COVID-19 & Healthcare

The so-called ‘religious liberty’ aka ‘a license to discriminate’ legal fight

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Screenshot from 2015-09-01 15:48:10A self-anointed “Right Hand of God” Christian who deems herself to speak on behalf of God and to be the judge of God’s divine wisdom, Rowan County (KY) Clerk Kim Davis (right in photo, h/t NY Times), has got her self-righteous Bible thumping butt in big trouble with her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Rowan County, Kentucky.

Clerk Kim Davis is determined to be the Religious Right’s test case to redefine “religious liberty” broadly as an exception to anti-discrimination laws, i.e., a “license to discriminate” against gays, or anyone else, based upon her individualized deeply held religious beliefs.

Clerk Davis is represented in this lawsuit by Liberty Counsel (SourceWatch), affiliated with the Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University School of Law. It is “a nonprofit litigation, education and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family.”

Clerk Davis is an elected public servant sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Section_228 – Kentucky Legislature, and 30A.020 Oath of clerk and deputies. Clerk Davis, however, insists that she answers to a “higher authority.”

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Turns out all the Planned Parenthood “sting” videos were deceptively edited. Will some mainstream reporters who legitimized the story care?

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

I Love Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood isn’t taking the bogus “sells baby parts!” attacks on them sitting down, and commissioned an independent expert to analyze the supposed full video footage released by the fake Center for Medical Progress outfit.

Per Sarah Kliff of Vox.com:

Planned Parenthood hired a forensic research firm to analyze about 12 hours of footage that the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) secretly taped when it had actors pose as employees of a fetal tissue procurement company.

“This analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation, but we did identify cuts, skips, missing tape, and changes in camera angle,” the report from Fusion GPS, the firm that Planned Parenthood hired, concludes.

CMP took no steps to hide the fact that it edited its shorter, more widely viewed clips of undercover meetings with Planned Parenthood. The group interspersed news clips and overlaid text on top of the video; there’s clear evidence of production work.

But the group held that these “full footage” tapes were complete, unbiased presentations of its Planned Parenthood meetings. If CMP also edited these “full” tapes — ones that it told viewers were complete footage — then the group is guilty of deceiving the public the exact same way it deceived Planned Parenthood.

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GOP clutches its pearls after Hillary Clinton calls them out for extremist views on women’s reproductive rights

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So let me get this straight . . . Donald Trump, the Triumph the Insult Comic Dog of the Republican Party — whose entire campaign is based upon insulting his sixteen opponents, the media, every demographic voting bloc in America, and anyone else unfortunate enough to have crossed his path today — is entitled to say the most outrageously offensive things he wants and the media will eat it up, giving him free airtime to air his boorish insults on the network news.

But Hillary Clinton says one mildly offensive (to some) comment, that just happens to be true, and suddenly it’s a “scandal” for which she should apologize?

The clear media double standard here is that IOKIYAR, but not if you are a Democrat.

The New York Times reports, Hillary Clinton Likens Republican Views on Women to Those of Terror Groups:

TalibanAt a rally in Ohio on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton scolded Senator Marco Rubio of Florida for his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape or incest. She hit former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida for wanting to defund Planned Parenthood. And she criticized Gov. John Kasich of Ohio for banning public financing of some rape crisis centers.

“Now, extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world. But it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States.”

Calling such policies out of date and out of touch, Mrs. Clinton dared her rivals to face mothers who caught breast cancer early because of screenings and girls who did not get pregnant because of access to contraceptives that were made available through government funding.

Charles Pierce at Esquire says that Hillary Clinton Has Run Out of F*cks to Give. Good for her, Clinton has had a tendency to be too cautious because of the Clinton Rules of reporting.

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Superior Court Judge upholds Gov. Jan Brewer’s Medicaid (AHCCCS) expansion plan

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We-Love-ObamacareIn a bit of a surprise today, Maricopa County Superior Judge Douglas Gerlach ruled in favor of Governor Jan Brewer’s  Medicaid (AHCCCS) expansion plan, and the bipartisan coalition of Democrats and a handful of Republicans who came together to pass the legislation by a simple majority.

As I have previously warned you, this case is no longer about Governor Jan Brewer’s  Medicaid (AHCCCS) expansion plan per se, it is about the “Kochtopus” Death Star, the Goldwater Institute, trying to preserve the GOP’s “weapon of mass destruction,” Prop. 108 (1992), the “two-thirds for taxes” amendment. The Goldwater Institute, representing the 36 Tea-Publican legislators/plaintiffs in this case, will appeal. This case is far from over.

The Arizona Republic reports, Judge: Medicaid expansion was constitutional:

The Arizona Legislature needed only a simple-majority vote to expand the state’s Medicaid program in 2013, a Superior Court judged ruled on Wednesday.

The case hinges on whether a hospital assessment lawmakers approved to fund the expansion, which extended health-care coverage to more than 250,000 low-income Arizonans, is a fee, as its proponents argued, or a tax.

Judge Douglas Gerlach, in his ruling, said the fee “does not qualify as a tax,” as the 36 Republican legislators who opposed it have argued. As a result, there was no need for a two-thirds super-majority to enact the legislation.

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EJ Montini would like people to discuss jailing women for abortion more politely

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

EJ Montini

Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini finds the way that some people engage in the ongoing debate over the fair use of the female breeding chattel to be unseemly.

What?

No placards? No shouting? No exchange of insults and accusations?

Actually, no. Just people with different opinion having their say and responding to others in a way that suggests that they actually listened to the other side.

It began when a long-time anti-abortion advocate I hear from now and then wrote to me with this question:

“Was throwing away a baby worse than abortion?”

She was talking about the case of Samantha Perez, who was 16 years old when she gave birth to a baby girl in her family’s bathroom then dropped the newborn out a window into an outdoor storage room, where the injured infant was found by sheriff’s deputies. (The child is fine now, according to authorities.) Perez had hidden her pregnancy from her parents.

This week she was sentenced to five years in prison and lifetime probation.

“Do you agree with her getting prison time?” the woman asked me.

Yes.

“And yet if she’d had an abortion nothing would have happened to her, how is that right?”

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