Krull: "What they know for sure that isn't so."

If Mark Twain really said the words reprinted on this meme, then "imbeciles who really mean it" works quite well, too.

Krull: What they know for sure that isn't so, by John Krull (TheStatehouseFile.com via the C-J)

INDIANAPOLIS – Long ago in an almost forgotten presidential primary debate, U.S. Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-South Carolina, delivered a classic line about Ronald Reagan.

It wasn't the things that the Gipper didn't know that created trouble, Hollings said

Rather, Hollings continued, it was the stuff that Reagan "knew for sure that just wasn't so" that was the problem.

I've thought about Hollings' jest as we approach the 2015 session of the Indiana General Assembly.

This session promises us proposals that will protect the "rights" of Christians to celebrate Christmas in public schools and on courthouse lawns and to refuse service to gay people because doing so will violate their religious principles.

Doubtless, we also will see Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore David Long, R-Fort Wayne, continue his efforts with other state legislators from around the country to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.

Driving these initiatives is the unshakable conviction that something is wrong with the moral workings of the universe and the law if social conservatives aren't allowed to use the power of government — to borrow former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's revealing phrase — "to inflict" their "views on others."