Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
Democratic candidate for AZ Attorney General Felecia Rotellini has been running an ad (click here if embedded video doesn’t work attacking the Republican candidate Mark Brnovich, AKA NOT Tom Horne, for his lobbying for private prisons.
In case you missed it, here is Tuesday’s Arizona Attorney General debate on Channel 8 wherein Rotellini owned NOT Tom Horne.
It was bad enough when Republican gubernatorial candidate Dicey Doug Ducey decided to duck debates in Tucson, but now the League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson (LWVGT) has reported that only ONE of the invited Republicans– Corporation Commission candidate Doug “I Heart APS” Little– will participate in a televised LWVGT debate in Tucson. All of the Democratic candidates agreed to the LWVGT debate invitation, along with Libertarian Barry Hess and “Independent Constitutionalist” J.L. Mealer.
“Dark Money” Ducey, Attorney General candidate Mark “Nullify the Constitution” Brnovich, Diane “Tea Party Tool” Douglas, and Tom “I Heart APS” Forese have all decided that debating in Arizona’s second largest city is not worth their time. These cowardly Republicans are taking a page from the playbooks of Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain: don’t go south of Oro Valley, unless you have to rush to the border for a photo opp.
Was it something we said? Or something they’re afraid we’ll say? Did someone tell them that every old hippie artist in Tucson has protest signs tucked behind the couch? Let’s face it. These bought-and-paid-for Koch Brothers candidates can’t hold a candle to the Democratic Party’s slate, and they know it. They don’t want to look stupid on camera. They prefer to hide and hope no one will notice. (Remember Jan Brewer’s on-camera brain fart in 2010?)
Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com
Per Ian Millhiser:
Citing Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court’s decision last June holding that the religious objections of a business’ owners could trump federal rules requiring that business to include birth control coverage in its health plan, a federal judge in Utah held last week that a member of a polygamist religious sect could refuse to testify in a federal investigation into alleged violations of child labor laws because he objects to testifying on religious grounds…
…The federal child labor investigation arose from a CNN report investigating claims that Jeffs “ordered all schools closed for a week so children could go to work picking pecans off trees at a private ranch” in Utah. The report included video of “hundreds of children, many of them very small” working on the ranch. When the reporters arrived, CNN also caught video of the FLDS children fleeing the cameras.
Yet, according to an order signed by Judge David Sam, a Reagan appointee to a trial court in Utah, the federal officials investigating this alleged violation of child labor laws will not be able to require an FLDS member named Vernon Steed to provide information that could aid the investigation because Steed objects to giving certain testimony on religious grounds. Steed claims that he’s made “religious vows ‘not to discuss matters related to the internal affairs or organization of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.’” According to Judge Sam’s opinion, that’s enough to exempt him from providing the testimony he does not want to give.
Whoops.
Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com
Let’s say you are Sean Noble, a Koch-ed up dark money operative who has been the focus of some negative attention for your activities. You’d probably prefer to be known for something else in the midst of a heated general election cycle in Arizona, where you are the manager of the GOP candidate for Attorney General. Then it comes to your attention that former AZ Senate President Russell Pearce has said some vile things in public, as he is wont to do. And as right wingers are wont to do so often, Pearce focused his wrath on poor women. In this case Pearce says that poor women on public assistance should be forcibly sterilized.