Wednesday, April 27, 2005
GOP = The People of the Lie
The Sensenbrenner-approved falsifying of the Democratic amendments to the Let's Penalize Women As Much As We Can Bill has actually made the news. Click here and scroll down a bit: The House bill was approved after acrimonious exchanges in which Democrats accused Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee of grossly distorting their amendments. "I've never seen anything like this," said an incensed New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who had offered an amendment exempting grandparents or clergy from prosecution if they helped a girl travel to get an abortion. The committee report described the measure as one that "could be used by sexual predators to escape conviction." Pretty scummy, eh? I wonder what most Republican voters would think of this. As for the bill itself: If this bill had been the law back in 1982, a college classmate of mine would be in prison right now for having had two abortions while outside of her home state. And her Republican parents would be screaming like banshees about the unfairness of it all. See, that's who this law is going to hurt the most in the end. The poorest girls can't even get up the money to go out of state for a week or two anyway, so it's a moot point unless they have very generous friends. Only those with rich -- or at least middle-class -- mommies and daddies can pull this off easily. So it's back to coathangers and pennyroyal tea for these people. I've often heard it said by clinic workers that Republican women who are publicly anti-abortion are their biggest client group. This law is going to hit these women where they live -- literally. No longer will they be able to hypocritically run away to have done what they condemn their poorer and darker-skinned peers for doing. Not unless they're VERY rich, in which case they'll simply move to a state like New York for a few months or jet to someplace overseas.
But another thing I find interesting is that while the press mentions Nadler's anger, they studiously avoid mentioning Slaughter's role in mobilizing DailyKos readers to contact the media and their representatives over this. (Meanwhile, the same media suspects would go out of their way to give credit to PowerLine, were Hinderaker and Company to try and mobilize their readers -- even though PowerLine has but a fraction of DailyKos' reach.)
One very good sign: Representatives Slaughter and Conyers, and to a lesser degree Senators Boxer and Feingold, are learning how to work with the netroots to organize and communicate -- though Feingold is still unclear on a lot of things blog-related. (Conyers himself has a very good blog, and he's not afraid to wade into the comments sections and address the commenters.)
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