The State with Legal Brothels

“Have you ever heard the case … of a young boy sticking his finger in his ear, getting ear wax and inserting it into a girl to test her for chlamydia?”

―Nevada Assembly Speaker-Designate Ira Hansen (R-Sparks)

This one is going to take some explanation.

Actually, in truth, it is pretty much inexplicable.

Hansen has consistently voted against legislation that would have modernized the state’s sex education curriculum. But in one odd exchange with a 19-year-old mother who had become pregnant as a 15-year-old, Hansen challenged her on her understanding of sex as a sixth grader and asked her to verify a rumor brought up by a prior witness.

Here are excerpts from the exchange:

Assemblyman Hansen: “You said that when you would talk with your parents about sex, they would tell you that they would beat up if you ‘did it.’ Did you know what ‘did it’ was at that time?”

Teenage mom: “No, not exactly.”

Assemblyman Hansen: “You had no clue about what sex was in sixth grade? When your parents asked you not to do it, did you ask what ‘did it’ was?”

Teenage mom: “I knew what they were talking about, but I did not know what to expect.”

Assemblyman Hansen: “Have you ever heard the case … of a young boy sticking his finger in his ear, getting ear wax and inserting it into a girl to test her for chlamydia?”

Teenage mom: “No, I have not.”

At that point the committee chairwoman interrupted the exchange.

(Damon)

So this is how it goes in Nevada. It’s what the people vote for. But, yeah. You’re welcome to try to figure out that one on your own.

Earwax?

The Main Attraction! (Retro Redux Remix)

“You can fade; your time has come to feel the need. Don’t be safe; the sky’s the limit, no need to retreat. So take your best shot and place your bet on what you know. (God can tell you.)

“The stage is set, now; you’ve got the know-how for the main attraction; satisfaction guaranteed to rock the chains that bind you. The main attraction—your reaction—guaranteed to leave your tracks behind you.”

―Quiet Riot

Earworm!

The Main Attraction?

“Just because some Republicans want to pretend that before January 2009 presidential power had been limited to pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys doesn’t mean they are right.”

―Jonathan Bernstein

And the hits keep coming. ‘Tis a bold headline for Bloomberg View: “Boehner Betrays Congress”, and Jonathan Bernstein leaves little room for doubt about his perceptions:

I’ll say it again: Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans aren’t asking for authority to be returned from the White House to Congress. They want an imperial judiciary that could trump either of the elected branches.

In a system of separated institutions sharing powers, which is what the Constitution created, all three branches do things that look a lot like legislating, but laws can trump administrative or judicial rule-making. That gives Congress serious clout within the system. This lawsuit, however, is an abdication of that clout. In effect, it says that the courts, not Congress, should have the last word when there’s a dispute between branches.

Filing this lawsuit amounts to institutional treason. Boehner and House Republicans should be ashamed. The rest of us can only hope that the courts rescue them by keeping to precedent and tossing this lawsuit into the garbage.

To the other, the suit is filed. In a way, that is actually surprising. It is not quite that it seems like yesterday that House Republicans found themselves in need of a new lawyer after the one they hired quit the case, owing to the sort of political pressure one’s law firm might apply when one is about to publicly humiliate the firm with an act of juristic malpractice; it wasn’t yesterday, but two months ago. After hyperpartisan lawyer David Rivkin quit the case for having bitten off too much hyperpartisanship for his firm, Baker Hostetler, to chew, the GOP turned to William A. Burck of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, who had just finished the laborious task of failing to defend former Virginia First Lady Maureen McDonnell.

Late last month, then, we learned that Mr. Burck was also stepping down. Josh Gerstein and Maggie Haberman of Politico summarized the situation thus:

Rivkin’s firm withdrew in September after health-care-related clients pressured the firm to back out of representing the House in the Obamacare-related suit. Two sources told POLITICO in recent days that a similar scenario played out with Burck’s firm, with clients bringing pressure to get the firm off the case.

How about three days ago? Is that close enough to feel like yesterday? For whatever reason, Jonathan Turley of George Washington University decided to take up the case. Lauren French of Politico reported ot Tuesday:

“Professor Turley is a renowned legal scholar who agrees that President Obama has clearly overstepped his constitutional authority,” said Michael Steel, a spokesperson for Speaker John Boehner. “He is a natural choice to handle this lawsuit” ....

.... “Even for $500-per-hour in taxpayer dollars, Speaker Boehner has had to scour Washington to find a lawyer willing to file this meritless lawsuit against the president,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Minority Leader Pelosi. “Now, he’s hired a TV personality for this latest episode of his distraction and dysfunction.”

Something About Mary

Right. Time out. Take a moment to reflect on the finer qualities of your closest friends, and then check out the latest edition of Mary Death.

An Attempt to Explain Republicans to an Overseas Neighbor

Ed. note: The following is a repost of a Facebook comment offered to a friend from New Zealand who is constantly baffled by what he witnesses in the American political process, and happened to inquire about Republican efforts to … well, right. It has to do with recent House bills pertaining to the role of science in government policy.

I think the best way to explain it is to once again invoke a Cold War analogy; after all, depicting Democrats as “liberals”, with “liberals” meaning “Soviet Communists” was a key to Ronald Reagan’s electoral success.

But think about it this way, too: By that analogy, Republicans are the “capitalists”.

So it goes, then, that if we look at votes as “capital”, then the actions of the RNC, Congressional Republicans, and various surrogates and allies make sense: Get the capital by whatever means necessary.

That’s why the whole thing is so puzzling to people who, you know, have a conscience. The GOP ain’t playin’ that way. This is about winning votes, and nothing more. And in the United States, conservative voters will take whatever they can get to reinforce their platform. Additionally, superstition and subjective moral outrage are much more attractive to most American voters than obvious logic that, if attended, would skip the melodrama and slapstick that has become our political system.

To that end, we might consider Manichean dualisms or, simply, reality television. Just as many people believe in a basic struggle between good and evil, so also do many people believe reality television depicts reality.

In that context, it becomes a capitalistic ratings game; our elections become a functional part of our entertainment industry.

What Republicans are trying to do here is twofold: (1) Bolster their own political fantasies by excluding reality; (2) create a situation in which government will experience an even greater failure about its performance of duty so that they can complain even louder that government just doesn’t work.

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Abrams, Lindsay. “House Republicans just passed a bill forbidding scientists from advising the EPA on their own research”. Salon. 19 November 2014.

Benen, Steve. “Republicans take aim at imaginary target: ‘secret science'”. msnbc. 20 November 2014.

Another Reason Why Kentucky Has a Bad Reputation

Ah, Kentucky!

A Kentucky law enforcement official is under fire this week after footage of his deeply racist comments was made public on Tuesday. In September, Southeast Bullitt Fire Chief Julius Hatfield was recorded on a Bullitt County Sheriff deputy’s body camera during a response to a traffic accident, when Hatfield allegedly refused to help a black family while referring to them in derogatory, racist terms.

“Well, I’ve got a family of four from Cincinnati, I got to do something with,” the Bullitt County deputy says in the footage, which was obtained by WDRB.

“We ain’t taking no n–gers here,” Hatfield responded, laughing.

The footage also reveals the fire chief helping the other man involved in the traffic incident, Loren Dicken, who is white. According to WDRB, after Hatfield went out of his way to assist Dicken with a tire issue, the chief also had his firefighters pick the man up from the hospital when he was released.

(Kutner)

A note to the good people of Kentucky: Friends, we in the rest of the country are aware that you are sick and tired of presumptions that the Bluegrass State is populated by backwater hick racists, but please realize there is a reason people think about you that way. Please stop empowering racists.

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Kutner, Jenny. “Kentucky fire chief refuses to help black family after traffic accident: ‘We ain’t taking no n–gers here'”. Salon. 20 November 2014.

A Note on Voters’ Values

“It takes a truly talented individual to pack in this many falsehoods into a single paragraph.”

―Steve Benen

The thing about Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI01) is that this sort of thing keeps happening. And while it certainly provides some sense of sport for commentators like Steve Benen of msnbc, there is only so much genuine laughter we might muster; the consequences of such dishonesty (ahem!) “innocent, forgetful mistakes” can be severe.

“Give us time to do immigration reform”? Well, Republicans have controlled the House for four years, during which time they haven’t even held so much as a hearing on a piece of legislation. More to the point, the Senate passed a popular, bipartisan immigration bill 512 days ago, and soon after, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised the lower chamber would act on the issue. The Republican leader then broke his word and killed the reform effort.

In other words, Obama gave Republican lawmakers “time to do immigration reform,” and the GOP did nothing. Does Ryan not remember this?

“He had two years with a super-majority of his own party”? Actually, no, Democrats had a super majority in the Senate for four months, not two years. It’s a big difference.

And it goes on.

An Extraneous Blame Game

Briefly: Sure, if your mother is still accessible to you in this world, give her a hug.

The rest of this is just … I don’t know, silly.

Quite literally on the day Keith Knight’s cartoon, detailed above, posted at Daily Kos Comics, a note popped up from a friend that her mother had fallen and broken her arm. You know, a request for prayers and best wishes.

Naturally, I sent my friend a link to the cartoon.

It was … what, two days later? Another friend informed us that her mother had fallen and broken her wrist. Prayers and best wishes dutifully filed in, and I won’t nitpick the point that it seems a dubious proposition to pray that God will undo His will and magically heal the damage. We can set prayer aside, and just send cartoons on such occasions.

A bit before midnight last night that same friend checked in: “So, guess what…Mom fell again today. This time she broke her right wrist.”

Sigh. I don’t have a cartoon link for this one.

Best wishes, of course. But come on, either God or Keith Knight—who do I get to blame for this absurdity?

How about Isaac Newton?

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Knight, Keith. “Visiting Germany”. Daily Kos. 11 November 2014.