I hate gay people. You should therefore pay all my property taxes!
Arizona HB2128 is becoming a zombie bill, meaning that it will come back year after year. Here’s what it does:
cathi herrod
Why are conservatives unwilling to admit that pulling “The Interview” was a business decision?
Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, along with Rep. Paul Gosar have joined the conservative hand-wringing over Sony’s decision to pull the release of “The Interview”.
That move came after U.S. intelligence linked the North Korean government to hackers who made violent threats about the comedy film. In the movie, a TV crew travels to North Korea to interview dictator Kim Jong Un, and they are recruited by the CIA to assassinate Kim.
“It’s remarkable that a country like North Korea can have that capability,” McCain said. “If they are able to disrupt a film, you can imagine what they are doing or attempting to do to our national defense capability. This is deeply alarming.”
Flake added the hacking incident was a “huge wake up call.”
“If they can wreak that kind of havoc in the entertainment industry, then you’ve got to worry where else their reach is,” Flake said. “It’s very concerning.”
Gosar quipped: “Just show the movie.”
When Americans can’t see one particular Seth Rogen movie the terrorists have won! Like pretty much most people, I think Sony made a bad decision but it’s fairly obvious why they made it and, contrary to what the right wing perpetual outrage machine is spinning,
BREAKING: America apparently a nation of lily-livered pantywaists who let terrorists threats dictate which movies we’re allowed to watch.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) December 18, 2014
Republican senator signals the return of SB1062 under, you guessed it, the banner of Hobby Lobby
On Monday the AZ Republic featured a pair of op-eds from a Republican State Senator and the outgoing Democratic House Minority Leader about the prospect of a reformulated SB1062 in the upcoming Arizona legislative session.
Here’s Senator Nancy Barto (R) explaining why opponents of discrimination are misguided meaniebutts:
To start — the vast majority of the attacks against this simple bill were at best misunderstandings of the legislation, or at worst outright lies with the endgame of conditioning the public into automatically equating faith with bigotry — in the name of equality and fairness.
On the contrary, SB 1062 brought Arizona in line with federal law and would not have created any “new right” to discriminate (i.e. refusing people taxi, hotel or restaurant service).
The Supreme Court made this clear in June when they said the Green family, who own Hobby Lobby, couldn’t be forced to pay for abortion-causing drugs in their insurance plans as “Obamacare” mandated — meaning they didn’t have to surrender their First Amendment rights simply because they started a business.
This is exactly what SB 1062 would have clarified in Arizona.
Not treating Cathi Herrod with the utmost politeness is exactly the same as taking rights away from people, according to Channel 12 anchor Cooney
Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
Last Thursday, just two days after a midterm Republican sweep that left many liberals, including LGBT activists, in Arizona feeling devastated and worried the future of their newly won marriage rights, Channel 12 Phoenix aired a softball interview between anchor Lin Sue Cooney and the woman considered the mastermind of all of the anti-gay legislation in our state, Center for Arizona Policy President Cathi Herrod.
(Link for video, since embedded ones from Channel 12 open automatically.)
I’m not sure why there was this great need to “humanize” Herrod at this time. Her humanity was never in doubt. She’s a white, straight person of wealth and privilege. Furthermore, framing the interview as one with “one of the most outspoken Christians in Arizona” is a none-too-subtle way of implying that there is one true faith, and even one true kind of Christianity, in our state.
GOP might get to continue to wage war on women by lying that they are doing that
Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough offers this insight on the 2014 midterm election:
What an asshole. This is a guy who rose to prominence vigorously defending the murderer of an abortion doctor and subsequently voted for harsh anti-choice legislation when he got elected to Congress. Here’s what Scarborough had to say about that, on Morning Joe, after Dr. George Tiller was murdered in 2009:
“We’ve got to learn to sit down and talk,” said Scarborough at the climax of this morning’s several minute segment including co-host Mika Brzezinski and Pat Buchanan…
“People who are pro-life like myself can’t call people who are pro-choice murderers, and people who are pro-choice can’t call people who are pro-life — can’t claim they don’t give a damn about women and want women to die in back alley abortions. That is the sort of angry, heated rhetoric over the past quarter century that’s gotten us to where we are today.”