This was a busy week for Texas conservatives. In Austin, Sen. Wendy Davis was able to sustain an old-fashioned filibuster (the kind that requires you to stand up and talk non-stop for hours at a time) until the clock ran out on the special session and an anti-abortion bill dominionists were trying to push through at the wire. That got El Perrito lathered up and made an internet star out of Wendy Davis, which got the rest of the Republicans in an uproar.
Then the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that DOMA, passed during Clinton's administration and prohibiting federal benefits to same-sex marriages, was unconstitutional. People like Charles Krauthammer think it's now only a matter of time until gay marriage goes national. As far as I'm concerned, the government could solve the problem by simply terminating every special benefit, privilege, and advantage that it provides to hetero married couples. If hetero marriage is what the Christian god had in mind, it should have remained strictly a religious ceremony and the government shouldn't have rewarded married people with goodies to begin with. The whole mess is a perfect illustration of why we need separation of church and state. Since dominionist Republicans believe the church should BE the state, the court decision lathered them up again.
RWers got some good news when another USSC ruling invalidated a section of the Voting Rights Act that made it difficult for several former slave states to enact Jim Crow laws disenfranching the descendents of slaves. In Texas, this meant its bogus Voter ID law, designed to prevent fraud that never existed, was in Go status again. Other Dixie shit holes like North Carolina and Mississippi rolled out their own bills.
Republicans in the solid red states have used redistricting to lock in majorities in the House of Representatives. The gerrymandering occurred while the VRA was intact, so apparently it couldn't be prevented by the section the court abolished. Most of the states affected by the ruling are already dominated by the GOP, and now they may stay red a while longer than they might have otherwise.
In single-party government, there's always a tendency to overreach. When either party controls the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, it spells trouble. Now that Republican governments in the red states think nobody's watching what they're up to, it's only a matter of time until one or more of them enact really outrageous voter suppression laws, wind up back in court, and have their asses handed to them by a federal judge. It's not a matter of IF it happens, only how long it takes.
Then the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that DOMA, passed during Clinton's administration and prohibiting federal benefits to same-sex marriages, was unconstitutional. People like Charles Krauthammer think it's now only a matter of time until gay marriage goes national. As far as I'm concerned, the government could solve the problem by simply terminating every special benefit, privilege, and advantage that it provides to hetero married couples. If hetero marriage is what the Christian god had in mind, it should have remained strictly a religious ceremony and the government shouldn't have rewarded married people with goodies to begin with. The whole mess is a perfect illustration of why we need separation of church and state. Since dominionist Republicans believe the church should BE the state, the court decision lathered them up again.
RWers got some good news when another USSC ruling invalidated a section of the Voting Rights Act that made it difficult for several former slave states to enact Jim Crow laws disenfranching the descendents of slaves. In Texas, this meant its bogus Voter ID law, designed to prevent fraud that never existed, was in Go status again. Other Dixie shit holes like North Carolina and Mississippi rolled out their own bills.
Republicans in the solid red states have used redistricting to lock in majorities in the House of Representatives. The gerrymandering occurred while the VRA was intact, so apparently it couldn't be prevented by the section the court abolished. Most of the states affected by the ruling are already dominated by the GOP, and now they may stay red a while longer than they might have otherwise.
In single-party government, there's always a tendency to overreach. When either party controls the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, it spells trouble. Now that Republican governments in the red states think nobody's watching what they're up to, it's only a matter of time until one or more of them enact really outrageous voter suppression laws, wind up back in court, and have their asses handed to them by a federal judge. It's not a matter of IF it happens, only how long it takes.
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