Daily Kos

Rachel Maddow devoted the last segment of her show Thursday to Michigan, and to the astounding lengths to which that state's Republican legislature and governor have gone to essentially overthrow democracy. If you can, watch the whole thing:

(The full transcript)

Here's the story in a nutshell: In the early 1960s, the state adopted a constitutional amendment that slowed the implementation of new laws so that they wouldn't take effect until three months after the end of the legislative session in which they were passed. They did, however, allow for passage of emergency legislation, provided the legislature could get a two-thirds majority vote on the legislation. With a two-thirds vote, a law could go into effect immediately. In an emergency.

As Maddow reported last night, that's not how it's been working lately.

The Democrats in Michigan say that since Republicans took over the Michigan house, they've passed 566 bills. We have looked into that count ourselves. It does seem accurate and the Republicans are not contesting it.

Of those 566 bills, 546, all about 20 of them, were passed under the immediate effect clause -- 96 percent of the bills they've passed have essentially been an emergency. Almost everything they've done has been done under this provision of the constitution that let's you put things into effect immediately because you've got a super majority. They've been designed to rush from the legislature to Governor Snyder for a quick signature and into full immediate effect that day, that minute, right now.

This is new in Michigan governance. This is not the way Michigan was set up. This is not the way it was supposed to be.

They have used that procedure to pass massively undemocratic legislation: the emergency manager law that lets the state take over towns, boot out the elected town or city officials, and just take over; the stripping of public employee benefits to domestic partners; blocking the expansion of the graduate students' union. They will almost certainly use it to pass pending voter suppression laws.

And how they've done this is remarkable. These "immediate effect" laws are supposed to get a two-thirds majority. That's numerically impossible in the House, because Republicans don't have two-thirds majority and Democrats have remained united as a bloc against them. The House Republicans simply ignore the two-thirds part of the law. They hold a separate "immediate effect" vote after voting in a bill, and rather than doing a roll call vote, just simply eyeball the assembly and call it two-thirds.

Michigan Democrats, after a year of this, finally sued, and on Monday got a county judge to issue "a temporary injunction ordering Michigan House Republicans to follow the law, to follow the constitution, to let the minority vote even though the minority are Democrats." Why it took state Democrats so long to figure that one out is a bit of mystery, but they did, and they got the attention of the courts which is going to be critical in the next steps of the fight.

But what is remarkable here is the extent to which a democratically elected legislature and governor have overturned democracy. They have stripped the votes of all of the people living in the cities and towns who have been taken over by emergency managers by removing the officials they elected. They have stripped the votes of legislators in their very state government. They are about to prevent untold thousands from even being able to cast a ballot in November.

Undoubtedly, all in the name of freedom.

(Eclectablog has a comprehensive post detailing Maddow's full report.)

• Today's comic by Matt Bors is A PSA for Zimmerman apologists:
  

• Kaili Joy Gray will be on The War Room with Jennifer Granholm tonight on Current TV at 6 PM PT.
• What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...
  

• Steve King is still a rotten human being, by Hunter
• Rush Limbaugh is right: College tuition is too high. It goes without saying he's wrong about why, by Laura Clawson
• They are who we thought they were: the radical and extreme conservative movement, by Armando
• Can anyone force National Organization for Marriage to follow the law, by Scott Wooledge
• Pagan roots of Easter, by Denise Oliver Velez
• Reports from the field: the Republican war on caterpillars, by Dante Atkins
• Conservative group caught lying ... they repeat lie anyway, by Mark E. Andersen

• AMERICAblog Gay would like folks to take a moment and email Landmark Theatres at Q1Landmark@gmail.com to urge them to show a (gay) marriage equality documentary at their cinemas nationwide. Make sure you include where you're from. You can read more about it here.

• Once a blessing, now a curse, the tea party is being used as a cudgel by Democrats against Republicans this year. Polls indicate that the phony, Koch-funded "movement" that brought a boatload of extremists to the House of Representatives is hurting GOP chances at a time when Republicans already are having a hard time.
• Oh yeah, something definitely stinks:
  

  A Minnesota waitress had to hire a lawyer to force police to return a $12,000 tip she gave to them as lost property. From Reuters: "Knutson, a mother of five, called local police and turned in the cash as lost property. At first, police said the cash would be hers if it remained unclaimed for 60 days, according to the lawsuit Knutson filed against the department. At the end of the 60 days, however, the department told Knutson she would have to wait another 30 days to get the money. Then police told her she would not receive the money at all because it smelled of marijuana and had been seized under a state law."

• Green energy loans will soon be issued again. And no doubt the Republicans will be screaming "Solyndra" at the top of their lungs while lobbying to get  companies in their districts a slice.
• ACT-UP arose 25 years ago and developed a fresh, aggressive activism:
  

  The gay ghetto was a tinderbox by March 1987. Ten thousand New Yorkers had already become sick with AIDS; half were dead. Along Christopher Street you could see the dazed look of the doomed, skeletons and their caregivers alike. There was not even a false-hope pill for doctors to prescribe.

  Then the posters appeared. A small collective of artists had been working on a striking image they hoped would galvanize the community to act. Overnight, images bearing the radical truism SILENCE = DEATH appeared on walls and scaffolding all over lower Manhattan. The fuse was set—and then the writer and activist Larry Kramer struck a match.

• "Climate skeptics"—also known as bullshitters and Koch flacks—take another hit over claims that there's no connection between global warming and CO₂ levels.
• Still getting elected after all these years: Former District of Columbia mayor and now councilman Marion Barry apologized for comments about getting rid of "dirty" Asian businesses in his district.
• The National Center on Transgender Equality has released information about barriers and unmet needs in the area of transgender sexual and reproductive health.
• Shouldn't the NRA be protesting this Secret Service affront to gun-owners?
  

  To prepare for unruly protestors at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn is drawing up a list of things that the police will treat as "security threats." On the list: BB guns, water pistols, masks, pieces of string longer than 6 inches. Not on the list: Actual, bullet-shooting guns. Buckhorn's hands are tied when it comes to banning these popular weapons for assassins because Florida law mandates that "any local ordinance that regulates guns is void," the city attorney told the Tampa Tribune. While the Secret Service will take away the guns of conventioneers who enter the event's inner sanctum (let's hope not from their cold, dead hands), anybody will be allowed to pack heat in the outer "clean zone." Protest signs, however, are still forbidden if they include wood sticks larger than a ruler.

• Gallup Poll shows Americans split along racial lines in Trayvon Martin shooting case. For instance, 73 percent of African Americans said shooter George Zimmerman would have been arrested if Martin had been white; only 35 percent of white Americans said so.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson

Way back in February, the Wisconsin state Assembly followed the state Senate in voting to repeal the enforcement part of the state's equal pay law. The legislature then waited more than a month to send the bill to Gov. Scott Walker for his signature.

He had, according to the state constitution, six days to act on the bill. The deadline was 5:00 p.m. on Thursday. The governor quietly signed the bill into law on Thursday, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau, and it is now called Act 219.

Walker's office did not return repeated requests for comment.

Gee, do you think they're hoping this won't draw much attention?

Republicans, including Mitt Romney, have been lining up to say they think the Augusta National Golf Club should admit women. Just days ago, in the run-up to the Wisconsin presidential primary, Scott Walker was pretty much Romney's hero. Has the Etch-A-Sketch already shaken and wiped that one clean, or would the dividing line between discrimination against women that Romney supports and discrimination against women that he doesn't support fall somewhere between membership rules in Augusta and paychecks in Kenosha? Walker didn't make discrimination against women legal, after all. He just took away the legal recourse women who have been discriminated against previously had.

Walker's leading Democratic challengers, Kathleen Falk and Tom Barrett, condemned the move:

Falk said Walker has "turned back the clock for women across Wisconsin."

"As a woman and as a mother who worked full-time while raising my son, I know first-hand how important pay equity and health care are to women across Wisconsin," she said in a statement to The Huffington Post.

A spokesman for Barrett's campaign said that Walker's "ideological civil war includes a war on women, and repeal today of this protection against pay discrimination is a major step backwards for Wisconsin values and basic fairness."

Scott Walker wants his rollback of women's rights in Wisconsin to go unnoticed. But, especially with the recall election coming up, people need to know this. Make sure the word gets out by sharing this story over Facebook and Twitter or with your friends and family in Wisconsin. And make a $5 donation to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin to take the bill-signing pen out of his hand.

Despite a new report showing that Mitt Romney is exploiting a disclosure loophole to shield his investments from public view, his campaign says it won't release any more tax documents than it already has:

Under renewed pressure from the Obama campaign to release additional tax information, Mitt Romney's campaign showed no signs of buckling Friday morning.

The former Massachusetts governor's top spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, told MSNBC that the campaign considered the material put out so far to be "sufficient." Romney had, he noted, complied with "all of the disclosure that is required by law." In addition, he had "voluntarily put forward hundreds of pages in tax returns."

One of the big things I don't understand here is why Mitt Romney was willing to hand over 23 years of tax returns to John McCain's vice presidential vetting team but won't do the same with the public. What's in there that he was willing to let McCain's people see but that he doesn't want to share with the rest of us?

It looks like someone is getting a much-needed time-out:

It’s two strikes and out for Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, whose latest Election Day pickle led County Executive Dan Vrakas to relieve her of her duties for the historic recall elections in May and June.

According to a statement released Thursday from the County Executive’s Office, Vrakas posed an ultimatum to Nickolaus in an effort to restore confidence in the upcoming election: Either resign as clerk or she designate her Election Day duties to the deputy clerk.

Nickolaus chose the latter.

You of course remember Nickolaus as the notorious clerk who managed to flip the results of last year's ultra-tight state supreme court race between JoAnne Kloppenburg and David Prosser two days after the election, because she forgot to report results from an entire town. The election this past Tuesday was no better, with computer programs failing, results getting manually tabulated via long streams of paper pinned up to the walls, and final numbers not getting released until after two in the morning.

The state Democratic Party is still rightly skeptical as to whether this move will restore integrity to elections in Waukesha—after all, a Nickolaus deputy will be taking over the reins, and who knows whether her demotion is permanent or temporary. But it's a long-overdue step in the right direction—and with any luck, Nickolaus will lose reelection this fall.

For more discussion, see Giles Goat Boy's post.

Hey, ladies. Shut up already about all those policies that the Republicans are pushing to punish you. Think of the troops.

What voters should object to, many Republicans say, is Democrats’ efforts to characterize political disputes as a “war on women.”

“I find it offensive that the Democratic National Committee is using a term like that to describe policy differences,” said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “It’s not only bad, but it’s downright pathetic they would usea term like ‘war’ when there are millions of Americans who actually have engaged in a real war. To use a term like that borders on unpatriotic.”

Oh, right, now the Republicans remember that we're still in Bush's wars. They conveniently forget that fact every time they push for a new tax break for millionaires. Wars don't need to be paid for, they just need to be remembered in political rhetoric. Spicer's concern for the troops is truly touching.

Well, well, well. Now that Republicans are starting to worry their pretty little heads about just how badly they're going to get a high-heeled election day ass-kicking from the women of America, everyone's a feminist.

At least when it comes to whether women should be allowed to join the exclusive, no-girls-allowed Augusta National Golf Club.

Mitt Romney, who has sworn he will get rid of Planned Parenthood because women's health care makes him sad, said, "If I were a member and if I could run Augusta, which isn't likely to happen, but of course I'd have women in Augusta."

Newt Gingrich, who believes the real issue of women's inequality is actually male inequality, also took a bold stand for women's rights. Or at least for his wife's rights.

And then this morning, Sen. John McCain—who never met a piece of anti-woman legislation he didn't support, who picked the winking Wasilla idiot as his running mate because he figured a chick would shake things up, and who said Republicans should maybe think about laying off of women's health care after he voted for the Blunt amendment to restrict women's health care—let his feminist flag fly:

But you know who's remained awfully quiet about the Mostest Importantest Issue Ladies Have Ever Faced Ever^TM? House Speaker John Boehner, member of a boys-only golf club. He has "demurred" on this particular issue that even his fellow Republicans are rallying around because standing up for their rich wives' right to play golf at a fancy private club is so much easier than standing up for their right to basic health care.

But not Boehner. He likes his golf like he likes his Congressional hearings on contraception: for boys only. Let those bra-burning feminazis Romney, Gingrich and McCain start trying to score cheap political girlie points; he'll be busy "demurring" on his beloved single-sex golf course.

There's a lot to unpack in this story about the War on Women in the Washington Post. But let's start with this:

Neil Newhouse, who is the lead pollster for Romney’s campaign, said the candidate’s problems with women probably represent collateral damage from the arguments that women have been hearing about contraception and other social issues, rather than any reflection on Romney’s positions. [...]

Asked about the latest polling on Thursday, the former Massachusetts governor said, “My wife has the occasion, as you know, to campaign on her own and also with me, and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy.”

So Romney's problems with women have nothing to do with the fact that he supports the policies on birth control and "other social issues" that Republicans are pushing. (For a pretty comprehensive list of all that, check out cc's diary.) The ladies are just oversensitive. We hear things about birth control and get all scared and irrational and start thinking maybe all Republicans hate us. We'll get over that by November.

Of course, Romney's poor showing with women might just also have something to do with the fact that he's outsourced caring about women to his wife. "Here, let me hand you off to Ann so you ladies can chat about soccer practice while me and the boys solve world problems."

As brooklynbadboy pointed out a couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney's first major test after wrapping up the nomination will be selecting a running mate ... and given the GOP's weak talent pool, it's not likely to go well.

According to Politico's Maggie Haberman, the new flavor of the day is Ohio Senator Rob Portman. Apparently, being even more boring than Mitt Romney is seen as an asset. But will Mitt Romney really want to tap George W. Bush's former budget director given Bush's abysmal record on fiscal policy? Perhaps, but if so, only because there's nobody better.

Consider the other potential choices identified by Haberman:

• Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty: His political instincts are so bad, he quit before voting began. On the other hand, Romney owes him big time, because of Pawlenty had stayed in, he could have won.
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: Christie wouldn't bring anything geographically or experience-wise to the ticket. His personality would overshadow Romney, and the fact that he's already talking 2016 can't be winning him friends in Boston.
• Florida Senator Marco Rubio: Rubio is probably the smoothest Republican politician in the nation, but he's still 8 weeks shy of turning 41, and as a career politician with no major achievements, he'd undercut Romney's message about the importance of private sector work.
• House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan: The Wall Street Journal has a an article devoted to talk of him being on the ticket, but is Mitt Romney really ready to form the Committee to End Medicare? I doubt it.
• Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey: On the surface, Toomey might seem attractive, but Toomey's past as a derivatives trader on Wall Street would deepen Romney's Bain problems.
• South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley: Like, Rubio, Haley is young and charismatic. But while Republicans might think she would help them win over women voters, the reality is that Haley trailed among women voters to her male Democratic opponent in 2010.
• New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez: She says she wouldn't accept if tapped, but I'm sure she could be convinced. Her strengths are partly demographic, but she's also one of the most popular governors in the country. On the other hand, that sounds an awful lot like Sarah Palin—and like Palin, she's unknown nationally. The Palin shadow would be hard to avoid unless Martinez is an extraordinary politician.
• Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell: Unless you think the phrases "trans-vaginal ultrasound" and "covenant marriage" are winners, McDonnell is a loser.
• Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee: He'd be a great pick if Mitt Romney needed to shore up his standing in southern and heavily-evangelical states, but if that's where Mitt Romney finds himself, he's a sure loser anyway. If Huckabee really wanted to be on a national ticket, he'd have probably run.

As lame as a Portman pick would be, with a list like that, you can see why people think he's most likely.

In the wake of yesterday's Washington Post report that Mitt Romney is exploiting a loophole in federal ethics laws to hide the details of his holdings through Bain Capital, the Obama campaign is renewing its call for transparency from Romney in a statement from campaign manager Jim Messina:

“Mitt Romney has asked Americans to elect him President based on his experience as a corporate buyout specialist.  Each week, new questions are raised about whether he took unusual steps to avoid paying his fair share in taxes.  Today’s report suggests that Governor Romney is exploiting a loophole in order to shield his assets and investments from public review.

“Mitt Romney has put his personal financial assets in a black box and hid the key, attempting to play by a different set of rules than any candidate in recent history. In fact, Mitt Romney’s own father released 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president.  President Bush released his tax returns dating back to 1991.  And President Obama released his returns dating back to 2000 when he ran for president.

“Governor Romney provided 23 years worth of tax returns to the McCain campaign so they could determine if he would make a suitable Vice President.  He must meet that same standard now so that the American people may judge whether he would be a suitable President, and whether there are any conflicts of interest that could cloud his judgment.”

According to The Post's report, Romney has claimed he is exempt from reporting the details of his investments made through Bain because of his past ties to Bain. Normally, federal candidates are required to disclose the underlying investments made through other companies, but Romney claims an exception to this rule because of confidentiality agreements with Bain. As a result, his disclosure documents don't provide details on what companies he has a financial stake in through Bain. According to The Post:

Several outside experts across the political spectrum, however, say Romney’s disclosure is the most opaque they have encountered, with some suggesting the filing effectively defeats the spirit of disclosure requirements.

As you may recall, last week Romney's campaign refused to release any more tax returns until President Obama releases the full transcripts of all classified meetings with foreign heads of state, including Israel. That absurd non-sequitor came after The Wall Street Journal raised questions about whether Romney had avoided taxes through an unusual IRA program established by Bain.

Reposted from Comics by Tom Tomorrow

(click for larger version)

If you're attending The Citadel, you were in for a real treat this week: A lecture by one of America's foremost Ladies Against Woman, the person that was Ann Coulter before Ann Coulter was ever born, the ultraconservative leading light that made the mom from Leave it to Beaver look like an absolute whore, Phyllis Schlafly:

Schlafly, who led a grass-roots fight to prevent ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, spoke Wednesday at The Citadel as part of the military college’s new course, Conservative Intellectual Tradition in America.

Thus semi-conclusively answering the single most asked question about Phyllis Schafly, "Is Phyllis Schlafly still alive?" It also raises another equally valid question, which is why, precisely, the anti-indoctrinating-the-younguns crowd thinks "Conservative Intellectual Tradition" needs teaching at a military school, but I don't expect that one takes much imagination.

And feminists are working through the media and other channels because the American public no longer seems to strongly support their agenda, Schlafly said. “Feminists are having a hard time being elected because they essentially are unlikable,” she said.

Unlike Phyllis Schlafly, godmother of the apocalypse, who is a great deal of fun at parties and not at all an insufferable crank who has subsisted for the last fifty years on a diet of broken glass and seething public hatred for nine-tenths of America.

Schlafly talked to a group of Citadel students about the culture of conservatism and the history of the religious right. She told the all-male group that “feminist is a bad word and everything they stand for is bad.”

And she warned them about having personal relationships with feminists. “Find out if your girlfriend is a feminist before you get too far into it,” she said. “Some of them are pretty. They don’t all look like Bella Abzug.”

I'm not sure where warning the cadets that wily feminist-types will trick them by being all pretty and stuff fits into "Conservative Intellectual Tradition," unless the point of the course is to teach our future military leaders that "conservative intellectual tradition" consists of batshit paranoia coupled with a longing to return to the Salem witch trials ("She's advocating for better working conditions for the masses! Burn her!"), but I think the answer is that Phyllis Schlafly is just really, really that concerned with keeping the menfolk away from sinister feminists. Thus: a college course on how not to date them, even if they're pretty. No word yet on how grades will be determined.

Schlafly said she thinks pro-family, pro-life GOP candidates have a chance of winning if they concentrate on bringing good jobs to this county and putting a stop to Obama, who she thinks is doing whatever he wants to do. “He’s ruling like a petty dictator,” she said.

Now I'm not sure what happens to a cadet who might express such an opinion (cough military school cough), so once again that's going to lead to some awkward phrasings, come pop quiz time. But let's all give a warm hand to ... let's see, to suspiciously-possibly-liberal-because-all-professors-are-liberal wealthy pseudoprofessor Mallory Factor (no relation to Factor, The O'Reilly) for making sure his young recruits get good dating tips from a crazy person as part of their regular classwork. Go America!