Category Archives: Politics

May 29, 2023 · 5:10 am

Republican right-to-lifers are not moderates

The Washington Post reports that 12-week bans such as North Carolina’s are the new Republican forced-birth approach: see, they’re not trying to ban all abortions, only after the first trimester. They’re moderate — now, forget about abortion and vote Republican!

As the article notes, it’s not “before 12 weeks you have a right to abortion.” There’s a 72-hour waiting period after the first appointment, added regulations on clinics and, as Vox says, a ban on mifepristone at home. Oh, and the doctor must send a detailed report on the patient’s abortion/pregnancy history to the state. As LGM says (I don’t have the link), some forced-birthers point out that France (for example), has a ban after 14 weeks; before that, however, they don’t bog the process down with regulations and it’s covered by state health insurance. Not the same.

As noted at the second link, neither NC nor most other states with strict abortion bans have done much to expand the social safety net for pregnant women and mothers (Florida, at the same link, may become an exception). They are, however, perfectly fine with throwing money at crisis-pregnancy centers (including money marked for poor families) even though they don’t provide birth control, don’t give accurate information and often don’t have medical personnel on staff. But hey, regular ob/gyn care is nose-diving as doctors back away from right-to-life states — maybe bad medical help is better than none (said sarcastically).

It’s not just these details that give the lie to Republican pretense of moderation (and never forget, the forced-birth movement lies a lot), it’s that this is nothing but a temporary political tactic. This is not “we’ll compromise and settle for a 12-week ban,” it’s “we’ll compromise until we have the power to get what we want without any electoral consequence.” Maybe that’s by gutting voting rights (something NC, like Florida, has been working on for years) or the theocratic takeover some of them dream of; either way, if they can get away with it they’ll be all in on bans.

The Idaho GOP has already rejected life-of-the-mother exemptions; I doubt they’re alone. And even with exceptions, the bills are written to scare doctors out of abortion, no matter how awful the case. Many of the movement may not be as extreme as this guy, but as I’ve written before, that doesn’t mean they’ll stand up to extremists. After all, underlying the right-wing, as Kristen Kobes Du Mez says, is a horror of women defying men’s control. How can a man be master in his house if he knows his woman can divorce him?

Don’t get me wrong, 12 weeks with insane restrictions is preferable to six weeks. But it isn’t good. And the people pushing it definitely are not moderates on the issue.

For more on forced-birth bullshit, Undead Sexist Cliches is available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holders.

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May 25, 2023 · 5:15 am

Assault survivors are not at fault for not resolving the problem of evil

While browsing threads on Twitter the other day I saw a random outraged atheist ranting about one of the survivors of the mall shooting in Allen, Texas. Outraged Atheist was outraged because the survivor had thanked god, which proves religious believers are monsters: he’s saying he deserved to live but the victims didn’t! What a shitty human being!

No, that’s not what he’s saying, but that’s not the first time I’ve seen similar arguments. Back in the 1990s, skater Tonya Harding paid someone to assault skating rival Nancy Kerrigan with a hammer to her knees. At some point after the attack, Kerrigan asked, as people do, how something this would happen to her. A windbag columnist (I don’t have the name) declared this proved Kerrigan was a shallow, selfish bitch — what she should have done is ask why violence and assault happen at all. By focusing on herself, she proved she thinks she’s some special snowflake who should never suffer anything bad.

I have very little sympathy for this ass-hat viewpoint. The Allen mall dude just lived through a nightmare; Kerrigan, an assault that could have crippled her. Focusing on themselves rather than pondering “why does evil happen? What does it say about god/the universe that terrible things happen to innocent people?” seems natural to me. As Susan Neiman says in Evil in Modern Thought, even secular, rationalist philosophers have struggled with the problem of evil. I’m inclined to give people coming out of a traumatic experience a little slack.

Besides, the Allen survivor didn’t say he deserved God’s help better than the dead. The idea that God saves us not for merit but for his own incomprehensible reasons is a common one in Christianity. “Why didn’t God save the others?” is a valid question but I don’t think the survivor was offering “I’m better than them” as the answer — if he’d said it, the Outraged Atheist didn’t mention it (I’m sure he would have).

Not what I’d intended to post today but I wanted to get that off my chest. To make up for taking your time, here’s a photo of a silly bush in our neighborhood.

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May 22, 2023 · 5:15 am

E. Jean Carrol’s win against Trump triggers rape apologists

E. Jean Carroll sued Trump in civil court for rape, sexual assault and defamation and won $5 million in damages.  The jury took around three hours to decide Trump had sexually abused Carroll but didn’t find for Carroll on the rape charge. In other words they believed Trump had groped her, inserted his fingers into her but not necessarily his penis (the latter is a necessity for the New York definition of rape).

As Shakezula says, this is a win for Carroll and human decency but it was never going to change Trump voters’ views. And it didn’t: Trump supporters, however, are loud and proud, claiming TFG has been vindicated: the jurors said he didn’t rape her! The jurors said she lied! Clearly he didn’t defame her either! Misogynist Matt Walsh is among the right-wingers demanding harsher penalties for false rape accusations — they should go to prison for just as long as a rapist would get. Unsurprisingly there’s no suggestion we go beyond that, that false pedophilia accusers get the same sentence a pedophile would.

No surprise. Trump’s misogyny and his ability to get away with treating women like shit (not all women, but many of them) is a big part of his appeal: “Fear and hatred of women is at the absolute center of right wing politics in this country. That fascism is a wildly misogynistic ideology is not exactly some sort of coincidence.” Plenty of right-wingers (and a lot of people who aren’t right-wingers) think prosecuting rape is an attack on men.

Like all misogynist arguments, this is bullshit. The jury not calling it rape is a technicality. They believe Trump assaulted Carroll but they balked at labeling it rape — it’s a laden word, even though I think it’s the right one — or questioned whether he’d used his penis rather than his finger. This is not saying “Carroll lied” but She Lied is a common rape apologist argument. According to them, a woman accusing the wrong man isn’t mistaken — mistaken identity happens in many criminal cases — but willfully lying or lashing out because of her buyer’s remorse.

As the National Sexual Violence Resource Center says, this also affects police reporting on rape. Cops can close a case as “unfounded” if they investigate and determine the rape didn’t happen. In practice they routinely brand a case unfounded without an investigation: the victim didn’t report immediately, doesn’t want to talk, is vague about details, etc. All of these are common in real rape cases but cops buy into bullshit about women making it up as often. Trump supporters aren’t outliers in American rape culture … but that’s not an excuse.

For more of my opinion on rape culture and rape apologists (spoiler: I’m not a fan), check out Undead Sexist Cliches, available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holders.

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May 18, 2023 · 5:29 am

The hate that dares not speak its name

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past, when I was a columnist for the Destin Log newspaper, nothing generated more outraged mail than writing about right-wing terrorism.

It didn’t matter if I situated it carefully in the context of terrorism overall (a lot of groups in American history have resorted to terror tactics), readers still screamed there was no such thing! I was trying to tarnish respectable American conservatives by claiming they were outlaws like eco-terrorists and Muslims! Shut up, shut up, shut up!

They were, for the record, completely wrong: right-wing terrorism is a serious threat. Nevertheless, I’m not the only one conservatives complain about: any time Homeland Security brings up right-wing terrorism there are screams of outrage that conservatives are being demonized! Routinely on Twitter I see people equate “armed thugs showing up at school board meetings is bad” with “Democrats say parents are armed thugs!” Or Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville complaining that fighting white supremacy in the military is fighting ordinary Americans. Funny how they don’t have any problem with the military excluding “woke” Americans.

I thought (and still do) that part of this was that it disturbed the post-9/11 narrative that equated Muslims with terrorists. Fear, too, that the massive security state developed in the Bush years might be turned against them. The same people who insisted that spying on nonviolent liberal groups or tapping hundreds of phone calls didn’t matter — people who had nothing to hide had nothing to fear! — squealed like stuck pigs at the thought of being on the receiving end.

A third, uglier reason is that many right-wingers  were on the terrorists’ side. On Substack, Noah Berlatsky makes this point about the neo-Nazi shooter in Allen, Texas: rather than argue “the problem is Nazism, not guns” they deny the shooter’s politics: “Gun rights proponents won’t tactically distance themselves from the far right because their ideological and personal connections to the far right are too strong.”

As plenty of liberal bloggers have said, the same is true of the Republican Party. For all their claims that left-wingers are fascists, real American Nazis are a solid block of Republican voters. The party’s leader moved to overthrow the government on 1/6 and Republicans still support him. They still welcome anti-Semitic support while squealing about their support for Israel. Party leaders talk all the time about getting violent while insisting they have no responsibility for violence. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott has talked about pardoning the man who murdered a BLM protester, though he’s been silent about it as the killer’s extremism became clear.

Like Tuberville they’re not going to denounce the extremists. They’ve met the enemy and the enemy is them. As Michelle Goldberg puts it, “guns are at the center of a worldview in which the ability to launch an armed rebellion must always be held in reserve.” Their ability, not anyone else’s.

As LGM says, this will continue to be a problem: “we are going to have a kind of low-level very informal civil war for many decades to come, as Red America and Blue America increasingly come to the conclusion that they don’t want to live with each other any more, but can find no way, either practically or emotionally, to break up.”

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May 15, 2023 · 5:15 am

Republicans continue treating women as incubators: abortion links.

“Rather than introduce a fresh bill, they gutted an unrelated measure on child safety and then inserted 46 pages of abortion restrictions. ” — from an article on North Carolina’s new abortion ban. It’s bad (no surprise) and Sen. Tricia Cotham, who just switched to Republican, has thrown away her solid pro-choice record by voting for it. Among other details “People would also only be allowed to get a medication abortion until 10 weeks of pregnancy, and to get one, they would have to go to three separate, in-person appointments that are 72 hours apart.”

Two other Republicans who said they wanted to stick with current law switched and voted for it; another didn’t show up at all. Rep. John Bradford responded to reporters’ questions by not answering and blathering about liberal propaganda.

That particular point is noteworthy because “anti-abortion activists know that so long as abortion pills—and accurate and reliable information about how to use them—remains widely accessible, their entire crusade is doomed to fail. ” No wonder they want mifepristone outlawed. And they’re increasingly fighting abortion providers by resorting to criminal tactics.

The American College of Pediatricians is anti-abortion and anti-trans and as a Wired article shows, full of shit: “Most of the College’s research had been ‘written by one person,’ according to minutes from a 2006 meeting, which were included in the leak. The College was failing to make a splash. In the future, one director suggested, papers rejected by medical journals ‘should be published on the web.’ The vote to do so was unanimous (though the board decided the term ‘not published’ was nicer than ‘rejected’).” Shakezula has more.

Despite the right-wing touting adoption as an alternative to abortion, Marjorie Taylor Greene dismisses a stepmom’s opinion because she’s not “a biological mother”

Exceptions to abortion bans typically don’t amount to crap. In Tennessee, for instance, a woman with a life-threatening pregnancy still couldn’t get an abortion.

The Montana Supreme Court has ruled the state constitution protects abortion. Republicans just passed multiple abortion bans anyway. Over in Oregon, Dems have the votes to pass abortion-rights and other legislation but Republicans simply walk out so there’s no quorum. In Ohio they’re engaging in elaborate gamesmanship to keep an abortion-rights measure off the ballot.

“She told her friends Slaton drove her home the next morning, stopping at a drugstore so she could obtain emergency contraception. Slaton at one point proposed to penalize the use of emergency contraception, including what is known as the Plan B pill.” — from an article about Bryan Slaton, a Texas state legislator who supposedly hates groomers but had no trouble hitting on an intoxicated 19-year-old staffer.

On a sort-of up note, the South Carolina legislature has been debating a ban on abortion after conception but women in the legislature, including pro-life Republicans, have blocked it. So that’s a point in their favor but on the other hand, two of the Republicans were fine with a six-week ban.

Over in Louisiana, rape and incest victims testified in support of a rape and incest exceptions to the state’s abortion ban: “Some Republican committee members got up and left in the middle of witness testimony.”

NC’s misogynist Lt. Governor Mark Robinson thinks mass shootings are punishment for abortion. It’s always abortion or gays with religious conservatives, never that the US doesn’t beat its swords into plowshares or usury or that rich people don’t give enough to the poor. I wonder what he’d say about a Texas man murdering his girlfriend after she got an abortion. Then again, I don’t really want to know.

For more on forced-birther arguments and why they’re bullshit, check out my Undead Sexist Cliches, available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holders.

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May 11, 2023 · 5:10 am

Making Christianity more vicious

About forty years ago, PBS did a documentary on what was then the extreme right of American Christian conservatism, people who openly advocated for theocracy. The kind of extremists that supposedly sensible moderate conservatives such as Jerry Falwell backed away from (though Falwell was hardly a moderate, being a devout segregationist).

That was then; now calls for a “Christian nation” and claims we were always a Christian nation (until the godless liberals took over) are the Republican norm. And more and more of them are open about an extreme, militant Christianity, asserting, for example, that it’s good to burn books. They really hate “the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject.”

Or consider Republican Mark Steffen, Kansas State Senator: he believes the US is a Christian nation (wrong) and the separation of church and state is a myth (also wrong) and says he’ll legislate based on his Biblical worldview and what his community wants. When a Muslim in his district asked how he’d represent her his response was that he’d “try to convert you.”

Over in South Carolina, Senator Tim Scott says government should kneel before the church. I recommend reporters in the relevant areas ask both him and Steffen how they define things like Christianity and “the church.” Does it include Catholics? Mormons? Churches that allow gay marriage or women preaching? When Scott says Christians can “exercise their faith wherever they go” what does he mean? That they have a right to pray anywhere? They should feel free to insult and bully gays?

Another shift is that right-wingers are increasingly trying to broaden the right to discriminate beyond religion. In Florida there’s a bill that might let doctors refuse patients based on moral objections — and possibly let insurers refuse coverage too (Republicans deny that, but they lie a lot). I think that’s significant. First Amendment exemptions were based on freedom of religion, which is not the same as morality. The latter gives bigots considerably more leeway to discriminate.

Of course they’d shriek blue murder if this were used against them (“Sorry Pastor Steve, you got this disease sleeping around on your wife — I can’t condone your adultery.”) or if doctors claimed their morals required them to provide patients with abortions or trans-related medical care. On the first point, they’re probably counting on a)liberals generally aren’t fans of discrimination, and b)all the right-wing justices throwing out opposing claims.

For the second, Republicans won’t acknowledge those religious claims as legitimate. A synagogue has filed a lawsuit arguing that Florida’s abortion restrictions violate Jewish religious views; a right-winger made the argument that other than conservative Orthodox Judaism, Jews don’t have real religious beliefs. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone made the same argument against liberal Christians down the road. Especially given the growing cries that liberals are literally agents of Satan.

As Fred Clark says, when Texas has schools post the Ten Commandments, it’s going to be the Protestant version — which makes it less about morals and more about See, Our Religion is Best! The same purpose as Confederate monuments. Oh, and forget parents’ rights: as not enough parents are right-wing Christian Republicans, Family Research Council urges those who are to indoctrinate other people’s children.

The supposed secular rationale is that posting the Commandments and imposing religion on others will make us better people. Never mind that when Protestant Christian Bible readings and prayer were the norm in schools nice white Christians lynched thousands of blacks. Nor did Christianity stop the Southern Baptists from covering up abuse and harassment. Nor, as Texas State Rep. James Talarico points out, will posting commandments about having no graven images do much to stop school shootings. No more than replacing school mental health professionals with chaplains will do students any good. But I’m sure the churches will appreciate the added revenue stream.

And when all else fails they can shriek that whoever opposes them serves Satan. It often sounds over the top and comical but people have gone to jail in past Satanic panics. The religious right is following a long tradition of loving America while hating their fellow Americans.

Ansley Quiros says that we too need to “unabashedly invoke the language of morality. Of religion. We must make the choices plain. Admittedly, that is difficult when so much of our political speech is spiritually tinctured hyperbole. And yet, those who care, still, about goodness and justice and mercy, should not abandon the effort. ” I think President Biden gets this, for example, marking the careers and futures destroyed by the 1950s lavender panic.

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May 8, 2023 · 5:15 am

The wisdom of our judiciary

Republicans have won the popular vote exactly once since 1988. Unfortunately the electoral college and other factors — including Democrats not filling slots fast enough during the Obama years — mean the right wing now has the upper hand in the courts and little chance of losing it any time soon. And no, they’re not driven by a belief in legal history and tradition, just a desire to fulfill right-wing dreams … while whining that they’re not getting the respect as wise solons they think they’re entitled to.

Currently federal agencies can make reasonable interpretations of ambiguous Congressional directives. The Supreme Court may decide that’s a no-go, which would nullify regulations unless Congress spells out exactly what should be done. Congress can’t foresee everything so that’s a return to the days of unregulated business.

A judge in Arkansas who accepted contributions against the law — because he considered the law unconstitutional — sentenced a student protesting at a school board meeting to ten days in jail.

When judges rule that things such as abortion or interracial marriage left to the states, that’s no different from saying they’re okay with them being illegal. If they claim of course they don’t want states to ban interracial marriage but they certainly have the right to — well, either they’re lying or they’re buying into the Shirley exception.

While a lot of conservatives wring their hands over criminals who escape judgment through “legal loopholes” they have little problem with innocent people going to prison for the same kind of legal loophole. Just as they’ve worked to make Miranda rights toothless.

It seems there’s a lot of possible corruption on the Supreme Court but judicial ethics rules don’t apply so there’s no remedy. And John Roberts gives Congress the finger (politely) for even raising the topic. Why wouldn’t he? Though depressingly it’s not just that Thomas and the others are unethical: given his and Ginni’s annual income is above a half-million, it’s depressing how little he sold out for.

The North Carolina Supreme Court flipped Republican in 2022. They’ve seized the opportunity to reverse past court decisions such as one striking down Republican gerrymanders.

LGM points out that the world in which most of these justices moved for much of their life was a male-dominated misogynist one.

To wrap up, some more legal notes: One, over in Texas, some prosecutors in blue states have said they won’t prioritize abortion cases. The state house has passed a bill that would allow citizens to use this as grounds for removal from office, with Gov. Gregg Abbott appointing a replacement until the next election. On and anti-vax Texas AG Ken Paxton plans to investigate vaccine makers and hold them to account for … um, making vaccines?

A woman who plowed into BLM protesters with her car got community service for her assault.

Second, Mike Lindell (the My Pillow guy) offered $5 million to anyone who disproved some of his election-fraud claims. Someone did, Lindell refused to pay. A court says he has to. Even in this era it’s not all bad news. As witness four more Proud Boys have been convicted of sedition.

Third, the WaPo looks at Democratic attorney generals who are pro-choice, pro-gay rights and more. Again, not all the news is bad.

And while I’m not a Satanist, if the courts are going to allow religion in schools that should definitely apply to Satanist clubs.

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May 6, 2023 · 12:07 pm

Writers on strike! There’d be film at 11 but we have no script!

The Washington Post provides the basics on why screenwriters are striking, what they want and how it will affect TV.

Vanity Fair looks at the current streaming environment and how it’s already become hard for writers to make a living in it. “Wall Street changed the rules of the game,” says Marc Guggenheim, a veteran showrunner. Instead of chasing subscriber growth with great content, streamers are now directed to focus on profitability. “Overnight, all the streamers will suddenly be measured by a completely different yardstick that they weren’t built to meet.”

If you want a primer on the topic, these articles should do the trick.

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May 2, 2023 · 5:10 am

AI and other science and tech topics.

“People have reported the voice of their loved ones being recreated to perpetuate scams. Start-ups have emerged that scrape the internet for high-quality speech samples and bundle hundreds of voices into libraries, and sell them to companies for their commercials, in-house trainings, video game demos and audiobooks, charging less than $150 per month.” — from an article about how AI may kill voice actors’ careers.

What effect will AI-generated images have on porn?

AI deepfakes are hurting women already but some women are doing their best to fight back.

The flip side: some hustlers have figured out how AI can help them work two salaried jobs or more.

A new food safety law was supposed to avoid sesame-contamination (it’s an allergen) the same way companies avoid peanut contamination. Instead, some companies just add sesame flour to food.

Using Excel for genetics data is not a good approach.

“When relocating, villagers face a choice of either leaving behind the bones of ancestors, or exhuming them and taking them to the new site. Either choice is deeply traumatic.” — an excellent look at the physical, financial, social and spiritual challenges Fiji faces moving villages to escape climate change.“New swarms of satellite constellations, such as SpaceX’s Starlink, threaten to outshine the real celestial objects that capture astronomers’ interest—and that humans have admired and pondered for all of history.”

Water is scarce in parts of the west, and IT data centers suck it up.

“The problem was that the most efficient way to win baseball games under the rules as they existed turned out to be highly inefficient for the purpose of entertaining the spectators and TV audiences who make major league baseball major.” — on how baseball managing has come to resemble AI.

“The products shown in targeted ads were, on average, roughly 10 percent more expensive than what users could find by searching online. And the products were more than twice as likely to be sold by lower-quality vendors, as measured by their Better Business Bureau ratings.”

#SFWApro. Covers by Werner Roth, Jack Kirby, Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky and Carmine Infantino. All rights remain with current holders.

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May 1, 2023 · 5:10 am

Florida Man, Texas Man (and other state and local atrocities)

Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine is cool with erasing gay and trans people to supposedly protect children.

Unsurprisingly Ron DeSantis is cool with singling out Disney for higher taxes to punish them for not hating gays enough. Republican Nick DeCeglie has slipped an amendment into a bill that would target Disney for monorail inspections.

Some Florida legislators say they’re fed up with DeSantis using state policy to build his presidential cred. One sign is that DeSantis’ bill on suing media outlets more easily is DOA. Too bad that’s not the case for a bill that might let doctors refuse patients based on moral objections — and possibly let insurers refuse coverage too (Republicans deny that last part, but they lie a lot). But don’t worry for DeSantis, the Republicans in the legislature are all in on abortion bans, mother’s health be damned.

The next Florida health emergency might require legislative approval before health officials do anything.

“If someone wants to come to a public space and say, ‘We should reinstitute slavery,’ why are we afraid?” — Fla. Republican Spencer Roach on a bill he sponsored forcing colleges to host right-wing speakers in the name of Free Speech. Roach is also sponsoring a bill that would override local historic preservation rules to make it easier to build high rises.

Florida college students are not fond of DeSantis’ efforts to make state schools conform to party doctrine.

One Florida school district is currently dealing with fallout after a teacher showed a Confederate pride video celebrating the glorious CSA. Hmm, do you suppose DeStalinist will denounce it for possibly causing some students discomfort? Probably the teacher will do better than the anti-DeSantis superintendent whose license may be revoked for his defiance.

Don’t think it’s all about hating LGBTQ, Jews and uppity women and POC, though: there’s money in it: “The plan—which was proposed in March by board chair Bridget Ziegler, a co-founder of the right-wing book-banning group Moms for Liberty and wife of the state GOP chair—would have cost the school district $28,000 and given Vermilion the job of reviewing and recommending teacher lesson plans, textbooks, and library books. The initial proposal would have also had the newfound consultancy agency sit in on teacher interviews and review district policies and procedures, costing the school district $4,820 a month.”

Wouldn’t you know, Florida birthed Moms for Liberty, which masks their hate by pretending to protect children. And if you’re wondering about all those Republican states weakening child labor laws, they also trace back to one Florida right-wing group.

The Texas Senate has banned tenure for new professors, though the bill may have a tougher time in the house. The Senate also passed a bill requiring posting the Ten Commandments in schools., which Lt. Governor Dan Patrick brags will bring prayer back to schools (spoiler: it never left). They’re also busy restricting library books. Oh, and restricting which precincts you can vote in. Oh and here’s a goody: by increasing medical liability for any problems with trans care, even if the doctor’s not at fault, a new bill would leave doctors on the hook if anything goes wrong. What a vicious, sneaky way to discourage doctors providing care.

In my state, North Carolina, Tricia Cotham — the representative who recently switched from Dem to Republican — is a perfect example of Murc’s law. It’s not because there’s any personal gain to her from siding with the dominant party, it’s that her evil Democratic colleagues forced her to switch. She’s apparently gotten rid of her support for gay rights; too bad as NC Republicans are joining in on the criminalize-drag-show trend.

Montana tells NC trans legislators to hold my beer. Trans legislator Zooey Zephyr stood up to the powers that be on this issue. So did her supporters. The powers that be, as you can see, were not happy (she’s now having to vote remotely, having been banned from the floor).

Given right-to-lifers’ use of the Comstock laws and other old anti-abortion laws, it’s good Michigan Democrats are repealing the state’s ban on couples living together. Republicans oppose repeal. Michigan’s also repealed the state’s old abortion ban. North Dakota, however, has banned it almost completely — and there are no abortion clinics left in the state.

Alabama forced a state official out for writing the wrong sort of book.

In Georgia, Chatam County Republicans want to ban LGBTQ from the Republican Party.

Tennessee State Rep. Scotty Campbell was all in favor of expelling the two black reps who took an anti-gun stance. Turns out he’s resigning over sexual harassment.

An Ohio anti-trans activist told the legislature that non-Christian elected officials are possessed by demons.

A New Mexico state law guarantees access to abortion. A forced-birth city is suing against it.

Right-wing fascists took over a California town. Now one journalist covering them faces death threats. In Michigan’s quietly Republican Ottawa County, things have also gone crazy.

Who knows what’s ahead? Right-wing twit Ben Shapiro thinks local communities should be able to ban men from wearing traditional female clothes in public. Love that right-wing fondness for limited government.

 

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