Day: July 9, 2013

Protests over Right-Wing Assault on Women’s Rights Continue in Raleigh

Jon Ponder

RT America:

North Carolina’s first Republican-led state government in more than a hundred years has been met with weekly protests opposing the legislature’s attempts to limit access to women’s health clinics that provide abortions. Dubbed “Moral Monday,” the rallies have combined with similar controversy in Texas to raise the national consciousness on a conservative movement that could make it almost impossible for women in the states to terminate a pregnancy safely and legally.
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How and Why Do These Guys Come Back After Sex Scandals?

Buck Banks

Another week and there goes another fallen officeholder trying to claw his way back from tabloid purgatory–another chance for some people to marvel about the power of forgiveness and redemption, and other people to marvel about the power of egomania and pure chutzpah. … It is one more occasion, in other words, for the vast majority of people who would stay crouched in a hole for years if they ever endured humiliation and disgrace of the sort Eliot Spitzer brought down on himself to wonder: What makes these guys tick?

— Politico

Political Copycatting Thwarts the Governing Process

Buck Banks

But if we learned one thing after the Bork judicial fight in the 1980s, it’s that political parties copycat each other. And if Republicans are trying to stop Democratic laws from being implemented or preventing executive-branch appointees from being confirmed, then you can bet that Democrats will return the favor the next time there’s a GOP president. This is a slippery slope fraught with unintended consequences. In fact, we already saw Democrats in the minority on the state level trying to thwart laws that were being passed and signed into law by Republican governors and Republican-controlled legislatures. This “any means necessary” style of politicizing legislating and governing is only helping to add to the public’s distrust and cynicism toward government — on all levels.

— NBC’s First Read.