Today’s political news - Part 7

Regrettably with conservative judges and justices, religious belief has become a legal way to discriminate. Not just PreP, the right for adoption agencies to discriminate against same sex couples, denying wedding services to same sex couples and restricting access to contraception and abortion. In MA, the Salvation Army is trying to discriminate against people with opiod addictions using medication assisted therapy.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/07/supreme-court-religious-right-antidiscrimination-laws/

Emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court, today’s religious right is pressing in courts nationwide for what amounts to a sweeping right to discriminate. U.S. courts are flooded with cases brought by institutions claiming their right to religious freedom entitles them to refuse to comply with anti-discrimination laws.

These efforts are simply incompatible with a pluralistic constitutional democracy that values both equality and religious freedom. Religious freedom, after all, doesn’t mean a right to hurt others.

Proponents of religious exemptions portray them as a shield to protect religious people from an increasingly secular United States. In reality, they’ve become a sword wielded to impose religious beliefs on others.

We have been here before. In the mid-1960s, a white supremacist who refused to serve Black people at his South Carolina barbecue restaurants argued that he was entitled to a religious exemption from the newly enacted Civil Rights Act. His lawyers told a trial court that the owner believed “as a matter of faith that racial intermixing or any contribution thereto contravenes the will of God,” and therefore enforcing the Civil Rights Act against him “constitute[d] State interference with the free practice of his religion.” The Supreme Court dismissed the argument as “patently frivolous.”

Champions of this “patently frivolous” claim are back before a remade Supreme Court. Half a century ago, the court snuffed out the flame on claims that religious freedom gave institutions the right to violate anti-discrimination laws. This time, it is lighting the match.

My experience as a poll clerk and poll watchers. Poll watchers had to register with the county elections board. They had to wear their County issued ID, it had to be visible and legible. It also stated who their represented while they were at the polls.

At no time were they allowed to be close to the tables, the voter registration/sign in books. They could not be behind the tables or near the voting machine. And in no way interfere with either the poll clerk ks or voters.

For years we generally had the same group of poll clerks and we got along extremely well, two from each party. I worked several very contentious elections and we'll still did well.

Today, I am not so sure... I vote by mail..

Heather Cox Richardson
Wednesday 9-7-22

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-7-2022?r=1f0orz&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Nah. I doubt he feels the walls closing in, sadly. 
The shit this man gets away with is truly MIND BOGGLING. 
I will be shocked and awed if anything comes from any of this. I would love to be proven wrong, though! 

One LP founders, Rick Wilson answers former's threats of a lawsuit!!!

Warning profanity...!!!

Look who got loose...
Not that she lifted a finger and helped!!!

He really is pathetic.

Heather Cox Richardson
Thursday 9-8-22

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-8-2022?r=1f0orz&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email