Tag: GOP

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At Large Opinion

6/08/23

Photo: Vasakkohaline | Dreamstime.com

Boy, last Thursday was quite the news day!

We woke up to the startling revelation that New York City was basically paralyzed, hazed over by dense smoke from forest fires in Canada, our supposed “ally.” Eh?

Then it was announced that the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey company had won its case over a dog-toy manufacturer that had created “poop-themed” chewies with a “Jack Spaniel’s” label. Justice was fetched. Woof!

Next we learned about the earthly departure of “Christian” broadcaster Pat Robertson, who made a career of claiming that LGBTQ folks caused hurricanes, earthquakes, and even the 9/11 attacks. Sadly, ol’ Pat missed out on a chance to blame extra-polite, denim-clad Canadian homosexuals for the smoke invasion, but he did have the good taste to leave us during Pride Month. Enjoy the eternal smoke, Pat.

Oh, and I almost forgot one other tiny bit of news from last Thursday: Former President Donald Trump announced that he was going to be indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for mishandling classified documents after leaving office.

Trump, no doubt intentionally, preempted the DOJ’s official announcement of the indictment with his own, and quickly began grifting funds for his defense. It was all so unfair! Send money!

The messaging from the usual GOP piss-pots and pundits was remarkably consistent. They bemoaned the country’s “two-tiered justice system” and “selective prosecution.” They raged about “Joe Biden’s Justice Department,” and alleged that the coming Trump indictments were just a distraction from the ever-imminent prosecution of Hunter Biden for giving his father a $5 million bribe, or something, which the GOP could prove if only they didn’t keep misplacing “FBI whistleblowers.”

In fact, the Trump World response was so uniform that one could almost imagine it had been coordinated. Either that, or grievance and what-about-ism was the only ammo they had left. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s reaction was typical. He said “the indictment of Donald Trump was a dark day for the United States,” and that he “stood with” the former president, adding that “House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

It’s worth noting that more than 30 elected Republican officials — including several congressmen and senators — are reputed to have exchanged texts and voice messages with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6, 2021. Indictments for the January 6th insurrection case are presumably forthcoming, so there may be some understandable anxiety among those on Meadows’ speed-dial list.

Unsurprisingly, those defending Trump have it precisely backwards. President Biden didn’t indict Trump; the Department of Justice did, and only after months of investigation by a special counsel and his team. (Fun fact: When the feds prosecute somebody, their win rate is 99 percent.) The first-ever indictment of a former president is a huge deal, and the DOJ is not about to file a frivolous case. As the Friday release of the indictments made clear, Trump mishandled and resisted returning hundreds of government documents, even after being subpoenaed for them. There is no parallel with President Biden’s — or Mike Pence’s — handling of the same situation; both cooperated with investigators.

A true dark day for this country would be if the DOJ did not investigate a former president for criminal behavior. It would put presidents above the rule of law, giving them a privilege granted to no other American, creating a true two-tiered justice system.

There was one other piece of news from last Thursday that was overshadowed by Trump’s indictment revelation — but it was potentially as important. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Alabama’s Congressional Districts had been gerrymandered to minimize that state’s African-American vote. Only one of the state’s seven districts had a Black majority in a state with a 27 percent Black population.

In what most legal analysts considered a surprising ruling, the Court preserved at least a vestige of the 1982 Voting Rights Act by ruling that Alabama must redraw its district maps. It’s a decision with potential ramifications for similar cases in Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas. When future historians look back at June 8, 2023, they may see this SCOTUS decision — a blow to the plague of gerrymandering — as more consequential for the country than Trump’s whiny announcement. The years have a way of clearing the smoke.

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Politics Politics Feature

And From the GOP…

John Bobango (Photo: Courtesy Farris Bobango)

Some weeks ago in a year-end article in the Flyer we speculated on the unlikelihood of there being a white Republican candidate for Memphis mayor. At the time a few names in that category had been floated — those of former Sheriff and County Mayor Mark Luttrell and City Councilman Frank Colvett prominent among them.

As of this writing, there is little reason to believe that either one of those personages will become a candidate, but a new name has surfaced — that of John Bobango, who served a term on the Memphis City Council and is well-known as a lawyer of some eminence and as a donor and broker of numerous successful political campaigns on the part of others.

Bobango is known to have been making numerous phone calls of late, notifying friends and potential supporters of his potential availability to make a mayoral race. And, given his own past and current immersion in the political sphere, he has to be taken seriously as a possible entrant.

Should he become a candidate, Bobango’s name would not be as fresh with Memphis voters as either of the aforementioned names. His term of active political service ended in 2001; whereas, Luttrell’s term as county mayor was as recent as 2018, and Colvett is still serving on the council, having served a term as its chair.

What Bobango has in spades is financial resourcefulness, stemming from his own hugely successful career as a lawyer and investor, and from his presumed high potential to raise additional money from his extensive network of associates.

What he lacks, like all other potential white candidates, is membership in the city’s demographic majority. In theory, American politics is color-blind. In actuality, it is not, given the clear tendency of voters, in Memphis as elsewhere, to vote within the confines of their own ethnic connections.

The chances of any white mayoral candidate would be problematic. A white Republican like Bobango would face another disadvantage, that of belonging to a political party that clearly has minority status locally.

It is obviously meaningful that, in last year’s Shelby County election, Democrats prevailed so totally that not a single Republican was able to win a countywide race. And the Democratic base of Memphis is proportionally even larger — a fact that is relevant even in what will be a technically nonpartisan city election.

To be sure, a white candidate in this year’s mayoral race would be running against several African-American candidates and in theory would benefit from a voter-base split among them. The current incumbent mayor, Jim Strickland, undoubtedly benefited from such a split in his initial 2015 victory, and, to go with his identity as a Democrat, he had the kind of support from the city’s Republican voters that Bobango would hope to have.

But Strickland, at the time, was an active office-holder on the city council, and his mayoral ambitions had been known for years. Bobango’s active service in office was a generation ago.

But he was a factor in the city’s politics then, and, should he run, it would be instructive to see what he can make of the long-odds challenge that would confront him.

• Meanwhile, stop the presses! Another Republican, this one an African American, is apparently ready to join a mayoral field that is already rife with entries. This would be former County Commissioner James Harvey, who changed party affiliations some years back and has long meditated on a mayoral race, whether of the county or the city kind.

Harvey has sent out a notice under the letterhead “James Harvey – Mayor 2023” announcing a “Call to Action Campaign Meeting” scheduled for Friday evening of this week at the Southwind country club.

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At Large Opinion

Same Old Game

Over the past couple weeks, we’ve seen a fresh incarnation of a game we’ve all become familiar with during the last seven years. It’s called “Will You Denounce This?” The game begins when Donald Trump says or does something that used to be thought of as outrageous. The media then jump into action by asking any Republican they can get in front of a microphone to denounce Trump. As in:

Reporter: “Senator Leghorn, Donald Trump said this week that the United States should bomb Puerto Rico to keep Democrats from making it the 51st state. Puerto Rico is an American territory and Puerto Ricans are American citizens. Will you denounce Trump’s statement that the United States should bomb American citizens?”

Leghorn: “Well, President Trump says a lot of things, and I don’t think anything is gained from addressing these ‘gotcha’ questions from the media.”

Reporter: “But Mr. Trump is saying we should bomb one of our own territories, which could kill thousands of American citizens. Surely you don’t condone such a thing.”

Leghorn: “Look, I work for the American people, and the American people are concerned about high taxes, inflation, drag queens, and Hunter Biden’s laptop. The kind of questions you’re asking are irrelevant, premature, and based on speculation.”

Reporter [incredulous voice]: “So you won’t denounce the bombing and killing of American citizens by American armed forces?”

Leghorn: “Well, of course I don’t personally approve of bombing Puerto Rico, but the president is privy to information we don’t have, and he has a right to express his opinion.”

Reporter: “So, if Mr. Trump gets the GOP nomination in 2024, will you support him?”

Leghorn: “It’s a long way to 2024 so I don’t want to play that game, but, as a Republican, I will of course support our nominee. Also, Hunter Biden’s laptop.”

So yeah, that wasn’t exactly what happened recently, but Trump did roll out three doozies. First, he vowed that when he became president again, he would pardon anyone involved in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Then, he had dinner with musician Kanye West, who just last week on Alex Jones’ InfoWars, expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler and his disdain for Jews. Having this guy to dinner was not a great look for Trump. But “Ye” upped the ante and brought Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, anti-Semite, and avowed Nazi boot-licker who makes Ye look progressive.

When word got out about the dinner, the media began a fresh round of “Will You Denounce This?” And they actually found a few Republicans willing to say that Trump was wrong to host these assholes for dinner, including Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Mitt Romney. Progress, right?

Not exactly. Before the ruckus ensuing from his dinner could die down, Trump posted the following on his Truth Social network: “With the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? … A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

No one knows for sure what provoked this latest Trump outburst. Perhaps the weirdness of those Hunter Biden penis pictures coming out via a Twitter story? Surely we don’t need to terminate the Constitution for that, do we? I mean, unless that thing was really huge.

It’s tempting to dismiss all this as the ranting of a delusional fool, but bear in mind that this is a man who could still become the GOP nominee — and that most Republicans are still afraid to stand up to a guy who pledges to release convicted January 6th rioters, has dinner with two Hitler-lovers, calls for the overturning of the 2020 election, and says we should terminate the U.S. Constitution.

There’s an adage that you should never play chess with a pigeon because they knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and then strut around like they won. If the Republicans don’t pick a new king soon, they’re going to need another board. This game is getting old.

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Opinion The Last Word

White Tears and ‘Current Voters’

Mitch McConnell (Photo: Wikipedia)

“The concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell at a recent press conference.

Even if Mitch McConnell’s viral gaffe last week is as innocent as he claims it to be, the stench of something deep — the unexamined racist fear and shame at the core of GOP policy — is unavoidably noticeable: There’s “them” and there’s “us” and never the twain shall meet. And we’ll make sure of that. (Shhhh … don’t tell anyone.)

What’s fascinating to me is the fact that blatant racism — manifested in voter-suppression laws over the years, gerrymandering, and, more recently, hysteria over the teaching of actual history in the public schools — can no longer be put forth publicly and unapologetically as The Truth, as it was for most of American history. Politicians and public figures can no longer declare things like “This country must be ruled by white people. … Negro suffrage is an evil,” as a Mississippi judge named Solomon Calhoon wrote in 1890. Nowadays, racism has to be covered up with clichés and political correctness and, in particular, white victimhood.

The prevailing right-wing dogma, at least on the surface, is not that white people are no longer just plain better than Black people; white people are victimized by people of color. “Come on,” they cry, “judge us by the content of our character, not the color of our skin.”

Here’s Tucker Carlson, for instance, quoted by The New York Times columnist Charles Blow, explaining “white replacement theory” on his Fox News show last year as a Democratic plot “to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters, from the third world. … Every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.”

Not a white voter, simply a “current” voter. This is the impact the Civil Rights Movement has had on right-wing Republicanism.

And then there’s critical race theory (CRT). In the past year, according to Education Week, 36 states have scapegoated this otherwise unknown academic concept, introducing legislation or taking other steps to ban whatever-it-is from being taught in public schools. The state of Virginia has even established a special tip line that parents can call to report that their kids’ school has been feeding them CRT — which means, of course, teaching actual American racial history. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to go even further, giving parents the power to sue the school if it has the nerve to teach CRT.

As I say, whatever that means. Education Week points out that there’s almost no clarity about what this might mean, and “leaders in states where these laws have passed have reported widespread confusion about what kind of instruction is and is not allowed.” Many teachers fear the rules can be broadly interpreted and amount to banning “any discussion about the nation’s complicated past or the ongoing effects of racism in the present day.”

“This isn’t an idle fear,” the report goes on. Last June, for instance, “a parents’ group in one Tennessee district challenged the use of an autobiography of Ruby Bridges, who in 1960 was one of the first Black children to integrate an elementary school after Brown v. Board of Education. The parents complained that in depicting the white backlash to school desegregation, the book violated the state’s new law in sending the message that all white people were bad and oppressed Black people.”

This is now the national divide, apparently. Jim Crow suddenly wails in anguish. As a bill in the Florida Senate puts it, a student “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” Note: Such a bill wasn’t introduced in 1890 or 1930. I wonder why?

For me, this opens a deep sense of wonderment. Mostly it opens up some profound questions about how the country can and should face not just its past but also its future. While there may be a lot of blame and guilt to spread around regarding the nation’s pre-civil rights era, addressing the future requires a larger, more complex perspective. It’s not about blaming, but healing … and changing.

The anti-CRT crowd wants to keep the clichés in place, as though “one nation, under God, yada, yada” is all that’s needed to guide us into the future. Of course, the military-industrial complex knows there’s more to it than that. Waging war, staying dominant, staying wealthy — these are not simple tasks! It’s not about saluting the flag and revering the Founding Fathers. It’s about passing gargantuan military budgets. And it’s also about keeping as much of the public as possible (in the words of Tucker C.) “obedient” — that is, patriotic, believing that the USA is the greatest country in the world and only kills evil terrorists plus occasional collateral bystanders.

If CRT were actually taught in schools — not in order to spew shame on some, but to open everyone’s minds, to grasp the nature of hatred, dehumanization, and dominance, and create a future that transcends our past — a lot more would be put at risk than some people’s psychological distress.

The meaning of nationalism itself would have to change. And suddenly everyone becomes a participant in creating the future.
Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.

Categories
At Large Opinion

The Quiet Part

The Ninth District: Note phallic incursion from 2010 redistricting. (Photo: courtesy Congressman Steve Cohen)

Maybe you saw this quote last week, when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the quiet part out loud while defending the defeat of the Voting Rights Act in the Senate: “African-American voters,” he warbled, “are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”

Never mind that McConnell apparently believes African Americans aren’t actual Americans, like, you know, white people. And never mind that the bills his party is passing in GOP-controlled states around the country are intended to change that pesky situation before the next election rolls around. McConnell is intentionally glossing over the fact that the Voting Rights Act would have outlawed the implementation of these undemocratic new laws, and that every Republican Senator voted against it — as did two hypocrites calling themselves Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

Since the 2020 election, dozens of restrictive voting laws have been enacted in 19 states, laws that supposedly remedy “voter fraud” (which didn’t happen) but that have the actual purpose of making voting more difficult for poor people and people of color — who just coincidentally tend to vote for Democrats.

You don’t have to look any further than Nashville for a perfect example of how far the GOP is willing to go to establish a permanent and overwhelming majority. Last week, the Tennessee Senate Judiciary and House State Government committees approved three redistricting plans for new state House, state Senate, and Congressional maps, which are drawn every decade after the federal census to reshape state and federal districts, if necessary, to ensure equity at the polls.

The new Republican-created Tennessee maps are a joke at all three levels, a mugging of democracy in plain sight. Newly configured districts in and around Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville are designed to break up neighborhoods and Democratic voting strongholds in urban areas, especially Black communities. The new maps pit Black and Democratic incumbents against each other in four instances at the state representative level and give Republicans a huge numerical advantage in eight out of nine of Tennessee’s Congressional districts. That’s an 11 percent representation in Congress for Democrats, who made up 41 percent of the vote in the most recent statewide election.

The lone outlier is Tennessee’s Ninth District, represented by Congressman Steve Cohen, but it’s not for lack of trying. After the 2010 census (in what was widely seen as a direct skewering of Cohen), the GOP took a literally phallic-shaped piece out of the Ninth that just so happened to include Cohen’s place of worship in East Memphis and a large surrounding Jewish neighborhood. To balance the population math, the GOP added a large chunk of Tipton County to the Ninth, meaning Cohen now represents a disparate melange of rural, inner-city, and suburban voters. This isn’t just unfair to Cohen (or whoever the Ninth District representative may be in the future); it’s unfair to all the residents of the district, who deserve to be represented by someone who reflects their concerns and values. The Republicans, it appears, would prefer it if Memphis residents found themselves being represented by a Republican turd farmer from Atoka.

But compared to Nashville, Memphis got off easy. The Fifth District — represented by Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper, and which currently encompasses most of Nashville and Davidson County — will now encompass parts of five (count ’em!) counties. The city’s vote will be split and allocated to three rural-majority districts. Meaning Nashville’s urban residents will soon more than likely be represented by three Republican turd farmers.

This isn’t how democracy is supposed to work. Our elected representatives shouldn’t be allowed to create districts specifically designed to keep them — and their party — in office. Geographic political districts — at every level — should be created by bipartisan commissions, not party hacks. And yes, I know gerrymandering has been done by Democrats as well. The point is that it’s wrong, no matter who does it, and that we had in our hands a bill that would have eliminated all this cheating, that would have kept states from arbitrarily reducing the number of polling places in certain districts or shortening voting periods or, for god’s sake, banning the dispensing of water to voters in line.

In our system, unfettered democracy is supposed to be a feature, not a bug. But unfortunately, that’s not how the Republicans see it these days.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Appeasing the Mighty Oz

CREDIT: REUTERS | Brian Snyder

Was it really just a week ago that I was sitting up late with politics editor Jackson Baker and Flyer art director Carrie Beasley (in our own homes) waiting to decide what cover to run for our issue covering the 2020 election results? It seems a month ago now. At least.

We had three covers mocked up and ready to go to the printer, each with an appropriate photo. One was called “Biden FTW!” which we thought would have been a great reversal of our now-infamous (and eBay gold) “WTF?” Trump cover from 2016.

REUTERS | Brian Snyder

And we had one we were hoping never to have to run called “Trump Again!” with a smiling, thumbs-up-waving Don the Con. The third possibility was the one we finally chose: “Too Close to Call!”

Jackson had three versions of the lead paragraphs to the cover story ready to go. And I’d written three versions of my column. My “too close to call” column was titled “The Waiting is the Hardest Part” because, well, I like Tom Petty and why not? It turned out to be one of the most prescient things I ever wrote. I shoulda bought a lottery ticket.

I said if the ballot counting went on for several days, President Trump would do his best to sow discord and divisiveness and doubt about the integrity of our electoral process. Right on all counts.

I added: “Trump will remain in office (win or lose) until January, so there will be at least a couple more months of chaos and drama, of tweeting and conspiracy theories, and who knows what other kinds of outrages.” Bingo.

There were lots of things I couldn’t have predicted, of course — like Rudy Giuliani and a “witness” who turned out to be a convicted sex offender holding a Philadelphia press conference on a parking lot at Four Seasons Total Landscaping — next to a dildo store. That was straight out of a jump-the-shark episode of Veep.

Another thing I didn’t predict but should have been able to, in hindsight, is that the majority of the GOP leadership — national, statewide, and locally — would go along with Trump’s antics, as would most of Trump’s media allies. As a result, there has been a week-long drumbeat of lies, exaggerations, and false discrediting of the nation’s election process.

We knew, at some level, this was part of the plan. All the pre-election polling had Trump losing, so blocking people from voting became Job 1. The U.S. Postal Service was enlisted to delay delivery of mail-in ballots. The number of voting sites and drop-off boxes were systematically cut in red states. Numerous last-minute lawsuits by GOP operatives were filed to try to disqualify various kinds of ballots not cast on Election Day.

Sowing doubt on the counting process was Job 2: GOP legislatures in key states (Michigan and Pennsylvania, to name two), passed laws requiring local election commissions to refrain from counting mail-in, drop-off, and absentee ballots until Election Day, thereby ensuring several days of drama as the mandated post-Election Day count played out around the country — days that could be used to spread conspiracy theories and further incite the most rabid of Trump’s supporters.

Imagine how much angst the country would have been spared if other swing states used Florida’s system, which allows counting of mail-in and absentee ballots as they arrive. Florida’s results were basically in on election night. How great would it have been for the country to have been able to go to bed Tuesday night knowing the results of the presidential election, instead of having to wait four days? Really great, is how.

Except that would have spoiled the plan to delegitimize the electoral process, one Trump had been setting up for weeks by refusing to say that he’d accept the results of the election. And now, the game continues. No concession from the president, no work getting done. He’s just firing people, tweeting, and playing golf.

Meanwhile, Biden is almost five million votes ahead in the popular vote and has an insurmountable lead in the Electoral College. If Trump had any integrity or respect for the election process — or a grown-up brain — he’d do the right thing and concede. We shouldn’t hold our breath. My prediction is that when I’m writing my next column a week from now, he still won’t have done it.

The only question is how long will other Republicans play along to appease the Mighty Butthurt Oz.

Categories
News News Blog

Governor Renews Push for Comprehensive Anti-Abortion Legislation

Lee announces strict abortion restrictions


Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Thursday that he will submit a “comprehensive pro-life” bill this legislative session that will put the state “at the forefront of protecting life.”

Surrounded by state GOP lawmakers, Lee made the announcement of the near-total abortion ban just one day after the 47th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. The governor called it a “monumental step forward in celebrating, cherishing, and defending life.”

“I believe we have a special responsibility to protect the most vulnerable members of our community,” Lee said. “And no one is more vulnerable than the unborn.”

Last year’s “heartbeat bill” passed in the House but failed in the Senate. This bill has additional restrictive provisions. Lee said these provisions “make it a stronger bill” and are a part of a legal strategy. The provisions include prohibiting abortion motivated by the sex, race, or diagnosis of a disability, as well as requiring women to view their ultrasound.

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“We know that when a mother views her unborn child and hears a heartbeat, hearts and minds are changed,” Lee said of the ultrasound provision.

Following the model of a Missouri law, the bill will also specify that if the heartbeat provision is struck down in court, the abortion ban would kick in at 8, 10, or 12 weeks — the point at which bans have been upheld in court.

“My passion for developing this legislation stems from my commitment to defending the intrinsic dignity of all people,” Lee said.

Rep. William Lambert (R-Portland) is one of the lawmakers pushing the bill.

“It is reprehensible to murder a human being, period, whether that child is in the womb or it’s already drawn his or her first breath,” Lambert said. “Governor, leaders, I wish we had a bigger stage because I think this shows just how powerful this legislation is.”

Lambert said legislators will work out the details of the bill over the next few months, figuring out “exactly how we can accomplish the mission of saving millions of lives.”

Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood

Democratic lawmakers speak against governor’s proposal.


Democratic legislators quickly voiced opposition to the governor’s announcement in a press conference Thursday.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville called the governor’s proposal “extreme” and “divisive.”

“This isn’t even legislation at all,” Yabro said. “It’s a litigation strategy. We have real problems to solve in this state. If you went to hearings in this building, just this week we talked about the fact that we provide fewer protections for pregnant women than any other state.”

Sen. Katrina Robinson, who is from Memphis, also spoke at the press conference, saying that Thursday’s announcement is a “stage prop” and “divisive political pawn.”

“It is not a political issue,” Robinson said. “It’s a human rights issue. It’s a women’s rights issue. It’s an issue of families. It’s an issue of being human. I find it very disturbing that this is our first run of political agenda this session.”

Robinson also opposed referring to the legislation as “comprehensive” and “pro-life.”

“I don’t understand that,” she said. “How is it comprehensively pro-life if we don’t provide health care, don’t provide childcare, don’t fund education? That’s pro-life. This is not pro-life legislation.”

Robinson said with Tennessee’s high infant-mortality rate and high number of unintended and teen pregnancies, the governor should be focused on preventative care, contraception access, and policies that will provide youth with sexual education to reduce unintended pregnancies.

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Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood also responded to the governor’s announcement in an open letter to the governor and legislators.

“We, the undersigned, are called by our lived experience as parents, caregivers, and family members to stand up for the dignity and autonomy of pregnant people,” the letter reads in part. “We have lived through typical and complicated pregnancies, and we are raising children we deeply love. We oppose all attempts to criminalize and restrict abortion access.”

The letter continues saying that the proposed legislation will not eliminate abortions, “but will force pregnant people to turn to unregulated and often dangerous attempts to end their pregnancies.”

The letter also notes that the legislation would force women to become parents, including those who are survivors of rape or incest.

“Rather than force people to have babies, our state lawmakers should focus on broadly popular ideas to support new families, such as paid leave, access to affordable care, and reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers,” the letter continued.

The letter calls for lawmakers to “recognize that abortion access is a critical issue for current and future families. We trust people who are pregnant to make thoughtful, moral decisions and urge our state leaders to do the same.”

A study done by Vanderbilt University in the fall found that 54 percent of respondents believe Roe v. Wade should be upheld. The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters in Tennessee. Of the 54 percent that believe the Supreme Court decision should be upheld, 85 percent were Democrats and 32 percent were Republican.

Last year, a poll done by NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll showed that 77 percent of Americans think the Supreme Court should uphold Roe. v. Wade, while 13 percent want to see it overturned.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GOP Candidates Slam Huckabee on Sunday Talk Shows

The Washington Post does a weekly roundup of the Sunday morning political talkshows. This week, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was getting hit from all sides. Tennessee’s Fred Thompson fired a salvo, and so did Mitt Romney.

From the Post: Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, surging in the polls for the GOP presidential nomination, faced criticism by two rivals yesterday.

Fred D. Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, said, “Liberal is the only word that comes to mind, when he was governor.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Thompson criticized Huckabee for his positions on illegal immigration, tax policy and Cuba, and for his belief that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be shut down.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney criticized Huckabee for a recent Foreign Affairs article in which he called the Bush administration’s foreign policy “arrogant.”

“Mike Huckabee owes the president an apology,” Romney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I think he needs to read the article. It would really help if he would do that. Because if he did, he would see that there’s no apology necessary to the president,” Huckabee responded on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

For more, see the Post‘s website.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Preacher in Chief?

As we all know, the president of the United States is elected by and swears to serve all citizens of this nation by protecting and defending the Constitution, not the Bible or any other religious text. America — founded by men who in some instances proclaimed Jesus as their God — was created to assure the freedoms of religion and conscience without regard to an individual’s personal beliefs, creed, or worship practices.

The Republican Party appears to have abandoned any commitment to this tenet of the Constitution and is positioned to nominate a preacher in chief, whose first loyalty will be to the dogmas of Christian fundamentalism.

And they have a constituency. Across the country, sprawling corporate religious “lifestyle centers,” serving more as Christian country clubs than as houses of worship, have produced congregations who foster a blend of ostentatious piety, self-righteous intolerance, and unyielding arrogance. For these churchgoers, voting Republican is de rigueur.

Unprecedented amounts of wealth have been amassed in many of these churches, not in small part as a result of the wealth-redistribution policy of the Republican administrations’ faith-based government programs. The threat of losing this power and money may in fact be looming large in the selection of the party’s nominee and in the desperately pious tone, manner, and attitude of the Republican presidential acolytes.

Not to be outdone, the media, particularly cable television punditry and radio talk-show hosts, are reliably helping to advance the idea of establishing a religious “test” for candidates. Although the most recent Republican debate fielded questions created by viewers of YouTube, those questions were vetted and selected by officials at CNN. Thus, all Republican presidential candidates were asked by Wolf Blitzer if they believed in the inerrancy of the Bible. (Any guesses as to how the pack of them answered?)

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a proud member of God’s Own Party and an ordained Baptist minister, may be the most flagrant offender against the Constitution. Huckabee recently told a group of students at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University that his astonishing rise in the Iowa polls is an “act of God.” He has also received letters of endorsement from Tim LaHaye, author of the “Left Behind” series of novels which extol the Rapture as an imminent end-of-the-world phenomenon.

Huckabee has stated on the record that he does not believe in evolution and lists among the most urgent issues facing the country the perils of abortion and gay marriage, as well as threats to the unlimited rights of gun-owners. His frequent statements of religiosity are delivered with a jocular smile and a sense of humor — designed, apparently, to seem non-threatening to anyone who is not a believer.

And, as if this country hasn’t suffered enough division, enough religious hypocrisy, and enough self-righteous intolerance in the last seven years, now we have former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, an ex-moderate of sorts, hastening to join the ranks of Christian soldiers in the Republican Party and seeking like the rest to impose a religious obligation on political service. His immediate motivation, amplified by concern about rival Huckabee, is to gain the White House at any cost, but the ultimate result of his apostasy from reason is to further erode the wall separating church and state in this country — something most Christian fundamentalists believe is a myth concocted by God-hating secular liberals.

Prompted by Huckabee’s surge, Mormon Romney has ramped up his attempt to sway the fundamentalist crowds and seems determined to try to one-up Preacher Huckabee. He may indeed have trumped Huckabee with this mind-bending assertion: “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. … Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” Can Romney really not know of the suppression, torture, and murder of heretics and infidels by Christians (and members of virtually every other religion) throughout history?

When candidates such as Romney and Huckabee ratchet up their efforts to destroy the separation of church and state established by this country’s founders, it requires those of us in the electorate to ratchet right back. After all, it is an election that will be held in America next November, not an altar call.

Cheri DelBrocco writes the “Mad As Hell” column for MemphisFlyer.com.

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Politics Politics Feature

Talking Turkey

Newly elected members of the Memphis City Council, fresh from a recent get-acquainted luncheon with Mayor Willie Herenton, followed by an informational session with MLGW officials, continued their orientation with an all-day retreat Monday at the Lichterman Nature Center.

There, among other things, they heard from several council veterans as to what to expect. Typical of the good advice they got was the retiring Dedrick Brittenum‘s counsel that they never meet with constituents petitioning their support for a measure without having a council staffer on hand.

Barbara Swearengen Ware, a returning member, pointedly told the novices that the key to their success would be “relationships, relationships, relationships” — a reminder of the snags encountered in the not-so-distant past by one or two famously go-it-alone members.

Council vet Myron Lowery had a similar message, warning the council newbies not to get involved in “stupid stuff” that feeds the media without yielding positive results. “Three members of the council always had a rebuttal,” he said, without naming names. He cited the evolution in style of one departing colleague. When he was brand-new, Brent Taylor would comment on “everything in sight,” Lowery said, but Taylor finally progressed to the point that he “just voted.”

A surprisingly animated and light-hearted presentation came from the outgoing Henry Hooper, who had often seemed stiff and uncomfortable in his losing reelection race this fall. The visibly relaxed Hooper got a laugh Monday when he expressed satisfaction that he would no longer “have to worry about Janis Fullilove,” his victorious opponent, who smiled amiably as Hooper ventured, “If I run for something else, maybe try to go across the street [County Commission?], she’s not going to quit and run against me.”

E.C. Jones tossed off some one-liners, too — as well as one ultra-serious point: “Remember. You work with the mayor. You don’t work for the mayor.”

The logical follow-up to that was delivered in the form of an address by Stephen Wirls, a professor at Rhodes College. His message? The council has more power, potentially, vis-à-vis the mayor than anyone had previously realized. Hmmmmm.

• Richard Florida, whose Rise of the Creative Class is one of the basic texts of urban planning these days, was the featured speaker at last week’s Chairman’s Luncheon of the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce at The Peabody, and his appearance was not without irony.

A superb salesman and, some would say, a gifted theorist as well, consultant Florida advocates diversity and tolerance as essential tools for civic progress, and, as he told his overflow blue-chip audience in The Peabody’s Grand Ballroom, a distinct no-no is for a city’s leadership to address a dissident part of its population with the attitude, “If you don’t like it, you can get out.”

Er … Someone forgot to remind Florida that one of his hosts, Mayor Herenton (whom the speaker, who tailors his remarks to his locale, made sure to praise lavishly), is locally famous for occasionally expressing just such sentiments toward critics of his administration.

• Time, as they say, heals wounds. A case in point is the enhanced status among local Republicans of Shelby County commissioner George Flinn, who hosted this year’s annual Christmas gathering of the Shelby County Republican Women Monday at his expansive East Memphis residence.

Flinn presided over the affair with avuncular grace, and, by way of concluding some welcoming remarks, struck a note that clearly resonated with the sizable throng. “And notice that I didn’t say ‘Happy Holidays,’ I said ‘Merry Christmas,'” offered Flinn, who is fluent these days in the lingo and nuances of his party-mates, most of whom no doubt deplore the erosion of the season’s once-traditional greeting.

Five years ago, Flinn, a well-known radiologist and broadcast magnate, had just conducted his maiden political effort, a run for county mayor which involved both a bruising primary win over the popular Larry Scroggs and a difficult general election race in which he was swamped by the even more popular A C Wharton.

Some ill feeling lingered from both efforts, most of it stemming from the combative campaign tactics urged upon Flinn by some out-of-state consultants.

Flinn would have been an unlikely host for a holiday season GOP event back then, but the increasingly sure-of-himself commissioner is now regarded as one of his party’s least contentious presences and a likely candidate for another try at the mayoralty in 2010.