Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
Democratic candidate for AZ Attorney General Felecia Rotellini has been running an ad (click here if embedded video doesn’t work attacking the Republican candidate Mark Brnovich, AKA NOT Tom Horne, for his lobbying for private prisons.
No Supreme Court observer predicted this: the U.S. Supreme Court this morning dismissed the appeals on same-sex marriage pending before the Court, allowing full marriage equality to go into effect in the the Circuits from which those appeals were pending.
This is a major civil rights victory for marriage equality, and sends a clear signal to other courts in which same-sex marriage cases are pending as to how those courts should rule. Expect a quick succession of opinions from other courts, including the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for Arizona.
USA Today reports, Supreme Court lets gay marriage expand to 30 states:
The Supreme Court refused to get involved in the national debate over same-sex marriage Thursday, leaving intact lower court rulings that will legalize the practice in 11 additional states.
The unexpected decision by the justices, announced without further explanation, immediately affects five states in which federal appeals courts had struck down bans against gay marriage: Virginia, Indiana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Utah.
It also will bring along six other states located in the judicial circuits overseen by those appellate courts: North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Colorado, Kansas and Wyoming.
A Missouri state court judge struck down part of that state’s same-sex marriage ban for the first time on Friday by ordering the state to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other states. Missouri judge side with married same-sex couples:
The decision comes in a lawsuit filed by 10 same-sex couples who legally married outside the state, including Arlene Zarembka and Zuleyma Tang-Martinez. The St. Louis couple, who married in Canada, said Friday’s ruling could boost their household income, and they plan to apply Monday for Zarembka to receive Social Security benefits as Tang-Martinez’s spouse.
The order means such couples will be eligible to sign up for a wide range of tax, health insurance, veterans and other benefits now afforded to opposite-sex married couples. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, who has defended the state’s ban on gay marriage, said his office was reviewing the ruling.
Crossposted on DemocraticDiva.com
Doug Ducey likes to praise Texas, often. He wants their state tax income rate (none) and their health care policies (no ACA exchanges, no Medicaid expansion). Ducey most assuredly wants the reproductive rights climate that currently exists in Texas, where the Fifth Circuit Court upheld spurious TRAP laws passed last year (and famously filibustered by State Senator Wendy Davis) which will close all but seven clinics in the entire state. Rural areas, including all of West Texas, will be without a single abortion provider.
When Congressional candidate Martha McSally ran for Congress in 2012, she was full Tea Party:
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.