Voter ID laws speak louder than words of outreach

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Virginia Electoral College Rigging Scheme Would Further Disenfranchise Minority Voters

By Josh Israel/Think Progress

As the Virginia Senate’s Privileges and Elections Committee prepares to take up a bill to rig bill the state’s electoral college vote, Democrats and evenRepublicans are distancing themselvesfrom the effort, calling it “a bad idea,” “skewing,” and a “partisan bill aimed at defying the will of the voters.” A ThinkProgress analysis of Virginia voter demographics reveals another major flaw with the proposal: it would significantly dilute the influence of minority voters.

The 2012 Virginia Congressional maps, authored by Delegate Robert Bell (R) based on the 2010 U.S. Census, divided the state’s estimated 8,001,024 people into 11 Congressional districts. Though the state population is more than 20 percent African American — and more than 31 percent non-white — just one Congressional district contains a majority of non-white voters (the Third District, which is majority African American). Though white non-Hispanic Virginians makeup just 68.6 percent of the population, they comprise at least 58 percent of the population in all of the other 10 districts.

While many of the electoral college-rigging schemes being pushed by Republicans nationallywould still allocate two electors based on the popular winner in the state — the Virginia plan would not even do that. State Sen. Charles “Bill” Carrico Sr.’s Senate Bill 723 would allocate 11 electors based on the popular winner in each of the House districts and two to whichever candidate won the majority of those gerrymandered House districts.

So, with more than one-fifth of the population, African American Virginians would go from having about 20 percent of the say to just controlling one-thirteenth of the state’s electoral votes under the Carrico plan. And racial minority voters overall would go from having about 31 percent of the say, to also controlling just 7.7 percent of the state’s electors.

And while African American voters would of course have some say in districts where they do not make up a majority, more than a quarter of them them are packed into the 3rd district, meaning the remaining 73 percent would be in districts where they comprised, on average, just about 16 percent of the population. This would be a significant retrogression of influence for minority voters. Given Virginia’s history of racial discrimination and the fact that much of the state remains a Voting Rights Act covered jurisdiction, this maneuver might well be not just anti-democratic, but also illegal.

Romney To Visit Electronics Plant In Town Where Bain Laid Off Hundreds Of Electronics Workers

By Josh Israel/Think Progress

Today, Mitt Romney will bring his campaign to EIT, a circuit-board and electronics manufacturing company, in Sterling, Virginia. But while he is likely to highlight the success of the company, it represents a curious location choice for the Romney campaign.

A decade ago, the Northern Virginia suburb was home to a major circuit-board factory for the DDI Corp. DDI, based in Anaheim, CA, was a major Bain Capital investment during Romney’s tenure with the firm. Romney personally invested in the company and Romney’s name appeared on a 2001 SEC filing as a designated liaison from Bain’s management committee for the company.

While Romney and Bain made tens of millions on its investment in DDI, the company saw large layoffs in Sterling and ended up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2003. A 2003 Washington Business Journal report noted:

Circuit board maker Dynamic Details has laid off 167 people at its Sterling manufacturing plant since the beginning of July — and a total of 460 over the past two years — as it weathers the lingering effects of the tech and telecom industry implosion.

According to the same story, the Sterling plant employed 550 in 2001 and just about 130 in 2003. While the Romney campaign has repeated claims that Bain is responsible for creating thousands of jobs, hundreds lost theirs at DDI, at least in part thanks to Romney and Bain.

Additionally, today’s company — EIT — appears to contradict the Romney campaign’s gloomy assessment of the nation’s economy. Virginia state legislator Joe May (R), who owns the company, told the Washington Post that his private sector firm is indeed doing “just fine.”

GOP continues to push to disenfranchise citizens through voter ID laws

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CNN Contributor Dana Loesch Defends Virginia ‘State-Sponsored Rape’ Bill As No Different Than Consensual Sex

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress




This week, a Virginia state House committee overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring women to receive an ultrasound before they can have an abortion. Because the majority of abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, many women would have to undergo an invasive procedure “in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced,” as Dahlia Lithwick explained last week.

CNN contributor and Andrew Breitbart blogger Dana Loesch, however, sees no problem with a law that effectively legalizes state-sponsored rape, saying the procedure is no different than penetration that occurred during consensual intercourse that “resulted in the pregnancy,” as Little Green Footballs reported:

LOESCH: That’s the big thing that progressives are trying to say, that it’s rape and so on and so forth. [...] There were individuals saying, “Oh what about the Virginia rape? The rapes that, the forced rapes of women who are pregnant?” What? Wait a minute, they had no problem having similar to a trans-vaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy.

Listen:

Unfortunately, such a radical view isn’t unique to conservative talking heads like Loesch. According to Lithwick, an unnamed Republican delegate made the same argument in support of the bill, saying women consented to being “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.”

Virginia Poised To Enact ‘State-Sponsored Rape’ Law Forcing Women To Be Vaginally Probed Before Abortions

By Ian Millhiser/Think ProgressVi

Earlier this month, a bill requiring women to receive an ultrasound before they can receive an abortion passed the Virginia senate, and it recently cleared a state house committee with an overwhelming majority. As Dahlia Lithwick explains, the effect of this bill would be to force most women to undergo a stunningly invasive procedure for no medical reason whatsoever. “Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.”

In case Lithwick’s description doesn’t completely drive home what this means, here is a depiction of the procedure that women would be forced to endure under the Virginia bill:

Simply put, it is difficult to distinguish a law requiring women to be vaginally penetrated by a long metal object from state-sponsored rape. Worse, discussions among lawmakers leave little doubt that its supporters understood just what they were trying to write into law — they just didn’t care. As an unnamed lawmaker told a fellow Virginia delegate, a woman already consented to being “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.”

UPDATE

A previous version of this post attributed the quote about women consenting to vaginal penetration to Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R). That was an error. Gilbert said that “in the vast majority of these cases, [abortions] are matters of lifestyle convenience.” A different lawmaker suggested that women who consent to sex also consent to vaginal probing.

Virginia Gov. McDonnell proclaims April ‘Confederate History Month.’

By Matt Corley The Washington Post reports today that Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has issued a proclamation that “quietly declared April 2010 Confederate History Month, bringing back a designation in Virginia that his two Democratic predecessors — Mark Warner and Tim Kaine — refused to do.” According to the Lynchburg News and Advance, McDonnell’s proclamation “comes in advance of an upcoming anniversary — it was on April 17, 1861 that Virginia seceded from the union.” The proclamation makes no mention of slavery, but does call on Virginians “to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present“:

WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse; and

WHEREAS, Virginia has long recognized her Confederate history, the numerous civil war battlefields that mark every region of the state, the leaders and individuals in the Army, Navy and at home who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today; and

WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to reflect upon our Commonwealth’s shared history, to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present;

The Post notes that “Republican governors George Allen and Jim Gilmore made similar proclamations. But in 2002, Warner broke with their action, calling such proclamations a ‘lightning rod’ that does not help bridge divisions between whites and blacks in Virginia.”

M.C.L comment: This is proof positive of why those on the left should get out and vote in the 2010 elections.

Virginia attorney general instructs state colleges to stop protecting gay students from discrimination.

By Igor Volsky Just weeks after Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) refused to renew an executive order that would have protected gay and lesbian state workers from discrimination, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is asking the state’s colleges and universities “to rescind policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.” Cuccinelli — who has previously argued “homosexual acts are…intrinsically wrong” — wrote a letter to all of the state’s public colleges and universities:

“It is my advice that the law and public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia prohibit a college or university from including ’sexual orientation,’ ‘gender identity,’ ‘gender expression,’ or like classification as a protected class within its non-discrimination policy absent specific authorization from the General Assembly,” he wrote. Colleges that have included such language in their policies — which include all of Virginia’s leading schools — have done so “without proper authority” and should “take appropriate actions to bring their policies in conformance with the law and public policy of Virginia,” Cuccinelli wrote.

Most colleges protect gays from anti-discrimination and violence. Earlier this month, students at John Carroll University, a Jesuit college in Cleveland Ohio, staged a sit-in to protest “the university’s decisions not to include the protection of sexual orientation of in its anti-discrimination statement.” Other Jesuit universities, like “Canisius College, College of the Holy Cross, Georgetown University, Gonzaga University, Le Moyne College, and St. Louis University” all include “sexual orientation in their anti-discrimination policies.” The blogger Joe.My.God. writes, “Virginia is going to have a VERY hard time attracting top students and faculty after this, not to mention the inevitable backlash against people or companies willing to work with the Virginia higher education system.”

M.C.L.comment: I told you liberals when you stay at home and let the misinform and stupid to vote this is what you get, you got a right wing governor that's trying to turn back the social clock 40 years.