Jesus wept

 Yes, it was Arkansas.

It's Sunday

 

Jesus wept

 

Coming soon:  Schoolgirls must wear dresses.  And, yes, that was in fact the case as late as the 1960s.  MAGA.

Testing the limits in Arkansas

[O]n Christmas Eve, a federal judge struck down a law that put booksellers and librarians at risk of imprisonment if they provided minors with “harmful” material. That includes themes about race and being LGBTQ. The Judge wrote that the law tried to deputize “librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship” and that if their decision were made in the shadow of “fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest.”

Holly Dickson, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, called the law “an attempt to ‘thought police,’” and said the Judge’s decision was a “victory over totalitarianism” and “a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers and readers who refused to bow to intimidation.” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “Schools and libraries shouldn’t put obscene material in front of our kids.”

It’s likely we will see an appeal to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals from the state as early as this week.

  Joyce Vance

Solar power economics

Please stop electing Republicans

She also signed a law weakening child labor laws.  Those kids probably don't have time to read.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Typical red state behavior

Immigration could answer the call

Republicans have found a new hill to die on: rolling back child labor laws. It’s all part of a larger plan to crush worker protections, and it’s especially repugnant that children are a part of this scheme.

In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders just signed a bill that will allow children as young as 14 to work without getting a work permit from the state. Before this, anyone under 16 had to apply for a work permit with the state’s Division of Labor.

[...]

[T]his law, and similar ones across the country, are the brainchild of a conservative think tank in Florida. The “Foundation for Government Accountability” has a website explaining that teens under 16 are a “critical source of labor” and complaining that “millions of adults would rather stay home than work.”

[...]

A similar bill is going through the Iowa legislature right now. Iowa currently has a lengthy list of jobs teenagers aged 14-17 aren’t allowed to do because they are dangerous, but the law proposes that the state create a sort of apprenticeship program so teens could do dangerous jobs such as mining, meatpacking, or ones where they are exposed to radioactive substances.The bill also contains a provision that would limit civil liability for those businesses if a teen worker is hurt or killed on the job. The bill has passed out of committees in both chambers of the state legislature.

Minnesota Republicans are also pushing a child labor bill that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work construction jobs. However, the state currently has a Democratic trifecta, so it is unlikely to get anywhere. In Ohio, there’s a proposal to allow teens as young as 14 to work until 9 pm on school nights.

[...]

[C]hild labor violations have been increasing since 2015.

[...]

[A] Department of Labor investigation [...] found Packers Sanitation, one of the country’s biggest food safety sanitation companies, employed 102 children ages 13-17 in 13 meatpacking plants across eight states, including three in Minnesota. These teens were using what the Department called “caustic chemicals” to clean dangerous meat processing equipment, including sharp saws.

[...]

While these bills are focused on child labor, they’re part of a larger push by Republicans to roll back worker protections generally.

[...]

The Trump administration went on a deregulation spree, gutting workplace protections in high-risk jobs like mining and meatpacking. The administration also tried to get rid of a child labor rule that prevented 16- and 17-year-olds working in nursing homes from operating power-driven patient lifts.

[...]

Conservatives pushing these child labor bills say they are necessary because companies are having trouble finding workers in a tight labor market. Rather than making jobs safer or better-paid, they’ve decided to exploit children. 

  Aaron Rupar substack

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The important stuff

Delivering for Arkansans.

Good

Now let's see if this goes to the Supremes and what happens to it there if it does.

Arkansas governor dipping a toe into the roiling waters

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) on Sunday said former President Trump is “politically, morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 riot last year and called for Republicans to do some “soul-searching” after the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Hutchinson told “Fox News Sunday” guest host Bret Baier that while he did not believe Trump was criminally responsible for Jan. 6, he does think the former president shares blame for the insurrection.

“Trump is politically, morally responsible for much of what has happened, but in terms of criminal liability, I think the committee has a long way to go to establish that,” the governor said of the House select panel investigating Jan. 6.

  The Hill

Governor Hutchinson, stand back and stand by.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A bit of good news

This is the League of Women Voters lawsuit against voter suppression laws passed last year.

Assholes

Taxpayers in 5 states are forced to double down their support of people who refuse to get vaccinated. Support them financially, give up hospital beds to them, and risk their own and their children's health and lives.

Seems fair.

These people did not "lose" their jobs.  They QUIT their jobs.

MAGA to the dark ages

Inmates at an Arkansas prison said they weren’t told that they were treated for COVID-19 with the drug Ivermectin, a known livestock de-wormer, according to The Associated Press.

In an interview with the newswire, three inmates at a Washington County, Ark., jail said they didn’t know they were given the anti-parasite drug as medication for the virus until last week.

Inmate William Evans said that inmates felt that they were being tested as guinea pigs for the medication, saying he was given the drug two weeks after testing positive for coronavirus, the AP noted.

[...]

“I asked what are they, and they’d just tell me vitamins,” Inmate Edrick Floreal-Wooten told the AP.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

Vaccine/mask resistant GOP-controlled states are not doing themselves any favors

It was to be expected, and I will be very surprised if they don't all win their cases.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Arkansas, heads up

Nice ad by the man running against Sarah Huckabee Sanders for Governor of Arkansas...

Light years ahead of Sanders.

Leet the lawsuits begin

It's Sunday

The same day the [Arkansas] legislature overrode the veto to insert itself between trans patients and their doctors, a House committee passed a bill to allow public schools to “teach creationism.” The full House passed the creationism bill the next day. Dehumanizing trans-people and indoctrinating schoolchildren, all in 24 hours.

[...]

Passing these two bills might be simply coincidence, but the genesis of the creationism bill is telling. Rep. Mary Bentley preached a creationist sermon on the House floor [...] urging her colleagues to pass the anti-trans youth bill on March 10. The very next day, March 11, she sponsored and proposed her new bill to put creationism in public schools.

[...]

While sporting a massive bedazzled cross necklace, Bentley invoked creationism in a context where most people wouldn’t recognize it, but the anti-trans creationism Bentley preached on March 10 overlaps perfectly with the creationism she and her ilk want preached in public school classrooms. [...]

Bentley began, “I’m going to share with you the Father’s heart because Father God, our Creator, has some very important things he would like to say about this.” After claiming to speak for the creator —an arrogant presumption no doubt claimed under the guise of humility—Bentley regurgitated a fake quote beloved by Christian Nationalists: “George Washington once said, ‘It is impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible.’ And I couldn’t agree with our first president more; we need to hear the heart of God on issues we are facing today to govern correctly.”

Of course, George Washington was famously reticent about religion, refused to take communion the few times he went to church, spurned religious consolation at his deathbed, and absolutely did not say this.

[...]

Bentley continued as if in Sunday school and not the state legislature. She declared that the Bible is “the state’s book,” and then quoted it five times and expounded on each passage.

[...]

Next, she read the creationist classic Genesis 1:27 and then Deuteronomy 22:5, which says that women wearing men’s clothes or vice versa is “an abomination to the Lord.” Bentley tediously opined, “Father God is proud of who he created each of us to be and to deny who you are is to deny that he created you.”

[...]

Bentley then stretched to make Jesus relevant, contending that he hugged children “because each one is special, each one is unique, and we need to do everything we can to help these children be just who they were created to be.” At this point and after prompting, the chairman chastised Bentley and asked her to speak on the bill itself. “I believe I’m speaking on the bill exactly,” she responded. This is the undeniable link between her bigotry and creationism. For Bentley, creationism dictates her anti-trans views. For Bentley, the Bible demands her bigotry. And it’s not enough that she believes it, she wants the machinery of the state to push this creationism in public school classrooms. That is, of course, unconstitutional.

  Religion Dispatches

But hey, it's Arkansas.

[Bentley] convinced her colleagues in the House to vote overwhelmingly, 72–21, for the bill.

I doubt it took much convincing.

But there’s a second reason, which Bentley stated clearly. She first proposed a bill to have public schools “teach creationism and intelligent design” in March 2017, about two weeks before Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings began in the US Senate. It died quietly in committee without a hearing. At the time, the court was politically and ideologically more conservative than previous Supreme Courts, but not enough to countenance creationism in the public schools. Four years and three justices later, Bentley feels sufficiently confident to propose a clearly unconstitutional bill because the court has already been packed with Christian nationalist ideologues. “I believe that we have a different Supreme Court and . . . I think we have different members of the Supreme Court,” she said. Her words serve as an indictment of this Supreme Court and show the desperate need for court correction, reform, and expansion.

H.L. Mencken minced no words about the judge in the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial and how he played to the local crowd: “almost every word he uttered has been an undisguised appeal to their prejudices and superstitions.” Though written nearly a century ago, the Arkansas Legislature is making the same appeal today, and, in the process, proving that biblical creationism is a blueprint for anti-LGBTQ bigotry that doesn’t belong in our classrooms. It’s time for Arkansas to evolve.

Don't hold your breath.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Arkansas had a "Confederate Flag Day"?!

It's Sunday

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Friday signed into law legislation allowing doctors to refuse to treat someone because of religious or moral objections, a move opponents have said will give providers broad powers to turn away LGBTQ patients and others.

The measure says health care workers and institutions have the right to not participate in non-emergency treatments that violate their conscience. The new law won’t take effect until late this summer.

  PBS

And hopefully not then, after some inevitable court hearings. But you never know these days after Trump's court packing spree.

“I support this right of conscience so long as emergency care is exempted and conscience objection cannot be used to deny general health service to any class of people,” Hutchinson said in a statement released by his office. “Most importantly, the federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, and national origin continue to apply to the delivery of health care services.”

Opponents have said types of health care that could be cut off include maintaining hormone treatments for transgender patients needing in-patient care for an infection, or grief counseling for a same-sex couple. They’ve also said it could also be used to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control, or by physicians assistants to override patient directives on end of life care

[...]

The state Chamber of Commerce [...] opposed the measure, saying it sends the wrong message about the state.

Wrong, but perhaps accurate.

The law is among several measures targeting transgender people that have easily advanced through the majority-Republican Legislature this year. Hutchinson on Thursday signed a law that will prohibit transgender women and girls from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

A final vote is scheduled Monday on another proposal that would prohibit gender confirming treatments and surgery for minors.