Texas Obstucts Women from Voting; Effort Similar to Wisc AG's Failed Suit

Civil rights violations are our business: GOP

Update: Barbara Arnwine and Eleanor Smeal explain the GOP's war on women voting: "The assault on voting rights is a naked attempt to suppress the votes of minorities, students, the elderly, and the poor. But don’t be fooled. This War on Voting is an essential part of the War on Women."

In 2008 Wisconsin's Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen tried to push through the courts a new constitutional requirement to vote: An exact match of a voter's name on the databases of various government bureaucracies.

Ridiculous.

The GOP voter obstruction effort failed miserably, though Van Hollen later showed no shame in trying to stop our sacred right to vote, efforts for which Van Hollen will be well-compensated in the private sector at a cushy GOP firm, (Van Hollen is not seeking reelection in 2014.)

"Nothing in state or federal law requires that there be a data match as a prerequisite for a citizen's right to vote," Judge Maryann Sumi said in dismissing Van Hollen's lawsuit (J.B. Van Hollen v. Government Accountability Board (GAB) et al (2008)) that tried to use the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) as a voter suppression tool.

In October 2008, it was reported by WisPolitics that Reince Priebus (then Wisconsin and now national GOP Chair) and Wisconsin McCain-Palin co-chair Van Hollen met before and at the 2008 National Republican Convention in St. Paul to discuss this new voter obstruction effort which would was employed by the Van Hollen-headed Wisconsin Department of Justice during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Now, Texas is employing the Priebus-Van Hollen strategy to obstruct voting, requiring an exact and up-to-date name match on Photo Voter ID, per newly enacted Texas GOP law.

The New Civil Rights Movements notes: "Think Progress reports that as of November 5, Texans must show a photo ID with their up-to-date legal name. It sounds like such a small thing, but according to the Brennan Center for Justice, only 66% of voting age women have ready access to a photo document that will attest to proof of citizenship. This is largely because young women have not updated their documents with their married names, a circumstance that doesn’t affect male voters in any significant way. Suddenly 34% of women voters are scrambling for an acceptable ID, while 99% of men are home free."

Van Hollen had denied any contacts with the Republican Party and the McCain campaign about Wisconsin's invented 2008 voting rule in the GOP's failed lawsuit, a denial that was contradicted by WisPolitics‘ audio recording revealing Van Hollen promising this 2008 legal action to Priebus on alleged "voter fraud" during an address at the 2008 Republican National Convention held in St. Paul.

Texas GOP Attorney General Greg Abbott, Wendy Davis' likely opponent for governor in 2014, has had much to say about new voting requirements and other GOP obstruction schemes, now under challenge by the U.S. DoJ under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, to the chagrin of voting rights poseur and lede Republican bullshitter, James Sensenbrenner. Abbott is running the Reince Priebus playbook.

Writes Dave McNeely:

"In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party's electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats," says the (legal) brief filed by Abbott's office, (defending Texas gerrymandering). "It is perfectly constitutional for a Republican-controlled legislature to make partisan redistricting decisions, even if there are incidental effects on minority voters who support Democratic candidates."

Abbott also accused Jose Garza, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, of unethical behavior for telling Latino voters to go ahead to the polls even without the now-required photo ID in a Sept. 14 election in Edinburg to fill a city council vacancy.

It is "unethical for a lawyer to advise someone to violate Texas law," Abbott said. "Confusing and misleading Texans in order to create an unnecessary lawsuit is disgraceful."

Garza hotly shot back that he had never encouraged Texans to violate the law, but to cast provisional ballots if they can't get a photo ID. He said he thinks the law is unconstitutional, and if they are refused that would be grounds for a legal challenge.

"Do not stay home and allow a discriminatory law to suppress your vote and voice," Garza said. "That is my message to Edinburg's voters."

Abbott says he needs to stop voter fraud and ensure the integrity of Texas elections.

As the world looks at American politics, wondering vaguely if the US has lost its collective mind in allowing the Tea Party suicide caucus to threaten the world economy, it also cast dubious eyes on the American commitment to voting rights in a democracy, wondering in the words of Teresa Wiltz in The Guardian if this is "2013 or 1953?"

It's 1953, only worse.

In the words of Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times, enterprising and corrupt voter obstruction efforts by GOP operatives, including five sitting jurists on the U.S. Supreme Court judges, have in dismantling voter protections imposed on America a "gift to both the billionaire political hobbyists who gave us the Tea Party Congress and the noisy charlatans who push for cynical 'anti-voter-fraud' legislation that is crafted to suppress voter turnout."

Republicans vs. Women

"Even with a persistent gender gap in a presidential election year, House Republicans have not given up on their campaign to narrow access to birth control, abortion care and lifesaving cancer screenings. Far from it."
- NYT editorial

GOP Bets Heavily on the Appeal of Misogyny

Photo that caught a nation napping as women are targeted

Update II: Irin Carmon reports: Something incredible just happened. Faced with a growing national outcry against a bill forcing an ultrasound before an abortion — which activists and legislators had been comparing to rape — Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell backed off from his earlier support. “Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state,” he said in a statement today. “No person should be directed to undergo an invasive procedure by the state, without their consent, as a precondition to another medical procedure.”

Update: See Opus Dei and the War on Birth Control: Neofascism Within the Catholic Church

Those failing to challenge Virginia's state-mandated (not just state-sponsored) rape of women are betraying humanity. The War on Women has been declared; whose side are you on?
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The above-right shot is not a photo of a 16th century inquisition. This is 2012, and these men are going to engage in a discussion on WOMEN'S health, contraception, and family planning.

I'm not going to ask "What's wrong with this picture?"

We know what's wrong.

I'm asking how can this be happening in 2012?

By Progressive Eruptions

What I want to know is: Where are the women?” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked the committee chairman, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) before walking out. “I look at this panel and I don’t see one single individual representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventative health care services, including family planning. Where are the women?”

More here.

From Politico:

"The image of men dominating the discussion about women’s health, say those on the left, may galvanize women voters in the way that the Senate Judiciary Committee's handling of sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas did in 1991.That incident is widely credited with the election of a large number of Democratic women the next year.

'I think it is an Anita Hill comparison,' said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who staged a walkout of Democratic women in protest of the chairman’s decision not to seat a minority female witness at the start of the hearing. 'I hope it will be just as galvanizing.' ”

More anti-woman legislation:

This time from the Commonwealth of Virginia, which just passed a bill that REQUIRES a doctor to give a transvaginal ultrasound (that is legislating vaginal penetration by the state) before a woman receives a legal medical procedure, even when the doctor deems it is not necessary. Democrats in the legislature tried to pass an amendment to the bill:

"An amendment by Del. David Englin, D-Alexandria, would have allowed medical professionals to determine whether images can be obtained without being penetrated by equipment used in the ultrasound."

The amendment failed.

Republican Governor McDonnell says he will sign the bill.

Got that?

Lord, you'd think there's less fools in this world

Virginia is poised to legislate forced penetration of a pregnant woman's vagina in order to obtain an image of the embryo or fetus and then the woman will be forced to view the image before she is able to receive a LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURE.

No exceptions under any circumstances whatsoever.

This monstrosity of a law forced on the women of Virginia by the party that wants government out of its lives.

The GOP has lost its mind; and certainly women's votes.

Here are some of the comments on the website announcing the legislation:

"Wake up Virginia! Wake up America! Virginia is about to pass legislation that requires women to undergo an invasive search of her body in an effort to gain permission from Republican legislators for her to obtain a perfectly legal medical procedure from her doctor.

Now, if anyone wants to liken this law to that of the Nazi regime, go right ahead."

*****

"Forcing women to be penetrated vaginally? Isn't that the equivalent of rape??"

*****

"Well, reads that way to me ... but with rape you could get pregnant and then denied the right to abort the child of a socio or psychopath ... UNLESS you agree to be penetrated once again. You can see the logic to their argument, nes pas? Again, does it not appear that logic is nowhere in this legisltive thought process? Just sayin' ..."

*****

"If rape is nonconsensual penetration, then what the government is mandating is rape of a pregnant women. Have we gone so far down that path that our most vulnerable citizens can be treated in such a criminal manner. I hope the courts are getting to overturn this monstrous legislation."
*****

"An affront to all women everywhere!"

UPDATE:

From ThinkProgress:

"As Dahlia Lithwick explains, the effect of this bill would be to force most women to undergo a stunningly invasive procedure for no medical reason whatsoever. “Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.”



Virginia mandates rape - nothing less

 In case Lithwick’s description doesn’t completely drive home what this means, here is a depiction of the procedure that women would be forced to endure under the Virginia bill:"
"Simply put, it is difficult to distinguish a law requiring women to be vaginally penetrated by a long metal object from state-sponsored rape. Worse, discussions among lawmakers leave little doubt that its supporters understood just what they were trying to write into law — they just didn’t care. As an unnamed lawmaker told a fellow Virginia delegate, a woman already consented to being “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant."(confirmed with Englin that this quote was accurate.)

"VIRGINIA IS FOR MORONS"

Charlie Pierce writing in Esquire: "Yes, and anyone who has had their earlobes pierced already has made the decision that, one day, the law would require them to have a tenpenny nail driven into their eye."