Civil & Human Rights

Fact Check: McSally ‘Equality’ Ad & Website Reveal Flip-flopping

by
Congressional candidate Martha McSally stands with white women.
Congressional candidate Martha McSally stands with young, white women.

When Congressional candidate Martha McSally ran for Congress in 2012, she was full Tea Party:

  • militarize the border
  • protect the military industrial complex
  • fight for big business and small government
  • balance the budget on the backs of the middle class and the poor
  • repeal and replace Obamacare;
  • fight for the “sanctity of life” (because of her deep faith in God)
  • ignore the civil rights struggles of workers, women, immigrants, people of color, the poor, and LGBTQ.

Fast forward to 2014, and we find that Tea Party Martha with her flight pants, t-shirts, and natural hairdo has morphed into Corporate Republican Martha, with a complete makeover of her ideas and her image. God, the sanctity of life, repeal and replace, and War on Women denials have quietly slipped off of McSally’s campaign website.

Read more

GOP war on voting heats up in the U.S. Supreme Court

by

“May you live in interesting times.” (an apocryphal curse)

Voting-RightsOn Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of the Tea-Publicans in the Arizona legislature that may settle the future of attempts by voters to take the redrawing of congressional districts out of the hands of legislatures and assign the task to independent redistricting commissions. Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.

This is an appeal the Court should deny based upon its own precedents. That it agreed to hear this appeal portends that the “Felonious Five” are prepared once again to disregard the court’s precedents as they have done in Citizens United, McCutcheon, and Shelby County. The optimistic view is that a majority of the court could still reject this appeal on the grounds of lack of standing.

Lyle Denniston reports at SCOTUSblog, Fate of non-partisan redistricting on the line:

If the Court does reach the core issues in the case of Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, and it gave itself a couple of options not to do so, it could make a major difference in the degree to which future membership in the House of Representatives is politically polarized.  In recent years, state legislatures dominated by one or the other major political party have carved up districts in ways to help their party’s candidates.

Read more

4th Circuit Court of Appeals enjoins part of North Carolina’s ‘worst voter suppression law’ in the nation

by

Ari Berman at The Nation posts on today’s voting rights victory in the state of North Carolina. Voting Rights Victory in North Carolina:

Last year, North Carolina passed the most sweeping voting restrictions since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Civil rights groups like the North Carolina NAACP and ACLU asked the courts for an injunction against three major parts of the law before the midterms—a reduction in early voting by a week, the elimination of same-day registration during the early voting period and a prohibition on counting ballots accidentally cast in the wrong precinct. In early August, District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder denied the injunction, saying the plaintiffs had not proven “irreparable harm.”

Voting-RightsTwo of three judges on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled parts of Schroeder’s ruling today, reinstating same-day registration and the counting of out-of-precinct ballots for 2014.

In not-so-good news for voting rights, the appeals court also upheld: “(i) the reduction of early-voting days; (ii) the expansion of allowable voter challengers; (iii) the elimination of the discretion of county boards of elections to keep the polls open an additional hour on Election Day in “extraordinary circumstances”; (iv) the elimination of pre-registration of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who will not be eighteen years old by the next general election; and (v) the soft roll-out of voter identification requirements to go into effect in 2016.”

“With respect to these provisions, we conclude that, although Plaintiffs may ultimately succeed at trial, they have not met their burden of satisfying all elements necessary for a preliminary injunction,” wrote Judges James Wynn and Henry Floyd, two Obama appointees.

Read more

‘Cathi’s Clown’ Doug Ducey will do the bidding of CAP

by

HerrodI have been telling you this for months. “Cathi’s Clown” Doug Ducey is the alter ego of his campaign adviser Cathi Herrod of the Center for Arizona Policy, the “Dr. Evil” of religious bigotry and discrimination. A vote for Doug Ducey is a vote to put Cathi Herrod in an adjoining office in the governor’s office.

The Phoenix New Times reports Doug Ducey Aligns Perfectly With Cathi Herrod on Candidate Surveys:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Ducey recently has downplayed his relationship with Cathi Herrod, the Christian Right lobbyist who serves as one of Ducey’s top policy advisers on his campaign.

* * *

Well, how closely to Ducey and Herrod’s views align? Perfectly, according to Ducey’s answers on the Center for Arizona Policy’s candidate surveys.

All candidates for public office in Arizona are offered the chance to fill out this survey, which Ducey has done twice — once in 2010, when he ran for state treasurer, and again this year.

In both years, Ducey’s answers were completely consistent with the Center for Arizona Policy’s agenda.

Read more