The first thing you need to understand is what the Alabama Public Service Commission is supposed to do - regulate utilities in the state of Alabama.

If you didn't know that, you are forgiven - Alabama public service commissioners forget it all the time.

Case in point, Commissioner Chip Beeker.

Following the Pledge of Allegiance at the PSC's meeting Tuesday, Beeker went on a rant that can only be described as full-bore Alabama.

WARNING: Do not just read the column. Watch the video above, preferably in a safe place with a cold beverage.

God in schools, gay marriage, welfare for the poor and teenage pregnancy - all to Beeker are proof that things just ain't the way they used to be and things are bad.

"It reminds me ... the difference of our federal government when we were children and how then they did not punish success and they did not reward sloth," he said. "But with the crowd we have in D.C. today with the wealth redistribution scheme, that is exactly what is happening."

For a moment Beeker seemed to come back to the 21st century, lamenting a measles outbreak in a daycare in a public school. However, Beeker wasn't morose over the measles outbreak or people who don't vaccinate their children. He was expressing his dismay that such a thing exists as a daycare in a public school.

Last year Beeker defeated former commissioner Terry Dunn, a not-far-right-enough Republican who was drummed out of office after he made the ludicrous suggestion that the PSC conduct formal rate reviews of Alabama utilities. For that, Dunn was accused of being a pawn of the Obama administration's War on Coal.

Beeker, in contrast, has said that Alabamians should pray the EPA away and has questioned who has the right to take the coal God gave to Alabama. (Most Alabama coal is metallurgical grade coal which is exported to foreign countries for making steel.)

This isn't the first time a PSC meeting has turned into church. In 2012, the PSC came under fire after a minister invited by PSC President Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh asked those in attendance which among them believed in prayer before asking God's forgiveness for same-sex marriage and murdering children.