Looking back on a good week.
Next week is going to be a humdinger for Arizona progressives in terms of the bad legislation on the agenda but this past week ended on a couple of positive notes and I think we should take a moment to appreciate them. 1. Komen/Planned Parenthood smackdown. Supporters of comprehensive (and that includes reproductive) women’s health [...]
Ciphers, the lot of them
ci·pher noun, often attributive \ˈsī-fər\ Definition of CIPHER 1 a : zero 1a b : one that has no weight, worth, or influence : nonentity So much going on today! Hard to pick what to write about. Let’s see: The independent redistricting outrage (public meeting going on in Scottsdale as we speak, with many of [...]
My report from the Church Lady convention
I went to the Center For Arizona Policy Faith in Action Tour, featuring Dr. Del Tackett yesterday morning. I stayed through most of it and took some notes. Let me start by saying that the “non-denominational Bethany Bible Church is enormous. It’s a large campus with several buildings, including the spacious auditorium where the Tour [...]
It’s because they care about you and want to protect you. You murderer.
It’s been an interesting week for those of us keeping track of women’s rights in Arizona. Yesterday the Maricopa County Superior Court put a stay on recently passed anti-choice legislation until a hearing August 22 where Arizona’s Planned Parenthood will challenge the laws. Planned Parenthood says the new rules would put medically unnecessary limits on [...]
Salient clips from yesterday’s special session
The link to yesterday’s Special Session in the AZ House is up at azleg.gov and I clipped out a few of the GOP speeches I found striking. I was going to do a longer post but I think these clips illustrate the situation perfectly. First there’s Rep. Steve Montenegro (R-Litchfield Park), who seems to be [...]
As long as the unemployed are going to have conditions put on them
The AZ lege has until Tuesday to extend 20 weeks of federal unemployment benefits to jobless people out of work for 79 weeks. The Republicans are balking at this because Freedom Fairy Unicorn Economics dictates that not starving people makes them unwilling to take the thousands of jobs not actually being offered by philanthropic employers. [...]
Okay to pull bogus undercover stings on Planned Parenthood. Not okay to do legit undercover reports on farms and meatpacking plants.
Opponents of reproductive choice made hay over anti-abortion/contraception activist Lila Rose’s dishonest “sting” operations on Planned Parenthood clinics across the country. Her operatives mostly found clinic workers responding to a possible sex trafficking operation the way they were supposed to, which was to report it to the authorities. (The one employee who violated ethical standards [...]
