Kansas Could Turn Blue as Democrat Leads Republican Gov. Sam Brownback by 4 Points

By: Jason Easley/politicususa

The Republican Party is so damaged that even in deep red state Kansas, Republican Governor Sam Brownback is trailing Democrat Paul Davis 43%-39%.

According to a new SurveryUSA poll, Davis leads Brownback 43%-39%. Only 59% of Republicans support Gov. Brownback. The governor gets the support of 62% of conservatives, but trails Davis with moderates, 58%-28%. There are several things happening in Kansas that mirror the problems of the national Republican Party.

Brownback is at the center of a Republican civil war in Kansas. The governor helped to oust moderate Republicans from the state senate in 2012. He also alienated moderates by signing a tax reform bill that both liberal and conservative experts consider to be the worst piece of tax reform legislation passed in the entire country.

Gov. Brownback’s tax cut was a Republican dream come true.It reduced income taxes on the top two brackets, slashed corporate taxes, and made LLC pass through income non-taxable. The Republicans paid for this gift to the wealthy by raising taxes on working people, the poor, and senior citizens. Of course, this scheme blew a giant hole in the state’s budget which Brownback tried to fix by slashing hundreds of millions of dollars in education spending, laying off public sector workers, and cutting transportation funding.

National Review published a lengthy profile of Brownback where they enthusiastically paint Kansas as a model for the country and suggest that Brownback is a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, while the voters back home are seriously contemplating throwing him out of office.

Brownback is trailing a Democrat in a state where Republicans hold every statewide office, and the entire congressional delegation. Republicans outnumber Democrats in the state 46% to 25%. Democrat Paul Davis has a chance to win because Brownback has taken the state too far to the right for many in Kansas. Moderates, which in Kansas mostly means moderate Republicans, are supporting Davis because the ALEC/tea party/Koch agenda is unpopular with them.

National Republicans and their media are so out of touch with reality that they are touting the presidential future of a governor whose policies are so unpopular that he might not get a second term.

If Davis won, he would be a conservative Democratic governor, but a Brownback defeat would be a supreme humiliation for far right Republicans and their agenda.

The Republican Party may have finally become too extreme for even deep red state Kansas to tolerate.

Kansas Governor Approves Sweeping Anti-Abortion Law, Writes ‘JESUS + Mary’ In His Notes On The Bill

By Tara Culp-Ressler/Think Progress

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has signed astringent anti-abortion bill that blocks tax breaks for abortion providers, requires doctors to tell women about the disputed link between abortion and breast cancer, anddefines life as beginning at conception in the state constitution. However, despite the fact that the omnibus legislation is 70 pages long, it does not necessarily explicitly state everything that the Republican governor wishes to convey on the abortion issue.

Before Brownback signed HB 2253 into law at a ceremony at the statehouse on Friday, an AP photo reveals that he made a few additions of his own in his notes on the bill. He typed out some phrases — “building a culture of life,” and “all human life is sacred” — that he ended up using in his speech to abortion opponents before approving the legislation, and he also scribbled “JESUS + Mary” at the top of the paper (second enlarged image via Gawker):

Of course, this is hardly the first time a politician has invoked religious belief to justify their opposition to legal abortion rights, regardless of the historical separation of church and state in the United States. That’s partly because the anti-choice community has worked hard to brand reproductive freedom as entirely antithetical to the Christian faith. Catholic lawmakers in particular are often hostile to abortion rights even when they are more moderate on other social issues.

But even though Brownback may invoke the Christian faith as he approves some of the harshest abortion restrictions in the nation, his position isn’t necessarily representative of the Christian coalition in the United States. Reproductive rights aren’t actually always in sharp opposition to religion. People of faith support women’s access to contraception, and most religious groupsdon’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, over 75 percent of white Protestants — along with 65 percent of black Protestants and 63 percent of white Catholics — support women’s constitutional right to legal abortion services.

Kansas bill calls for HIV positive people to be quarantined

BY JOE MORGAN/GayStarNews(yeah that's a actual news source)

A proposed bill in Kansas is calling for people with HIV or AIDS to be quarantined.

Lawmakers are close to passing a new law discriminating against those who have HIV or AIDS, forcing them to be isolated or have their movements restricted.

Kansas House Bill 2183, which has passed in the Kansas Senate, will update the state’s public health statute by allowing quarantine of Kansans with ‘infectious diseases.’

Senator Marci Francisco attempted to restore an amendment providing an exclusion for people living with HIV/AIDS, saying the disease is not spread through casual contact and the bill could permit discrimination.

Cody Patton, Executive Director of sexual health charity Positive Directions, said: ‘We live in a very conservative state and I’m afraid there are still many people, especially in rural Kansas, that have inadequate education and understanding concerning HIV/AIDS.

‘My fear would not be the state uses the law as some way to move all people living with HIV/AIDS into an isolated community, but that this law could allow some county employee to use this law to justify their religious beliefs over their professional responsibilities and discriminate against people with HIV/AIDS.’

The law was originally intended to remove the need for a firefighter or a paramedic who would have to get the necessary court order to get a victim’s blood tested for infectious diseases if they had become exposed to it.

In 1988, Kansas banned quarantining those with AIDS. If the law is passed, many are fearing health officials will begin intimidating those with HIV or AIDS with the threat they could be isolated from the general population.

Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said by including HIV and AIDS in this updated law, Kansas legislators are harkening back to the ‘earliest, darkest days’ of the AIDS epidemic.

He said: ‘At best, it is short-sighted of Kansas legislators to reject Senator Francisco’s amendment. It either shows how little they understand about HIV and how it is transmitted – it is not spread through casual contact such as TB or other airborne communicable diseases – or it shows that they want the ability to quarantine people, and/or discriminate against them in other ways as they see fit.

‘For the senators, either choice shows a real lack of understanding about public health and safety—one of the most basic services that is government’s role to ensure.’

Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are currently working to get this law passed, meaning it will likely be voted on and passed in the next few weeks.

How Kansas’ Anti-Abortion Bill Launches A Sweeping Attack On Women’s Rights

By Tara Culp-Ressler/Think Progress

Not to be outdone by states like North Dakota and Arkansas that have recently passed record-breaking abortion restrictions, Republicans in Kansas are advancing astringent anti-abortion bill that combines several attacks on reproductive rights into one omnibus measure.

HB 2253 is a 70-page piece of legislation that failed last session, when the Senate was more moderate — but since anti-choice state lawmakers won big victories in the 2012 election, Kansas’ abortion opponents are seizing the opportunity to push it through this year. The House approved the bill by a 92-31 vote on Wednesday afternoon, and it’s also expected to pass in the GOP-controlled Senate, where Republican leaders have promised to “consider the bill quickly.” Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has promised to sign any anti-abortion legislation that reaches his desk.If the massive bill were to be enacted into law, here’s how HB 2253 would compromise the reproductive rights of the women living in Kansas:

1. Threatens to outlaw all abortions by redefining life in the state Constitution.HB 2253 includes a personhood clause that would define life as beginning at fertilization in Kansas’ Constitution. Women’s health groups call that a “personhood trigger” because, if the Supreme Court ever left abortion rights completely up to the states, it would ensure that abortion would be totally outlawed in Kansas.

2. Instates costly taxes on abortion services and abortion providers. Several provisions in the bill hope to limit abortion by making it more expensive. Under HB 2253, women who get abortions would not be able to deduct the medical procedure as a health care expense on their taxes. Since Kansas law already prevents women from using their own insurance plans to cover abortion services — requiring them to purchase an additional rider — the extra tax provisions would even further complicate reproductive health care in the state. And according to Planned Parenthood officials, enforcing the abortion deduction ban could end up violating medical privacy laws by allowing state auditors to demand access to individuals’ medical records. The bill would also target groups affiliated with abortion providers by preventing them from receiving the same tax breaks that other organizations do.

3. Requires doctors to give women biased information about the dangers of having an abortion. Under the omnibus bill, doctors would be required to provide women with disputed information about abortion risks. Of course, every patient undergoing a medical procedure should be fully educated about the risks — but these kind of “informed consent” sessions are a popular anti-choice tactic specifically designed to dissuade women from terminating a pregnancy. Doctors would need to tell women about a potential link between abortion and breast cancer, even though medical experts don’t believe there’s a connection between the two.

4. Doesn’t include exceptions for victims of rape or incest. One Kansas lawmaker attempted to amend the bill to include a exception for some of Kansas’ existing abortion laws — including the state’s late-term abortion ban, restrictions on insurance coverage of abortion, and a requirement for minors to get parental consent for abortion services — in cases of rape or incest. Women’s health advocates call such policies “common-sense, compassionate exceptions,” particularly for minors who may have become pregnant from incest and can’t get permission from a family member to terminate the pregnancy. But Republicans in the House voted it down on Tuesday, saying they weren’t interested in revisiting the details of the nearly two dozen abortion restrictions that are already on the books.

5. Restricts the use of comprehensive sex ed resources in public schools. The bill contains a clause that prohibits anyone who works for an abortion provider from also working in a school — a provision intended to specifically target Planned Parenthood and prevent the women’s health organization from providing students with any comprehensive sexual health instruction. Originally, it was so broadly worded that it would have also prevented any parent who works for an abortion provider from volunteering at their child’s school. It’s since been tweaked to specify that volunteering is okay.

Kansas’ omnibus bill is similar to a controversial package of abortion restrictions that Michigan lawmakers forced through their lame duck session at the end of last year. Women’s health advocates warn that HB 2253 represents the “biggest threat this year” to Kansas women’s access to reproductive rights.

Judge blocks Kansas anti-abortion law

By Reuters

KANSAS CITY, Kan (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday blocked a Kansas law that forced two clinics in the state to stop providing abortions because they could not comply with 36 pages of new regulations.

Judge Carlos Murguia granted a request from the two clinics for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of the rules, which went into effect Friday morning.

At a hearing, lawyers for the clinics argued the rules are unreasonable and the state gave less then two weeks' notice for them to be imposed.

The Kansas Department of Environment and Health said the two clinics -- the Center for Women's Health and Aid for Women -- failed to meet the requirements and could not be licensed.

A third clinic, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, got its license but not until the agency determined late Thursday afternoon that it passed inspection and was in compliance.

While the health agency says the new regulations are in the interest of patient safety, clinic officials have said they are excessive and unnecessary.

Among other things, the regulations set minimum dimensions for surgical and recovery rooms, specify room temperature ranges and require extra medical equipment and staffing. Doctors performing abortions must have hospital privileges within 30 miles of the clinic.

The Kansas law is one of many abortion curbs pushed by conservative lawmakers in dozens of states this year. Other proposals included bans on late-term abortions and requirements that providers offer women sonograms of their fetuses.