Keep the damn lights off! We're taking away your rights in here!

If you ever happen by the Ashe County Courthouse on a Monday around 2 p.m. and see the Commissioners trotting up the stairs to a tiny, dark conference room next to the Register of Deeds Office on the second floor, you might be thinking they're looking for a dark closet where they can play spin the bottle. 

But you'd be wrong. They're assembling to conduct the county's business in the middle of the day while all good taxpayers are slaving away to pay their bills. Commissioners call it the "work session."

These five elected officials will emerge 95 minutes later, go upstairs to the third floor courtroom and then have the "official meeting" where they formally rubber stamp the public's work they've just completed in the conference room.

Case in point: the February 7, 2011 Commissioners work session. This is from the official minutes of that work session, lost in a bullet point list of issues presented by county manager Dan McMillan:

Ashe County Board of Commissioner Minutes

We're certainly not surprised the Commissioners decided to summarily strip women working for the county of their reproductive rights -- these five are Republicans and stripping women of their rights seem to be a popular pastime for GOP-controlled governments everywhere. You can read a good primer here on Rep. Paul "Skippy" Stam, R-Wake, who sent a deceptive letter to all 100 counties to start this latest crusade to crush women's rights.

We'd at least think Commissioners would have the kahunas to place this issue on the public agenda, consider comments from those they supposedly represent, and take a real vote on it in the light of day so we all know where they stand.

But we know where they stand: huddled in the conference room on the second floor with the lights off molesting women's rights. 

Cowards.