Why the Christian Right Believes It Has Once-in-a-Decade Chance to Impose Its Radical Worldview on America

Why the Christian Right Believes It Has Once-in-a-Decade Chance to Impose Its Radical Worldview on America

A change to obscure procedural rules in the U.S. Senate and the upcoming 2014 elections could be a dangerous window of opportunity.

November 26, 2013  

 

AlterNet / By CJ Werleman

Elections have consequences. The Senate Democrats’ detonation of the “nuclear option” has dramatically raised the stakes for secular progressives in 2014, because if there are two issues that juice the Christian Right the most, it’s women’s reproductive rights and judicial activism. On the latter, the Religious Right senses a once-in-a-decade opportunity to impose its radical worldview on America.
Last week, the Senate voted 52-48 to eliminate the ability of the minority party in the Senate to filibuster executive branch nominees and any judgeship below the Supreme Court by changing the requirements for passage to a simple majority vote. It was a historic move made because there was no other alternative, given the GOP’s unprecedented abuse of the filibuster. In the history of the United States, 168 presidential nominees have been filibustered. Half occurred under all presidents from Washington through to Bush. Remarkably, the other half has taken place under just one president: Obama.
Why such aggressive judicial obstructionism by the GOP?
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. writes, “This era’s conservatives will use any means at their disposal to win control of the courts. Their goal is to do all they can to limit Congress’s ability to enact social reforms.”
The Christian Right, which is the GOP’s most reliable and agitated voting bloc, is obsessed with the courts, and the Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit is the nation’s second most important judicial body, which is why Republicans “gave the game away when all but a few of them opposed Obama’s three most recent appointments.”
Now that Democrats were forced into limiting the filibuster, the Christian Right has its incentive to mobilize for 2014. A simple majority control of the Senate gives it an opportunity to pack the courts with judges straight out of the Justice Scalia mold, who once said that separation of church and state would come under scrutiny under a Supreme Court with a Scalia majority. If the Christian Right sweeps Republicans to control the Senate in next year’s midterms, the anti-secularists will take a big step forward toward their stated ideological goals.
The recent Values Voter Summit demonstrated that the likely 2016 GOP frontrunners have a base wish to transform America’s secular state into a tyrannical theocracy — a nirvana absent gays, liberals, immigrants, Muslims and science books. The right-wing media elites are already doing their bit to gin up the far right’s judicial activists with Rush Limbaugh comparing filibuster reform to rape.
Truth in Action Ministries recently released a film titled Freedom on Trial, which features Robert Bork, the failed Reagan Supreme Court nominee, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, and Heritage Foundation vice president Genevieve Wood. The general theme of the documentary is that Christianity is under attack thanks to liberal "activist judges." Bork warns that courts are “teaching the people that religion is evil,” while another conservative attorney claims decisions that go against the Ten Commandments will “destroy the country.”
President Obama’s judicial nominees were being filibustered because they threaten to alter the circuit court’s philosophical balance. The Republican Party has again demonstrated that nullification and obstruction are ready-made weapons to ensure the courts remain dominated by conservatives.

Cass R. Sunstein, author of Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Bad for America, writes, “Our courts now represents the most extreme elements of the Republican Party. These reformers include a number of federal judges—radicals in robes, fundamentalists on the bench….some of these judges do not hesitate to depart radically from longstanding understandings of constitutional meaning.” Political analyst James Fallows writes, “Add that to the simply unprecedented abuse of the filibuster in the years since the Democrats won control of the Senate and then took the White House, you have what we’d identify as a kind of long-term coup if we saw it happening anywhere else.”

The end of the filibuster threatens the far right’s stranglehold on our courts. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell warned, “The solution to this problem is at the ballot box. We look forward to having a great election in November 2014.” John McCain warned, “Democrats will regret this.”
For Republicans to take back the Senate, they’ll need to win six seats. Given Democrats will need to defend 21 seats, compared to just 14 for the GOP, and that seven of those 21 Democratic seats are in states that lean Republican, expect the Christian Right to be the party’s primary water carrier in the midterms.
Former Speaker Tip O’Neill liked to say that all politics is local. He was wrong. It’s tribal. The detonation of the nuclear option ensures the always-mobilized theological tribe will turn out in high numbers in 2014. This means America’s secular state will remain in the balance should the secular left tribe do no better than its impotency in 2010.
CJ Werleman is the author of Crucifying America and God Hates You, Hate Him Back. Follow him on Twitter @cjwerleman.

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Focus on the Family serves up a rancid turkey in time for Thanksgiving

Focus on the Family serves up a rancid turkey in time for Thanksgiving

by Steveningen

 

Ugh. Where to even begin with this one. The odious Focus on the Family has released a video designed to teach you how to explain the truth behind Thanksgiving to the kiddies. It is so rife with distortions, fabrications, omissions, persecution complex, and anti-government bias that it is a hideous thing of beauty.

Hi. I'm Stuart Shepard, This is Stoplight. About now, children are bringing home Pilgrim hats and turkeys made out of construction paper. And maybe making lists of things they are thankful for. But, it's up to us to make sure they understand the full context of what happened back around 1620.
We are the Pilgrims.
They were not called "the Pilgrims" back when this whole thing started. England would not allow these Christians to live out their faith they wanted to. They were told to fall in line with the government's view of religion. If not, they could be taken to court, fined or even imprisoned.
We are the Pilgrims.
So, some of them packed up and moved to Holland. Now thing were generally better there. But then they watched as the culture began to draw their children away from the Christian faith they were learning at home.
We are the Pilgrims.
So, then they booked that trip on the Mayflower. A cargo ship. Not really designed for passengers. Think of it as a floating tractor-trailer being tossed about by a stormy ocean. It was spartan, it was rough, but it eventually got them here to the New World.
We are the Pilgrims.
They signed the Mayflower Compact saying they were united in this undertaking for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith. Its simple framing of democracy would inform the U.S. Constitution more than 150 years later.
We are the Pilgrims.
They learned about human behavior: That if the colony took what each one produced and shared it with everyone else, well it brought out the very worst in human beings. The colony only succeeded once it allowed each family to have their own property and enjoy the benefits of their own labor.
We are the Pilgrims.
So--after having government trample on their God given rights--after seeing their children wooed away by a decadent culture, after a treacherous ocean voyage, a harsh winter, after learning how imperfect human beings function as a group--after all that--they held a feast to celebrate. And they thanked God for His Providence.
We are the Pilgrims.
It was only after Christian faith was turned into action, and after it was applied to real life troubles, and after they endured hardship while giving thanks--that they became known as "The Pilgrims."
We--are--the Pilgrims.

Even those with a rudimentary historical understanding of Thanksgiving would somehow remember to include the Indians at the first Thanksgiving table. But I suppose that is just too much for today's xenophobic, immigration-hatin' modern Pilgrim. Best just not to mention them and give over that time to further drive home all that persecuting, government intrusion and fear into your children's soft little heads. Among all the tripe to be found in this video is this doozy that sits at the very heart of the religious right.

They signed the Mayflower Compact saying they were united in this undertaking for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith. Its simple framing of democracy would inform the U.S. Constitution more than 150 years later.

Here they have taken the notion that it was our Founding Fathers who intended our Constitution to be divinely inspired and are now crediting the wacked-out Pilgrims for our Constitution that clearly states there shall be no separation of Church and State. Or something. The stupid, it burns.
So, when you find yourself at your own Thanksgiving table on Thursday, please remember to give a little moment of thanks that Stuart Shepard isn't sitting over there at your kid's table giving your little ones a history lesson.
Update: Thanks to Dave in Northridge for sharing this link: The Puritans and the Puritans who settled Massachusetts, 1620-1630.

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Cruz, comity, and comedy

11/25/13 10:04 AM

By Steve Benen

 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sat down with Bloomberg News’ Al Hunt the other day, who asked the Republican senator about the “nuclear option.” Alas, the message didn’t match the messenger (via Caitlin MacNeal).

HUNT: Will it complicate passing budgets or debt ceilings or anything?

 

CRUZ: Of course it will. I mean, it will poison the atmosphere of the Senate.

I should note that I’ve only seen the transcript, and therefore have no idea whether the right-wing Texan was able to say this with a straight face.

 

Either way, let’s not forget that this is the same Ted Cruz who helped oversee his party’s government-shutdown strategy. Cruz has repeatedly drawn the ire of his own Republican colleagues who’ve been the targets of his extremist tactics. Cruz won’t endorse his own Senate allies. A “remarkable number” of lawmakers in both parties have come forward “to say that they think Cruz is kind of a jerk.”

 

He’s the guy who wants to talk about poisoning the atmosphere of the Senate? Maybe someone else can take the lead on defending institutional comity?

 

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Rand Paul Throws a Tantrum on CNN and Calls Harry Reid A Big Bully

Rand Paul Throws a Tantrum on CNN and Calls Harry Reid A Big Bully

By: Jason Easley and Sarah Jones 

Thursday, November, 21st, 2013, 3:27 pm

The crying has only just begun now that Republicans won’t be able to hold up judicial and executive branch nominees (the filibuster rule changes do not apply to SCOTUS nominees or legislation). Mitch McConnell’s spokesperson inaccurately accused Obama of court packing, and now Rand Paul started a whine fest on CNN during which he complained that Republicans need an anti-bullying ordinance to protect them from “dictator” Harry Reid.
Video:

Senator Rand Paul said on CNN, “I think what we really need is an anti-bullying ordinance in the Senate. I mean, now we’ve got a big bully, Harry Reid says he’s just going to break the rules and make new rules. Never been done this way before.”
“He’s gotta have everything his way, he’s gotta control everything. This is more about them trying to control the agenda and shift it away from Obamacare than it is about anything else. Basically, he’s become the dictator of the Senate. He’s going to bend and break the rules to get his way.”
Rand Paul has been one of the main sources of Republican obstruction in the Senate, so it isn’t a surprise that he would cry a river over the fact that he has lost a critical tool that he has used both to gum up the works and call attention to himself.

Harry Reid’s rule change will make it a lot more difficult for look at me 2016 Republican wannabes like Paul and Ted Cruz to use obstructing the Senate to further their presidential ambitions. Obstruction of nominees will no longer be a prime PR tool for Sen. Paul as he daydreams about a presidency that may never be.
The root problem is that Rand Paul rejects the purpose of the Senate. Sen. Paul doesn’t believe in passing laws. Rand Paul thinks he is in the Senate to prevent progress. If Paul can’t obstruct, he serves no purpose in the Senate.
Sen. Paul is throwing a tantrum because he had his favorite toy taken away. Instead of looking like a visionary leader for America’s future, Rand Paul is stomping his feet because Republicans are no longer going to get their obstructionist way on everything.
Mostly though, Rand Paul is upset because he lost a vehicle to promote Rand Paul.

Rand Paul Throws a Tantrum on CNN and Calls Harry Reid A Big Bully was written by Jason Easley and Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Thu, Nov 21st, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

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New Bill Would Force Congress To Stay In Washington Until It Passes A Budget

Posted: 11/20/2013 1:26 pm EST  |  Updated: 11/20/2013 1:51 pm EST

WASHINGTON -- New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, the senior Democrat on the House Rules Committee, introduced legislation Wednesday that would prevent Congress from skipping town for the holidays if the House fails to pass a budget agreement by mid-December.
The "No Budget, No Vacation" bill would hold lawmakers accountable for their pledge to reconcile the vastly different House and Senate budgets by Dec. 13, which was one of the key components of last month's deal to end the 16-day shutdown of the federal government. Since then, members of the Budget Conference Committee, led by the House and Senate budget chairs, have twice convened publicly, but there's been little indication that they're headed for a breakthrough.
Democrats will thus attach a vote on Slaughter's resolution to a procedural motion known as "the previous question" on Wednesday. The maneuver is one of the few ways in which the minority in the House can attempt to take control of the floor briefly away from the majority, but it's unlikely to succeed because it would need Republican votes.
Democrats are hopeful, however, that the vote will be tricky for Republicans amid reports that House GOP leaders are done legislating for the remainder of the year and have distributed a blank agenda for 2014 to their members. In a press release, Slaughter cites such articles and points out that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly joked in a private meeting with Republicans that the House shouldn’t even remain in session in December.
"This Republican House has redefined the term unproductive by setting records for futility with its glacial legislative pace and then shutting down the government when they don’t get their way," Slaughter said. "Now, after this dismal record, the Majority is planning to go on a vacation before fulfilling our most basic role to fund the government. It is time to stop governing crisis–to-crisis and finally give the American people and American businesses the certainty that comes with passing a federal budget. No budget, no vacation."
Slaughter voiced similar frustration over the lack of legislative action in the House on Tuesday when a second vote series was canceled. "Oh did we work too hard today?" she quipped, according to BuzzFeed's Kate Nocera.
As The Huffington Post reported earlier this year, the 113th Congress is on track to be the least productive in modern history, a tough record to beat given the 112th Congress was already the least productive since the 1940s. Boehner has called such reports "total nonsense," and said the American public would like to see Congress repeal laws rather than simply pass them.
But the House GOP has been scrutinized for stalling on comprehensive immigration reform and failing to pass spending bills at the levels set by Republican appropriators.
In terms of a budget agreement, Boehner and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the House Budget Chair, have ruled out any budget deal that includes new tax increases. Democrats have maintained that the federal budget cuts known as sequestration must be replaced with a combination of tax revenues and targeted spending cuts, setting up a possible stalemate ahead of the mid-December deadline.
Boehner nonetheless expressed optimism Tuesday that both sides could agree on a spending level for 2014, a day after top Republican appropriators warned against keeping sequestration in place in a letter to Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
"It’s important that we do appropriations bills here to fund the government," he said at a press conference. "The idea that we should operate under what are called continuing resolutions is a poor way to do business."
Read the 'No Budget, No Vacation' bill below:
Resolution: No Budget, No Vacation

 

  ..................................................................... (Original Signature of Member)
113TH
CONGRESS 1ST
SESSION

H. RES. ll

Prohibiting the consideration of a concurrent resolution providing for adjourn-ment unless the House has adopted a conference report on the budget resolution.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Ms. S
LAUGHTER
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on
lllllllllllllll

RESOLUTION

Prohibiting the consideration of a concurrent resolution pro-viding for adjournment unless the House has adopted a conference report on the budget resolution.
Resolved,
That it shall not be in order to consider a
1
concurrent resolution providing for adjournment unless
2
the House has adopted a conference report on S. Con. Res.
3
8, establishing a budget for the United States Govern-
4
ment, by December 13th, 2013.
5
VerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:34 Nov 19, 2013Jkt 000000PO 00000Frm 00001Fmt 6652Sfmt 6201C:\DOCUME~1\NLWOFSY\APPLIC~1\SOFTQUAD\XMETAL\5.5\GEN\C\RULES2~1.XMLH
November 19, 2013 (2:34 p.m.)
F:\NLW\DEM\RULES2013.XML
f:\VHLC\111913\111913.131.xml           (564885|1) 

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Why I Will Never, Ever, Go Back to the United States

Why I Will Never, Ever, Go Back to the United States

Huffington Post / By Niels Gerson Lohman

 

After a year of traveling, I had planned a last, short trip. Border control had other ideas.

October 17, 2013  |  

 I was going to take the train from Montreal to New Orleans. The travels I had been undertaking earlier this year had brought me to places that were meant to form the background of my second novel.
This trip, however, was for my dad. He, a trumpet player, loved New Orleans and had died a year ago. It felt like the first sensible trip I undertook this year. I had been searching for ways to forget about the last hours at his deathbed. He had been ill for 15 years and his body just would not give up. It was a violent sight. I had decided the trip to New Orleans would put an end to those memories.
Usually, I barely plan my trips in advance. But this time I had booked everything: my train tickets, hotels and my flight back to Montreal, from which I would depart back to Amsterdam. In total the trip was supposed to take three weeks. The confirmations and tickets I had printed and tucked away in a brown envelope I had bought especially for the trip. I like things to be neatly arranged. At home, in Amsterdam, my house enjoys a slight version of OCD.
The first part of the trip, from Montreal to New York, is known to be one of the world's prettiest train routes. When we had just passed the sign 'Welcome to the State of New York,' the train pulled over for a border check. I put the brown envelope on my lap. On top of the envelope I filled in my migration form with utmost dedication. I love border crossings. Forms don't lie.
The customs officer walked by and asked everybody on the train a few questions. Where they were from, where they were heading. The usual stuff. Everybody who was not a U.S. or Canadian citizen was to head for the dining car to fill in an additional green form.
In the dining car sat a cheerful looking family from the Middle East and a German man with a mouth in which a small frisbee could easily be inserted. I took the seat across the German, who had already filled in his green paper, and started on my own, dedicated, hoping to impress him. He was not throwing me friendly looks. The customs officer took the German's papers and welcomed him to America. They switched seats. He put his hands on the table and looked at me. We must have been of similar ages. He had a goatee and slid my passport towards him like it was a small gift.
I had not finished my novel yet, but my passport was complete. It was filled with pretty stamps. He did not like the stamps.
First, he saw my Sri Lankan stamp. The customs officer raised his eyebrows.
"Sri Lanka, what were you doing over there?"
"Surfing. Traveling. My best friend lives there. He is an architect."
The officer flipped on, seemingly satisfied. Secondly, he found my stamps from Singapore and Malaysia.
"What were you doing over there? Singapore and Malaysia? Aren't those countries Islamic?"
Looking over my shoulder, his eyes searched for his colleague's confirmation.
"Malaysia, I think so, yeah. But not Singapore. It's a melting pot. A very futuristic city. Airconditioned to the ceiling. To Singapore I went mostly for the food, to be honest."
"Sure."
"I'm sorry?"
"Nothing. And how about Malaysia?"
I explained flights departing from Malaysia were cheaper compared to Singapore. That I only went there for a few days, but also, a little bit, for the food. The customs officer went through some more pages. Then he found my Yemeni visa. He put my passport down and stared at me.
"What the hell were you doing in Yemen?"
"I went to the island Socotra, it's not on mainland Yemen. It's a small island closer to Somalia. A very special place, some call it 'Galapagos of the Middle East.' I think 85 percent of the plants and animals there, are indigenous."
"Weren't you scared?"
"Yeah. I was scared. When I was at the airport in mainland Yemen. That entire area is now taken by al Qaeda, I believe."
The customs officer was looking at my passport no longer. If he would have leafed through, he would have found Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi stamps.
That was the first time I had to open my suitcase. Six customs officers went through my two phones, iPad, laptop and camera. In my wallet they found an SD card I had totally forgotten about. They did not like that. By now I was the only one left in the dining car and the center of attention. I had put a raincoat in my suitcase, because I'd heard New Orleans tends to get hit by thunderstorms in the late summer. An officer held up the coat and barked:
"Who takes a coat to the U.S. in the summer?"
I answered it would keep me dry, in case the New Orleans levees would break again. The officer remained silent. He dropped my coat like a dishcloth.
The raincoat seemed to be the last straw. The customs officers exchanged looks.
"We'd like to ask you some more questions. But the train has to continue, so we're going to take you off here."
I looked out of the window. We weren't at a proper station. Along the tracks were piles of old pallets.
"Will you put me on another train, afterwards?"
"This is the only train. But in case we decide to let you in, we'll put you on a bus. Don't worry."
I started to worry. I packed my suitcase as quickly as possible and was escorted off the train. There were three officers in front of me, and three behind. My suitcase was too wide for the aisle, it kept getting stuck between the seats. I apologized to the train in general. While I struggled, the officers waited patiently and studied the relation between me and my suitcase.
Outside, we stopped in front of a white van. The officers permitted me to put my suitcase in the back and I was about climb into the van, when the they halted me.
"You are not under arrest. There is no need to be scared. But we would like to search you."
"I'm not scared. But it's kind of exciting. It's like I'm in a movie. You're just doing your job. I get that."
To me, that seemed the right attitude. They searched me for the first time then, just like in the movies. Before I climbed into the van, I had to give up my phones. I seemed unable to close my belt by myself, so an officer helped me out. This is when the sweating started.
In a little building made of corrugated tin, I opened my suitcase once more. Behind me, there was a man in tears. An officer was telling him about the prison sentence the man was looking forward to. He had been caught with a trunk full of cocaine. The man kept talking about a woman who seemed to be able to prove his innocence, but he was unable to reach her.
After that they searched me again. Thoroughly.
Just like in the movies.
In the room next to me they tried to take my fingerprints, but my hands were too clammy. It took half an hour. An officer said:
"He's scared."
Another officer confirmed:
"Yeah. He's scared."
I repeated, another attempt to be disarming:
"This is just like in the movies."
But border patrol is not easily disarmed.
In the five hours that followed, I was questioned twice more. During the first round I told, amongst others, my life's story, about my second novel's plot, gave my publisher's name, my bank's name and my real estate agent's name. Together we went through all the photos on my laptop and messages my phones had been receiving for the past months. They wrote down the names of everybody I had been in touch with. In my pirated software and movies they showed no interest.
During the second round of questioning, we talked about religion. I told them my mother was raised a Catholic, and that my dad had an atheist mother and a Jewish dad.
"We don't understand. Why would a Jew go to Yemen?"
"But... I'm not Jewish."
"Yeah, well. We just don't understand why would a Jew go to Yemen."
Again, I showed them the photos I took in Yemen and explained how nice the island's flora and fauna had been. That the dolphins come and hang out, even in the shallow water and how cheap the lobsters were. I showed them the Dragonblood trees and the Bedouin family where I had to eat goat intestines. They did not seem to appreciate it as much as I had.
"You yourself, what do you believe in?"
I thought about it for a second and replied.
"Nothing, really."
Obviously, I should have said:
"Freedom of speech."
When I'm supposed to watch my words, I tend to say the wrong ones.
The last hour was spent on phone calls about me. Now and then an officer came and asked me for a password on my equipment. By then, the cocaine trafficker had been brought to a cell where they did have a toilet. I continued my wait. An officer, who I had not seen before, flung the door open and asked if I was on the Greyhound heading to New York. I shrugged hopefully. He closed the door again, as if he had entered the wrong room.
Finally, two officers came rushing into my waiting room.
"You can pack your bag. And make sure you have everything."
They gave me my phones back. All apps had been opened. I had not used my phones that day, but the batteries were completely drained. Because I was soaked in sweat, I attempted to change shirts while packing my bag. It seemed like I had made it.
"How much time do we have? What time will the bus depart?"
"We don't know."
I was unable to find the entrance to my clean shirt. I held it high with two hands, as if it was a white flag.
"So... what's the verdict?"
"We are under the impression you have more ties with more countries we are not on friendly terms with than your own. We decided to bring you back to the Canadian border."
They brought me back. In the car, no words were said. It was no use. I was defeated. To the Canadian border they said:
"We got another one. This one is from the Netherlands."
The Canadian officer looked at me with pity. She asked if there was anything I needed. I said I could use some coffee and a cigarette. She took my passport to a back room and returned within five minutes, carrying an apologetic smile, a freshly stamped passport, coffee, a cigarette, and a ticket to the next bus back to Montreal.
I have been cursed at a Chinese border. In Dubai, my passport was studied by three veiled women for over an hour and my suitcase completely dismembered. In the Philippines I had to bribe someone in order to get my visa extended for a few days. Borders, they can be tough, especially in countries known for corruption.
But never, ever, will I return to the United States of America.

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US top court rejects pre-abortion ultrasound case

20 hours ago

 

 

Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court refused Tuesday to hear a case concerning pre-abortion ultrasounds for women seeking to terminate their pregnancies in Oklahoma.

By refusing to take up the matter, the top US court let stand a ruling by the state's supreme court that struck down a local law requiring "the performance, display and explanation of a pre-abortion ultrasound."
The state claimed to have a "legitimate interest of reducing the risk that a woman may elect an abortion, only to discover later, with devastating psychological consequences, that her decision was not fully informed."
The law mandated that doctors or certified technicians working with them perform ultrasounds on woman at least an hour before carrying out an abortion.
It required the images to be displayed in such a way that they could be seen by the women in question and mandated a "simultaneous explanation of what the ultrasound is depicting."
In addition, physicians or certified technicians were required to provide a medical description of the images, which had to include such details, if applicable, of a heart beat and internal organs.

They also had to "obtain a written certification from the woman, prior to the abortion" although the measure stated that "neither the physician nor the pregnant woman shall be subject to any penalty if she refuses to look at the presented ultrasound images."

After examining the matter in closed session three times, the Supreme Court gave no explanation for its refusal to take it up.
Just last week, the court announced it would not review the Oklahoma supreme court's decision to overturn a state law that restricts the use of an abortion pill.
The decision effectively upholds the lower court's ruling that the law was unconstitutional, and will allow doctors in the state to prescribe RU-486, also known as the Mifepristone abortion pill.
It is also expected to say soon whether it will take up a Texas law that could lead to the closure of more than a third of clinics performing abortions in the state.
Despite its landmark "Roe V. Wade" decision in January 1973 legalizing abortion in the United States, the practice has remained a perennial source of controversy and in recent years a growing number of states have passed laws limiting it.
Supreme Court watchers expect the nine-member panel to revisit the issue.
On January 15, it will focus on the right of "pro-life" protesters to demonstrate in front of abortion clinics.
  

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Everything That’s Happened Since Supreme Court Ruled on Voting Rights Act 

by Kara Brandeisky and Mike Tigas
ProPublica, Nov. 1, 2013, 11:24 a.m.

Last year, we wrote extensively about photo ID laws and the Supreme Court’s decision to strike a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, with gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and the debt ceiling and healthcare debates already shaping the 2014 midterms, we’re revisiting voting policies to see which states have enacted tougher restrictions since the Supreme Court ruling in June.
Remind me – what is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act?

Under the Voting Rights Act, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination needed to get permission from the federal government to enact any changes to their voting laws, in a process called “preclearance.” As of June 2013, nine states, mostly in the South – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia – needed to get any new voting laws pre-approved. Some counties and townships in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota and Michigan were also subject to preclearance.
Section 5 first applied to states that imposed literacy tests or other unfair devices, and had low voter registration or turnout. Congress later expanded the law to add jurisdictions with sizable minority populations and English-only election materials.
States and localities could “bailout,” or get off the preclearance list, after 10 years of elections without any problems. Several smaller jurisdictions bailed out over the years, including parts of Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Hawaii, and Colorado.
Of course, some of the biggest voting law battles of the 2012 election were in states not covered by Section 5 at all, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.
What did the Supreme Court strike down in Shelby County v. Holder?
The Supreme Court decided, 5-4, that the preclearance formula was unconstitutional under the 10^th  Amendment, which gives states the power to regulate elections. The Court ruled that the coverage formula was “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day.”
From the decision:

Cite as: 570 U. S. ____ (2013)

3

Syllabus
cial discrimination in voting" that had "infected the electoral process
in parts of our country for nearly a century," Katzenbach, 383 U. S.,
at 308. At the time, the coverage formula--the means of linking the
exercise of the unprecedented authority with the problem that warranted 

it--made sense. The Act was limited to areas where Congress
found "evidence of actual voting discrimination," and the covered 

jurisdictions shared two characteristics: "the use of tests and devices
for voter registration, and a voting rate in the 1964 presidential 

election at least 12 points below the national average." Id., at 330. The
Court explained that "[t]ests and devices are relevant to voting 

discrimination because of their long history as a tool for perpetrating
the evil; a low voting rate is pertinent for the obvious reason that
widespread disenfranchisement must inevitably affect the number of
actual voters." Ibid. The Court therefore concluded that "the coverage 

formula [was] rational in both practice and theory." Ibid.
Pp. 12-13.
(3) Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.
Largely because of the Voting Rights Act, "[v]oter turnout and 

registration rates" in covered jurisdictions "now approach parity. 

Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority
candidates hold office at unprecedented levels." Northwest Austin,
supra, at 202. The tests and devices that blocked ballot access have
been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years. Yet the Act has not
eased ?5's restrictions or narrowed the scope of ?4's coverage formula
along the way. Instead those extraordinary and unprecedented features have 

been reauthorized as if nothing has changed, and they
have grown even stronger. Because ?5 applies only to those jurisdictions 

singled out by ?4, the Court turns to consider that provision.
Pp. 13-17.
(b) Section 4's formula is unconstitutional in light of current conditions. 

Pp. 17-25.
(1) In 1966, the coverage formula was "rational in both practice
and theory." Katzenbach, supra, at 330. It looked to cause 

(discriminatory tests) and effect (low voter registration and turnout), 

and tailored the remedy (preclearance) to those jurisdictions exhibiting both.
By 2009, however, the "coverage formula raise[d] serious constitutional questions." 

Northwest Austin, supra, at 204. Coverage today
is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices. The formula
captures States by reference to literacy tests and low voter registration and 

turnout in the 1960s and early 1970s. But such tests have
been banned for over 40 years. And voter registration and turnout
numbers in covered States have risen dramatically. In 1965, the
States could be divided into those with a recent history of voting tests
and low voter registration and turnout and those without those char-

 

One important technical point: the Supreme Court actually left Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – the part of the law that describes how preclearance works – intact. Instead, the Court struck down Section 4, which explains which states and localities are subject to preclearance. If Congress amends Section 4, the Justice Department can start enforcing Section 5 again.
Why does this matter?

Takeaways

• Seven preclearance states have announced new restrictions since the Supreme Court rolled back the Voting Rights Act.
• Last year, a federal court called Texas's photo ID law "most stringent in the country.” Now, it's in effect.
• Two months after the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, North Carolinacut early voting and eliminated same-day registration.
• Are you registered to vote? Virginia has purged 38,000 voters, and Kansas has suspended registration for 17,500.

While literacy tests are a thing of the past, voting rights advocates say that statutes that limit early voting and registration, require voters to show photo ID, and purge voter rolls still disproportionately affect poor and minority voters.
The Supreme Court’s June 2013 decision also effectively shifted the burden from states to citizens. Before, a state subject to preclearance had to demonstrate that a new voting law was not discriminatory and let voting law experts in the Justice Department evaluate it before it could be implemented. Now it is up to voters to challenge voting laws by filing lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination.

But most court cases involving Section 2 have been limited to redistricting, not other controversial voting measures, says Yale University law professor Heather Gerken.
“With redistricting, there’s always one very wealthy political party or another who can hire some very good lawyers and go into court and challenge it,” Gerken said. “But a lot of the types of things that were challenged under Section 5 were smaller questions, like, ‘Can you change a polling place? Can you shut down early voting hours in ways that might affect the black community?’ There are things smaller than redistricting that can fall through the cracks.”
What have preclearance states done since the Supreme Court ruling?
a NORTH CAROLINA: Two months after the Supreme Court decision, North Carolina passed a number of measures, including strict new photo ID requirements. The law also eliminates same-day voter registration, shortens the early voting period by seven days, and specifies that ballots cast at the wrong polling station will be thrown out. Some changes will be phased in starting in 2014, and the photo ID provision goes into effect in 2016.
The North Carolina NAACP and a civil rights group called the Advancement Project have filed a lawsuit challenging the changes. The Justice Department also filed a suit of its own. But the suits venture into some new legal territory.
“What North Carolina did was definitely at the extreme of practices in this country,” Gerken said. “So if anything is vulnerable to a suit, it’s likely to be the North Carolina law. But again, the case law was built around redistricting cases. It wasn’t built around this kind of work.”
q TEXAS: Last year, a federal court rejected Texas’ voter ID law, calling it “the most stringent in the country.” The panel also rejected the state’s redistricting maps, finding that they protected white incumbents while altering districts with minority incumbents.
But on the very day of the Supreme Court ruling, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state would “immediately” enact both measures.
The photo ID law requires voters to present an approved form of photo identification, where before they could present mail, utility bills or other proof of voter registration. The Justice Department had refused to approve the law based on the state’s findings that Hispanic registered voters were far less likely to have the approved photo IDs. The new law also requires the photo ID presented on voting day to match the state’s voter rolls — complicating voting for some married women and others with name changes.
The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the newly enacted photo ID requirements and joined an ongoing lawsuit against the disputed redistricting maps.
I FLORIDA: After the Supreme Court ruling, Florida resumed its plans to remove non-citizens from its voter rolls using the federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database. The Department of Homeland Security database helps government agencies check the immigration statuses of people applying for government benefits like drivers’ licenses, housing assistance, or Medicaid.
But opponents of Florida’s measure say that SAVE data is faulty and not meant for elections, and that using the database to verify voter rolls will disenfranchise eligible voters. (Colorado legislators rejected a bill to purge rolls based on SAVE data for this very reason, but that didn’t stop Secretary of State Scott Gessler from moving ahead with the plan.) The Miami Herald found that Florida voters flagged for verification were disproportionately Hispanic, and most turned out to be citizens. The Department of Justice has also said that SAVE is not meant to be “a comprehensive and definitive listing of U.S. citizens,” especially since it doesn’t include data about people born in the United States.
A nonprofit group has challenged the law, but a federal court dismissed the lawsuit after the Supreme Court ruled that Florida was no longer subject to preclearance. Another group has appealed a similar case to the 11^th Circuit.
s VIRGINIA: Virginia passed a number of voting laws this spring that seem likely to go into effect in wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
The Virginia legislature passed a photo ID law last year (which the Justice Department approved), but the more recent measure goes further to limit what kinds of voter identification are acceptable. Voters can no longer show utility bills, bank statements, government checks or paychecks before they vote, but they can get an ID for freeif they don’t already have one.
The new laws also require the Virginia State Board of Elections to remove ineligible voters by comparing state voter rolls with the SAVE database and other states.The Democratic Party of Virginia has sued the state over the interstate crosschecks, contending that the database has erroneous information and the law will disenfranchise poor, elderly and minority voters, but a federal judge rejected the suit for lack of evidence. As of Oct. 17, the Board of Elections had already purged more than 38,000 voters.
n SOUTH CAROLINA: In October 2012, a federal court blocked the implementation of South Carolina’s photo ID law until 2013. The court found that although the law was not discriminatory, there was not enough time to implement changes before the 2012 election. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said the Supreme Court ruling now allows states to “implement reasonable election reforms, such as voter ID laws similar to South Carolina’s.”
Y MISSISSIPI: Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said Mississippi will enact a strict photo ID law by 2014. The state says it will provide free transportation to government offices where voters will be able to obtain free photo IDs.
B ALABAMA: Secretary of State Beth Chapman said Alabama would also enact changes to its photo ID law by 2014. Like Virginia, Alabama used to accept other kinds of non-photo identification, such as utility bills and Social Security cards. But the new law requires voters to present photo IDs (the state will also provide free voter IDs to those who don’t have them). Legislators passed the measure in 2011, but Alabama stalled in submitting the law for preclearance.
D ARIZONA: The Supreme Court issued another significant ruling on voting laws this summer: In Arizona et al. v Intertribal Council of Arizona, Inc. et al., the Court ruled that Arizona, formerly a preclearance state, could not unilaterally require voters to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote in a federal election. But the Court said Arizona could sue the Election Assistance Commission to get the federal voter registration form amended to require proof of citizenship. Now, both Arizona and Kansas have sued the commission.
In case their legal challenges are unsuccessful, the states are setting up two-tiered systems of voter registration, requiring proof of citizenship for state and local races but not federal ones. So far, Kansas has suspended registration for about 17,500 voters until those they submit proof of citizenship.
o SOUTH DAKOTA: Four Directions Inc., a Native American voting rights group, has asked the Justice Department to investigate why Secretary of State Jason Grant has so far refused to use federal money to fund satellite voting centers for registration and early voting on some Native American reservations.
What about non-preclearance states?
The 35 states that were not subject to any kind of preclearance were unaffected by the Supreme Court decision. But several of those states have also moved to tighten voting rules this year.
C ARKANSAS: This spring, Republican legislators overrode the governor’s veto to pass a law requiring voters to show photo IDs. If voters don’t have them, they can cast provisional ballots and return with IDs by the Monday after the election. The state will also provide free IDs to people who do not already have them.
L IOWA: In late March, Iowa implemented an administrative rule allowing Secretary of State Matt Schultz to begin a voter roll purge using the SAVE database. Activists have sued Schultz in an attempt to stop the purge.
O INDIANA: In May, Indiana enacted a law requiring officials to check voter rolls for individuals registered to vote in other states. The advocacy group Project Vote worries that the measure could lead to voter purges.
Z MONTANA: After Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed a measure that would have eliminated same-day voter registration, the legislature decided to let the people decide. In 2014, Montana citizens will vote in a referendum on whether to keep same-day registration. Backers of the measure say it will cut down on lines at the polls.
c NEBRASKA: This spring, Nebraska shortened early voting by 10 days. Voters will still be able to vote in the 25 days leading up to an election.
b NORTH DAKOTA: North Dakota is the only state without voter registration. In April, the state strengthened its voter ID law to no longer allow people without photo ID to vote by affidavit.
p TENNESSEE: This spring, Tennessee passed a bill restricting the kinds of IDs that can be used to vote. Previously, voters could show student IDs, out-of-state IDs, library cards, or any other IDs issued by counties or municipalities. Now only photo IDs issued by the state of Tennessee or the federal government are acceptable. The Green Party of Tennessee has sued the state over the law.
So, where does all of this leave the Voting Rights Act?
The Supreme Court left it up to Congress to write new preclearance criteria. In a July hearing, House Republicans showed little interest in rewriting Section 4. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., says there’s actually quiet Republican support for the issue. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., made headlines when he publicly supported restoring the law.
“There is at least one Republican, and you’ll find out in the future a lot more, that is committing to putting life in this most important civil rights act that got a stab in the back from the Supreme Court,” Sensenbrenner said.
Gerken, the law professor, isn’t optimistic that Congress will come up with a new Section 4 formula. But she said there are other actions Congress could take. For example, she has advocated that Congress adopt an “opt-in” approach and allow civil rights groups to file simple complaints for the Justice Department to investigate. Then the agency could halt the implementation of discriminatory laws as necessary.
Yale law professor Travis Crum has also suggested a “bail-in” measure, by which Congress could instead strengthen Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, letting courts put states under preclearance if their voting laws violate the 14^th or 15^th amendments.
As part of the Justice Department’s lawsuits against Texas and North Carolina, the federal agency has asked the courts to put those states back under preclearance.
This post will be kept up-to-date. Has your state or local government restricted voting rights since June 2013? Tweet at me, email me at kara.brandeisky@propublica.org or leave a comment below.

MAP METHODOLOGY: This map tracks state voting laws before and after Shelby County v. Holder on four key issues: photo ID, early voting, same-day registration and voter roll purging. States with the most restrictive voting measures involving these four issues are the darkest; each state earned one point per restrictive policy. So a state with restrictive policies in all four areas would have a score of four and appear the darkest. The “before” map reflects policies in place on June 24, 2013, the day before the Shelby County v. Holder ruling. The “after” map reflects policies in place as of Oct. 31, 2013, even if the changes are pending implementation. Details on scoring per issue follow.

Photo ID: States received a point if they will require photo ID in upcoming elections (even 2014 or 2016) as of Oct. 31, 2013. States that require ID but also accept non-photo IDs, such as paychecks or utility bills, didn’t receive a point. Likewise, states that have passed photo ID legislation but have been unable to enact the law because of a court order (such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania), didn’t get a point.
Early voting: States received a point if they don’t allow in-person voting before Election Day, or require an excuse for absentee early voting. States that have shortened early voting didn’t get a point as long as they still allow some early voting.
Same-day registration: States received a point if they don’t allow registration on Election Day.
Voter roll purging: States received a point if they have asked for access to, or support using, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE)database to maintain state voter rolls. Not all states that have requested access have actively begun purging voter rolls.

 

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Bill to Ban Certain Tattoos, Body Piercings Passes Senate

Posted by PBSpot Admin      20 August 2013 



The Arkansas Senate passed a bill to ban tattoos, piercings and other similar body modifications which it characterizes as “non-traditional,” recently.
Senator Missy Irvin of Mountain View, Arkansas sponsored the bill entitled ”An Act To Limit Body Art Procedures”. She says that body modifications should be limited to “traditional” tattoos and piercings. Her proposal was to essentially ban scarification procedures and dermal implants, as well as certain tattoos which remain yet to be defined as by the vague language of the bill she sponsored.

Almost unbelievably, this bill passed by a 26-4 vote. Following this, the bill was sent to the House, where it took on even more vague language. See the link above for the bill as it was eventually “compromised” on in the House. The scarification ban from the Senate version was removed, while considerable ambiguous language remained. The House “compromise” bans dermal implants unless performed by a doctor. This essentially, and in practice, outlaws the body modification. As well, the bill’s vague, undefined language – even in the edited, House version – while editing out some of the original language on tattoos, fails to define a number of important issues raised by the Senate version, including what they mean by “cosmetic” tattoos as opposed to “non-cosmetic” tattoos.
If the government dictating what you can and can’t do with your body bothers you, SPREAD THE WORD!
(Article by Micah Naziri, image Sandy TrueBodyArt)

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Is Ginni Thomas' Expanding Activism a Problem for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

Her fierce political advocacy with Groundswell revives conflict of interest questions surrounding her husband.

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Fri Jul. 26, 2013 9:03 AM PDT

Rex Curry/ZumaPress and Chris Zumma/ZumaPress

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas is no ordinary Supreme Court spouse. Unlike Maureen Scalia, mother of nine, or the late Martin Ginsburg, mild-mannered tax law professor who was good in the kitchen, Thomas came from the world of bare-knuckled partisan politics. Over the years, she has enmeshed herself ever more deeply in the world of political advocacy—all the while creating a heap of conflict of interest concerns surrounding her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Her role in Groundswell, the coalition of conservatives waging a "30 front war" against progressives and the GOP establishment that was revealed by Mother Jones on Thursday, revives questions about the propriety of Thomas' activism on issues that have or could become the subject of Supreme Court cases.
Conflict of interest issues were first aired during Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings in 1991, when critics argued that Ginni Thomas' political work might compromise her husband's objectivity. At that time, her political resume included stints as a Capitol Hill aide to a Republican congressman; a staffer at the US Chamber of Commerce, where she fought the Family and Medical Leave Act; and as a political appointee at the Labor Department during the first Bush administration. Thomas didn't leave politics after her husband was confirmed. "I did not give up my First Amendment rights when my husband became a justice of the Supreme Court," she has said in the past. She would later return to the Hill as a staffer to House majority leader Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas) and work for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. But in those jobs, Thomas kept a relatively low profile.

Advertise on MotherJones.com

That changed around the same time that the tea party exploded in American politics, and Thomas became an outspoken member of the movement. In late 2009, Thomas founded the political advocacy group Liberty Central, which would later become a fierce player in the opposition to health care form. Detractors pointed out that Liberty Central was a potential vehicle for people with interests before the Supreme Court to make anonymous donations that might influence her husband.
The group was formed with a $500,000 anonymous donation that came as the Supreme Court was considering Citizens United, a case that ultimately resulted in loosening the restrictions on corporate giving to political campaigns. The anonymous donor was later revealed to be Harlan Crow, the Texas real estate developer. Crow was also a friend of Clarence Thomas', and he was later linked to a scandal involving the justice's failure to publicly disclose gifts from the developer and trips aboard his private jet. (It didn't help that Justice Thomas had also failed to include his wife's $150,000 annual salary from Liberty Central on his financial disclosure forms, which he later had to amend.) In January 2011, the good-government group Common Cause asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Justice Thomas should have recused himself from Citizens United based on his wife's role at Liberty Central. (Common Cause also asked the IRS to revoke Liberty Central's nonprofit status. Nothing came of either request.)
Thomas ultimately stepped down from Liberty Central, and the group merged with the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a nonprofit started by former FBI agent Gary Aldrich (who's best known for writing a book claiming that Bill and Hillary Clinton hung sex toys on the White House Christmas tree while Clinton was president). But she continued to be deeply involved with the opposition to Obamacare. She formed Liberty Consulting, which focused on health care issues, and, while never registering as a lobbyist, she began visiting members of Congress as an "ambassador" from the tea party movement. Due to her outspoken anti-Obamacare advocacy, and the fact that she was earning a living in connection with it, liberal activists called on Justice Thomas to recuse himself from ruling on matters related to Obamacare. He declined to do so and later joined the minority in voting to overturn the health care law, as he was widely expected to do.
The recent revelations about Thomas' role in Groundswell will no doubt resurrect the debate over whether her advocacy causes conflicts for her husband. Gun safety, immigration, voting rights and voter ID, environmental concerns—all of these issues have been covered by Groundswell, and all of them are subjects that regularly come before the Supreme Court. (Ginni Thomas did not respond to a request for comment.)
Arn Pearson, vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause, says that Thomas' work with Groundswell raises "important questions about appearances of conflict, especially if the things she works on end up coming before the Supreme Court, and especially if [the members of Groundswell] end up getting involved in elections." The work she's doing now, he says, doesn't pose quite the same conflicts as her anti-Obamacare advocacy, in which she was directly attacking a specific law whose future rested with the Supreme Court her husband sits on.
The broader problem, Pearson says, is that the Supreme Court has no real mechanism for dealing with possible conflicts of interest, because the high court has refused to subject itself to the same code of conduct that applies to the rest of the federal court system. That code spells out the rules judges must follow to avoid conflicts—rules that include not making speaking appearances at politically tinged fundraisers, as Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito have done in the past. Another rule requires federal judges to recuse themselves from cases in which a spouse has a financial interest, a provision that would seem to be relevant to the Thomases.
Democratic members of Congress, including Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), are trying to remedy the situation with two bills that would bind the Supreme Court to the same ethics rules as lower court judges. The bills could be introduced as early as next week, but they don't have a single Republican co-sponsor, making their future fairly dim.
One thing that may insulate Justice Thomas from potential conflicts over his wife's work, in the near-term at least, is congressional gridlock. "I don't know how we're going to get any more conflicts out of Congress because they don't pass anything," Pearson says.

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Arizona's 'Sheriff Joe' Arpaio Threatens To Punish Unpatriotic Inmates With No Food

By myfoxphoenix.com

Published November 08, 2013

Fox News Latino

 

 See the Video Here:

 PHOENIX –  Just in time for Veterans Day: Patriotic jails, courtesy of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
U.S. flag stickers have been placed in cells housing 8,500 inmates around Maricopa County — and inmates who mess with the stickers will find the sheriff messing with their food.
MCSO says it employs over 600 men and women who are U.S. military veterans. This campaign is to honor them and anyone who disrespects Old Glory in a MCSO jail is looking at a lot of indigestion.
Any inmate ripping or defacing these American flag stickers is looking at what the sheriff calls a bread and water diet.
Actually, it's Nutri-Loaf, a punishment for bad behavior, disgusting by all accounts, including the sheriff's.
"Hate to tell you it doesn't meet my criteria," he said.
We visited an area where the worst inmates are housed. Sure enough, flags have met with some resistance.
In the special management unit of the 4th Avenue Jail, an inmate in a one cell has been repeatedly tearing down a flag decal, resulting in him being on a bread and water diet through January 26th.
Ten inmates currently slapped with what the sheriff's news release calls a  bread-and-water penalty for defacing the flag.
The American Civil Liberties Union says quote, "We're looking into the constitutionality of whether prisoners can be punished for defiling the flags (which would be considered public property)."
The sheriff says he's just promoting patriotism, plain and simple.
When asked if this is a publicity stunt, he replied, "Well if it is, everything I do is a publicity stunt.  No, it is not and yet in a way it is.  I don't run a CIA secret organization the public should know that I put flags on..."
And not just flags, there will be patriotic music too. "God Bless America" and the National Anthem will be ringing out over the jails' public-address system. The sheriff's news release says quote, "For all inmates, regardless of national origin, to hear and sing along."
Seven days on bread and water for each flag sticker violation, the sheriff says.
We spoke with professor Steven Gonzales of Arizona Summit Law School. He said he believes the sheriff's flag policy looks constitutional on paper. The question is whether it will be enforced fairly.
Back to the veterans theme: the sheriff's office says there are plans to house all inmate-veterans together, in honor of their service.

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10 Things Traditional Christians Got Terribly Wrong

10 Things Traditional Christians Got Terribly Wrong

Although progressive Christians have been at the forefront of social justice, conservative Christians are often on the wrong side of history. When Christians get political, they often do so because they believe that they have God on their side. This is true whether they are progressive or conservative, and throughout most of American history there have been both. (You’d think that the conflicting claims about what God wants would lead to more doubting, but here we are.) Looking over the long history of people claiming to be speaking for God’s wishes, it quickly becomes evident that Christians are frequently on the wrong side of history. Here are 10 things that American Christians of the conservative stripe got completely wrong when they were so sure they were speaking on God’s behalf.

1) Slavery. Both sides of the American slavery debate claimed to be speaking from profound Christian conviction. The Bible clearly has a positive view of slavery, something pro-slavery Christians routinely pointed out. Abolitionists took a broader, less literal view of the Bible. Unsurprising that this divide led to the South being, to this day, home of the most people who take a literalist, fundamentalist view of Christianity.
Of course, nowadays you can’t find even the most literalist fan of the Bible who is willing to agree with their predecessors in the 19th century who believed the Bible endorsed slavery. Of the many things conservative Christians have gotten wrong over the years, the pro-slavery argument is probably the one that is least likely to be revived by modern fundamentalists.

2) Women’s suffrage. Unsurprisingly, conservative Christianity was hostile to women’s suffrage, just as it’s been hostile to women’s progress every step of the way. Women’s “God-given” roles were routinely referenced in arguments against giving women the right to vote, such as when Susan Fenimore Cooper—daughter of James Fenimore Cooper–wrote in Harper’s that “Christianity confirms the subordinate position of woman, by allotting to man the headship in plain language and by positive precept.”
While the argument is clearly wrong in retrospect and disavowed by most modern conservatives, there are still some Christian conservatives who continue to believe that the issue isn’t resolved and should still be up for debate.

3) Evolution. From the second it became evident that the Biblical story of creation was wrong and life on earth evolved over millions of years of random mutation, many Christians were aghast and resisted the truth getting out as hard as they could. Because of this, there have been multiple times throughout history where Christians embarrassed themselves by being wrong in a dramatic courtroom setting. The Scopes monkey trial is the most famous, but the Dover trial of 2005 over the teaching of intelligent design in schools is up there in terms of sheer humor. The Republican-appointed judge even went so far as to describe the Christian conservative defenders of creationism as liars pushing a theory of “breathtaking inanity.”

4) Pain relief for childbirth. The Bible explicitly lays out pain in childbirth as Eve’s punishment for sin, so unsurprisingly, that’s what many Christians in the 19th century believed had to be so. Once reliable pain relief in childbirth began to be developed, therefore, there was a lot of resistance to it from Christians who feared it defied God to let women have some relief. The truth is that pain in childbirth is not a punishment from God, but the product of evolution, which is a far from perfect process. Eventually, the argument that women owed it to God to suffer through childbirth faded to the fringes of right-wing Christianity. “Natural” childbirth has seen a resurgence in popularity in the secular world since the 1960s, but that was more of a reaction to some medical overreach than a belief that women are sinful and deserve to suffer.

5) Catholics. Modern American conservative Protestants embrace Catholics and have even started to borrow some Catholic arguments against things like abortion and contraception. But in the early 19th and 20th centuries, there was widespread anti-Catholic sentiment, much of it tied up in hostility to Catholic immigrants. There was even an anti-Catholic political party in the early 19th century. Catholics were viewed as idolaters and drunkards by many Protestants, but by far the most bizarre relic of anti-Catholic paranoia is the fear that evil shenanigans were going on in nunneries. A woman writing under the pseudonym “Maria Monk” penned a best-selling book where she claimed to have escaped a convent where she was forced to be a sex slave and pressed into the act of killing babies and hiding their corpses. Needless to say, none of her accusations should be taken as anything approaching true. Anti-Catholic paranoia also led to another Christian-led folly…

6) Prohibition. Hostility to Catholic immigrants was a large part of the reason temperance mania took over many Protestant communities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite the fact that Jesus was a wine drinker, abstinence from alcohol—and forcing abstinence on others by force of law—became a major Christian cause during this period, leading up to Prohibition. This was true, even though many in the temperance movement were also aligned with the suffragist cause, making Prohibition one of the few Christian follies that weighs as heavily on the progressive Christian tradition as it does the conservative one. Luckily, it took little more than a decade for the bigtime error that was banning alcohol to be fixed.

7) Segregation. Religious leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. led the desegregation movement, but it’s also important to note that the pro-segregation movement was also conceived as a Christian one. Arguments against “race mixing” were largely framed in religious terms. The judge who initially ruled against the interracial couple in Loving v. Virginia argued that the “Almighty God” put people on separate continents and “did not intend for the races to mix.” Christian right leader Jerry Falwell got his start fighting to uphold segregation, giving sermons about how integration was offensive to God. As Max Blumenthal noted in the Nation, the modern religious right as we know it started off as a movement to defend segregation.

8) Contraception. From the beginning of the “birth control movement,” Christian conservatives fought to keep women from being able to have sex without getting pregnant. Devout Christian Anthony Comstock successfully convinced Congress in 1872 that contraception was ungodly, leading to a federal ban on sharing birth control information across state lines. This was finally repealed in 1936. In 1963, the Supreme Court ended anti-contraception laws for married women. Finally, in 1971, the Supreme Court also eliminated the last of the god-bothering anti-contraception laws banning birth control for single people. Nowadays, 99 percent of sexually active women have used contraception at some point in their lives.

9) School prayer. Along with supporting segregation and opposing feminism, the third issue that created the modern religious right is the issue of prayer in public schools. In 1961, the Supreme Court ruled against school-led prayers, even if they were supposedly voluntary. Instead of giving up a chance to use schools as a way to foist their beliefs on the unwilling, the religious right spent and continues to spend the next 50-plus years trying to find some way to sneak religious indoctrination/bullying of non-believers into public schools. They’ve attempted to sneak it in by having students lead it, as if that makes it less coercive. Recently, in Rhode Island, they tried to sneak it in by having it written on a wall instead of recited. Most attempts fail in court. Even though there’s no evidence that these bullying tactics have ever converted anyone to their faith, they keep trying.

10) Marriage equality. The religious right is still fighting like it’s not obvious that they’re wrong on this one. The tide is shifting so fast it’s quickly becoming apparent that this issue, like segregation, is going to be one where they’ll be pretending they didn’t fight so hard for the side of wrong in a few decades. The majority of Americans now support same-sex marriage. Illinois is becoming the 15th state to authorize it. The momentum is in the direction of justice, and as gay rights proponents said from the beginning, Christian conservatives are, as with most things, on the wrong side of history.

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.

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