A recent federal appeals court ruling found that insurrectionists whether they are current officeholders or not can be barred from the ballot.
Candidates who take part in an insurrection may be barred from holding public office under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, a federal appeals court ruled, overturning a lower court judge’s decision.
Last Friday the Supreme Court indicated that on November 30 it will hear arguments in the Trump administration’s appeal regarding its efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted in the census numbers used to calculate the apportionment of congressional districts.
Last Monday the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear a case brought by Kim Davis, a former country clerk who, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in the Obergefell v. Hodges case legalizing same-sex marriage, who refused to issue certificates for such marriages because of her religious objections to them. She was sued and even jailed for this refusal and was appealing her case.
The Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations merited certain rights of personhood. The decision in this case became crystallized in the notorious phrase, “Corporations are people.”
This year’s events insistently raise the question of which Americans enjoy the basic rights of personhood in America.
How are we doing when it comes to achieving our nation’s putative hallmark ideal of equality?
A reading of U.S. history we often hear tells the story of a nation that has thus far imperfectly realized its founding premise that “all men are created equal” but that has nonetheless been on an ongoing quest to achieve a fully egalitarian culture for all people, even and perhaps especially those that the initial formulation did not include in its reference to “all men.”
The cherished founding principle that “all men are created equal” animating the American experiment has obviously been vexed by realities of our national life and history, which stand undeniably in stark contradiction to that principle. The racism informing the practices of slavery and genocide present in U.S. history since the nation’s inception highlight the unrealized status of this value of equality.
But “we” the people still believe in it, right? We’re still just trying to figure it out, right?
It’s just that it is so hard to figure out, right?
While we could ask many constituencies, particularly people of color, how they are faring when it comes to equal rights, let’s take a quick look at women and transgender people might assess the national terrain in this regard.
In last November’s election, Democrats in Virginia flipped the state Senate and House of Delegates to gain full control of the state government for the first time since 1993. These election results have inspired hope that the state government will now become the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which passed the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in 1972 and was quickly ratified by 22 states. Any constitutional amendment requires ratification by 38 states. The crawl toward reaching this number has been a slow one, with Nevada becoming the 36th state to ratify in 2017, followed shortly thereafter by Illinois. Last February, efforts in Virginia fell short by one vote in the House of Delegates. The votes now seem to be there.
But let’s also step back and get a little perspective. Here we are in 2019 still asking whether or not women—some half of our population—should enjoy equal rights or continue to be relegated to the status of second-class citizen.
Isn’t it strange, for a nation pretending to value equality, that we still ask this question, deferring equal rights to women?
Here’s the statement in the ERA this nation trembles to validate:
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.”
"Texas Senate has no problem with taxpayer-funded discrimination against virtually anyone who doesn't meet a public official's personal [religious] standards."
The Defense Authorization bill should be about making our country safe; not about codifying evangelical Republican hatred and intolerance.
Judge Reeves noted that “the title, history and text of the law showed it to be the State’s attempt to put LGBT citizens in their place."
Religious Republicans passed unconstitutional legislation denying a wide swathe of the population their constitutional rights.
It is an abomination that an avowed religious bigot like Kim Davis was invited as a protest and counterweight to President Obama's message
Conservative bigots love the idea of shredding the Constitution's 13th and 14th Amendments in place of actual immigration reform
The 14th Amendment grants citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. The GOP want to shred the Constitution to revert to legal white supremacy
Evangelical Republicans hate America with religious passion because the Founding Fathers did not create a Christian theocracy
Tt was no great surprise that evangelicals followed the lead of two congressional Republicans and issued religious orders restraining the 'wrong' kind of Supreme Court Justices from fulfilling their duly sworn Constitutional duty.
The crux of South Carolina's argument in support of discriminating against gays is that if it constitutionally permissible to discriminate against women, then it is perfectly legal to discriminate against gays.
Every nation on Earth is plagued with inconvenient, and uncomfortable, 'secrets' that are widely known by the population, but are hardly ever discussed. America is no different and one of its dirty little secrets is that although the U.S. Constitution was created to guarantee that all citizens are treated equally, a growing number of Republican states are actively seeking protection to discriminate based on religion.
Republicans in state after state spent the past year hastily passing legislation abolishing other Americans' 14th Amendment rights
Republicans and religious conservatives detest the 14th Amendment for myriad reasons, but chief among them is the guarantee of equal rights for Americans not in the biblical mold championed by Neo Christians; single mothers, atheists, Muslims, non-compliant Christians, and particularly gays.
Maybe the President regrets intertwining government and religion when he continued George W. Bush's Faith-Based initiatives. Now they are using their connection to the White House to exact recompense in the form of permission to discriminate against the gay community according to their "deeply-held religious beliefs" the Supreme Court cited mercilessly in its ruling for Hobby Lobby.
After taking a brief break from race baiting due to being slapped down by Shirley Sherrod, Fox News has moved on to an easier target, babies, specifically the so called anchor babies. Fox News ratcheted up the rhetoric today by referring to the 14th Amendment as the, "anchor baby amendment." Lucky for us, Jon Stewart has taken on the lunacy of the right wing anchor baby campaign.
