GOP knuckleheads continue to speak
After Wednesday’s decision from the Supreme Court, FoxNews huckser and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee Tweeted, “My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined that same sex marriage is okay: ‘Jesus wept.’ ”
Adult Advisory Warning: this is an opinion piece. If you’re looking for unbiased news you need to look at other sections of the Baltimore Post-Examiner.
Sometimes you’re left wondering, “Did that knucklehead really say this?” It’s so outlandish, you think, maybe it’s just one of those parody/satire sites that poke fun at famous people, politicians in particular. So, like we did with the knucklehead who is now the president of the NRA, we do a little research.
Turns out the knucklehead at the NRA, James Porter, didn’t really opine for the days of the old South when men were men and slaves were 3/5 human.
But, this knucklehead congressman from Arizona, Trent Franks did say, “The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low, but when you make that exception, there’s usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case, that’s impossible, because this is in the sixth month of gestation.”
Franks is a Republican, if you were wondering (you probably weren’t), and he was sponsoring a bill in the House of Representatives to further restrict a woman’s right to abortion. It sort of isn’t a big deal because the bill was going nowhere, but it does illustrate the ignorance by which the GOP chooses to operate.
There is no scientific data to support Trent’s claim and in fact the data shows that rape produces pregnancy as often as consensual intercourse. But for the so-called “right to life” crowd, what are a few little white lies if the sentiment is in the right place?
So, the House GOP got that woman from Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn, to trot the bill out on the floor — even though she wasn’t a member of the committee that sponsored it — and get it up for a vote. It passed the house along party lines (the GOP claims it’s bi-partisan) and then died because the Senate isn’t going to even look at it, let alone bring it up for a vote and even if they did the president would stamp “VETO” on it.
But the affair was interesting because the GOP named the bill (and I am not kidding), the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” and linked passage of the bill to the former doctor in Philadelphia that was found guilty of murder and negligence for killing women and babies in his clinic.
And then those crazy Democrats had to ruin everything by bringing facts and reality into the debate, citing the findings of actual scientific research that says the fetus doesn’t start to develop the brain connections for sensing pain until 24 weeks, which is also the time when a fetus can be viable outside the womb.
“We don’t need no stinking facts! We got Jesus on out side!”
Which brings up some newer news: last week the Supreme Court struck down DOMA and California’s Prop 8. Actually, the Supremes dismissed the Prop 8 case, which in effect sent it back to the lower court, but both the governor of California (Jerry Brown) and the State Attorney General (Kamala Harris) support marriage equality so they have no plans to defend Prop 8. In fact they are making all necessary arrangements to allow same-sex marriages throughout the state within a month.
The GOP went on a verbal rampage. Queue R.E.M. and “The End of the World.”
Justice Scalia led the charge with his dissent of the decision, calling the majority opinion “legalistic argle-bargle.” That had Constitutional scholars scratching their heads.
Scalia wrote in his opinion, “That is jaw-dropping. It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive. It envisions a Supreme Court standing (or rather enthroned) at the apex of government, empowered to decide all constitutional questions, always and everywhere primary in its role.”
Which is funny because just the day before he signed on to a decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts that read, in part, “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.
“[Congress’s} failure to act leaves us today with no choice but to declare S4(b) unconstitutional”
The voting Rights Act of 1965 has stood for nearly 50 years and has been renewed by Congress with overwhelming majority votes ever since. President George W. Bush signed the most recent 25-year extension into law in 2006.
Scalia is perturbed that the judicial body he is a member of over turned a law passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton, but thinks it’s okay to over turn a law that was renewed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush. You gotta love the irony. Both Congresses, in 2006 and 1995, were controlled by Republicans so it’s not like it was Democrats shoving their pet legislation down anyone’s throats in either case.
And then there’s the obvious inconsistency of his argument. In one case he’s all for overturning a federal law, but in another he’s against the Supreme Court overturning a federal law, in both cases the legislation was passed by the “people’s Representatives.”
We’ll get to the voting rights act in a moment, but we have this little bit of theater to mention.
One of the funnier tirades against the same-sex marriage rulings came from Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. She said, “This decision is one that is profound because the Supreme Court not only attacked our Constitution today, they not only attacked the equal protection rights of every citizen under our Constitution, they attacked something that they have no jurisdiction over whatsoever, the foundational unit of our society, which is marriage. That is something that God created. That is something that God will define. The Supreme Court, though they may think so, have not risen to the level of God.”
- Didn’t King Solomon, of Old Testament fame, have something like 700 wives and 300 concubines? Did God define that and if so, aren’t we men a little behind the curve?
At any rate, Bachmann’s oratory was goofy on so many levels; with the DOMA and Prop 8 decisions the court extended certain rights (marriage equality) to all Americans, the court didn’t attack anyone’s rights. As far as anyone can tell, heterosexual people are allowed to marry anyone they choose, including the ones our mothers told us to avoid.
But Bachmann chose to invoke the mighty name of God in her speech, which is something Republicans love to do when they want to restrict the rights of others or allow any crazy person to buy assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines.
When told of Bachmann’s reaction to the Court’s decision on DOMA, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, “Who cares?” And that appears to be the majority opinion of Americans.
As for the Voting Rights Act, the Supremes struck down sections four and five which say that whenever certain states create laws that will affect voting — in any way — that new law must be “pre-cleared” by the justice Department or a three-member judicial panel from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Well, as it turns out the majority opinion in the court decided discrimination no longer exists; in other words, we got over that racism thing! Wow. The NAACP was so over-joyed they took a group vote via the Twitter and decided to disband, their work being done.
Actually the NAACP didn’t do that.
Most people were shocked, shocked I say! The “pre-clearance” provisions of the act, the primary enforcement tools of the VRA, have been used 74 times just in the past 14 years when the states in question, primarily the Southern States, tried to pass laws that would adversely affect minority voters, i.e. people who vote for Democrats, mostly.
Now here’s where those pesky civil rights junkies will have a problem. These new laws they oppose aren’t aimed at restricting minority voters per se, they are aimed at liberal, Democrat-leaning voters, regardless of race, age, gender or ethnicity! So these new laws, according to the Supreme Court, are okay as long as they don’t implicitly or explicitly say they are designed to restrict the voting rights of Negroes or Mexicans or whatever ethnic minority the new law is designed to disenfranchise.
In other words, these new voter I.D laws are not racially discriminatory by design, they are racially discriminatory by circumstance and that’s perfectly acceptable.
Sometimes the majority opinion of the Supreme Court makes perfect sense … sometimes not.
But, the minority of the Supremes had a different opinion of the enforcement provisions of the VRA. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg famously said, via her written opinion, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet,” Ginsburg wrote.
Ginsburg added, “The sad irony of today’s decision lies in its utter failure to grasp why the VRA has proven effective. The Court appears to believe that the VRA’s success in eliminating the specific devices extant in 1965 means that preclearance is no longer needed. With that belief, and the argument derived from it, history repeats itself.”
Damn liberals. If it was up to them everyone would have equal rights.
But thanks to Governor Rick Perry and his state of Texas, we can be assured moral malfeasance will continue, at least for now. On the day Texas celebrated the Supreme Court’s voting rights decision by passing the most restrictive voter I.D. laws in the nation (within two hours of the court’s decision), they executed their 500th prisoner since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, more than the next six death penalty states combined.
Nothing says “pro life” like a state-sanctioned killing and that knucklehead, Rick Perry, really did say the process for state-sanctioned killing in Texas is very thoughtful and clear and he has no problem sleeping at night—even though one of those people killed in his kill chamber was later proven to be innocent, Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004.
As the allegedly pro-life governor said later in that debate, “Oops.”
As you may recall, two years ago the GOP faithful thought Perry would be the Great non-Mormon hope for their presidential nomination, practically begging the Texas governor to get in the race. So he did.
Oops.
Tim Forkes started as a writer on a small alternative college newspaper in Milwaukee called the Crazy Shepherd. Writing about entertainment issues, he had the opportunity to speak with many people in show business, from the very famous to the people struggling to find an audience. In 1992 Tim moved to San Diego, CA and pursued other interests, but remained a freelance writer. Upon arrival in Southern California he was struck by how the business of government and business was so intertwined, far more so than he had witnessed in Wisconsin. His interest in entertainment began to wane and the business of politics took its place. He had always been interested in politics, his mother had been a Democratic Party official in Milwaukee, WI, so he sat down to dinner with many of Wisconsin’s greatest political names of the 20th Century: William Proxmire and Clem Zablocki chief among them. As a Marine Corps veteran, Tim has a great interest in veteran affairs, primarily as they relate to the men and women serving and their families. As far as Tim is concerned, the military-industrial complex has enough support. How the men and women who serve are treated is reprehensible, while in the military and especially once they become veterans. Tim would like to help change that reality.