I wonder if Ms. Proud would require men to watch a video of a vasectomy before having one, or women wanting plastic surgery to view a video of the particular surgery they’re opting for. After all, if an elective medical procedure like abortion merits such a requirement, shouldn’t all elective medical procedures?
Women in Arizona trying to get reimbursed for birth control drugs through their employer-provided health plan could be required to prove that they are taking it for a medical reason such as acne, rather than to prevent pregnancy.
A bill nearing passage in the Republican-led Legislature allows all employers, not just religious institutions, to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage when doing so would violate their religious or moral beliefs.
When a female worker uses birth control pills, which can be used to treat a number of medical conditions, the bill would allow an employer who opted out to require her to reveal what she was taking it for in order to get reimbursed.
Ariz. bill could require reason for birth control
The GOP, translated: “We can’t carp about the economy anymore so we’ll distract everyone from the fact that Obama’s policies are working by resuming our Culture War.”
The conservative war on women shows no signs of abating. The last few weeks have given rise to half a dozen bills that try to limit or eliminate a woman’s access to reproductive health care. Just this week, Arizona took up a bill that ups the ante: It would require women to prove to their employer that they are not using contraceptives to avoid getting pregnant. This piece of legislation gets dangerously close to requiring women to tell their employers whether they are sexually active. This bill seems like a particularly large piece of artillery in the war on women — infantilizing to say the least, it means that women would essentially need to turn in a note from a supervising adult before they are allowed to take care of their own health.
Arpaio: Obama’s birth certificate not authentic
The birth certificate is perfectly authentic — unlike you, Arpaio.
As Republican voters in Michigan and Arizona head to the polls for today’s primaries, Mitt Romney is already declaring victory in both states—telling Chris Wallace in a Fox News Sunday interview that he’s “planning on winning here in Michigan and also in Arizona,” and that his Michigan win will be “huge” after “having come from so far behind.”
But that’s exactly the problem: Having been born and raised in Michigan, where his own father served as a popular three-term governor and where Romney beat John McCain by nearly 10 percentage points in the 2008 GOP primary just four years ago, Romney should have had Michigan locked up from the very beginning. Yet he’s struggling to win his own home state, at times falling behind Rick Santorum—who is battling Romney in trying to appeal to the far right fringe and has gone as far as criticizing the President for encouraging young Americans to pursue higher education. It’s clear that regardless of what happens on Tuesday night, voters will see that for Romney—who has vastly outspent his Republican opponents and who keeps running farther to the right and alienating independent, moderate, and working-class voters along the way—a win in Michigan and Arizona will come at a significant cost…
Between Romney’s home state advantage in Michigan and the fact that he and his super PAC allies have outspent Santorum and his allies there nearly2 to 1, you’d think the battle for Michigan’s 30 Republican delegates would have been “no contest” from the very beginning.
Victory in Michigan, Arizona Primaries Will Come at a Cost for Mitt Romney
The Pinal County sheriff, who stepped down as Arizona’s co-chair for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign amidst allegations he threatened a gay ex-lover with deportation, reportedly served as headmaster for the now-defunct DeSisto School in Stockbridge, Mass. from 1999 to 2001. When Babeu — a retired major in the Army National Guard and an ex-police officer — was in charge, the Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services launched an investigation into repeated claims of physical and sexual abuse from students at the private boarding school, ABC15 is reporting.
More questionable still: Babeu’s older sister Lucy told the news station that she confronted her brother after finding a 17-year-old student from the school, which services troubled teens, living with him. She noted: “I said what is this student from Desisto doing here? He says, ‘Lucy, he’s my boyfriend. I love him.’”
Lucy claims her brother, once considered one of his state’s rising Republican stars, was clearly having a relationship with the student, who has not been identified: “I said, ‘Paul, get a hold of yourself here,’” said Lucy. “You were his teacher! You were his Executive Director! You can’t do this.”
At age 17, the student would have been the legal age of consent in Massachusetts.
The Top 10 Things You Should Know About Arizona’s Latinos and Immigrants
Since Arizona’s Republican-controlled legislature and governor passed the harsh anti-immigrant law S.B. 1070 in 2010, the state has been ground zero for the nation’s increasingly acrimonious immigration debate. The policies enacted in S.B. 1070 and the rhetoric used to justify the law have angered and alienated Arizona’s Latino population—the fourth-largest in the nation. If the state’s rapidly increasing number of eligible Latino voters tilts away from the party that enacted and continues to defend the law, Arizona could turn from “red” to “blue” in November.
In advance of Arizona’s Republican caucus on February 28, we have compiled a list of important facts about Latinos and immigrants in the state.
Arizona might have less symbolic importance than Michigan, but it is probably of more practical significance. That is because it’s one of the few Republican states to award its delegates on a truly winner-take-all basis, without any qualifications or complication. Get one more vote than your rivals in Arizona, and you take all 29 of its delegates.
The most tangible advantage in Arizona belongs to Mitt Romney, and it is because the state has a reasonably high Mormon population. In the 2008 primary there, Mormon voters constituted 11 percent of the electorate — and Mr. Romney won 88 percent of their votes, versus 8 percent for John McCain.
If Mr. Romney posts similar numbers among Mormon voters this year in Tuesday’s primary — and there’s no reason to think that he won’t — that works out a nine-point built-in advantage in the state.
In the latest sign that Mitt Romney’s road to the Republican presidential nomination could get rocky, a new [Public Policy Polling] survey shows the former Massachusetts governor nursing a razor-thin lead over Rick Santorum in Arizona. Like Michigan, the Grand Canyon State’s winner-take-all primary will be held on February 28, a potentially watershed day in the GOP’s race for president.
PPP’s statewide survey of likely Arizona primary voters shows Romney narrowly edging Santorum, 36 percent to 33 percent. Newt Gingrich claims the support of 16 percent of respondents, while Ron Paul comes in fourth with 9 percent.
Many viewed Arizona as a buffer for Romney against a potential setback in Michigan, where he was born and raised.
![“A proposed law that would devastate public unions in Arizona appears to be stalled in the state Senate after Republicans said they failed to come up with enough votes to pass it… [T]wo Republican leaders in the Senate told the Arizona Guardian (sub. req.) they don’t have enough votes to keep the bill alive.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzgph6IhsT1qztsh3o1_1280.jpg)
Giffords Expected to Endorse Former Aide for Her Seat
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., is expected to announce as early as Wednesday or Thursday that she is endorsing the man who served as her office’s district director – and who was wounded with her in the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting melee in Tucson – to fill out the remainder of her congressional term. - By Billy House
AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE
Arizona State University is reportedly blocking students’ access to the petition and advocacy site Change.org and to messages from the site to ASU email addresses. A popular website that uses petitions to create social change, Change.org is hosting a petition by ASU students to lower tuition rates. Free speech advocates and net neutrality group Free Press are concerned that it was this petition, and not the threat of ‘spam mail’, that led to the blockage of the site.
Censorship U? Arizona State Downs Site After Tuition Petition
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