Month: September 2015

The Times and Post editorialize in favor of universal (automatic) voter registration

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While we’re still waiting on the California Assembly to complete passage of universal (automatic) voter registration and send the bill to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature, both the New York Times and the Washington Post editorial boards weighed in this week in support of a expanding universal voter registration to all states.

The Times writes, Entwining Two Rights in California: Voting and Driving:

Voting-RightsFor all the early excitement stirred by the presidential primary contests, a greater test of democracy than the candidates’ cut-and-thrust will be voter participation, a vital statistic which dropped from 62.3 percent in 2008 to 57.5 percent in the last presidential election. In part because of a welter of obstructionist state laws, more than 90 million Americans did not bother or care to vote in 2012.

The Democratic-majority Legislature in California, the most populous state, has just taken a major step toward resisting this alarming trend by approving a system of automatic voter registration for any citizen who obtains or updates a California driver’s license. Modeled on Oregon’s excellent “motor-voter” program, the new system cannot help but increase democratic participation.

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(Update) The GOP’s ‘Planned’ government shutdown

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TrainCrashThere is a train wreck coming, and the GOP leadership in Congress is at a loss to know how to stop it.  Tea-Publicans are the anti-government party that has held the government hostage to their extortionate shutdown demands 11 previous times since taking back control of Congress. Steve Benen documents the impending government shutdown is the 12th time we’ve been through this just since April of 2011, and provides a helpful timeline of all the other 11 standoffs.

GOP leadership knows that the public will blame them for any government shutdown. House GOP leaders to members: We’ll be blamed for shutdown:

House GOP leaders are trying to convince their rank and file it would be a bad move to risk a government shutdown over blocking funding for Planned Parenthood.

At a closed-door conference meeting on Thursday morning, leadership presented their members with polling data from the House GOP’s campaign arm showing Republicans would be blamed for a government shutdown.

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GOP War on Women: Tea-Publicans vote to defund Planned Parenthood

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The GOP’s ” War on Women” is back with a vengeance today in Congress with the cause célèbre of defunding Planned Parenthood health services as a result of surreptitiously recorded undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group out to destroy Planned Parenthood.

This is a well planned and highly coordinated assault between the far-right coalition “Groundswell” and Republican leaders in Congress. Planned Parenthood Attacks Coordinated by High-Ranking Republican Operatives.

TalibanThis morning, the House approved the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015 by a vote of 241-187, Roll Call Vote 505, with Republicans voting to defund Planned Parenthood, joined only by two Democrats who routinely vote with Republicans, Reps. Dan Lipinski (IL) and Collin Peterson (MN). Only three Republicans broke ranks to vote against the funding freeze: Reps. Charlie Dent (PA), Robert Dold (IL) and Richard Hanna (NY).

The House also approved the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill sponsored by Arizona Congressman and anti-abortion religious zealot Trent Franks, by a vote of 248- 177, Roll Call Vote 506, with five Democrats, Reps. Cartwright, Cuellar, Langevin, Lipinski, and Peterson voting with the Republicans.

The Hill reports, House votes to freeze federal funding for Planned Parenthood:

An official with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund ripped the vote as a “callous attempt to insert politics into women’s heath.”

“Millions of Americans rely on Planned Parenthood for birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, and other critical preventive care, and nothing that politicians in Congress did today will change the fact that our doors remain open to everyone, in every part of this country, who needs high-quality, compassionate reproductive health care,” said Eric Ferrero, the action fund’s vice president of communications.

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Fact checking GOP lies about Planned Parenthood

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GOP 2016 DebateCarly Fiorina set off fact-check alarm bells during the CNN GOP presidential primary debate when she dared Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama to watch a surreptitiously recorded undercover video by the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group out to destroy Planned Parenthood. “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,” she said.

Factcheck.org found that the scene that Mrs. Fiorina urges others to watch is not present in any of the Planned Parenthood videos. Politifact called her statement “mostly false.” Sarah Kliff at Vox.com, who actually watched all 12 hours of footage and is in a position to know says Carly Fiorina is wrong about the Planned Parenthood tapes. I know because I watched them. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker says the same thing. Fact checking the second round of GOP debates: Fiorina might have trouble finding this video to show to Clinton. No video has surfaced showing the scene Fiorina describes taking place inside a Planned Parenthood facility.

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