Where are all the women at? We’re at war.
April 6, 2012
by Pamela Powers Hannley
No longer just a punchline from Blazing Saddles— "Where are all the women at?" became a rallying cry for feminists across the country when a male-dominated Congressional committee refused to allow women to testify about insurance coverage for birth control.
Two Congresswomen– Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes (D-DC)–walked out of the committee hearings because no women were included in the list of wittnesses dominated by male religious leaders. Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif) made the now-infamous decision to block Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke from testifying and labeled her an "inappropriate" wittness.
That fateful day in February, the Republican Party's latest barrage in the War on Women unfolded.
What began as political grandstanding on contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act, snowballed into dozens of invasive, crackpot bills proposed by Republican Legislatures across the country. Requiring women to submit to (and pay for) vaginal ultrasound examinations prior to having an abortion, requiring women to watch an abortion before having one, giving employers the right to deny insurance coverage for contraception based upon any vague "moral" grounds, giving employers the right to question female employees about their contraception usage, defunding Planned Parenthood and other organizations that perform abortions… the list goes on.
Couple these bills with the Bible-thumping piety from all of the Republican Presidential candidates, most notably Rick Santorum, and you have a bare-knuckle fist fight over women's health, contraception, and choice.
Two months into this latest round in the War on Women, the Republican attack on the country's largest voting block has resulted in an 18-point lead by President Obama among women voters. Obama leads R2publican challenger Mitt Romney 2:1 with women under 50.
On the local level, Republican candidates for CD8 (former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' district) have all jumped on the anti-woman bandwagon–ironically, even Martha McSally. In a recent Arizona Public Media televised debate, candidates Frank Antenori, Jesse Kelly, Dave Sitton, and McSally all agreed that contraception should not be covered by insurance, that a fetus' life sacred (unlike the lives of people they would bomb), and that women don't have the right to choose. Senatorial candidate, right-to-lifer, and current Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake–a hardened Teapublican–voted for the Blunt Ammendment which would have vastly expanded conscience exemptions to birth control coverage.
As for the Democrats, Senatorial candidate and former Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona has been the most outspoken critic of the Republcan's wrongheaded fight against women's health. In a commentary on the Huffington Post, Carmona wrote, "A recent push to block women from getting access to contraception shows the Arizona legislature is not operating from an evidence-based or reality-based point of view."
Congressman Raul Grijalva and Phoenix-area State Senator and Congressional candidate Kyrsten Sinema also have made strong statements, attacking the Republicans' War on Women.
In my opinion, the political upshot of the War on Women will be a rebirth of the feminist movement. You can see it on facebook and Twitter; social media has fueled the outrage. Prime examples are the backlash against Rush Limbaugh for his slutty comments about Fluke (and resultant loss of advertisers) and the flood of bad publicity targeting the Komen Foundation when it tried to defund Planned Parenthood (and the resultant fundraising loss to Koman and boon to PP).
You can also see it in the nationwide Unite Against the War on Women movement, which is organizing women and protest marches across the country on April 28– including a march in Phoenix. Although the Republicans wanted to frame the anti-abortion and anti-contraception debate as a fight for religious freedom, it is all too obvious a continuation of their long-standing War on Women. They can't put this genie back in the bottle.
Attorney General Eric Holder reponds to 5th Circuit
April 5, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
On Monday, President Obama argued in support of the Affordable Care Act's constitutionality, and said, "I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."
As I previously posted, the right-wing noise machine clutched their pearls and manufactured an outrage over this "threat" to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Steve Benen reports what followed next. The 5th Circuit's Unsettling Tantrum:
[President Obama explained on Tuesday] that "The point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it's precisely because of that extraordinary power that the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress."
That happens to be true — the Supreme Court has not struck down a central provision of a landmark federal statute since the 1930s. But it didn't stop a Reagan-appointed judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit from throwing a tantrum from the bench yesterday.
A federal judge on Tuesday expressed concern over President Obama's comments on the Supreme Court's consideration of the health-care law and demanded a letter explaining whether Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. believes federal judges have the authority to strike down federal laws.
Judge Jerry Smith, a Republican appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, was part of a three-judge panel hearing arguments in a lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act when he issued his unusual demand, saying the Justice Department must submit the three-page, single-spaced letter by noon Thursday, according to a lawyer who was in the courtroom.
This is not only ridiculous, it's also an embarrassment to the federal judiciary at a time when the institution can least afford another setback in its credibility.
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Yesterday's tantrum, even by conservative standards, was pathetic. Judge Smith saw something on the news, decided to question whether the president accepts the principle of judicial review, and then assigned homework to a Justice Department attorney — complete with instructions on page length and spacing, as if the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is now a 9th grade English class.
Pima County Democratic Party County Reorganization Conference
April 5, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Announcement from the Pima County Democratic Party: 2012 Pima County Democratic Party County Reorganization Conference Saturday April 14th.Amphitheater High Scool, Panther Hall125 West Yavapia Rd.(Stone and Prince) 9:00 am – Registration9:30 am – General AssemblyFollowed Immediately by New Legislative District Breakout Sessions During this very important meeting we will provide everything you need … Read more
Ron Barber’s First Quarter fundraising over a half million
April 5, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: The Federal Election Commission has been slow to post the candidates' March 31, 2012 quarterly reports at fec.gov, but the Ron Barber campaign has issued a press release with his number, and he had a solid first quarter of fundraising. Ron Barber receives support from 3,293 donors in first seven weeksThousands contribute … Read more
Brewer vetoes voucher expansion — for now
April 5, 2012
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by David Safier To my surprise, Brewer vetoed the bill that would have expanded the "empowerment scholarship accounts" to include students at D or F schools, gifted students and children of people in the armed forces. Right now, they only apply to students with learning disabilities and, I believe, children in foster homes. My surprise … Read more
Right-wing pearl clutching over SCOTUS
April 4, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The conservative talking point du jure that has all the right-wing propagandists clutching their pearls and feigning outrage, ranging from the inflamatory Rush Limbaugh to the always lame neoconservative opinion writers at the Washington Post (e.g., Ruth Marcus republished today in the Arizona Daily Star) is that President Obama: (1) threatened the U.S. Supreme Court; (2) threatens the "separation of powers;" and, naturally (3) the former law professor doesn't know constitutional law. (Always diminish him and attack his legitimacy — that is how the right-wing politics of personal destruction works).
First of all, these propagandists of the right-wing noise machine know neither the finer points of constitutional law nor their American history. They are propagandists after all.
Secondly, President Obama merely made the observation that the Supreme Court has traditionally exercised judicial restraint and deference to the legislative acts of Congress.
The quote that has the right-wing propagandists clutching their pearls and feigning outrage is:
I am confident the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress…
I just remind conservative commentators that for years we have heard the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example and I am pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step…
As I said, we are confident this will be over — this will be upheld. I am confident this will be upheld because it should be upheld. And again, that is not just my opinion. That is the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who have examined this law, even if they're not particularly sympathetic to this piece of legislation or my presidency.
Here are just a few of the Rules of Statutory Construction that "Professor" Obama clearly had in mind:
- "When testing the constitutional validity of statutes, courts shall presume the statute to be valid."
- "Every act of the legislature is presumed to be constitutional, and the Constitution is to be given a liberal construction so as to sustain the enactment in question, if practicable."
- "When the constitutionality of an act is challenged, a heavy burden of proof is thrust upon the party making the challenge. All laws are presumed to be constitutional and this presumption is one of the strongest known to the law."
There is a strong historical comparison to the hostility President Obama faces from the "Felonious Five" conservative judicial activists of this Supreme Court to the conservative judicial activist Supreme Court that existed in President Franklin Roosevelt's first term. Andrew Cohen, a contributing editor at The Atlantic and a legal analyst for 60 Minutes, makes the case in an analysis at The Atlantic, For Barack Obama, Law Professor, the Time to Lecture Is Now (excerpts):
When President Obama on Monday (and again on Tuesday) offered his own legal analysis, when he accurately identified the hypocrisy the health-care law's defeat would reveal about "judicial activism," he raised for renewed public consideration the question of what a president should or should not say while a Court case is pending.
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In this context, and especially compared with the past, what President Obama said was a virtual mash note to the justices.
“Three Sonorans” blog pulled from the Tucson Citizen
April 4, 2012
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by David Safier If you look for the Three Sonorans blog on the Tucson Citizen website, you'll find a gray page with this on top: This user has elected to delete their account and the content is no longer available. The quick summary is, Tucson Citizen editor Mark Evans has gotten lots of complaints about … Read more
President Obama finds his inner FDR
April 4, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
On November 24, 2008, TIME magazine ran the cover to the right. This is whom a majority of Americans hoped they had elected.
But Barack Obama spent much of his term in office trying to be a "post-partisan" president, one who negotiates in good faith and always seeks compromise to find common ground solutions on which all sides can come to an agreement. Oy!
In Obama's defense, this was the first time in American history that a minority party soundly rejected by voters in an electoral landslide simply refused to acccept the legitimacy of the winner of the election or to acknowledge the mandate that comes with such an electoral landslide. This is something that previous American presidents enjoyed. President Obama had a reasonable expectation of cooperation by historical precedent and American tradition.
But Republicans adopted a haughty sense of entitlement or divine right to lord over us, even as a vanquished minority party soundly rejected by the electorate. From President Obama's first day in office the Republican Party's official strategy was to "just say no" to the agenda of the majority Democrats. It was a strategy of stasis and political gridlock. The anti-government Republicans would cause the government to fail and then blame that failure on President Obama. Their only agenda, as the Septegenarian Ninja Turtle Mitch McConnell said, was "to defeat Barack Obama."
Keep in mind that this came at a time when the world's financial system was melting down and the world's economy was slipping into a global great depression with thousands of Americans losing their jobs weekly as a result of the failure of faith based supply-side "trickle down" GOP economics. Republicans actively sought to undermine the government's economic rescue efforts and cause it to fail, at the expense of the American people.
Again, this is the first time in American history — at least since the Confederate states seceeded from the Union during Abraham Lincoln's interegnum — that such a thing had occurred.
One cannot fault President Obama for keeping faith in our system of government, and believing that he could negotiate in good faith and seek compromise to find common ground solutions on which all sides could come to an agreement, especially during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
One could not reasonably foresee that a far-right conservative "Tea Party," financed by far-right conservative billionaire businessmen and promoted by the propagandists of the conservative media noise machine and a complicit corporate media echo chamber, would declare a second "Civil War" against the American government ("WE the people") only weeks after President Obama was sworn into office. Such an insurrection had not occurred since Abraham Lincoln.
