Yesterday, I wrote about the GOP’s “rebranding” effort following their “autopsy” in the wake of the 2012 elections. Let it be known that they’re doing the exact opposite of everything recommended in that report.
Just today, in his Plum Line blog at the Washington Post, Greg Sargent marveled at the backwards nature of today’s Republican Party in “GOP opposition to gay workplace equality will do wonders for that ‘makeover’” – a piece about the fact that ENDA (The Employment Non-Discrimination Act) today passed out of the Senate Health and Education Committee with votes from three Republicans (Kirk, Murkowski and Hatch), and could actually pass the 60-vote threshold needed to avert a filibuster. But that possibility is really screwing with the GOP’s backwards propensity:
In a way, a vote against ENDA puts Republicans on the wrong side of history in just as stark a fashion as the party’s continued opposition to gay marriage does. After all, ENDA doesn’t have the cultural baggage of the gay marriage debate; it’s simply about whether gay and lesbian Americans will be discriminated against in hiring decisions.
…
It’s quaint to do this now, but I’ll quote from that Republican National Committee makeover document, anyway:
Already, there is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays — and for many younger voters, this issue is a gateway into whether the party is a place they want to be.
Of course, not long after publishing this, the RNC subsequently reaffirmed the party’s institutional opposition to gay marriage.
The coming confrontation over ENDA gives Republicans another opportunity to revive that “makeover,” but I’m not optimistic they’ll take it.
Hypocrisy much? There’s a reason I talk so much about “opposite world!”
Yesterday, we spent a good portion of the show talking about the GOP’s resurrected war on women. Today, I played a couple of videos that spotlight the problem in hilarious ways. First up, from a guy whose Youtube account has only this one video and calls himself Bad Bill, this re-write of Schoolhouse Rock‘s “I’m Just a Bill”:
And the creator of this video (I was told it was Emily’s List, but I can’t find any confirmation of that) gives Ohio and the despicable manner in which it rammed through anti-woman/anti-abortion legislation – by including in the state budget at the last minute – the treatment in deserves in “How the New Ohio Budget Affects Your Vagina”
I hope you got your fill of laughter, because the next video isn’t funny at all. As today (for most) marks the beginning of Ramadan which, as Maysoon Zayid told us on the show this morning, has as it’s centerpiece is a daytime fast. Of course, that poses a bit of a problem for the Guantanamo Bay hunger striking detainees (though, relatively speaking, Ramadan fasting is the least of their problems).
Gladys Kessler, the US District judge who heard the challenge to the force feeding said in her very succint, four-page ruling on Monday that she lacks the jurisdiction to stop the force-feeding, but noted
Even though this Court is obligated to dismiss the Application for lack of jurisdiction, and therefore lacks any authority to rule on Petitioner’s request, there is an individual who does have the authority to address the issue. In a speech on May 23,2013, President Barack Obama stated “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. . . Is that who we are? Is that something that our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.” Text of President Obama’s May 23 Speech on National Security (Full Transcript), Wash. Post, May 23, 2013, available at 2013 WLNR
12700673.Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that “
[t]he President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States … ” It would seem to follow,
therefore, that the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority– and power– to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
As I mentioned, Maysoon Zayid returned to show this morning to talk about Ramadan, the situation in Egypt, and spectacle that is the George Zimmerman trial.
As we once again fight the war on women, Amy Simon of She’s History joined in to tell us about Margaret Sanger, the woman behind Planned Parenthood.
And John Amato checked in from Crooks and Liars to talk about another Greg Sargent piece, this one “Sabotage governing” that tells us that when even Chuck Todd, one of the more corporate of the corporate media elites, says the GOP is derelict in its responsibility to govern, you know that something is really, really wrong in DC.
