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Appalling AZ Republic false equivalence on national legislative orgs

April 7, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

I don’t know for sure, but Alia Beard Rau’s recent piece looks like it started to be about the influence that American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Goldwater Institute, and Center for Arizona Policy (CAP) have on the Republican-controlled AZ Legislature, but then she was pressured by an editor to make it a “both sides” thing. Or maybe not, but whatever happened, the article is a testament to the incredible lengths the MSM will go to imply that the left is as powerful and corrupt as the right is.

“Hey, Conservative Trolls, Its More Complicated Than That!”

March 28, 2014 by Michael Bryan

By Tom Prezelski

Re-blogged from Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

We have been hearing about a forthcoming Cesar Chavez biopic since at least the 1990s, when an El Vez lyric plugged a rumored project by Moctezuma Esparza which never materialized. Today, a mainstream feature film about the legendary Arizonan finally opens nationwide.

Predictably, this has brought out the trolls, the same trolls who tell us that Martin Luther King Jr. would support the TEA Party if he were alive today and that Ronald Reagan was the real hero of the civil rights movement. This time, the claim is that Chavez was a registered Republican and a vocal and dedicated opponent of immigration.

First, his one-time voter registration is irrelevant. The Republican party of the 1950s and 60s was a very different animal than the one which is familiar to us today, and his political loyalties have to be considered in the context of his contentious relationship with some prominent Democrats like California Governor Pat Brown. His well-recorded support of Democrats like Bobby Kennedy and lifelong work for causes like civil rights and organized labor, however, would seem to imply that his Republican registration was nominal at best.

As for his immigration stand, I first heard this one from some of my Republican colleagues as a member of the legislature. As strange as it seems, despite the fact that many people at and around the capitol had actually worked with Chavez, not one of the folks telling me these things bothered to ask around before repeating the talking points.

Protest Planned to Greet Boehner at $500/plate Fundraiser for McSally & Tobin

March 28, 2014 by Pamela Powers

As announced earlier this week, the worst-ever Speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Boehner, is coming to Marana on Saturday to be the headliner at a $500/plate fundraising dinner for CD2 candidate Martha “I got no opinions” McSally and gubernatorial candidate Andy “I heart the Christian Right” Tobin.

These three Regressive knuckle-draggers are perfect for each other: anti-abortion, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-education, anti-immigration-reform, anti-healthcare-reform, pro-military-industrial-complex, pro-NRA, pro-Christian-Taliban, pro-Wall-Street. It’s a menage-a-tois made in ~~heaven~~… er… backroom deals with the Koch Brothers.

By refusing repeatedly to offer opinions on just about any issue except the fate of her old aircraft, the A10, McSally has been playing it even safer with her campaign in 2014 than she did in 2012. But actions speak louder than words. Her alignment with Teapublican Tobin (who has been in the thick of Arizona’s anti-gay and anti-woman legislation and personally tried to stop the Equal Rights Amendment this year) speaks volumes. Campaigning with one of the Arizona Legislature’s Christian Taliban adds to McSally’s street cred as a Teapublican “Regressive”.

Just give us an up or down vote on the immigration bill

March 26, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

Congressional Democrats are going to try to bypass the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, the “Worst. Speaker. Ever.” who has refused to bring up any immigration bill in the House that he controls, by introducing a discharge petition in the House today. Democrats to Try Long-Shot Tactic for House Immigration Vote:

House Democrats will carry out a long-shot legislative maneuver on Wednesday that is intended to bring a broad immigration bill to the House floor for a vote — or, at the very least, to increase the pressure on Republicans to move forward on some form of overhaul before the end of the year.

The maneuver, known as a discharge petition, would require 218 signatures and allow House Democrats and Republicans who support the immigration legislation to circumvent the Republican majority and bypass the regular committee process.

House Democrats are calling the effort the #DemandAVote petition, and they hope to force Republicans to take up the immigration bill, which largely mirrors the broad measure the Senate passed last year. The bill has 200 co-sponsors, including three Republicans, and it is officially known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act.

Ken ‘Birther’ Bennett and voter disenfranchisement

March 21, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

How typical. The Arizona Republic editorializes today that it “has always opposed Prop 200’s voter ID requirements; we would have preferred a court decision tossing them out. But once the Supreme Court upheld them, it became clear the alternative encourages the worst of both worlds for voters.” Proof of citizenship: Let’s live with it.

And what is this alternative? “Secretary of State Bennett . . . said he will continue to prepare the dual-track [ballot] system in the event of yet another court decision against Prop 200. Dual-track voter registration is, unquestionably, the worst possible outcome.”

Secretary of State Ken “Birther” Bennett has no legal authority to institute a dual-track ballot system that disenfranchises eligible U.S. citizens of their right to vote in Arizona elections, based solely upon the voter registration form they used to register.

This dual-track system is the brainchild of anti-immigrant activist Kris Kobach, of counsel with the Immigration Law Reform Institute, the legal arm of the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and currently the Secretary of State of Kansas. Kobach is the coauthor of Prop. 200 (2004) and SB 1070 (2010). The dual-track system was originally discussed in 2004, but it was dropped because it is unconstitutional. Now Kobach and Ken “Birther” Bennett want to test the envelope of constitutional law.