

All Magettes hate Cheney for her role as chief inquisitor of the House Select Committee on January 6, as it probed the former president's role as ringmaster of the apes planning a coup. Think Jane Goodall.

Cheney now says she will dedicate herself to making sure Trump never gets anywhere near the Oval Office again. In doing so, she has cast herself as the tip of the spear hoping to lead the Republican Party back from insanity. Think J.K. Rowling. It is fantasy, after all.

Well Wilson, the Body Police are coming and folks are gonna have to get their chromosomes in order. Let's play something for the old, white transphobic guys on Capitol Hill that'll shake 'em up a bit. We know the band has just the number for it:

I met her in a club down in old Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola
C-O-L-A cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said Lola
L-O-L-A Lola la-la-la-la Lola

Well I left home just a week before
And I'd never ever kissed a woman before
But Lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said dear boy I'm gonna make you a man

Well I'm not the world's most passionate guy
But when I looked in her eyes well I almost fell for my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
I pushed her away, I walked to the door
I fell to the floor, I got down on my knees
Then I looked at her and she at me

Well that's the way that I want it to stay
And I always want it to be that way for my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola

Well I'm not the world's most masculine man
But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man
And so is Lola
Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-l
"Lola"—The Kinks