Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
Commenter “Robert” alerted me to an “in-depth analysis” of Friday’s court decision dismissing the anti-Medicaid expansion lawsuit by Arizona’s Own Espresso Pundit. EP warns liberals like myself not to be too sanguine about the judge’s ruling that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing.
By Karl Reiner
In Northern Virginia outside of Washington, DC, the stream valley of Little Rocky Run near U.S. Route 29 and the historic village of Centreville located on the plateau to the stream's west played a crucial role in the early days of the Civil War. It is the place where the dreams and illusions of a divided nation, presidents and soldiers began to disintegrate. Today, less than 40 miles down the road, the fragmented U.S. Congress fritters away time sidestepping issues as it unthinkingly ignores the lessons so painfully learned in the past.
The United States had cracked apart due to a complex series of issues involving the growing industrial power of the North, the shifting of the balance of political power in Congress from South to North and the increasingly toxic issues of abolition and slavery. After Abraham Lincoln, an attorney expert in the emerging field of railroad law, won the presidential election of 1860, the planter class of the South decided to quit the Union. The result was a war that nearly everyone in the North and South expected to be inexpensive, glorious, short and decisive.
Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
No standing. That’s the verdict of Maricopa County Superior Court to the whiny cast of idiots suing the state to block the Medicaid expansion. Judge Katherine Cooper handily dispatched with all their baseless arguments.
by Pamela Powers Hannley AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong reported that the highly profitable, multi-million-dollar company was forced to cut employee benefits because of increased insurance costs under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the cost of care for two sick dependent children born to AOL employees. Armstrong (who made $12 million in 2012) said because … Read more
In today's Arizona Daily Star, columnist Tim Steller chides the Pima County Democratic Party for trying to take down "moderate" Republican LD9 Legislator Ethan Orr.
First of all, a quick look at Orr's voting record and political endorsements reveal that the "Ethan Orr is a moderate" meme is a myth. For example:
Orr voted FOR voter suppression on multiple occasions. Most recently, Orr cast the deciding vote in committee and sided Republicans who want to do an "end run" around voters by repealing last year's Omnibus Voter Suppression Bill (HB2305), in order to pass several other voter suppression bills this session. The bill to repeal HB2305– if passed by the Legislature– will eliminate the citizens' right to vote for or against voter suppression in the 2014 election. Orr voted for voter suppression last week, and he was part of the Republican block that originally passed HB2305 in the dead of night in the waning hours of the 2013 Legislative session.
Orr signed an anti-abortion pledge to defend the rights of the unborn. Orr– along with Governor Jan Brewer, Republican legislators, and three weak-kneed Democrats– signed the Christian conservative Center for Arizona Policy's pledge to fight for the rights of unborn fetuses, while ignoring the legal rights of adult women to make choices about their bodies, their children, and their lives. Steller soft-sells Orr's pro-fetus stance by saying that Orr "tends toward a pro-life viewpoint on abortion." Orr signed a pledge to fight for fetal personhood; this is an extreme viewpoint that confers rights upon fetuses– while taking away the rights of American women. This goes far beyond tending "toward pro-life". [Pledge text and more after the jump.]