AZ Congressional Delegation

Pope Francis Addresses Congress

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PopeFrancis.2The big question preceding Pope Francis’ address to a joint session of Congress was whether anyone opposed to his views would be so disrespectful as to disrupt the Pontiff’s speech.

It appears that only Arizona’s Rep. Paul Gosar behaved badly, by boycotting the Popes’ speech.

Best headline of the day: Congress mostly behaved during the Pope’s speech. And of course, Boehner cried. So much so, it became distracting.

Vatican officials had asked lawmakers to remain seated and quiet during the address, but our Congress critters ignored them. The Pope was interrupted by applause and standing ovations as if this was a State of The Union Address. This may have given the appearance of partisanship at times. It was not the fault of  Pope Francis. Blame the usual suspects.

Here are some highlights from Pope Francis’ address to a joint session of Congress, the first ever by a Pope. Transcript: Pope Francis’s speech to Congress:

I am most grateful for your invitation to address this Joint Session of Congress in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

First interruption by a standing ovation. The Vatican’s protocols were immediately disregarded.

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About that “sensible” 20 week abortion ban the Senate tried to pass this week

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Congress.Gov
Congress.Gov

Anti-choicers like to tout the popularity of some of their positions and one of those that they do frequently is that of the 20 week ban on abortions. They have relentlessly and ingeniously painted procedures at that stage as being done mostly on flighty women who, midpoint in pregnancy or later, callously decide to dispatch with the inconvenient fetus. It seems to have worked. “I’m not even a sanctity-of-life guy,” a local alternative weekly columnist told me on Facebook a while back, “but it seems ghoulish to me to wait that long.” Comments like that amply illustrate how anti-choicers deftly wove their narrative about women who abort after the first trimester into existing negative views on women’s trustworthiness and mental and moral competency in the larger culture.

Because that perception about abortion has taken root in the general public and especially with many journalists, it is difficult for pro-choicers to counter it with facts and nuance. The reality is that there are many reasons that women don’t get abortions prior to the twentieth week of pregnancy and ideally in the first trimester (which is up to 13 weeks and when the most people support abortion on demand). They include things like geographical barriers, lack of funds, intimate partner violence, trauma, and, of course, health problems. Many fetal abnormalities are detected at weeks 18 to 20, and lead some patients to opt for termination. Basically, it’s a lot more complicated than the simplistic “damn, don’t wait so long, lady!” truism would have you believe.

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For my friends who continue to believe that legal abortion is safe

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On this very day in 2015 there are still liberals who cling to the belief that the anti-abortion stance is merely a ploy by wily “establishment” (whatever the hell that means) Republicans to keep the rank-and-files docile and the campaign coffers full. I, of all people, still hear this claim constantly from I know! “They’ll never overturn Roe! They need abortion as a wedge issue too much!”

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Paul Gosar embarrasses Arizona (again) with an insult to the Pope

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The Washington Post recently asked, Can Congress behave itself when the pope visits?

I was with a group of friends the other day and we were speculating about which congressman would win the Joe Wilson “You lie!” Award for shouting at Pope Francis during his address to a joint session of Congress next week.

It turns out that Arizona’s “mad dentist” just couldn’t wait to insult the Pope. Congressman Paul Gosar wanted to make all of the late night comedy shows and keep Arizona’s poor reputation intact, despite the Governor’s silly #Rebrand Arizona campaign. Catholic Congressman Will Skip Papal Address To Congress, Cites Climate Change:

PaulGosarWhen Pope Francis addresses Congress in Washington, D.C. next week, at least one Republican representative won’t be in the audience.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wrote a letter in Town Hall this week outlining why he’s skipping out on the pope’s visit to Congress. The main reason? Climate change.

“Media reports indicate His Holiness instead intends to focus the brunt of his speech on climate change — a climate that has been changing since first created in Genesis,” Gosar writes. “More troubling is the fact that this climate change talk has adopted all of the socialist talking points, wrapped false science and ideology into “climate justice” and is being presented to guilt people into leftist policies.”

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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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