Rachel Ford is a programmer, and since 8:00 to 5:00 doesn't provide enough opportunity to bask in screen glare, she writes in her spare time. She was raised a very fundamentalist Christian, but eventually "saw the light." Rachel's personal blog is Rachel's Hobbit Hole, where she discusses everything from Tolkien to state politics.
Public Policy Polling released a poll on Tuesday identifying Scott Walker (below) as the leading presidential favorite among primary-voting Republicans. Which isn’t even the worst thing the poll tells us (and I say that as a Wisconsinite…). While many of PPP’s questions focused on potential Republican primary candidates, some were the sort of simple queries like “Do you believe in evolution or not?” that trip up politicians like Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal. And if you’re wondering how the potential primary voters fared, well… their responses weren’t any more heartening than Walker’s “punt.” Read more
Christy Perry (below) is an Idaho Republican State Representative who champions her support for the sanctity-of-life on her website, where she lists it as a pressing issue. So, presumably, if such a self-styled champion of life heard that parents were allowing their children to die of easily treatable illnesses by withholding medical treatment, her pro-life commitment would ensure that she was at the forefront of the movement to protect the lives of those children. Right? Not so much. According to a report from Al-Jazeera America’s Leah Sottile, Perry suggests that faith-healing parents … are more comfortable confronting death. “Children do die,” Perry said. “And I’m not trying to sound callous, but [people calling for reform] want to act as if death is an anomaly. But it’s not. It’s a way of life.” Which might have been Perry’s first clue that something was wrong — because death should not be just a “way of life” for children. Read more
Scranton, Pennsylvania doesn’t always come off well in the public eye. It was the hometown of the fictional Dunder Mifflin and Michael Scott; it’s where chronically-embarrassed Vice-President Joe Biden is from. It’s also the location of the aptly-named University of Scranton, whose president, Father Kevin P. Quinn (below), is so opposed to abortion that he wants to cut insurance coverage even for women whose lives are depending on that access. Read more
If you listen to the Christian far right, Dearborn (Michigan) is a terrifying Islamic haven within our borders, governed by Sharia Law and ruled by extremists. It would not be unexpected, if such a thing were true, to hear of a judge who essentially proselytized from the bench, and fired the employee who blew the whistle on his illegal actions. As it happens, there is a judge in Dearborn who did just that. But he isn’t Muslim — which probably explains why all the people who are worried about a caliphate in Dearborn seem to have been snoozing when the latest ruling in this case was handed down. You see, the judge in question, Mark Somers (below), is a Christian. His misconduct included sending official correspondence on letterhead that quoted the Bible and incidents of “literally preaching from the bench,” according to the court clerk. Based on these behaviors, another employee, Julie Pucci, filed a complaint against Somers. Read more
South Dakota Republican State Rep. Isaac Latterell (below) has an important message for the people of his state. Dilation and evacuation abortions are basically “beheading unborn children” — and since you don’t like when ISIS beheads other people, you should be outraged that Planned Parenthood offers abortion. To that end, he has put forth House Bill 1230, the Preborn Infant Beheading Ban of 2015, which would outlaw the procedures and jail violators. Yes, really. Read more
