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Seven Years Since Gorsuch, Elections Have Consequences

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Conor O’Callaghan is running for Congress as a Democrat in AZ01. He is an Irish immigrant who grew up in Congressional District 1. He excelled in Scottsdale public schools, which took him to an Ivy League university. Conor has a B.S. in Economics, a B.A.S. in Engineering, and a Master’s in Public Administration from the … Read more

With a Powerful Resume, Andrei Cherny Hopes to Become the Next Representative from Arizona CD One

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A grandchild of Holocaust Survivors. The son of immigrant refugees fleeing Communism. Recruited to the Clinton White House as the then-youngest Presidential speechwriter in United States History. Co-founder and President of the journal, Democracy. The primary drafter of the Democratic Party Platform in 2000 A Naval Reserve Intelligence Officer following 9/11 A speechwriter for the … Read more

Mark Finchem, LD11 Republican, supports domestic terrorists.

AZ’s Worst Legislator: Mark Finchem is Bad for Schools, Women, and Veterans

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Rep. Mark Finchem likes to dress up in cowboy hats, rawhide jackets, and Colonel Sanders ties. He’s from Michigan and imagines it’s a very “Western” look.
Rep. Mark Finchem likes to dress up in cowboy hats, rawhide jackets, and Colonel Sanders ties. He’s from Michigan and imagines it’s a very “Western” look.

Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley) wants to sell the Grand Canyon to pay the state’s debt.

That’s not the only bad idea he’s come up with since representing Oro Valley and Marana in Legislative District 11 since 2015.

He injects his religion into legislation, he opposes gun safety measures, disputes reproductive freedom for women, votes against veterans, and fights against public schools.

Who represents Legislative District 11? The district has one state Senator, and two Representatives (all Republicans). One of them is Arpaio endorsed, 57-year-old Mark Finchem. Who is Mark Finchem and what motivates him to make that miserable drive to Phoenix three days a week? I found out.

He is running against retired Air Force Colonel Hollace Lyon. See Retired Air Force Colonel Hollace Lyon Offers a Consensus-Building Vision as a State Representative In LD11.

Professional Life: Mark Finchem has held many jobs. However, he spent most of his professional life (20 years) working as a cop in…. wait for it…. Kalamazoo Michigan. It was also here that Finchem earned an Associate’s Degree in criminal justice from Kalamazoo Valley Community College in 1984. Finchem also had a stint as a firefighter, public safety officer, and airline employee; he has four grown children.

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Anatomy of the “both sides do it” strategy

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Birther Pie Chart

At long last, it appears that the Birther conspiracy is enough of an embarrassment to the GOP that they are not only dropping what seemed to be an official position of tacit tolerance, if not encouragement of it. Republicans are now actively distancing themselves from it and the way you can tell for certain they are is they have shifted into full “Democrats do it too!” mode. More specifically, they are accusing one Democrat – none other than Hillary Clinton herself! – of manufacturing the whole thing. I first noticed it on MSNBC’s UP with Steve Kornacki this past weekend, when GOP flack Amy Holmes was quick to raise the accusation when the conversation on the panel turned to the Birther topic. I thought her response was interesting, to say the least, and it turns out that Republicans, including none other than GOP primary front-runner Donald Trump(!), have been pushing this line hard lately, as Dave Weigel explains in the Washington Post.

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Respectability and Baltimore

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Much has been said about the protests in Baltimore following the death in police custody of 25 year old Freddie Gray and, of course, much of it is centered on how black people should better themselves so as to avoid deadly confrontations with the police and discrimination in general. You know the drill: Pull your pants up! Stay in school! Stop having babies out of wedlock! Stop being so angry!

I’ll just paraphrase something I posted on Facebook a while back about that:

An African-American man graduated with honors from Columbia University. He went on to become a community organizer and then to attend Harvard Law School, where he was the editor of the prestigious Law Review. Afterward, he worked as a civil rights attorney and as a lecturer at University of Chicago Law School.

In 1992 he married a woman who was an accomplished attorney and they had two daughters. They have been married ever since and are the model of an intact and stable family. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate and then to the United States Senate. In 2008 he was elected President of the United States. It does not get any more respectable than that.

And yet.

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