Friday Reads: Fresh Hells brought forth by Republicans

I wish I could really say good morning, but I have to say that I’m getting more discouraged all the time.  It feels like the Republicans are destined to bring on The Handmaid’s Tale future.  There should be no complaining around here about burkhas because it seems we’re being enslaved by the same narrow minds here in this country with the same degree of ignorance and intolerance.  We’ve turned from a nation of scientists, inventors, and pioneers into something completely different.  We better start fighting the ignorance coming from pews and Republican Congressional districts now or everything we have come to know and love about this country will be gone.  One hundred fifty years after the beginning of the Civil War, we now have another war seeking to create slaves rather than free them.

First, a selection of how a few robed men with their own religious jihad have become jurists in favor of dismantling some one of the most central tenets of The Constititution:  The Establishment Clause. Every citizen in this day and age should be able to show the damage done by religionists in this country.  It will be a difficult task, however.

In a decision earlier this week in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, the five conservative Justices on the Supreme Court (Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito) carved a large hole out of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Although the issue in the case was subtle, the consequences are not.

The First Amendment prohibits government to make any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” A central concern of the Establishment Clause, in the words of James Madison, was to forbid government “to force a citizen to contribute” even “three pence of his property for the support of” religion. As the Supreme Court recognized more than forty years ago, as a general proposition the Establishment Clause prohibits government from using its “taxing and spending power… to favor one religion over another or to support religion in general.” Thus, the Establishment Clause forbids government to fund churches to enable them to spread their religious beliefs or to award special tax credits to individuals to reimburse them for their contributions to religious organizations.

There is a complication, however. Even though such government programs violate the Establishment Clause, it is not clear whether anyone can legally challenge them. To bring a lawsuit contesting a law’s constitutionality, a plaintiff must have “standing” to sue. To have standing, a plaintiff must have suffered a distinct “injury in fact” as a result of the government action he wants to challenge. Standing is necessary because we want the parties to have a meaningful stake in the outcome of litigation. Otherwise, they might not adequately represent their position, which could result in a waste of judicial resources or, even worse, erroneous decisions.

Why should I have to subsidize some one’s superstitions?  I certainly will get no benefit from it nor will society.

Idaho lawmakers are seeking to force raped women to bring pregnancies to term because it is the will of “The Almighty”. (H/T to BB) That some one’s imaginary friend should hold every one hostage is anathema to me.  We have to ask when the witch burning will begin, when will we return to biblical stoning, and under what conditions will slavery be okay?  This also completely bans induced labor under strict term.  There are no ‘abortions’ in the third trimester.  That’s one of those word games religionists play to confuse the easily confused.  So, what happens if you have a brain dead baby or one that’s dead and the remains go septic?  Do you just sit around and wait for their imaginary friend to do something?  How are all these radical measures coming to pass?  Where are the reasonable people in this country?

The Idaho legislature on Tuesday gave final approval to a measure that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and subject abortion providers to criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.

The Senate-backed bill cleared the House in a 54-14 vote and now heads to Governor Butch Otter, who is expected to sign it.

This person actually believes a rapist is the hand of god?  Representative Shannon McMillan needs to go back and figure out that a fertilized egg is in no way a child and that forcing women to hangers and back alleys isn’t going to save lives.

“Is not the child of that rape or incest also a victim?” asked Rep. Shannon McMillan, R-Silverton. “It didn’t ask to be here. It was here under violent circumstances perhaps, but that was through no fault of its own.”[…]

The Idaho bill’s House sponsor, state Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, told legislators that the “hand of the Almighty” was at work. “His ways are higher than our ways,” Crane said. “He has the ability to take difficult, tragic, horrific circumstances and then turn them into wonderful examples.”

It looks like “clerical error” has returned the vote advantage to Right Wing Radical extremist David Prosser to the Supreme Court in Wisconsin.  He’s best known for calling a colleague a bitch.  The assault on women’s rights, worker’s rights,  and ordinary people will continue there.

Nickolaus says the reason for the big change is that data transmitted from the City of Brookfield was imported but that she failed to save those results to the database. Brookfield cast 14,315 votes on April 5 — 10,859 of those votes went to Prosser and 3,456 went to JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Congressional Republicans are trying to blame the budget stalemate and the ensuing bad PR of not paying soldiers in combat on Democrats.  The truth comes out that they are quibbling over funding Planned Parenthood and not the numbers.  It’s really quite shameful.  Maybe the Democrats and Obama are figuring out that these people do not negotiate, they only take hostages.  The Democrats offered to pass a troop funding standalone bill 3 times but were turned down.

Today, House Republicans pushed through their stopgap measure in a 247-181 vote. The bill, H.R. 1363, quickly came under fire for demanding a series of non-budget related policy riders, including an anti-abortion policy restriction banning D.C. from using its own local funds for abortions and anti-environmental restrictions to limit the EPA from regulating green house gas emissions, on top of an extra $12 billion in cuts. “With an eye to protecting themselves politically” from blame, the GOP quickly redefined H.R. 1363 today as the “troop funding bill.”

Slate’s Dave Weigel noted that five minutes after the White House declared H.R. 1363 unacceptable, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) slammed President Obama for threatening to veto a bill to “ensure that our troops are paid.” Minutes later, Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) ripped Democrats for “girding to oppose a ‘troop-funding bill.’” Republican lawmakers quickly picked up the rallying cry. Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN) and Harold Rodgers (R-KY) called it “astonishing” and “inexplicable” that Obama would, as GOP shutdown architect Newt Gingrich put it, use the troops as “bargaining chips for budget negotiations.”

There’s only one problem with this talking point — it’s the opposite of true. Today, the House Democrats tried three times to pass a measure that would ensure the troops received pay. The Republicans overwhelmingly opposed every single “troop-funding” opportunity  …

Nancy Pelosi is now saying there is a war one women and predicts a ‘strong Democrat Response to the recent events. One has to wonder where it was when they sold out on tax cuts that would bring on this situation.  One also has to wonder about where these folks were when they were eviscerating women’s right to have private insurance with abortion riders a year ago too.

“I think you’ll see a strong Democratic ‘no’ on that,” Pelosi said of the funding measure, “and I would hope that the president would veto that bill.”

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), senior Democrat on the House Budget panel, called the Pentagon funding “a cynical ploy to use our troops to try to impose the Republican agenda through the budget process.”

Pelosi agreed, and predicted the attempt to lure Democratic votes won’t work.

“For them to hide behind our troops while they build a future unworthy of the sacrifice of our troops … is a contradiction in terms,” she said. “I believe we’ll have a solid vote against that.”

These are truly trying times.  We have people who do not embrace modernity, science, or reason making policy right now.  They’ve also had time to stack a lot of courts with justices who appear to care more about their religion than The Constitution.  We’re assaulted on all fronts by radicals who seek to redefine this country in theocratic terms and are willing to ruin it to bring about an end to everything that protects the pubic interest and public assets.  The costs will be huge if this stuff succeeds.

Anyway, I can’t read any more of the headlines without wanting to ask Canada for sanctuary.  If you’ve got anything better on your reading or blogging list, please share it.  I just would like to get my assets and my daughters out of here before they’re declared breeders and kidnapped by some infertile white couple in the name of their angry sky god.

Uppity Woman suggests that we join the ACLU and women in the state of Florida and “incorporate” each and every uterus in the country so the Republicans will want to deregulate them and free them from taxes.  Here’s the link to Incorporate My Uterus!  Sigh.

So many religionists, so few lions.

Oh, and if you want to get stirred up, go watch CSPAN and the Stand Up for Women’s Health Rally:

Stand Up for Women’s Health Rally Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and more than 20 other organizations will hold a Stand Up for Women’s Health rally at the U.S. Capitol in opposition to proposals in Congress.

From the NYT:

On Thursday, Republicans passed a one-week spending bill — one almost surely destined to fail in the Senate — that featured one of the key provisions they are seeking.

The measure would reinstate a policy, scotched a few years ago by Democrats, that prevented the District of Columbia from using locally generated taxes to provide financial help to poor women for abortions. (The use of federal funds for abortion is already prohibited.) Because this law was on the books for years — passed by Democrats as a rider to unrelated bills — it has perhaps the best chance of surviving in any spending compromise.

Republicans also seek to prohibit payments for abortions overseas — a measure known as the “Mexico City” policy that was overturned by an executive order from Mr. Obama. Another rider seeks to end the United States’ contribution to the United Nations Population Fund, which focuses on reproductive health.

Finally, rather than cut all federal funds for Planned Parenthood, House Republicans would like to take the money given to it and other family planning organizations and give it to state health departments to spread at their discretion.