Posted by AzBlueMeanie: In the second major victory this week for the Obama administration's Justice Department, voting rights advocates, and for the rule of law, a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court ruled unanimously today that the Texas Voter ID law intentionally discriminates against minority voters. Federal court rejects Texas voter ID law as unfair … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
In a major victory for the Obama administration's Justice Department, voting rights advocates, and for the rule of law, a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court ruled unanimously today that the Texas redistricting plan crafted by the Tea-Publican dominated Texas legislature intentionally discriminates against Latinos in violation of the Voting Rights Act. You're shocked, I'm sure. Federal Court: GOP’s Texas Redistricting Plan Intentionally Discriminated Against Hispanics | TPMMuckraker:
A redistricting plan signed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) intentionally discriminated against Hispanic voters, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled Tuesday. The judges found that seats belonging to white incumbent members of Congress were protected under the plan while districts belonging to incumbent minorities were targeted for changes.
The court was “persuaded by the totality of the evidence that the plan was enacted with discriminatory intent,” according to the ruling. There was “sufficient evidence to conclude that the Congressional Plan was motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory intent,” the court found.
All three judges said they were overwhelmed with the amount of evidence showing the law was intentionally discriminatory, writing in a footnote that parties “have provided more evidence of discriminatory intent than we have space, or need, to address here.”
All three redistricting plans — for Texas’ congressional delegation, its state House of Representatives and the state Senate — were blocked by the federal court. The Supreme Court had earlier ruled that interim maps drawn by a federal court were invalid.
The panel of three judges found that “surgery” had been performed on congressional districts belonging to minority members of Congress while no such alterations were made to districts belonging to incumbent white members of Congress.
“Anglo district boundaries were redrawn to include particular country clubs and, in one case, the school belonging to the incumbent’s grandchildren,” the judges wrote.
That country club reference is tied to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who chairs the House Oversight Committee that oversees the Justice Department.
You can read the opinion here (there was a partial dissent by Judge Griffith as to one district, who wrote most of the majority opinion as well).
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
August 26 of each year is designated Women's Equality Day, commemorating the granting of the vote to women throughout the country on an equal basis with men. Women in the United States were granted the right to vote on August 26, 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified.
Today is a day to not only celebrate the enacting of the 19th Amendment, but to call attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality to make the United States a more equal society. Full participatory rights by women are essential to real democracy. This civil rights movement continues.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in an interview with California Lawyer, dismissed the idea that the 14th Amendment prohibits gender discrimination:
The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.
Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for
that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey
we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws.
His views are not new; Scalia has also dismissed the idea that the 14th Amendment might protect against gender discrimination in his dissent in U.S. v Virginia. Scalia is correct that the authors of the 14th Amendment intended to address equal protection under the law on the basis of race in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of African-American slaves.
But 14th Amendment equal protection jurisprudence has been extended by the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous Acts of Congress to other classes of U.S. citizens to prohibit intentional discrimination by the government, including sex (gender), age, national origin, religion, disability or handicap, and in recent years, sexual orientation.
The fact that Justice Scalia expresses any doubt that women enjoy equal protection under the law is cause for concern. Last year, Democratic lawmakers reintroduced the Equal Rights Amendment in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to deny class action status to a gender-discrimination lawsuit against
Wal-Mart. Lawmakers reintroduce ERA in wake of Supreme Court's Wal-Mart decision:
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) on
Wednesday reintroduced the Equal Rights Amendment at an event outside
the Capitol. [H.J.RES.69 has 186 cosponsors. S.J.RES.21 has 15 cosponsors.]
“The Equal Rights Amendment is still needed because
the only way for women to achieve permanent equality in the U.S. is to write it into the Constitution,” Maloney said, according to a subsequent press release.
“Making women’s equality a constitutional right — after Congress passes and 38 states ratify the ERA — would place the United States on record,
albeit more than 200 years late, that women are fully equal in the eyes of the law,” she said.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Jim Nintzel at the Tucson Weekly has already done an excellent job of reporting on this issue, so I hope that he will not mind that I repost his reporting at length here (kudos). Flake vs. Carmona on Abortion Rights | The Tucson Weekly:
Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin’s comments about "legtimate rape" and abortion have thrust the topic into the center of the nation’s political debate just one week before the Republican National Convention.
Congressman Jeff Flake, who is the odds-on favorite to win the GOP primary next week, has urged Akin to get out of the race.
After a speech Tuesday afternoon at the Pima County Republican Club, Flake said that while he believes abortion should be illegal in most cases, he supports an exemption for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
“I have always, throughout my career, said that there should be exceptions for rape, for incest and for life of the mother, “ Flake said. “I’ve received a lot of criticism from groups on the right because my position wasn’t as they wanted it to be, but that’s been my position and I’m sticking with it.”
But the Arizona Democratic Party is reminding voters that Flake was one of 227 co-sponsors on the bill that Akin was discussing when he got into trouble this week.
That bill, H.R. 3, was designed to narrow the circumstances under which federal dollars could be used to pay for an abortion. Among other changes in federal law, it would have redefined “rape” to “forcible rape” in regards to an exemption to the Hyde amendment, which blocks the use of federal funding to terminate a pregnancy.
The Christian Science Monitor has a good run-down of the controversy regarding the bill here. The CSM noted:
The term “forcible rape” was never explicitly defined, but pro-abortion-rights forces presumed the bill would preclude federal funding for abortions of pregnancies resulting from a variety of rapes where force may not be involved, including date rape, statutory rape, the rape of a woman who had been drugged, and the rape of a mentally incompetent woman. The bill also restricts abortions in cases of incest to females who are minors.
Flake said Tuesday that he makes “no distinctions” between different forms of rape. [Then why did he cosponsor the original bill that included the "forcible rape" language?]
“’Forcible rape’ seems redundant to me,” Flake said. [Yeah, you say that now after all the blowback.]
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
CD 2 Republican congressional candidate Martha McSally has gotten kid-gloves treatment and a free pass from the local media villagers during this primary, running a below the radar campaign. She is an unknown quantity as a result. That is about to change after Tuesday's primary election.
The media villagers can start with a direct question about the hot-button issue of the week for Tea-Publicans going into their convention: "Where do you stand on the "legitimate rape" comments of Rep. Todd Akin running for the Senate in Missouri, and where do you stand on the "no exceptions" anti-abortion plank in the GOP platform?"
The media villagers should also ask her direct questions whether she will support Reps. Todd Akin and Paul Ryan's bill to redefine rape as "forced rape," an end-run around statutory rape laws and instances of emotional abuse and intimidation to limit access to abortions. And whether she will support Reps. Todd Akin and Paul Ryan's bill defining life as beginning at conception — thus reducing an adult woman to second class citizen status to her fertilized egg.
Does McSally's views on "small government" mean a government small enough to declare her uterus property of the state and to dictate her access to contraception and abortion, and general reproductive health? The kid-gloves come off now.
Now, I know that the leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, has told Tea-Publicans not to answer these questions, but you media villagers need to demand an answer and keep pressing. Don't accept the crap that Jesse Kelly pulled during his now infamous K-GUN 9 interview about support from an anti-immigration organization.
The Arizona Democratic Party issued this press release this week: