Both Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell lost their bid for election but both will probably remain on the political scene. Both will put in many appearances on TV. Why? Both own huge national donor lists that are capable of bringing in up to $8 million dollars off of the Internet. That is a lot of money and very little flesh pressing. No rubber chicken dinners. No wallowing with Sleazles. Just clean, crisp political money.
Both women worked with the same online fundraising consultant: Kurt Luidhardt’s The Prosper Group Corporation, an 11-person shop based in the Indianapolis suburbs. Luidhardt declined to go into specifics on the size of Angle and O’Donnell’s fundraising lists, but said each has “high tens of thousands” of online donors.
Both women own their own lists, not Luidhardt. If I must see either, I want to see O’Donnell. Her politics are dreadful but she, herself, is charming. Maybe she will give Bill Maher another chance.
For the past several days I have been seeing and hearing a Gerry Connolly campaign commercial that paints Candidate Keith Fimian as an extremist. Most campaign ads are background noise to me so it went in one ear and out the other. Besides, most campaign ads are full of hyperbole and exaggeration. Then I perked up my ears. The ad said that Fimian supported the rights of pharmacists to not dispense contraception. Now THAT IS extremist.
I have tried researching this allegation, without much luck. I even went to the Legatuswebsite. Fimian is a member of Legatus, which is a Catholic organization, founded by Dominos Pizza Magnet Tom Monaghan for very wealthy Catholic business folks and their spouses. I didn’t find out much there either. Maybe it’s me. However, I haven’t heard anything which disputes this claim. This makes me nervous.
There has been somewhat of an uproar the past several years about pharmacists with religious objections being forced to dispense contraception, in particular, the morning after pill. NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia has this to say:
In addition to lack of contraceptive equity, Virginia’s so-called “conscience clause” allows pharmacists to decide which prescriptions they will and will not provide. This means that a pharmacist could legally refuse to fill a doctor’s prescription for birth control or stock or distribute emergency contraception. Since when do pharmacists get to step inside the doctor-patient relationship and refuse to fill necessary prescriptions?
Conscience Clause? Where did that come from? Someone slipped that one by me. The more I google, the more I unearth and the angrier I get. This thread needs to be a work in progress. First of all, anyone who has knowledge of Fimian’s position on allowing pharmacists to cherry pick what prescriptions they will fill, please let us know. I don’t have a bone to pick with private pharmacies who post, in clear view on their door that they do not sell or dispense contraception. However, other stores open to the public without disclaimers should really not be involved in type of exclusionary behavior. I consider it equivalent to the Muslim cab driver who wouldn’t let bottles of liquor in his cab. Find another job.
Secondly, what kinds of legislation have been passed that allow ‘conscience clauses and require pharmacist counselling? How offensive. If one works for a pharmacy, the job is to fill prescriptions, not chime in with a moral opinion. If that is an issue, go work for a private religious hospital or pharmacy.
I would especially welcome and appreciate word from the Fimian campaign that this information is indeed false. This is the year 2010, in the United States of America. Griswald was decided 45 years ago.
Christine O’Donnell really needs to do better than this. Part of going to Washington must include basic understanding of what’s makes our government work. She really isn’t prepared on the most basic of levels. Ms. ODonnell is correct. Senators don’t have to memorize the Constitution, but they should have some basic knowledge of key ideas.
Christine O’Donnell really needs study harder. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Ms. O’Donnell attacked her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, for insisting that public schools teach evolution but not “intelligent design,” which posits that life forms are too complex to have evolved through natural processes and must have been created by a conscious being such as God. Mr. Coons, the New Castle County executive, said that public schools could not teach intelligent design or similar theories, like creationism and creation science, because they were “religious doctrine” rather than science.
“That is a blatant violation of our Constitution,” Ms. O’Donnell said. “The Supreme Court has always said it is up to the local communities to decide their standards.”
That’s generally true–except when it comes to teaching religion-based nonscientific theories of human origin. In 1968, the high court struck down an Arkansas law prohibiting instruction in evolution. In 1987, the court invalidated a Louisiana statute requiring that “creation science,” an antecedent to intelligent design, be taught alongside evolution.
Ms. O’Donnell likened Mr. Coons’s position on evolution to those of “our so-called leaders in Washington” who have rejected the “indispensible principles of our founding.”
She lacks facts on such a basic level, it makes her unqualified for office. I felt sorry for her watching the video. We are aware that the words in the Constitution do not say ‘separation of church and state.’ However the courts have continued to reaffirm this interpretation. Jefferson’s writings also support separation.
Let’s see if this second post on the subject brings out the wrath of the christian right [lower case intentional] like the first one did. If that happens, we can always rename the thread “Greg Letiecq fights pornography with pornography.” But I digress…..
News & Messenger reporter Keith Walker has up-to-date coverage of the latest plan for the City of Manassas during Fall Festival, which is one of the city’s biggest events. About 50 people are expected to gather in protest at City Hall sometime during the Fall Festival.
Apparently the plan to coerce merchants into closing their doors between noon and 1 pm didn’t pan out. I know of 1 merchant who ran off the visitor who came to garner support for her cause. Picture a restaurant owner telling everyone to stop eating and to get up and leave right at noon. Sort of makes one chuckle, if some idealistic person didn’t take it seriously. What shopkeeper closes down during the busiest time of the biggest sale day of the year?
Jennifer Basinger said she’s expecting about 50 people to show up at Manassas City Hall on Saturday to rally against an adult store set to open Oct. 20 on Battle Street in Old Town.
She said KK’s Temptations won’t fit in with the historic nature of the area.
“The shop I feel — and many do — is just not consistent with what Old Town is about,” Basinger said.
However, she doesn’t have anything against Kim and Kristina Skokan, the mother-and-daughter team who plan to open the store.
“It’s not a personal vendetta against the owner. It’s not an ugly, self-righteous march at all,” the 39-year-old Basinger said. “It’s really just wanting to keep Old Town the way it is.” Basinger said the group will restrict itself to the area around City Hall between noon and 2 p.m. to avoid disrupting the Fall Jubilee that is also taking place Saturday.
“It’s peaceful. It’s non-confrontational. It’s not meant to take any thunder away from the fall festival,” she said. “It’s not going to be a bunch of people marching into Old Town.”
Reality check! I saw an email or 2 and I don’t think you say some of that stuff to someone you don’t have a vendetta against. Perhaps I just have different values. Ms. Basinger needs to be more honest and forthright about that one.
Another reality check involves the image you want to create for your city. Do you want to stage a protest of any sort on your biggest tourism day of the year? Why not just bring Mr. Fernandez back with a few native Americans to parade around. I am sure he would be glad to accommodate. Anything to embarrass the City. How is this different? At least if Mr. F paraded around with Native Americans you could tell the guests coming in from other areas that it was just the Tea Party, getting ready to dump a few barrels of tea overboard.
Furthermore, what is it that these people want the City of Manassas to do? The City has caved in to every demand. Many people I know are so disgusted with the City for acquiescing to this group of christian conservatives [lower case intentional] that they are simply not going to spend money in the City. In trying to please everyone, you please no one.
Most of the City Councilpersons are nice people who take their elected position seriously. They try to represent their constituents, rather than advance their own agendas. What I don’t think they realize is that many people find KK Temptations a welcome addition to the City. It breaks up the ho hum and the restaurants. An even bigger number don’t care one way or the other.
Kim Skokan and her daughter have postponed their grand opening out of deference to the City merchants who will be their new neighbors. They didn’t want to draw attention away from a big sales day. They have dotted every i and crossed every t. Perhaps they, too, have been just a little too accommodating to those who are all about control and bullying. (and elections)
Censorship can be subtle, almost imperceptible, as well as blatant and overt, but, nonetheless, harmful. As John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty:
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
— On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
Banned Books Week began back in 1982. It is always designated as the last week in September. It is the only national celebration of the freedom to read what we want. More than a thousand challenges from every state have come in since 1982.
The following list is the top 100 banned or challenged classics:
Rachel Maddow does an excellent job of showing how rights can be taken away by making whatever it is that people are trying to do inaccessible. Inaccessibility substitutes for making an act illegal. Its a rather cowardly, un-democratic means of getting one’s own political way. Maddow also interviews the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Maddow explains how hospital regulations would financially burden abortion providers rather than making abortion safer (Double wide hallways, swinging doors, 15 mile proximity to emergency room, etc.) Cuccinelli’s explanation is vague and full of weasel words, so that the average Virginian really doesn’t know what is being said.
Cuccinelli attempted draconian, technically illegal abortion legislation while he served in the Virginia Senate. He was unable to ever pass his legislation. Now he attempts to circumvent legislation by simply declaring his opinion to be law. His attempts to codify his own opinion won’t fly for long.
Cuccinelli will not last. Most people don’t like having other people in their bedrooms. It remains to be seen if McDonnell will execute Cuccinelli’s opinion into state policy. Meanwhile, Cuccinelli has driven Virginia so far to the cultural right that he endangers other Republicans who might not be extremists.
Finally, Maddow addresses something the rest of us have been aware of for a long time. There is a tendency to bully those who are pro-choice. Many pro-choice people feel too intimidated to admit they are pro-choice, much less hold their legislators accountable for their votes. Every woman in Virginia must decide that the women of Virginia are capable of making their own morally appropriate choices. They need to decide today that they will not allow others to define them. Pro-choice is not being pro-abortion and do not let anyone tell you it is.
Strange. Senator Brown certainly doesn’t seem to be all that conservative to me.
I feel like many I have seen in this movement are bullies. I got that feeling watching the town hall meetings on TV and on the internet. I can’t believe that every thing I watched just showed the bad side. I can’t believe that every rally I saw only showed the bad side.
I honestly think people aren’t really sure what they want. Senator Brown is more like a person I might vote for than someone Sarah Palin might vote for.
Part 2 of Rise of the New Right addresses the common theme of dislike of President Barack Obama. The ‘birthers’ are explored. The video is about 7 minutes.
One often hears that the ‘new right’ includes people who voted for Barack Obama and have become disenchanged and want to take their vote back. Is that true? I only know of one person who said that and that person is something of a political schizophrenic.
Have people always called a sitting president a communist, a socialist? I find that so horribly disrespectful.
What motivates deep hatred of any president? When does this kind of hate become unhealthy?
Every time one thinks things just can’t get more outrageous, Sarah Palin opens her mouth. She now blames environmentalists for the BP oil spill. According to her own facebook comments:
With [environmentalists'] nonsensical efforts to lock up safer drilling areas, all you’re doing is outsourcing energy development, which makes us more controlled by foreign countries, less safe, and less prosperous on a dirtier planet. Your hypocrisy is showing. You’re not preventing environmental hazards; you’re outsourcing them and making drilling more dangerous.
Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country’s energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It’s catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves.
We don’t need the blame game. We need to get that gusher stopped and start the clean up. Does Sarah Palin thrive on discord and animosity? Does she want Americans to hate each other? Her behavior indicates that the answer to that question is yes. Shame on Sarah Palin, again.
AG Ken Cuccinelli loves to file law suits and briefs. He has several lawsuits against our country. Please someone tell me why he didn’t jump on the band wagon against the funeral protesters, Westboro Baptist Church, 48 states filed an amicus brief. 2 states did not: Virginia and Maine. WHAT? If there was ever a reason to file an amicus brief, WBC is it!
WASHINGTON — Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have submitted a brief to the Supreme Court in support of a father who sued anti-gay protesters over their demonstration at the 2006 funeral of his son, a Marine killed in Iraq.
Only Virginia and Maine declined to sign the brief by the Kansas attorney general.
Albert Snyder sued over protests by the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church at his son’s funeral in Maryland. The church pickets funerals because they believe war deaths are punishment for U.S. tolerance of homosexuality.
The Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether the protesters’ message is protected by the First Amendment.
In the brief filed Tuesday, the states argued they have a compelling interest in protecting the sanctity of funerals.
Mr. Snyder now owes WBC over $16,ooo because of a counter lawsuit. Americans are outraged that the father of a fallen hero would ever have to pay this horrible group a penny. Where is Virginia? Once again, Ken Cuccinelli shames us all. However, he now as one ally, according the the Richmond Times Dispatch–the ACLU.
Cuccinelli’s office announced that it is not joining 48 other states in filing a supporting legal brief on behalf of Albert Snyder, the father of a soldier killed in Iraq whose funeral in Maryland was picketed by Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, a hate group.
Among other things, the church pickets funerals of American soldiers, claiming God has killed them for defending a nation of “sodomite hypocrites.”
Snyder is suing Westboro and its pastor, the Rev. Fred W. Phelps, for what he alleges was a disruption of the funeral for his son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006. Church members have become nationally known for heckling at military funerals and hoisting signs that berate mourners with slogans such as “You’re in hell” and “God hates you.”
After Snyder won a $5 million verdict in district court, an appeals court reversed the decision, saying the Westboro protestors were exercising their First Amendment right to free speech. The case is now moving to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yesterday was the deadline for filing a “friend of the court” brief in support of Snyder’s case. Every state but Maine and Virginia lined up behind Snyder.
“The attorney general’s office deplores the absolutely vile and despicable acts of Fred Phelps and his followers,” spokesman Brian Gottstein said in a statement. “We also greatly sympathize with the Snyder family and all families who have experienced the hatefulness of these people.”
The statement said Cuccinelli’s office chose not to file a brief “because the case could set a precedent that could severely curtail certain valid exercises of free speech.”
Gottstein said Virginia has a law that balances free-speech rights but also protects people like the Snyder family by making it a crime to “willfully disrupt a funeral or memorial service to the point of preventing or interfering with the orderly conduct of the event.”
Albert Snyder said Cuccinelli will pay a price politically for not joining other attorneys general.
But the attorney general found an ally on the First Amendment issue from a frequent critic — the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We completely agree with the attorney general,” said ACLU Executive Director Kent Willis, who called the issue a “fundamental gut check” of the First Amendment.
“This kind of deplorable free speech must be protected in order to make sure all speech is protected.”
The speech of WBC far exceeds any speech deemed tolerable by a civilized society. Their speech should be treated like yelling fire in a crowded theater or using the F word during prime time TV. The behavior of Westboro Baptist Church (sic) is totally unacceptable to conservatives, liberals, and moderates. What is Cuccinelli thinking? He should pay the political price, as father Albert Snyder states. Who ever thought the Cooch would be cozied up with the ACLU? I suppose politics makes real strange bedfellows in this case. Or…perhaps the Cooch agrees with WBC.
Rachel Maddow takes a look at founder John Taunton and the organization FAIR. John Taunton still sits on the board of FAIR. Maddow interviews a rather hostile Stein who is the president of FAIR.
U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva closed his offices in Yuma and Tucson at noon on Friday because of the threatening phone calls. The Congressman says he opposed the legislation that has just been signed into law by Governor Brewer. He specifically says he opposes making it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally.
The Arizona Daily Star reports that Grijalva spokesman Adam Sarvana released a statement Friday saying that the congressman’s office received “some pretty scary calls,” including one from a man “who threatened to go down there and blow everyone’s brains out then go to the border to shoot Mexicans.”
According to the Daily Star:
Grijalva staffer Ruben Reyes said the office has been flooded with calls all week about Senate Bill 1070. About 25 percent are “very racist” in nature, Reyes said, characterizing some as “telling that tortilla-eating wetback to go back to Mexico.”
Has it really come to this? PWC sure dodged the bullet if this is the case. Again, there are just other ways to handle problems. I saw people out throwing stuff, not sure what at cops on TV. People doing that might want to do a little reseach about Kent State….it really isn’t a smart thing to do. I love Arizona. I would not go there now. The Grand Canyon State will have to be grand without me.
Conscience Clause? Where did that come from? Someone slipped that one by me. The more I google, the more I unearth and the angrier I get. This thread needs to be a work in progress. First of all, anyone who has knowledge of Fimian’s position on allowing pharmacists to cherry pick what prescriptions they will fill, please let us know. I don’t have a bone to pick with private pharmacies who post, in clear view on their door that they do not sell or dispense contraception. However, other stores open to the public without disclaimers should really not be involved in type of exclusionary behavior. I consider it equivalent to the Muslim cab driver who wouldn’t let bottles of liquor in his cab. Find another job. 
