A hallelujah chorus of joyous whoops and hollers erupted from an audience described as “mostly African Americans” as the Texas DMV voted on Thursday to reject a license-plate proposal by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. After hours of hearing what was said to be “emotional testimony” wherein “passions ran high,” the DMV’s board, all of its members appointed by dodo-brained presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry, voted 8-0 to reject a license-plate design that would have featured a square Confederate battle flag occupying roughly five percent of the overall plate’s area.

Back in April, essentially the same Texas DMV board (one member died and was replaced) split their vote 4-4 on whether to approve the Rebel license plate. Having recently survived his “Niggerhead” scandal, it is thought that the shape-shifting reptilian Perry instructed his minions to nix the license plate because he didn’t want to worsen his numerous displays of public retardation in the GOP debates with further accusations of racism. So this time around, the panel’s vote against the Confederate image was unanimous.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans, whose website features a small man in a Rebel outfit who startles the unsuspecting viewer when he suddenly appears and starts speaking to you once the page loads, have already had their logo approved on license plates in nine formerly Confederate states. They were forced to sue to win the right to do so in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. They are now vowing to sue the state of Texas for the right to have specialty plates featuring what is described as a “baseball-sized” image of the Rebel battle flag.

Speaking before the US House of Representatives on October 11, the barely sentient Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee bloviated her hippo-shaped head off as she pled with Governor Perry to speak to his “higher angels” and reject the license-plate design featuring what she twice referred to as a “HEEN-ee-iss” symbol of hatred, bigotry, brutality, lynching, shattered families, and that old chronologically impossible canard about “four hundred years” of slavery. (We believe that “HEEN-ee-iss” is suppposed to be the word “heinous”; you can hear Ms. Jackson-Lee pronounce it HERE. You can also hear her talk about how the Confederates “opted to succeed [sic] from the Union.” It’s quite a fun and instructive clip.)