AZ Congressional Delegation

Rep. Matt Salmon says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is ‘the next guy in the crosshairs’

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Matt SalmonRep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) — a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, which just forced House Speaker John Boehner to announce his resignation — said Friday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell  is probably “the next guy in the crosshairs.” GOP Rep: McConnell Is ‘The Next Guy In The Crosshairs’:

“Mitch McConnell is infinitely worse as a leader than Boehner,” Salmon told reporters Friday. “He surrenders at the sight of battle every time.”

Boehner was under extreme pressure from the House Freedom Caucus, which was pushing for a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding. McConnell has put in motion a plan to avert the shutdown.

“I was texting back and forth with one of my friends on the Senate side, Mike Lee,” Salmon said, referring to the Utah senator. “And I said, the next guy in the crosshairs is probably going to be McConnell.”

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The GOP’s ‘Planned’ government shutdown may be averted, but only temporarily

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Since the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, announced this morning that he is quitting at the end of October, the GOP’s “Planned” government shutdown may have been averted, but only temporarily.

The mutineers of the GOP House Freedom Caucus just lost any leverage they held over the Tan Man with Rep. Mark Meadows’ resolution to vacate the speakership. Boehner’s response was “Oh yeah! You can’t fire me, I quit!” Boehner is now a freed man who can negotiate with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats for a “clean” CR spending bill before he surrenders his gavel, because there is nothing they can do to him.

Debt-celing-hostage-crisis-2-what-now-468The “clean” CR is only short-term, to December 11. Do you know why this is? Because that is when the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal debt ceiling will be reached, CBO: Debt ceiling will be hit by early December, so Tea-Publicans can tie their annual lunacy over the federal debt ceiling together with the next CR to take the country hostage again, and maybe give Americans a government shutdown just in time for Christmas.

Here is the latest developments. On Thursday, the Senate rejected the effort to strip funding from Planned Parenthood as designed:

The Senate on Thursday rejected a short-term spending bill that would defund Planned Parenthood, thwarting the opening move by Republican leaders to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

Senators voted 47-52 on ending debate on the short-term continuing resolution, well short of the 60 votes needed. The legislation would have funded the government through Dec. 11.

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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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