Tagged: abortion ban

Posted: March 7, 2013 at 7:16 am

Arkansas Passes Unconstitutional 12 Week Abortion Ban

by Cowgirl

What does it mean for Montana?

The Arkansas legislature has voted to outlaw abortion wherever a fetus’s heartbeat can be detected, which is usualy around 12 weeks. The governor of Arkansas, Mike Beebee, a Democrat, had vetoed the bill. But the Arkansas legislature overrode the veto.

To give you an idea of what Arkansas politics are like, not a single state senator, Republican or Democrat, spoke against the bill on the day the governor’s veto was debated on the senate floor. Continue reading →

Posted: February 24, 2012 at 7:19 am

What You Won’t Read in the Gazette about the Arrested Anti-Choice Activist

The man that the Gazette paints as a hapless local minister arrested for tresspassing is actually the national leader of the hardline anti-choice group called “Personhood USA.”

The Billings Gazette calls Calvin Zastrow, “a Billings resident and minister for the Assemblies of God.” But, a quick Google search of the man (what an amazing tool, Google) reveals a much different picture.

Cal Zastrow co-founded Personhood USA, the out-of-state group pushing initiatives to ban abortion and some forms of birth control in several states. He is the group’s national leader and spokesperson. He lists a DC phone number and calls himself “America’s premier trainer” for the anti-choice initiative and petition process. Zastrow boasts that he works today with Operation Rescue. The group has been linked to the bombing of women’s clinics, not to mention clinic blockades and invasions, arson, bombing and arson threats, death threats, chemical attacks, stalking, physical violence and gunfire.

It turns out the Billings arrest isn’t his first rodeo. Zastrow has made a career of getting arrested and openly brags about his various arrests and sentences across the U.S. (Getting arrested is part of his strategy for getting in the press. We can see it’s working.) This isn’t even Zastrow’s first arrest in Billings–he worked up a similar scheme when he visited the state over a decade ago.

Cal Zastrow encourages people to get young people involved in the anti-choice movement, “because they have less to lose by getting arrested.” He thinks his arrests make him a martyr. He thinks getting arrested allows him to compare himself to Martin Luther King Jr.

Get this:

Cal’s incarceration for loving his neighbor is in the tradition of men like John Bunyan, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Alan Keyes, and Martin Luther King Jr. His longest jail sentence, of 90 days in the Saginaw County Jail, Michigan, leads Cal to conclude that going to jail isn’t as bad as being dismembered by Planned Parenthood.

Sure, he’s been to Montana before. Zastrow was the national big-wig brought in to kick off the new, more extreme, Constitution Party of MT. The MT group broke off from the National Constitution Party for being “too liberal.” Zastrow told the splinter group that the problem isn’t political parties:

Instead, Cal says the problem is “demons from hell manifested as lies,” because a “law that lets women murder unborn children is hell.”

The absolute ban on abortion and some forms of birth control that Zastrow is pushing recently failed in Mississippi. In fact, it’s failed in every state that Zastrow’s group has attempted the ballot initiative.

Among all Montana’s anti-abortion activist groups (Montana Catholic Conference, the Montana Family Foundation, the Eagle Forum, the Concerned Women of America, and the Right To Life of Montana not one is supporting the so-called “Personhood Amendment.”

Posted: January 22, 2012 at 2:59 pm

Happy Roe v. Wade Anniversary Montana

Today is the 39th Anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. It’s a good time to look at the state of the GOP’s War on Women.

We used to think that it was only guys on street corners with a brown paper bag and a megaphone who really believed that God talked directly to them. Now, we find that these poor fellows have moved into leadership roles in the Republican Party.

Republicans seem to think that they don’t need to know facts and science because they are championing the issues of the Lord: keeping gays from getting jobs, letting cancer victims die with pain and indignity, and forcing women to bear children conceived by rape or incest.

Contrast this with the priorities of voters, who say the economy is the most important issue facing the nation–with social issues trailing way, way behind. What’s more, recent polls show more people consider themselves pro-choice than pro-life. Most reasonable people can agree that it should be women, not the government, who makes these decisions-whatever your views on abortion. Yet the zealots refuse to give up.

Recently, they are obsessed with passing sweeping abortion and birth control bans. So-called “personhood measures,” absolute bans on abortion and birth control, are designed to directly challenge the Roe v. Wade ruling. Thus far, the ridiculous personhood movement is 0 for 3, losing referendums in Colorado in 2008 and 2010 and in Mississippi last November.

The movement has consistently failed to garner enough signatures to get on the ballot here in Montana. For one thing, the initiative’s movement was plagued by problems, such as when their leader was caught in a Medicaid fraud probe. The signature gathering was found out to be pushed largely by out-of state interests, and that the proposal was so extreme that even Montana’s in-state nut-jobs urged their followers not to sign or refused to get involved. Mostly, reason the initiative didn’t qualify for the ballot is because Montanans simply don’t want this garbage in our Constitution.

The nutjobs in the TEA Party Republican legislature disregarded all of this and placed an unconstitutional parental notification measure on the ballot for a vote this fall. The referendum would require young women seeking an abortion under the age of 16 to notify a parent or appear before a judge in order to have the procedure. Parental Notification laws were already declared unconstitutional by the Montana Court system.

Posted: September 28, 2011 at 12:42 pm

Right Wing Pastor Caught Filching Victim Out of Life Savings

A Montana pastor renowned for his bigoted attacks on women and gays will be arrested for setting up fake companies to steal hundreds of thousands from a local man, the Missoulian reports. Pastor Harris Himes is facing several felonies for theft and fraud.

Himes, who is from Hamilton, is leading the effort to pass a statewide abortion ban in Montana. He lobbied heavily in the legislature for bills to repeal the ban against discrimination against gays, and tired to pass bills to eliminate Montana’s constitutional right to privacy. During the 2011 legislative session, he even told legislators that he believes gay people should be put to death. Himes partnered with Republican nutjobs like Bob Wagner and Derek Skees to back outrageous proposals like the birther bill, among others.

Himes and another right-wing pastor who conspired with him in the scam lured the victim to an abandoned building in Mexico that they had claimed was the site of their “investment” and then left him. This looks pretty bad. Presumably when you steal money from a gringo and leave him in the middle of Mexico, you’re hoping he doesn’t make it back state-side to turn you in.

The scam was shut down by Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Monica Lindeen.

Posted: September 24, 2011 at 8:17 am

A Look at 2012′s Packed Ballot

There are no less than five citizen initiative proposals that Montanans are trying to get on the ballot though signature gathering campaigns. This is in addition to the five bad ideas that TEA Party Republicans sent to the ballot to be voted on in 2012.

While people have a general impression that ballot initiatives “are good for turnout,” that’s actually not the case. Studies have shown time again that while the ability to legislate from the ballot could impact turnout in midterm elections, but it has little or no effect during presidential elections like 2012.

The sheer number of initiatives on the ballot is what is interesting here. There are, so far, ten measures that could be on the ballot. Five were referred by the legislature, and five are proposed by citizens who must first the signatures necessary. The general rule of thumb is that the more measures on the ballot, the more likely people are to vote no. This is partly because people would rather vote for the status quo (vote no) then vote to support something they feel they don’t have enough information on to make a decision.

In this case, since the initiatives are mostly (but not all) bad, this could work in progressives’ favor. Take a look at what the TEA Party Republicans in the 2011 legislature put on the ballot.:
·    Denying services to undocumented immigrants
·    Gutting the right to medical privacy for women
·    Prohibiting the federal government from enforcing the individual mandate of the ACA
·    Politicizing the election of supreme court justices by district instead of statewide, and
·    Dismantling state government by requiring that money not appropriated by the legislature not be available to future legislatures

This final one might be the worst of the lot. It would mean that even if there is a large budget surplus like the hundreds of millions we have now, and even if we vote to change the legislature to elect people that will use the surplus the fix the problems caused by the past legislature’s underfunding, our votes won’t matter. The funding will be sent back to Exxon-Mobil, et al. Your voice would be silenced.

Here’s an overview of what citizens are trying to get on the ballot–the entire list of proposed initiatives and legislative referenda can be found on the Secretary of State’s web site:

Jury Nullification
This is a proposal to allow juries to say, “the person is guilty, but we don’t like the law so we refuse to convict her.” If you believe that laws should be made under established, open and transparent and visible procedures (and in legislatures accountable to the electorate), you’re probably opposed to this idea.

It’s being pushed by Roger Roots, who the Montana Human Rights Network calls a “racist activist with Montana connections.” The Network became very familiar with Roots when he sued them for $3.7 million for libel in 1994. Roots lost. The Network reports that in 1996, Roger Roots held a rally with Rudy Stanko, a reverend for the racist World Church of the Creator. Roots is listed as a contributing writer for the racist publication known as “The Jubilee.”

Abortion Ban
This has already failed twice to garner enough support to get on the ballot. In fact, it’s never even come close. Still, there is no reasoning with fanatics. Despite the fact that according to the most recent polling, 78% of Americans want abortion to remain legal.

Medical Marijuana and Eminent Domain
Here’s where this gets interesting. These campaigns are both attempts to block two bills passed by the legislature from becoming law. The first is the unpopular Senate Bill 423, the Jeff Essmann medical marijuana disaster which passed with a veto-proof majority after the legislature voted down a slate of amendatory vetoes. The other is the new eminent domain bill, House Bill 198.

The medical marijuana campaign is expected to get enough signatures by the September 30th deadline. The eminent domain bill is still uncertain. Neither issue breaks down along traditional party lines lines. For example, those in favor of green energy and wind power may support the new eminent domain law because it allows transmission lines-the only way to get green energy to market.

On the other hand some environmentalists oppose it because they don’t want the line going through certain areas or because they see it as an increase in corporate power. Conservatives are also divided on the issue. TEA partiers like Art Wittich support the campaign to block the law, while other Republicans want to keep the new law in place. The web site of the campaign to block the new eminent domain law can be viewed here, and the site of the campaign to block the new medical marijuana law can be viewed here.

Legalization of Marijuana
Though this initiative has the odd title, “Constitutional right to alcohol and marijuana,” apparently it is an attempt to get the state to legalize marijuana and treat it like alcohol.

Make it Harder for the Legislature to Change Initiatives
Finally, the initiative to “reserve to the people the power to amend or repeal laws passed by initiative” is a measure that the Billings Gazette reports would require the legislature to send changes or repeal of citizen’s initiatives back to the voters.

Posted: March 23, 2011 at 6:45 am

Warburton Admits Abortion Ballot-Measures are Designed for Political Purpose: Did She break The Law?

Wendy Warburton, tea partyist legislator from Havre, made the mistake of admitting to Emily Ritter, Montana Public Radio that the reason she has introduced two anti-abortion constitutional amendments is that these two measures, if they appear on the ballot, will “drive Republican voters to the polls,” and thus benefit R candidates in 2012. (Listen to the story here: click “Click to Listen” the story is about 5 minutes and 10 seconds in.)

Putting things on the ballot to drive up turnout is an old trick that the GOP loves, like CI-105, a ballot measure which proposed eliminating a tax that didn’t exist. But the ballot measures are usually put on the ballot by citizen groups or other private interests, which are required to get the signatures from citizens to prove that enough citizens want the measure on the ballot. The measures Warburton is pushing have failed twice in two years to get anywhere close to the number of signatures necessary. It takes 49,000 signatures to place a proposed constitutional amendment before voters.

The Montana code clearly prohibits using government time and facilities for political activity.

Here, a legislator is being open about the fact that she has just wasted the legislature’s time–a significant amount of it, I might add–with a political task assigned to her by GOP operatives, to carry out an electoral strategy. Someone should probably file a complaint.

Beyond that, does this woman have any sense of appropriateness at all? Some common sense advice to Wendy: when politicians do things for purely political motives, they’re supposed to at least pretend to make up some sort of legitimate policy reason.

Posted: March 9, 2011 at 9:21 pm

Right-Wing Editor of the Daily Inter Lake is Way Far Gone

A week after writing an editorial in which he offered an impassioned defense of birthers, birther bills and the birther movement, Frank Miele–the ultra-right-wing editor of the Flathead Daily Inter Lake–has outdone himself.

Miele’s latest column takes aim at the “far left wing Associated Press” and the AP’s state-wide profile last week about the Tea Party. That story gave a fairly benign description of all of the bills and proposals that the Tea Party has pushed forward in the legislature.

Laments Miele:

“I wish I could go through the entire story with you, and highlight all of the unfair reporting, but it would just take too long.”

What’s really hilarious (or absolutely frightening) about Miele is how far gone he is. He cites this paragraph in AP reporter Matt Gouras’s article…

“With each bill, newly elected Tea Party lawmakers are offering Montanans a vision of the future. Their state would be a place where officials can ignore U.S. laws, force FBI agents to get a sheriff’s OK before arresting anyone, ban abortions, limit sex education in schools and create armed citizen militias”

…as the “only fair reporting in the AP article.” In other words, Miele agrees with everything in the above paragraph.

What upsets Miele is that Mr. Gouras goes on to suggest that a number of Montanans are turned off by the agenda described above. The nerve of the AP to make such a suggestion. Miele says he sees nothing wrong with abortion bans, states’ rights, nullification and militias. Miele sees all of these items as totally reasonable, and he is outraged the the Associated Press would presume to write an article suggesting that any portion of Montana should be turned off by these elements of the Tea Party agenda.

This guy Miele is half a sandwich shy of a picnic, and no progressive in the Flathead Valley should ever pay 50 cents for the Flathead Interlake. Read it online, and then only for the entertainment value.

Posted: March 3, 2011 at 6:52 am

MT GOP Attracting National Derision, Driving Away Young Voters

The antics of the Montana legislature may be attracting the attention of the national press, but it appears to be driving young voters out of the party.

A new blog post from a former GOP activist, describes well some of the reasons why she and other young people may be leaving the GOP.

A disturbing number of the GOP still believes being gay should be a CRIME and repealing our medical cannabis bill is the only solution to save our children’s futures. Here’s a newsflash. We may be young, but that doesn’t mean we are stupid.

The writer brings up an excellent point. It isn’t hard to see, especially this legislative session, that Republicans are positioning themselves as the anti-science party with attempts to legislate the laws of nature and the science of global warming, outlaw stem cell research, and claim the earth is 4,000 years old.

Younger voters may disagree on some of these issues, but Republicans are against them all, all of which makes this GOP’s agenda too backward and uninformed to be a party with which young people can identify. Of course, the problem probably isn’t just with young voters at this point.