Last Call For Another 47% Solution

Republicans are terrible learners, that's all I have to say.  And yes, their absolute disdain for half of America is legendary.  It's a feature of Republicanism, not a bug.  Take Colorado GOP former Rep. Bob Beauprez, for instance.  He's running for Governor against John Hickenlooper in November, and he just lost the race, Mitt Romney-style.

On Wednesday, as Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob Beauprez toured Colorado to "build unity," a video surfaced that Democrats say shows his divisiveness.

The video shows Beauprez in a speech to the Denver Rotary Club in 2010 making comments that echo those that hurt Mitt Romney's challenge to President Barack Obama two years later.

"I see something that frankly doesn't surprise me, having been on Ways and Means Committee: 47 percent of all Americans pay no federal income tax," Beauprez said in the video. "I'm guessing that most of you in this room are not in that 47 percent — God bless you — but what that tells me is that we've got almost half the population perfectly happy that somebody else is paying the bill, and most of that half is you all."

He indicated Democrats had reasons to keep it that way.

"I submit to you that there is a political strategy to get slightly over half and have a permanent ruling majority by keeping over half of the population dependent on the largesse of government that somebody else is paying for," Beauprez said.

When Beauprez says that, he means Grandma and Grandpa on Social Security and the poorest working-class Americans.  And as I said, many working American pay payroll tax.

The canard that people don't carry their fair share is a trope that Republicans love to roll out, and the 47 percent figure is their favorite data point to support it.

But as I have been saying for some time now, the 47 percent figure, while technically accurate as it relates to federal income taxes, doesn't include what people do pay through the payroll tax, sales taxes, excise taxes, and all sorts of other levies . So here is a partial breakdown of how those other burdens fall on the population, courtesy of the Tax Policy Center and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy:

28.3 percent pay payroll taxes, which cover Social Security and Medicare.

10.3 percent pay no federal income tax because they are retired or elderly, and Social Security payments are not taxed. I can't imagine that Romney objects to this category.

It turns out that just 6.9 percent of people who are non-elderly don't pay income tax. That is a far cry from 47 percent. We are not, in fact, a nation of moochers, as Romney seems to suggest.

But why would Beauprez tell the truth?  It doesn't fit the Republican lie that "the majority" of Americans are lazy moochers that need to be punished by God-fearing, patriotic Republican voters.

We're all "those people" to the GOP.

The Unending Cycle Of Payback

Three Israeli teens found dead near the West Bank two weeks ago has escalated into the latest IDF bombing campaign against the Palestinians, who have responded with rockets, prompting retaliation where a Palestinian teen was abducted and burned alive.

Mohammed Abu Khedair, a Palestinian teenager who was abducted and killed in Jerusalem this week, died from being burned alive and hit with a blunt object to the head, according to Palestinian General Prosecutor Mohammed al-Auwewy, sourcing the medical autopsy.

Al-Auwewy said the autopsy discovered traces of smoke inside the lungs of the 16-year-old , meaning that it was inhaled during the burning.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said his country is aggressively investigating the killing. "We'll get to the bottom of it and catch those responsible," he told CNN on Saturday.

This of course led to more fighting at the teen's funeral.

The teenager's death sparked widespread outrage among Palestinians and clashes with Israeli security forces broke out during his funeral on Friday.

More than 60 people were injured in fighting in parts of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, a group that said it was involved in evacuating injured Palestinians. It said the injuries mostly involved rubber bullets fired at the upper body and chest.

Israeli police said 13 of their officers were slightly injured in clashes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, where Palestinian protesters were throwing rocks at police, who responded by firing rubber bullets and tear gas.

 And so on, and so on, and so on...

In a separate incident, two videographers recorded men in the uniform of Israeli security forces holding down and pummeling a teenager in Shuafat. Relatives say he is a U.S. citizen from Florida and a cousin of Abu Khedair.

The victim, Tariq Khdeir, 15, is a high school sophomore in Tampa, family members there said. He was visiting his Palestinian relatives in Jerusalem for the first time in over a decade when he was attacked and detained outside the home of his cousin, who was kidnapped and killed on Wednesday.

The two videos, which were posted independently, say the beating occurred on Thursday.

CNN's Ben Wedeman confirmed that the videos appeared to show an area near the home of the killed teen.

Hard to fight thousands of years of hatred and death.  Very hard indeed.

Hillary's Snowden Split

There are some advantages being a Democrat not currently in the Obama administration right now, and one of them is that you can take a complete non-position position on the fate of Edward Snowden.

Hillary Clinton said Friday that it’s up to NSA leaker Edward Snowden to decide whether to return to the U.S. and defend himself in court.

“If he wishes to return knowing he would be held accountable and also able to present a defense, that is his decision to make,” the former secretary of state said in an interview with the Guardian, the newspaper that broke the story uncovering many NSA programs with help from leaks from Snowden. The paper received the Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting for its coverage.

Clinton has been critical of Snowden in the past, calling him an “imperfect messenger” who could have gone about his whistleblowing in a way that would have been less damaging to national security. In April, she said it was “sort of odd” that he fled to China and Russia, countries that have restrictive cyberpolicies, and that his leaks helped certain terrorist networks.

“Whether he chooses to return or not is up to him,” she said Friday. “He certainly can stay in Russia apparently under Putin’s protection for the rest of his life if that’s what he chooses.”

Snowden isn't her problem to deal with.  Of course, Team Dudebro Defector has repeatedly said there's precisely zero chance of Snowden ever deciding to come back, because "he can't possibly get a fair trial."  Loosely translated, that means "He'd be found guilty" and we can't have that, so.

It's a moot point, and she knows it.

The SCOTUS Bait And Switch

It seems the Supreme Court isn't quite done injecting religious freedom into health insurance coverage for women.  On Tuesday, a day after ruling Hobby Lobby had the right to refuse to provide company health insurance coverage for contraception it (erroneously) believed was abortion, the Supreme Court ruled that Hobby Lobby's beliefs trumped women's individual rights and that the company could then refuse to cover any forms of birth control.

Less than a day after the United States Supreme Court issued its divisive ruling onBurwell v. Hobby Lobby, it has already begun to toss aside the supposedly narrow interpretation of the decision. On Tuesday, the Supremes ordered lower courts to rehear any cases where companies had sought to deny coverage for any type of contraception, not just the specific types Hobby Lobby was opposed to.

The Affordable Care Act had listed 20 forms of contraception that had to be covered as preventive services. But Hobby Lobby, a craft supply chain, claimed that Plan B, Ella, and two types of IUD were abortifacients that violated the owners' religious principles. The science was against Hobby Lobby—these contraceptives do not prevent implantation of a fertilized egg and are not considered abortifacients in the medical world—but the conservative majority bought Hobby Lobby's argument that it should be exempted from the law.

Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the the 5-4 opinion, used numerous qualifiers in an attempt to limit its scope, but a series of orders released by the court Tuesday contradict any narrow interpretation of the ruling.

It got worse on Thursday as the Supreme Court then decided that non-profit organizations who objected to birth control coverage were somehow being crushed by a substantial burden of having to inform the government that they were non-profit organizations who wanted an exemption, and gave Illinois's Wheaton College an immediate injunction against having to fill out paperwork to say they wanted to opt out.

 In a decision that drew an unusually fierce dissent from the three female justices, the Supreme Court sided Thursday with religiously affiliated nonprofit groups in a clash between religious freedom and women’s rights.

The decision temporarily exempts a Christian college from part of the regulations that provide contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

The court’s order was brief, provisional and unsigned, but it drew a furious reaction from the three female members, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. The order, Justice Sotomayor wrote, was at odds with the 5-to-4 decision on Monday in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, which involved for-profit corporations.

“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “Not so today.”

The court’s action, she added, even “undermines confidence in this institution.”

So, oops!  Sorry about your vagina, but the religious rights of a corporation outweigh the individual rights of a .woman's belief that birth control is a necessary medical expense that she should have covered through insurance she gets as part of compensation from her employer for working there.

Happy Independence Day, corporations!  You're now more important than women!  Congratulations!

StupidiNews, 4th of July Weekend Edition!

• Hurricane Arthur has made landfall as a Category 2 storm along North Carolina's Outer Banks, but is rapidly heading out to sea and looks to bypass New England.
• Six months after legalizing marijuana, Colorado's crime rate is down sharply and state revenues from taxing cannabis are up.
• The Iraqi Army has rallied after losing ground to ISIS militants and has retaken territory south of Tikrit, including Awja, the village where former dictator Saddam Hussein was born.
• The Pentagon has grounded its entire fleet of F-35 fighter jets as a precaution as a cockpit fire aboard one plane forced an aborted takeoff.
• Actress Lindsey Lohan is suing the makers of smash hit video game Grand Theft Auto V claiming that one of the game's characters is too close in likeness to the film star.

Last Call For June's Jobapalooza

The good Labor Department jobs news, which it turns out is really, really good:

The economy accelerated in June, with employers adding 288,000 jobs, well above the rate of hiring recorded in the first five months of 2014 and another sign that growth is finally rebounding. 

The Labor Department also said on Thursday that the unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage point, to 6.1 percent, the lowest since September 2008, when the economy’s fortunes turned sharply lower as Lehman Brothers collapsed and the financial crisis ensued. 

Nearly six years later, some of the scars remain — like a historically low rate of Americans in the work force. But the job market has been showing signs of health, even as the overall economic growth rate has been anemic. 

Unemployment has come down from 7.9 percent at the start of 2013, and the average monthly gain in payrolls has been above 200,000 for the last five months.

2.5 million new jobs in he last 12 months, 9.7 million in the last 54 months of private sector growth, a new record for consecutive months of private sector job growth.  This is the good news.

And this bad, long-term labor picture news, which is pretty awful:

But there’s a gnawing fear among economists that the improving data provides false comfort. More than 26 million people are in part-time jobs, significantly more than before the recession, making it one of the corners of the labor market that has been slowest to heal. That has led to worries that the workforce may be becoming permanently polarized, with part-timers stuck on one side and full-time workers on the other. 

“What we’re seeing is a growing trend of low-quality part-time jobs,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Work Week Initiative, which is pushing for labor reforms. “It’s creating this massive unproductive workforce that is unable to productively engage in their lives or in the economy.” 

Washington has begun to take notice. As the unemployment rate has dropped, the debate among policymakers has expanded from providing aid to those without a job to include improving conditions for those who do. President Obama has raised the minimum wage for federal contract workers, many of whom are part-time. The White House is also building support for a measure that would require companies to provide paid sick leave. Nationwide protests at retailers and fast-food chains that heavily rely on part-time labor have called for more reliable schedules.

The government defines part-time workers as those whose jobs average less than 35 hours a week. Historically, they made up about 17 percent of the workforce — and, in most cases, they were part-time by choice. They may be caring for family members, enrolled in school or simply uninterested or unable to work more hours. Technically, they are not counted among the unemployed. 

But the spike in part-time work since the recession has been largely involuntary. They may have had their hours cut or are unable to find full-time jobs, earning them the official designation of “part-time for economic reasons.” Last year, nearly 8 million people fell into this category, compared to just 4.4 million in 2007.

We're getting jobs back.  We're not replacing them with good jobs.  Corporations are still raking in record profits at the expense of their employees, and wages are still stagnant.  We need to get that fixed, and for that, we need to get the House back from the Republicans in November.

Not So Civil, Definitely Not Right

This week is the 50th anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.  Politico's Todd Purdum argues that the legislation would be blocked by Republicans today, causing no small amount of chest puffing among "principled" conservatives, but Doug Mataconis agrees with him:

There are really two issues at play in Purdum’s analysis, but they both tend to support his argument that it would be difficult if not impossible for any President to push through legislation like this Civil Rights Act today.

At the top of the list, of course, is the fact that the kind of bipartisanship that existed in 1964 when the Act was passed simply doesn’t exist in Congress today. Back then 80% of the Republicans in the House and 82% of Republicans in the Senate joined with their Democratic counterparts to pass the bill. Additionally, the bill likely would not have made it through Congress at all without the help of Republicans in the House like Kuchel and McCulloch and Senate Republicans such as Everett Dirksen, who worked across the aisle to reach a compromise that broke the 54 day filibuster against the bill that had been launched by Southern Democrats. Does anyone realistically see something like that happening in today’s day and age? Perhaps if it were the case that the issue involved were something of immediate importance brought on by crisis this would happen, and indeed it did happen in the wake of the September 11th attacks in the case of both the Authorization For Use Of Military Force Against Terrorists and the PATRIOT Act. For almost any other type of legislation, it seems unlikely that the kind of cross-party and cross-chamber cooperation that Congress demonstrated half a century ago would be possible today.

In addition to the decline in bipartisanship, but certainly one of the reasons for it, is the way in which the Republican Party has changed over the past 50 years. The “moderate” Republicans like Dirksen who were behind the Civil Rights Act from the start barely exist anymore. While those moderates predominantly came from the Northeast and Midwest, today’s Republicans are largely a product of the South and the West. That geographic shift has also been accompanied by an ideological shift in the party that has made it far more conservative that it used to be. Indeed, it is beyond question that the Southern Democrats who were the primary opponents would, in most cases, likely be Republicans today. That’s not to say that every Republican would oppose something like the Civil Rights Act, but some would and, as we have seen when it comes to issues ranging from immigration to voting rights to such mundane issues as the budget, that small minority in the GOP is able to wield a lot of power over party leaders who obviously know better when it comes to issues like this. Senator Dirksen and Congressmen Kuchel and McCulloch never had to face that kind of opposition within their own party. If they had, things might have unfolded very differently.

Certainly the Rand Paul wing of the GOP would find it to be an intolerable assault on the rights of business owners to discriminate.  Today's GOP has no ability to govern, they simply lurch from one reactionary pogrom against whatever group they hate today (Latinos, African-Americans, LGBTQ Americans, non evangelical Christians, Muslims, poor people, etc) to another, screaming outrage all the while.

Of course they would lack the courage to pass the Civil Rights Act.  You have only to look towards their absolute refusal to vote on immigration reform of fixing the Voting Rights Act to see that...and the way they treat President Obama, the "Kenyan Usurper".

There are no moderate Republicans in America, only Tea Party nutjobs and the cowards who enable them.

Bigger Isn't Anywhere Near Better

A new Consumer Reports reader survey of fast food chains finds that the kings are so far from the top of the hill when it comes to taste, and have so much competition, that they're now at the bottom of the hill.

We asked subscribers this direct question: On a scale of  1 to 10, from least delicious to most delicious you’ve ever eaten, how would you rate the taste? We heard about 53,745 burger chains’ burgers, chicken chains’ fried or roasted chicken, Mexican chains’ burritos, and sandwich chains’ sub—or heroes, hoagies, grinders, or wedges, depending on where you call home.

The tables reveal that some signature dishes came close to our readers’ benchmarks for excellence. But many of the biggest names earned significantly lower scores for the foods that made them famous, notably McDonald’s. The chain, which serves flash-frozen patties made with 100 percent USDA-inspected beef, touts them as free from  “preservatives, fillers, extenders, and so-called pink slime.” Such a pledge might be comforting, but it’s hardly a rousing endorsement. McDonald’s own customers ranked its burgers significantly worse than those of 20 competitors, including Hardee’s, White Castle, and Carl’s Jr. No other house specialty scored as low. 

Taco Bell’s burritos were also voted least luscious. And the subs from Subway, the world’s largest restaurant chain with more than 40,000 units in 106 countries, are near the bottom of the list.

I can't say I'm surprised.  KFC also came in dead last for chicken, too  The only things that the big fast food chains have going for them anymore is price, and even then there's so much competition for the nearly $700 billion yearly restaurant business, that's simply no guarantee of success anymore.

It's still a pretty big component of success however.  There's a reason the big guys remain the largest chains, especially Subway and McDonald's.  That $5 footlong and the cheeseburger for a buck still makes a lot of profit...especially with the terrible wages these places pay.

Likewise, when you can't afford a $7 Chipotle burrito, you buy a bunch of 99 cent tacos at Taco Bell and call it a day.  It's good to see that fast casual dining chains are doing better, but not everyone can afford to eat there.

StupidiNews!

• Hurricane Arthur has now formed off the Georgia coast as a Category 1 storm heading for the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
• California officials are cracking down on water regulations as the state's worst drought in over a century continues.
• Iran and the five permanent UN Security Council members, plus Germany, are heading into final rounds of nuclear talks ahead of a July 20 deadline.
• India's new ruling party is demanding answers from the US after a Washington Post article citing possible NSA spying on the party of current PM Narendra Modi.
• Goldman Sachs is demanding that Google "unsend" an email that the trading giant accidentally sent to the wrong address, and is willing to go to court over it.

Last Call For The GOP Goal

Joe Sonka reminds us that there is a difference between the two political parties, and that is the stated goal of the GOP is to end all abortion in America by criminalizing it.

The National Right to Life Commission (NRLC) held their national convention in Louisville this weekend at the Galt House, rallying supporters to their cause of ending legal abortion in America. Their featured speaker Saturday morning, Sen. Mitch McConnell, told a slightly more than half-full conference room that “the tide is turning” on the issue, and he would help the anti-abortion advocates win their fight. 

“I’m not sure when it first occurred to me that we are winning this debate, but there’s no question that we are,” said McConnell. “The signs are everywhere, and you have played a huge role in that.” 

One of those signs came two days later, when a 5-4 Supreme Court decision ruled in favor of the craft store Hobby Lobby, who argued that they should be exempt from an Affordable Care Act mandate that they must provide their employees coverage for four types of birth control the company considers “abortion,” because this violates Hobby Lobby’s religious freedom. Despite no legal or scientific basis for that claim, the court ruled that “closely held” private companies — which make up 90 percent of American companies — are exempt from this mandate if they claim it goes against their religious beliefs, granting such companies the same religious rights as persons. 

With the current makeup of Congress and the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade does not appear in eminent danger, but abortion opponents openly celebrated the Hobby Lobby ruling as an advancement for their larger cause of chipping away at women’s reproductive rights. At last weekend’s convention in Louisville, McConnell urged attendees to help elect him majority leader of the Senate this fall so he can push through legislation banning abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy, which has already passed the House. 

Two Republican congressmen from Kentucky, Representatives Andy Barr and Brett Guthrie, who also spoke Saturday morning, are co-sponsors of legislation that would not only ban all abortion in America — with no exemptions for rape, incest and health of the mother — but could go further than the Hobby Lobby decision, banning many forms of birth control.

And that's really the point for the American Taliban here.  If you take away reproductive health care choices, then women will have to remain celibate or have to be punished for being sluts, and that will magically fix everything that's wrong with America.  It's laughable, or would be, if it again wasn't the stated goal of one of the major political parties in this country and the position of tens of millions of their voters.

So yes, when people ask me how I can support Alison Lundergan Grimes when she's "just as bad as Mitch", I remind them exactly why that's not the case.

GOP Minority Outreach In Mississippi Continues

So in the last 48 hours we've gone from mildly racist accusations that GOP Sen. Thad Cochran won last week's Mississippi Senate primary runoff against state Sen. Chris McDaniel by promising to get free government stuff for us awful, lazy black people to definitely more racist accusations that Cochran actually bought us awful, lazy black people to vote for him at the low, low price of $15 a piece.

The claim is centered on a report by blogger Charles C. Johnson, who reported at his website GotNews.com that African-American activist Stevie Fielder brought "hundreds or even thousands" of African-Americans to vote for Cochran. Johnson alleges that Fielder motivated the voters by calling McDaniel a racist. Johnson identifies Fielder as a pastor at the First Missionary Baptist Church in Meridian, Mississippi, located in Lauderdale County, but a deacon at the church told the Clarion-Ledger that Fielder is not a pastor there and is instead a "self-proclaimed minister."

Some blogger reports some guy said this happened, so of course it's 100% truth now and the only possible explanation for how McDaniel lost a race he should have won by 47 billion points because FREEDOM.

McDaniel supporters, since he lost the runoff, have accused Cochran of engaging in foul play to win the election by seeking out African-American and Democratic support. Laura Van Overschelde, a member of the Central Mississippi Tea Party, a group that strongly supports McDaniel, echoed Johnson's report on her Facebook.

"You lame stream media, Thad bought this election paying black voters harvested by black pastors at $15 a vote," Van Overschelde wrote. "Do your investigative reporting before you start spouting off printing false narratives."

See,  it's truth now, and the "false narrative" is that McDaniel somehow lost.  It's hysterical how racist and stupid these clowns are.  Of course it's all the fault of them dirty (insert racist expletive here.)  And you'd better believe that these assholes now believe it's their godly, Christian duty to punish as many black people as possible.

It's still 1964 in Mississippi, and about as deadly.

America The Counter-Productive

If you want to know why Republicans have now scrapped plans for immigration reform entirely, it's because their rabidly xenophobic base will crucify them for anything short of land mines, moats, army brigades and a 100-foot wall on the border to get rid of "those people".

More than 100 demonstrators forced buses full of immigrants to be rerouted from Murrieta, California nearly 70 miles south while hurling derisive chants toward them, KFMB-TV reported on Tuesday.

The protesters chanted “U-S-A, U-S-A,” and “Go back home” at the caravan, which was originally headed to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Murrieta carrying 140 undocumented immigrants, many of them women and children, who had entered the country after journeying from Central America. Federal officials put them on the buses after they were flown into San Diego from Texas earlier in the day.

“Send them back to their countries,” one unidentified male protester told KFMB. “Send them back to where they came from.”

It’s not clear if the demonstrators realized, however, that the purpose of facilities like the one in Murrieta is to help authorities prepare to send the immigrants leave the U.S., and to account for individuals who could pose flight risks. But because the protesters blocked the buses, they were shuttled out of the area and taken to a similar center in San Ysidro, close to the U.S.-Mexico border, where they arrived late Tuesday afternoon.

“This was a victory for the American people,” another protester was quoted as saying.

Congratulations, anti-immigration meatheads demanding undocumented immigrants be "sent back where they came from".  You blocked buses full of immigrants being processed so they could be deported out of the country, so they had to stay inside the country longer.

And no, Republicans have become the party of "us" versus "them", and "them" is a very long list of ethnicities, sexual orientations, religions, and beliefs.  I have been saying for years that Republican xenophobia would end any immigration deal, and in the end they've resigned themselves to that fact.

Demographics will be unforgiving.

StupidiNews!

• A cargo plane in Kenya crashed into a building shortly after takeoff from Nairobi, killing all four aboard, the Kenyan Red Cross says nobody on the ground was injured.
• Six LA County Sheriff's officials were convicted on federal charges of obstruction of an investigation into police violence against prisoners in county jails.
• Despite a record 16 saves, US goalie Tim Howard couldn't prevent a loss to Belgium 2-1 in extra time in yesterday's Round of 16 World Cup match, sending the Yanks home.
• Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been charged by French investigators with influence peddling as part of three corruption cases pending against him.
• With public comments savaging the deal, Time Warner Cable customers in New York are not happy with the planned merger of the two broadband and cable giants.

Last Call For Damage, Limited

Yesterday's Hobby Lobby decision was ugly, and the right went out of their way to call critics of the ruling all kinds of names, with Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post calling the reaction "caterwauling", Sean Davis at The Federalist complaining of "stupid arguments by dumb liberals" and the braintrust at Power Line going so far as to call the decision "meaningless".

Only the funny part is, the liberal point that the decision means private, for-profit companies can now refuse to cover any birth control is actually 100% correct.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday confirmed that its decision a day earlier extending religious rights to closely held corporations applies broadly to the contraceptive coverage requirement in the new health care law, not just the handful of methods the justices considered in their ruling.

The justices did not comment in leaving in place lower court rulings in favor of businesses that object to covering all 20 methods of government-approved contraception. 

Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby Inc. and a Pennsylvania furniture maker won their court challenges Monday in which they refused to pay for two emergency contraceptive pills and two intrauterine devices. 

Tuesday's orders apply to companies owned by Catholics who oppose all contraception. Cases involving Colorado-based Hercules Industries Inc., Illinois-based Korte & Luitjohan Contractors Inc. and Indiana-based Grote Industries Inc. were awaiting action pending resolution of the Hobby Lobby case. 

Do we understand now what's going on?  If a "closely-held" business objects to any or all 20 forms of covered contraception under the Affordable Care Act on religious grounds, they no longer have to offer health insurance coverage for any of them.  This includes standard birth control methods like the pill.

Sure, that seems like freedom to me, right?

So yes, this decision is very much an attack on women, who now can be denied health insurance coverage because of their boss's religion.

Might want to keep that in mind when you vote in November.

Ethics Schmethics, We're Flying To Aruba

Republicans continue to respond very quickly to the needs of their real constituency: the corporate lobbyists who have bought and paid for our political system.

It's going to be a little more difficult to ferret out which members of Congress are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world after the House has quietly stripped away the requirement that such privately sponsored travel be included on lawmakers' annual financial-disclosure forms. 

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings. 

"This is such an obvious effort to avoid accountability," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "There's no legitimate reason. There's no good reason for it."

Free trips paid for by private groups must still be reported separately to the House's Office of the Clerk and disclosed there. But they will now be absent from the chief document that reporters, watchdogs, and members of the public have used for decades to scrutinize lawmakers' finances.

Now why would House Republicans suddenly want to start hiding  disclosures of which corporations are giving them free trips?  It's not like lobbyists are spending millions buying members of Congress in order to get billions in favorable legislative deals, right?

The change occurs as free travel, which critics have criticized as thinly veiled junkets, has come back into vogue. Last year, members of Congress and their aides took more free trips than in any year since the influence-peddling scandal that sent lobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison. There were nearly 1,900 trips at a cost of more than $6 million last year, according to Legistorm, which compiles travel records. 

Now none of those trips must be included on the annual disclosures of lawmakers or their aides.

But the real problem is Obama playing golf, right?