Amen

January 6 - Another Story I Found (video)

1 - Pres. Obama: Shooting Victims Had Rights Too

m'eye thoughts: Thank you, Mr. President, for standing up, for speaking out, for doing something, for showing how much you care.

You were warned.

House Republicans Vote an Old Idea for the New Year: Repeal Obamacare!

"Boy, that'll show Obama.  Once again, House Republicans have voted to repeal Obamacare, 240-181.  This time they added in defunding Planned Parenthood, just to make sure the first big vote of the year was as wingnutty as possible...

...'With this bill, we will force President Obama to show the American people where he stands," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a blog post on Monday.  He said the vote would 'immediately set a tone that represents a better path for our country.'...

As if it wasn't clear where President Obama stands.  On Obamacare...

...And while they've managed to vote to repeal Obamacare 60 times, what they haven't managed to do is hold one vote on an actual plan to replace Obamacare, despite five years of promises to come up with one."

eye'm thynkin':  My kingdom for a Republican with an original idea! (with apologies to Will Shakespeare).

Read more at Daily Kos

GOP: When In Doubt, Impeach!

Dave Agema

"The Republican National Committeeman from the Grand Rapids area (Dave Agema) wants the GOP at its winter meetings later this month to pass a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Obama.

'(The resolution) has no binding requirements in it,' Agema said. 'It's basically just requesting that our GOP leaders do what the grassroots have been yearning for and show a little backbone and stand up to the Obama Administration...

...Agema said he is...urging Congress to act on about 50 articles of impeachment drafted by the North American Law Center.  The articles accuse Obama of criminal identify fraud, helping U.S. enemies, for example, by not enforcing immigration law, and overstepping the bounds of his authority, for example, by ordering military action without congressional support...

...'I think Hillary through this will be implicated as a co-conspirator,' Agema said. 'There would be a lot of pressure on Democrats to see what she's been involved with.'"

eye'm thynkin':  The GOP has been threatening to impeach President Obama almost since the day he took office.  They went through several law firms looking for someone--anyone--to tell them they had a case, all while promising their base that they were going forward.  Eventually, the idea fell away and was forgotten.  But now, it could hurt Hillary!  Let's bring it back as a new and exciting "grassroots" movement!  Yeehaw!   

They better hurry though.  At the usual glacial Washington pace, by the time they get their ducks in a row, Hillary will be running for her second term.

Read more here  and some more interesting craziness from Dr. Rich Swier here.

She Was Doing a Good Deed, Now She's Just Another Shooting Victim

A University of North Texas student has died after being shot in the head on a highway following a New Year's Eve celebration.  She had volunteered to be the designated driver for a group of friends so that everyone would arrive home safely. 

"According to police, the shooting occurred shortly after 2 a.m. on New Year's Day.  Police arrived at what they assumed was a run-of-the-mill New Year's drunk driving incident, but quickly learned that the driver of a car that slammed into an electrical pole near Texas Woman's University had been shot in the head.

According to witnesses, the driver--a 20-year-old woman...--and her three passengers met with a bit of New Year's terror when an SUV carrying five or six men pulled alongside them.  The occupants of the vehicles apparently argued, leading the men to do what gun-toting road ragers do best--one of them pulled out a gun and opened fire on the woman's sedan.

After taking a bullet to the head, the driver lost control and crashed into another vehicle before slamming into the pole... The shooter, of course, fled the scene along with his friends."

eye'm thynkin':  Remember when arguments used to end with yelling?  Remember when the worst that could happen was fisticuffs? Remember when the NRA was a sportsmen's organization instead of an adjunct advertising department of Smith and Wesson?  

Read more at Addicting Info

End Days for Gerrymandering?

what eye thynk:  Gerrymandering is not a new problem.  Both parties have done it and continue to do it; but it has never been as bad or as blatant as it is in Republican-led states.  It's days may finally be over.

(Any underlines are mine.)

Eye Recommend:

JUDGE HANDS DEMOCRATS A HUGE WIN IN FLORIDA JUST IN TIME FOR ELECTIONS, by Rika Christensen --

The GOP in Florida has lost a major battle they should never had had a chance at winning in the first place.  A judge for the Leon Circuit has ruled in favor of district maps drawn up by voters' groups, and not the GOP-controlled legislature.  These new maps give Democrats a new chance at capturing the state's Senate in upcoming elections by making districts competitive again...

Judge George Reynolds rejected the state Senate's maps as partisan, saying: "While the Senate maintains that the selection of Senate Map 1 was without partisan intent and that all safeguards were taken to insulate staff from outside political influence, it is difficult to infer anything other than impermissible partisan intent in the selection of Senate Map 1 based on its political performance."

Gerrymandering has been losing a lot of ground around the nation, particularly in the wake of a little-known Supreme Court decision (last) summer that upheld Arizona's citizen redistricting commission...which paved the way for other states to create their own independent commissions to combat the scourge of gerrymandering.

"Safe districts" are a major problem for voters and the population because they give one party a distinct advantage over the other for years at a time.  States end up with disproportionate representation in their legislatures and in the federal government.  Florida is a prime example of this, with more Democratic voters than Republican voters, but far more Republicans controlling the state.

My state of Ohio is much the same way. Many of the state's Democrats have been stacked in one, long, narrow district running along the northern border with Lake Erie.  Republican gerrymandering has even split cities into poor neighborhoods (add them to a predominately Democratic district!) and more affluent neighborhoods (attach them to a rural district which is mostly Republican). It keeps the Republicans in charge in the State House while limiting the Democrats to one district that they have any real chance of winning. 

Safe districts can cause two massive problems that seem contradictory:  The first is to make legislators lazy, because they don't have to fear serious challenges from the opposition.  However, it can also make them more exteme politically, because they fear primary challenges from their lunatic fringes.  This is part of how the GOP's lunatice fringe, a.k.a. the Tea Party, took over.  Republicans scewed themselves with their gerrymandering efforts, because they created hyperpartisan districts for themselves, some of which were way too far right.  When you create entire districts for your lunatic fringe, your lunatic fringe takes over.

 Florida's new maps--one for the House and one for the Senate--will be drawn by the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida.  These two groups spearheaded the four-year long war against the Republican's own redistricting plans.  The court rejected those plans as illegal under a voter-approved ban on gerrymandering...

...Other states with independent redistricting commissions include California, Arizona, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Washington.  These commissions do not include lawmakers as a general rule, which is necessary to create the fairest map possible.

Ohio voters approved a ballot measure earlier this year to reform the redistricting process in their state.  With that, the Supreme Court ruling on Arizona's commission, and this latest ruling in Florida, we're seeing a slow, agonizing death to the gerrymandering process, which will help voters get their voices back...

I know I certainly look forward to living in a district that is not stretched across most of the North Coast of my state.  I sincerely believe it will remove the strangle hold the Republican Party has held on Ohio for too many years.  

Read Ms. Christensen's entire article here