It’s Thursday Threatcon, your intelligence briefing on right wing activity. Below are the best reports, investigations, exposées, and debunkery of the wingnutosphere this week. Due to conservative hysteria about the pending Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, our Threatcon Color Code is RAINBOW APOCALYPSE
- Welcome back, Jim Crow: The GOP-dominated North Carolina legislature has overturned Gov. Pat McCrory’s veto and authorized state magistrates to refuse to issue marriage licenses to any couple who offends their private religious sensibilities. An obvious attack on marriage equality, the measure also sanctifies and protects the racial and religious prejudices of magistrates and clerks
- Right wing culture warriors are lining up against the SCOTUS ruling on marriage equality in advance, forecasting doom for the nation. GOP presidential aspirant Rick Santorum vows to ignore the ruling altogether, televangelists say that the Mark of the Beast cannot be far behind, and “religious leaders” claim that it will result in their being jailed for refusing to marry same-gender couples. Franklin Graham’s hilariously-failed boycott of gay-friendly banks is an example of what makes conservatives so angry and afraid about the growing social acceptance of LGBTQs
- Yet another public figure very close to Mike Huckabee has been accused of molesting children. This time, it’s his ghostwriter John Perry, who has also co-authored a book with Alabama’s Ten Commandments Chief Justice Roy Moore
- Still fighting Murphy Brown: Jeb Bush thinks single moms should be ashamed of themselves
- Slavery-by-fetus: Wisconsin legislators have drafted a bill that would let men sue doctors who provide abortions to the women they’ve impregnated
- Indiana Republicans created an HIV epidemic in small, rural towns by defunding Planned Parenthood
- Republican legislatures have required abortion providers to lie to their patients, but a federal court has struck down a number of such laws in Idaho and Arizona is being sued for forcing providers to give patients quack medical advice
- Nationwide, the number of abortions is declining because better access to reproductive health care and the death of stigma mean that Americans use more birth control. Harsh laws passed by the forced-birth lobby have made it easier to get a gun than an abortion, but have zero effect on reducing abortion rates; in fact, easy abortion access decreases the overall number of actual abortions. But those punitive laws are artificially inflating the price of abortion, which forces poor women to use cheaper providers like Kermit Gosnell or else self-abort unsafely at home
- NARAL President Ilyse Hoge is having twins. The fact that this amazes her forced-birth opponents just highlights their poor understanding of what “choice” means
- No wonder Ann Coulter sounds like a white nationalist; she actually credits her views on immigration to unapologetic racist Peter Brimelow. Claiming that immigration will result in mass rape of women and girls, here is Coulter with your US RDA of outrage porn:
- Henry Lee McCollum and his brother have been pardoned after spending three decades in prison for a murder they did not commit. Justice Antonin Scalia has cited this very case to justify the death penalty
- Scott Walker’s Wisconsin now ranks dead last in business start-ups. This is exactly the opposite of what right wing ‘free market’ theology predicts ought to happen. The same economic theologians have been hard at work for decades trying to disestablish Wisconsin’s higher education system and Walker is their tool
- Influence equals access: your congresscritter is more than twice as likely to agree to a meeting with you if you have given them campaign money
- The Koch brothers are taking over the Republican Party’s voter information operations, bringing the day of direct governance-by-super PAC a little bit closer
- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has asked the IRS and the Federal Elections Commission to investigate alleged political spending violations by the National Rifle Association
- No, global warming does not mean that plants will grow better — not even if you pour Brawndo all over them
- Self-made disaster: Kansas House Republicans have rejected sales and cigarette tax increases that would balance the state budget, ensuring the necessity of massive spending cuts
- So much for American government principles and separation of powers: Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has signed a bill to eliminate the budget for state courts unless they rule in his favor
- Jackson County, Illinois is dealing with a small epidemic of ‘sovereign citizens’ in its jailhouse
- Watch this Texas ‘sovereign citizen’ try to argue his way out of a speeding ticket and end up getting his car window smashed instead
https://youtu.be/JoBgkAmJUn0
- 42 year-old Canadian ‘sovereign citizen’ Norman Walter Raddatz killed an Edmonton police officer and then died this week after setting fire to the house where he was squatting
- Wife abuser, police violence apologist, and serial liar Bill O’Reilly worries that a war may break out between police and minorities, but makes no mention of white ‘sovereign citizens’ launching armed assaults on courthouses
- White supremacy damages the mental health of minorities
- Powerful people are quite sensitive to unfairness…as long as they are the victims of the unfairness
- Right wing radio host Jan Mickelson wants to bring back Jim Crow-era literacy tests for voters
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has nixed a last-ditch attempt by cable and telecom monopolists to stop new FCC rules on net neutrality from going into effect tomorrow
- Idaho Republicans want their state to recognize the Bible as a science and law textbook
- It’s been 14 years since Portugal decriminalized drug policy. Contrary to the expectations of those who endorse a ‘War on Drugs,’ the country has experienced massive improvements in public health and boasts the second-lowest overdose fatality rate in the European Union
- Aside from the fact that they’re all running for president, what do Rand Paul, John Kasich, and Scott Walker have in common? They’ve all been caught repeating fake quotes of real founding fathers
- Transparent oppression: WXIA Channel 11 in Atlanta was investigating closed-door meetings between Georgia legislators and lobbyists for ALEC, the Koch brothers-backed bill mill, but got kicked out of the venue for asking questions