Lying, cheating, SOBs GOP

Apparently having seen what happened when the Big Daddy theocrats tried to ram through a vagina control bill in Texas, our homegrown crackpot conservatives in Raleigh figured they would sneak through a similar anti-choice bill in North Carolina on the eve of a long holiday weekend.

The Senate met for much of the day, handling a variety of bills in other committees and on the floor. Just before 5:20 p.m., Senate Rules Committee Chairman Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson, announced a recess and said the Judiciary 1 Committee would meet at 5:30 p.m.

Until then, the committee's calendar listed only House Bill 695, which prohibits the recognition of foreign law, such as Islamic Sharia law, in family courts. That measure was controversial when it cleared the House in May, with opponents fearing it could interfere with recognition of U.S. law in foreign courts.

However, when the committee convened at 5:30 p.m., it quickly took up an amendment to revise the bill to include the regulations on abortion.

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary 1 Committee, Buck Newton (R-BigFatLiar) claimed this was pushed through so suddenly because they reached a surprising consensus just at that hot minute. Which totally explains why:

Lobbyists with nonprofits that have religious or moral purposes, including the Family Policy Council, Christian Action League and North Carolina Values Coalition, were in the room for the committee debate and the subsequent Senate floor debate. Senators noted that those lobbyists were given notice of the bill and its contents ahead of time.

Yet shockingly no one thought to alert the opponents of the odious amendments which will effectively shut down all the low cost women's health clinics that provide many more services than just abortions.

Their devious ploy didn't work as intended. Thanks to the NC media, a sizable group of women's rights supporters were alerted in time to attend today's hearing on the bill. And in a stunning display of the Republican's version of democratic governance, they were told to STFU.

"The gallery is to remain silent. The senators on the floor are the only voices that matter."

-- North Carolina Senate Pro Tempore Phil Berger (R), quoted on Facebook, to women in the Senate gallery protesting surprise abortion legislation passed last night.

These guys need to be reminded who they work for and 2014 isn't that far off. One hopes the voters will reward them appropriately at the ballot box by voting these arrogant SOBs out.

Standing with Texas women

Bless the women of Texas who continue to pour into the Statehouse to keep the people's filibuster going and the men who stand with them. Maybe Gov Goodhair was hoping they would lose interest. It was a fool's hope. Tweet of the day suggests the motto of this movement is "Never Surrender."

@mcbyrne: List is 1900 hundred long to speak. #StandWithTXWomen

Kind of wish I could go down there and personally thank every one of them individually.

If it was Monday

Then there must have been a citizen's action at the Raleigh Statehouse. The Moral Monday protests are still going strong. Twitter reported last night the crowd was the biggest yet despite the rain. [photo via]

Deep in the heart of Texas

The Texas legislature opened its second special session this morning and as the song goes, women rights supporters have a message for the crackpots trying to ramrod their theocratic wet dream through -- you ain't seen nothing yet.

Last week we saw hundreds of protesters. Today, an estimated 5000 are demonstrating for women's rights in Austin.



They're jamming the grounds.



Of course the Big Daddy theocrats pretend it's about protecting children, but this is all about controlling women and punishing them for having sex. Which is not only none of their damn business but also codifying their personal morality increases government spending and raises deficits. They're talking federal programs here, but the effects are the same on the state level.

In general, attacking women’s health choices costs taxpayers. Family planning programs save the federal government $3.74 for every dollar spent by providing women with access to contraception and avoiding unplanned births. Providing women who seek an abortion with the services they need doesn’t just avert government spending on unwanted births. A recent study found that women who were unable to obtain an abortion were three times more likely to fall into poverty in the subsequent two years than those who succeeded. That likely means more women who need to access federal programs.

Yet these same Big Daddy theocrats who insist every pregnancy must be brought to term -- because, Jesus -- are the first in line with the machetes to slash assistance for children born into poverty as a result of these damn nanny state moralists and their anti-choice laws. Bless every single person standing out there in the Texas sun trying to stop them. They stood them down once. Here's hoping they can do it again. [Livestream of the speakers outside the statehouse here.]

Addendum: One more photo of the crowd that gives a better sense of just how many people are massed outside the Statehouse. This makes me so happy I could weep with joy.

Women beat down GOP on Texas abortion bill

It's a very good day to be a liberal. The days long people's filibuster at the Texas statehouse culminated in an epic 11 hour filibuster on the Senate floor delivered by Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis.

Senator Davis was shooting for 13 hours but fell short when the Republicans successfully challenged her on procedural grounds, at which point the people in the gallery took over again and created enough noise to delay the vote until just past the mandated close of the special session.

Apparently hoping to take advantage of the confusion, Republicans tried to pull a fast bit of trickery and failed.

Initially, Republicans insisted the vote started before the midnight deadline and passed the bill that Democrats spent the day trying to kill. But after official computer records and printouts of the voting record showed the vote took place Wednesday, and then were changed to read Tuesday, senators retreated into a private meeting to reach a conclusion.

They concluded there were too many witnesses to get away with lying and the bill was deemed officially deceased. Chalk up a win for the forces of good and check out the numbers to fully appreciate how big a victory this was for women's rights.

Of course, this isn't the end of it. Hearing rumors Gov. Goodhair will call a second special session and Republicans are already working on redistricting Wendy Davis out of office, a revenge made so much simpler yesterday by the SCOTUS VRA decision.

Nonetheless, to have won even this temporary victory in Texas is inspiring. Between this and the ongoing Moral Monday protests in North Carolina, I haven't had this much hope for our future in a very long time.

Moral Mondays

The crowd of protesters at the North Carolina Statehouse just keep growing to cheer on those who volunteer to go inside and get arrested. With the 120 people who got arrested tonight, the total now stands at 550 over the last eight weeks. [photo via and another photo]

The People's Filibuster

The Republicans may yet ram through their Big Daddy Theocrat bills through but not without a fight. The wimmen are storming the Statehouse in Texas to defend their right to make their own choices without interference from vagina obsessed conservatives. [PPofGreaterTX photo]

Power to the people

Love this. Crackpot conservatives have been trying to railroad through a really odious anti-abortion bill. In response, people organized to block the vote by using the legal process.

Texas lawmakers are currently rushing an omnibus anti-abortion bill through a special session, after each of its provisions failed to advance separately during the regular legislative session. But not without being met with a fight. Over 700 Texans traveled to Austin on Thursday to testify against the anti-abortion measure before it could come to a vote in the House — and their “people’s filibuster” successfully prevented the legislation from advancing.

The Republican chairman of the House committee tried to shut down their testimony while 300 more people who signed up to speak were still waiting. The crowd prevented him from doing it. So far the vote has still not been taken up. The fight isn't over yet, and the people's filibuster may ultimately fail to block passage of the bill, but how great is it to see people battle the crackpots on their own ground rather than allow them to blithely force it through without any challenge at all?

Maine governor gags the press

Maine's crackpot governor has an odd view of freedom of the press. If the local media questions his policies and priorities, LePage isn't going to talk to them at all.

AUGUSTA – Gov. Paul LePage's administration will no longer comment in stories published by the Portland Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel, his spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Bennett said MaineToday Media, the newspapers' parent company, "had made it clear that it opposed this administration."

She would not elaborate, saying that responses from the administration could be gleaned from reports by The Associated Press or through document requests using the Freedom of Access Act.

Think Progress has more about LePage's corporate coddling agenda. One has to believe Maine voters were simply swept up in Tea Party fever when they put this nutjob into office in 2010. He barely squeaked into office then. After four years of his bizarre excuse for governance, one can only hope they come to their senses and kick the kook out in 2014.

Jan Brewer, crazy but not stupid

No news because, Father's Day weekend, but didn't get around to posting this earlier and it's still worth mentioning. She's been a poster girl for crackpot conservatism, but apparently Jan Brewer understands the value of free money and figured out the economics of keeping uninsured people out of the ER is cost effective for the state's finances.

After a marathon session that lasted until nearly 4 in the morning on Thursday, the Arizona House approved a plan backed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to expand Medicaid under President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act by providing health insurance coverage to an additional 350,000 low-income Arizonans.

The 33-27 vote followed 9 hours of debate and fiery pleas by conservative Republicans who wanted to kill the expansion and break the bipartisan coalition that ultimately pushed it to victory, according to the Arizona Republic.

“I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut,” Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko told the paper. “And I feel like I’ve been betrayed.”

Because, nothing matters more than screwing Obama and pissing off liberals, no matter how lamebrained the policy or how much it costs. Gotta give Brewer credit for standing up to the constituency that pretty much put her in office in the first place. She forced the crazed cons to do the right thing.

In Arizona this week, black is white, up is down, left is right and Gov. Jan Brewer is getting praised by gay Democrats and slammed by Tea Party conservatives.

But this conservative edifice has come crashing down since she announced in her State of the State address this year, to the shock of everyone, that Arizona would accept Obamacare and expand its Medicaid coverage whether her Republican allies in the state liked it or not. Needless to say, they did not like it. But Brewer’s newfound love of Obamacare was so strong that she vowed to veto every single bill the Legislature sent to her office until they caved on Obamacare.

Ironically Democrats and our President could take a lesson from Brewer here. She won that fight because she didn't back down. Have to respect that kind of political courage. It's too rare.

Moral Mondays

It started with 5 or 6 people getting arrested at the North Carolina statehouse a few weeks ago. Every Monday since it's grown until yesterday, about 150 were deliberately arrested by NC statehouse security and over a thousand demonstrators were massed outside to protest the real life tyranny of Republicans ramrodding their insane agenda through the legislature.

The craziest stuff makes the national news but it's bigger than just trying to establish a state religion. They've decimated the public school system, they're destroying the social safety net, criminalizing poverty, dismantling environmental safeguards and trying to sell off the public assets to their cronies just to start. And that's just at the state level. What's happening in the counties shouldn't even be legal.

Republicans claim the polling is on their side, but I wouldn't bet on it. The crowds outside the statehouse are diverse. It's not just poor people. Well off professionals and older people are marching in to be arrested. This week even the mayor of Carrsboro was carted off to jail. Even the national media has begun to notice. I have to believe the more the GOPers overreach, the more inspired the people of conscience who have long sat silent on the sidelines will be inspired to fight back. The damage being done is great, but it will be undone.

War on Christmas 2013

Great news for public school kids jammed into overcrowded classrooms in falling apart buildings with outdated textbooks and underpaid teachers. They can't have art or music classes, or play sports unless they can afford the fees but by golly in the great state of Texas their teachers can wish them a Merry Christmas. Because, freedom of religion, not from religion.

One can only hope they don't live next door to an unregulated fertilizer storage facility just waiting to explode, so they live long enough to hear them say it.

Long way from the Appalachian Trail

This is so sad I almost feel sorry for the guy. Now abandoned by the national party and with his opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch effectively ignoring him, Mark Sanford is reduced to debating a cardboard photo of Nancy Pelosi. Why is he debating Pelosi instead of a cardboard Colbert Busch? Hell if I know. It's true, Pelosi is an all-purpose villian, especially reviled by cons, but she's not running for Congress in South Carolina.

TPM has a short video clip of the sorry spectacle at the link. Has to be seen to be believed. [photo via]

Don't let the door hit you in the Baucus on the way out

The tears being shed over that miserable excuse for a Democrat, Max Baucus, announcing his long overdue retirement wouldn't fill a shot glass. Me, I'm suppressing the urge to dance on the table out of long ingrained imperative to be polite.

Everybody seems to be excited by the idea of replacing him with this guy I don't really remember. But if a Senator Schweitzer makes Charlie Pierce this happy, I'm all in for a string-tie Democrat.

Tennessee restores Yeager's gun carry permit

You'll recall some months ago that hot-heated CEO James Yeager of the dicey gun training camp Tactical Response had his carry permit revoked because of his video "'threatening to start killing people' if President Obama took executive action on guns." This week, Yeager got his gun carry permit restored.

Here's his personal video statement. Man, he still looks totally crazy to me.



Actually, the most frightening thing I learned in the video is they took away his carry permit, but they never took away his guns. Tennesee law doesn't require that even if they take your permit to carry. He still has that huge warehouse of artillery. Apparently no psyche eval is required either, even after you've publicly threatened to kill a bunch of people with your personal giant arsenal of weapons. [More from TPM at the link.]

Making guns mandatory in Missouri

Crackpot cons have such a bizarre definition of freedom. It's not enough for these guys to demand the right to wave their firearms in your face at every turn, this Missouri Republican lawmaker introduces stealth legislation to make it mandatory for every business owner to allow guns into their establishments. The bill provides:

1. Any private business that displays signage which prohibits public invitees, business visitors, and employees from carrying a concealed weapon on the premises owned or occupied by such private business shall be liable for any injury or damages incurred by such public invitees, business visitors, and employees as a result of such prohibition if such public invitee, business visitor, or employee establishes by a preponderance of evidence that having access to a firearm may have prevented his or her injury or damage.

2. Any private business that does not prohibit public invitees, business visitors, and employees from carrying a concealed weapon on the premises owned or occupied by such private business shall be immune from any liability arising from its decision to permit concealed weapons to be carried on business premises.

See what he did here? If you prohibit guns in your place of business and some wacko comes in and shoots the joint up, any litigation happy wahoo can sue you for preventing them from carrying a gun inside to shoot back because, for sure they would have been a hero. But if you allow guns into the establishment and some wacko shoots the place up, business owner is legally off the hook because, well, you should have been carrying your own damn gun so you could be the hero and stop the wacko from committing mass murder.

Here's hoping this bill dies on the Statehouse floor before it unleashes mass mayhem in Missouri. [graphic via]

GOPers gone wild in North Carolina

What happens when delusional voters give Republicans complete control of a Statehouse? This bill to establish a state religion in North Carolina, along with the possible mandating of Christian prayer in all schools and public meetings, is getting all the buzz today. It doesn't say which religion they intend to establish as the one and only officially sanctioned church tasked with the praising of the Lord God. If this really happens I see potential for some heavy infighting between the Baptists and the Methodists. (Half kidding.)

I don't see this going anywhere myself. It's pure pandering for the fundie rubes that will be tied up in the courts for years if it ever passes. Besides, while everyone is chasing this shiny object, our local crackpot GOPers are busy piling up many more odious proposals. For instance, this bill making it illegal to enforce federal gun laws.

Then there's this bit of delightful bigotry, requiring criminal background checks for food stamps or other government assistance. Meanwhile, another bill seeking to expand the for-profit charter schools would practically forbid running the same sort of background checks on the teachers. What better way to look out for the children than send them to school hungry under the tutelage of potential pedophiles?

And while no one is watching, our resident Republicans are upping their efforts at suppressing the Democratic vote. The latest addition to this stinking pile of loopy legislation is a new requirement on college student voter registration:

RALEIGH, N.C. — A bill filed in the state Senate Tuesday would carry a tax penalty for parents whose children register to vote at their college address.

Senate Bill 667, known as "Equalize Voter Rights," would remove the tax exemption for dependents who register to vote at any address other than their parents' home.

The bill would also require voters to have their vehicles registered at the same address as their voter registration. That also could cut down on college student registration, since many students maintain their vehicle registration in their home counties.

As we all know, those damned elitist centers of higher edumacation are just loaded with filthy libruls. These same provisions "have also been rolled into a larger omnibus bill." That's the one "which would also shorten early voting days, ban early voting on evenings and weekends and prohibit same-day registration."

The omnibus is Senate Bill 666. Hard to think of a more appropriate draw of the filing numbers. [graphic via]

NC GOP attacks voting rights

Suppressing the (Democratic) vote has been an ongoing effort since the idiot GOPers took over our statehouse and they're not letting up for a minute. Not content to trust their extreme gerrymandering of the districts, which went as far as to split a college campus down the middle, the GOP's latest assault on voting rights is going for the ALEC approved attack on voting access. They're double teaming this one:

Senate Bill 428, filed by Sen. Jerry Tillman, R-Randolph, would cut the early voting period from two weeks to one and would eliminate same-day voter registration.

House Bill 451, filed by Rep. Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell, goes even further. In addition to cutting early voting and same-day registration, it would also outlaw early voting on Sunday and straight-ticket voting.

You know for balance. And the Sunday voting ban has nothing to do with the long standing tradition of black churches "Souls to the Polls" voting drives. Of course not, it's all about the keeping the Sabbath holy.

"I think Sundays just should be – some things you just shouldn't do on Sundays, so I am just opposed to voting on Sunday," Starnes said.

However, you can bet you won't find him filing any bills to end Sunday retail sales or alcohol vending or holding NASCAR races and other sports events on a Sunday. Only voting by possible Democrats offends his God.

Not sure how much difference it even makes. The shameless gerrymandering NC GOPers pushed through gives them a ridiculous advantage already. I'd be willing to bet that was a big part of the reason why Obama didn't win this state again in 2012. Sadly, this isn't the worst thing they're ramming through the legislatures very much against the will of the people. One can only hope the deluded voters who put them into office will remember the GOP's betrayals at the next election.

All eyes on South Carolina Congressional race

There's just so much to love about the SC special election. Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford took the first step on the comeback from the Appallachian Trail and won the first round of the Republican primary. His chances look good for winning the subsequent run-off.

Meanwhile:

The eventual Republican candidate will square off in the May 7 general election against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert. She won the Democratic primary for the seat, handily defeating perennial candidate Ben Frasier.

Her bro has already announced he's willing to risk his comedy career to help her. Shaping up to be a fun contest. Something to look forward to in the future. [photo via]

Republicans new plot to rig the vote

Their best attempts at voter suppression didn't work in 2012, so the GOP came up with a new scam to steal elections:

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), who was the chief elections officer when the state experienced massive voting problems in 2004, is planning to lead a national effort to rig the electoral college in favor of the 2016 Republican presidential candidate.

I believe this was supposed to look like a spontaneous uprising in blue states conveniently held at the moment by Republican statehouses, but these two know a great grift when they see one:

Gehrke and Blackwell have been talking to major donors and plan to send a fundraising email to grassroots conservatives early next week. The money would go toward promoting similar plans to apportion electoral votes by congressional district in states across the country, potentially even hiring lobbyists in state capitals.

There's gold in them thar mailing lists folks. All the GOP grifters have been working hard since their trouncing in November to convince the rubes they really are the majority and were robbed -- robbed I tell ya -- at the ballot box by those shiftless inner city voting fraudsters. Now they want to cash in on the discontent.

As a Virginia state senator explained the rural white man's lament, "The last election, constituents were concerned that it didn't matter what they did, that more densely populated areas were going to outvote them."

Apparently in crackpot con world being outvoted is unfair and so unAmerican. Real Murikins don't lose. Ever.

So far there are five states keenly interested in advancing this cheat. Unfortunately, in Michigan Rep. Pete Lund, spilled the GOP's dirty little secret:

"I believe it's more representative of the people — closer to the actual vote," said Lund, who proposed a similar bill in 2012. "It got no traction last year. There were people convinced Romney was going to win and this might take (electoral) votes from him."

So, if you would you please ignore the electoral results accurately reflected the 5 million vote plurality Obama received, rigging the vote would certainly be "more representative" of the GOP's mandate fantasy. And yeah, they built that -- from scratch. And under no circumstances shall we mention Democrats won a plurality of votes nationally that wasn't reflected in the seat allocation on Capitol Hill thanks to shameless GOP gerrymandering of Congressional districts. That's totally fair. As long as they win.

Not clear how far they'll get with this brazen scam. It may be playing well among the crackpots in the statehouses, but the big name national GOPers aren't enthusiastic about this con. Whether they'll be able to shut it down or not is another question. Now that they allowed the crackpots to take over the party, I'm not so sure they can.