The Republican Party of Texas wants to you shoot off your gun, not your mouth.

In my vote for “boneheaded legal move of 2002”, the RPT is suing a website for appropriation of trademark. So, naturally, now thousands more people are hearing about the site, Enron Owns the GOP, than ever would have if the RPT had just ignored it.

Here’s a sample from the RPT site, and the spoof site’s version:

These images are 2/3rds original size, and look more similar here than they do in the originals. You’ll have noted the big honking “E” in the word Republican and superimposed over what I’m guessing is the state of Texas — not that I’d have seen that if I didn’t have the RPT version for comparison.

Oddly enough, EnronOwnstheGOP considers this to be a top story, while the RPT web site doesn’t mention it. Maybe that’s because of the apparent moratorium against mentioning Enron at all anywhere on their site, which strikes me as pretty weird.

But what really annoyed the hell out of me was the proof positive that the RPT thinks the average American has the mental acumen of a toaster. From the letter written by one Jonathan Snare of Loeffler, Jonas, & Tuggey:

>Your website is clearly intended to imitate and mimic the RPT trademark symbol and website, and to create confusion and mislead the public. As a result, the public is likely to be deceived into believing that your website… is sponsored by or affiliated with the RPT.

Perhaps if the public has been lobotomized. Problem for their theory #1: satire is Constitutionally protected. Problem for their theory #2: in order to get to the spoof site, you have to accidentally type E-N-R-O-N-O-W-N-S-T-H-E-G-O-P instead of T-E-X-A-S-G-O-P-.-O-R-G.

Of course, a third party could maliciously point to the wrong site. Of course, that third party would be entirely outside the control of the spoofers. And if you’re feeling third-partyish today, you can buy the texasgop.com domain from BuyDomains for the low price of somewhere between $650 and $10,000. Or you can wait until the registration expires on June 11th and try to pick it up cheaper.

The Republican Party of Texas: We Can Subvert the Constitution and Make Mountains from Molehills, All Before Breakfast! My thanks to those fine folks for bringing this to my attention.