The Cream-Filled Center of the Universe.

bemusedlybespectacled:

9 Reasons the Filibuster Is Completely Broken and We Should Fix it

truth-has-a-liberal-bias:

9. Because nothing says democracy like one dude blocking progress for 315 million people.

8. A modern-day “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” remake would be about 15 minutes long, and feature the senator placing a silent filibuster and then skipping town.

7. Requiring a super-majority to pass anything at all is really just a terrible, horrible, no good very bad way to run a country.

6. Lyndon “Master of the Senate” Johnson wouldn’t have had such a cool nickname if he’d had to overcome 386 filibusters. Harry Reid’s faced 386 filibusters. How many filibusters did LBJ face? One.

5. It allows far-right senators to stonewall any bills or nominations that they object to. Or which mildly annoy them. Or just because they feel like it. This is stupid.

4. If government never does anything to help (because of a messed up Senate rule) people start thinking the government CAN’T do anything to help. Which hurts everyone.

3. Fixing the filibuster only requires a majority vote. Kinda ironic, right?

2. If you singlehandedly block proposals that would help millions of people including your own constituents, is it really too much to ask for you to stand up and explain yourself?

1. Because undocumented youth who have never done anything wrong should have a shot at citizenship, women should make the same amount as their male peers, stronger unions would mean a stronger middle class, & there’s too much money in our politics… but bills tackling all of these problems passed the House but were killed by silent filibuster in the Senate.

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In a few weeks the Senate will vote on proposals to fix the filibuster. We need them to pass a strong measure that requires senators to stand up and talk the whole time, and reject a weak “bipartisan” proposal. Sign the petition now, and it will be delivered to the Senate next week.

Please click the link to sign the petition.

PREACH

(via bellatrixissexy)

Pennsylvania GOP Senate Candidate: Getting Pregnant From Rape Is 'Similar' To Having A Baby Out Of Wedlock | ThinkProgress

In the aftermath of Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) offensive and medically inaccurate comments that “legitimate rape” doesn’t often lead to pregnancy, Republicans have been scrambling to distance themselves from Akin. However, in addition to pushing policies that are very much in line with Akin’s anti-choice views, some GOP candidates have similar ignorance about the nature of sexual assault.

Tom Smith, the Republican challenging Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) seat, suggested that having a child out of wedlock was analogous to rape during an interview with a reporter at a press club this afternoon, claiming that it would have a “similar” effect on a father:

MARK SCOLFORO, ASSOCIATED PRESS: How would you tell a daughter or a granddaughter who, God forbid, would be the victim of a rape, to keep the child against her own will? Do you have a way to explain that?

SMITH: I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to.. she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.

SCOLFORO: Similar how?

SMITH: Uh, having a baby out of wedlock.

SCOLFORO: That’s similar to rape?

SMITH: No, no, no, but… put yourself in a father’s situation, yes. It is similar. But, back to the original, I’m pro-life, period.

sunfoundation:

Mapping the earmarks

Across the nation, 33 members of Congress have helped direct more than $300 million in earmarks to dozens of public projects for work in close proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members.

Source:

abaldwin360:

Claiming that “abortion is the leading cause of death in the black community.” The memo (PDF) was circulated by Republicans on the House judiciary committee on Monday in advance of Tuesday’s markup of Rep. Trent Franks’ (R-Ariz.) Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.

Franks’ bill, which is also known as H.R. 3514, didn’t make it out of committee when it was introduced in the last Congress. But the fact that it’s now receiving a markup—a key step on the way to a floor vote—and that 78 cosponsors have signed on suggests that it could proceed to a vote of the full House before November’s elections. In addition to banning abortions based on the race or gender of the fetus, H.R. 3514 would give a woman’s family members the ability to sue abortion providers if they believed an abortion was obtained based on race or sex. Critics warn that it would be next to impossible to prove that an abortion was obtained on the basis of race or gender and fear the provision could lead to nuisance suits against abortion providers by family members who are opposed to abortion on principle.

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In preparation for the 2012 election, GOP state lawmakers launched what former President Bill Clinton described as the most determined voter disenfranchisement effort since Jim Crow. The centerpiece of this effort are so-called “voter ID” laws, which could prevent millions of voters from casting a ballot in 2012. Moreover, because the voters disenfranchised by voter ID are disproportionately minorities, students and low-income voters — all demographics that tend to vote for Democrats — the overall effect of these laws is to skew the electorate towards Republicans.

Voter ID laws are also illegal. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act forbids state voting restrictions that have a greater impact on minority voters than on others. There is, however, a catch. According to one of the nation’s top voting rights experts, before DOJ can bring a lawsuit challenging this illegal voter disenfranchisement, it must first allow voters to be disenfranchised:

“In order to bring a Section 2 case, you’d have to as a practical matter show two things. One, that there’s a significant racial disparity and two, that the burden of getting an ID is significant enough for us to care about,” Samuel Bagenstos, who was until recently the number two official in the Civil Rights Division, told TPM.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Indiana voter ID case also suggests the court would be skeptical of a Section 2 case. And regardless of how the courts would find, any Section 2 case would almost certainly have to wait until after the 2012 election, since the evidence that the laws were discriminatory “can only be gathered during an election that takes place when the law is enacted,” Bagenstos said.

Sadly, the picture is even worse than Bagenstos suggests. If voter ID laws succeed in changing the result of the 2012 presidential election, than the next Attorney General will literally owe their job to their continued existence — hardly a recipe for vigorous enforcement of voting rights laws. Worse, the new Congress could very well owe its majority to voter disenfranchisement, and it could even repeal the Voting Rights Act outright if this law threatened their ability to remain in office.

The drafters of the Voting Rights Act anticipated this very problem, and they responded to it with Second 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 requires many states to “preclear” any new voting rules with a federal court or the Department of Justice, but it faces its own problem. Two years ago, the Supreme Court’s conservatives strongly hinted that they may strike down the provision of the VRA requiring many states to preclear new voting laws, and another recent case dealing with race discrimination in the workplace raises the — albeit less likely — possibility that they could also invalidate the VRA’s ban on laws that have a disproportionate impact on minorities.

So if DOJ acts now, they could run headlong into many of the same justices that brought us Bush v. Gore. If DOJ waits, then the fate of our democracy could rest in the hands of U.S. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. None of this means that DOJ should hesitate one second to block illegal voter ID laws under Section 5 when it has the opportunity to do so, but it does mean that the American people may effectively be powerless against a widespread effort to rig our future elections.

A Warm Place (At the Heart of it All): cognitivedissonance: BART Police Arrest Journalists, Cite KGO, KTVU at...

cognitivedissonance:

BART Police Arrest Journalists, Cite KGO, KTVU at BART Protest. Homeland Security Present

Thursday’s No Justice No BART protest–which shut down Powell Street Station in San Francisco–turned into an ugly attack on free speech and freedom of the press when BART…