So budget bills got through the Arizona Senate Thursday, which were surprisingly decent, and the Medicaid expansion won a decisive majority vote. Political strategist and former legislator John Loredo said it best on his Facebook page:

Tonight Senate Democrats along with a handful of courageous Republicans passed a reasonable, responsible budget. Dems learned that when you have serious leverage, you can hold out for some pretty amazing victories – if you don’t throw in the towel too ...

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Craig McDermott captured an interesting thing Rep. Steve Smith said Tuesday about a ridonkulous bill before the Arizona Legislature, that prevents the evil Federal Government from sapping our Stately essences. Or something.

Per Craig:

The text of his “explanation” (emphasis added) -

Mr. Speaker, I think just since we’re talking a little bit about history, I think it would be fair to point out that history of virtually every nation on the earth has come about from one people t...

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My friend Bob Lord has been taking flack from Phoenix City Council candidate Warren Stewart’s campaign over his posts about a disparaging comment that Maricopa County Supervisor and Stewart supporter Mary Rose Wilcox made about Kate Gallego, who is also running in that race.

I missed this last month, not sure how. Because this is a shining example of how voters lose respect for politicians.

According to The Phoenix New Times, Pastor Warren Stewart, held a telephone town hall last month, ...

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AZ Eagletarian has a concise run-down of a rumored deal by AZ Senate President Andy Biggs (which I hinted at on my Sunday Square Off appearance) to ram a budget through the Senate by tacking a Medicaid expansion amendment on it and dangling some district pork in front of a few Dem Senators to get their votes.

Here’s the scenario as it was set forth to me earlier this evening:

Senate President Andy Biggs, who has been declaring all along that he is dead set against the Medicaid expansion, w...

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Christine Bauserman, whose Facebook page proudly boasts all her conservative and Republican affiliations, believes that poor people getting health care in Arizona is a Marxist plot. She wrote a hilarious LTTE to the AZ Capitol Times about it.

Just how desperate are Gov. Jan Brewer and political wizard Chuck Coughlin to force Obamacare on an unwilling Arizona? Dwindling resources, loss of votes, and lackluster public support seem to be a reason for the fraught Republicans to enlist the support of...

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Today is Special Election Day in South Carolina, where Republican Mark Sanford faces off against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch to fill a vacant Congressional seat. Sanford, of course, is the former Governor who, while he was a Governor, famously hiked the Appalachian Trail in South America with his mistress without telling anyone where he had gone. We thought we’d seen the end of him but he reemerged and won the GOP Congressional primary a few weeks ago. We thought we’d seen the e...

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Right wing pundits have been furiously peddling the myth that “no one was covering Kermit Gosnell!”. Irin Carmon of Salon explains how this is nonsense but I do feel compelled to produce a post about it from my little corner of the Vast Liberal Media. In case you’re not familiar with the case, Kermit Gosnell is a Philadelphia doctor (to use the term loosely) who ran a filthy and unsafe clinic where he performed many illegal abortions and caused the death of some of his patients...

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The FDA has issued new rules on over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception. It will now be on store shelves and available to anyone age 15 or over. Previously, it had been kept behind the pharmacy counter and you had to be at least 17 to purchase it.

This ruling comes as a disappointment to many reproductive justice advocates who celebrated last month’s ruling. In April, Judge Edward Korman ordered the FDA to change regulations on the morning after pill, making it available over-the-cou...

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The AZ Democratic Party is sending out an email crowing about Sen. Jeff Flake’s rock bottom approval ratings after his shameful and two-faced vote to obstruct the Manchin-Toomey gun background checks bill.

Senator Jeff Flake is the poster boy for a “Lemon Law” in American Politics! In just four short months, the venerable Mr. Flake has done what many thought impossible and is now the most unpopular Senator in America. According to the latest poll from Public Policy Polling, only 32% o...

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(Sorry for the lack of posts all last week. Just needed a break.)

I came across this interesting press release from the North Carolina Democratic Party about their current Republican Governor Pat McCrory.

McCrory: Moderate No More

RALEIGH, NC—NYT Poll Analyst and data guru, Nate Silver, is out with some damning figures that erase the façade of Pat McCrory as a moderate Governor of North Carolina. Silver’s data blows McCrory’s cover as a moderate and shows him to be to the right of Tea Par...

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Count EJ Montini as disappointed at Senator Jeff Flake’s votes against background checks and tighter restrictions on straw purchasers of firearms yesterday.

Victims lost. Lobbyists won. And one of our senators helped.

Sen. Jeff Flake has proven himself to be a skilled teacher in the art of compromise when it comes to immigration reform.

It’s a shame he is such a poor student in that same art form when it came to background checks on weapon sales, which Flake helped to defeat in the sena...

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The preferred narrative of the pundit/consultant/business establishment types in Arizona about the root of our current political woes, as I’ve described here numerous times, goes like this: Arizona was long a bastion of bipartisan collegiality and cooperation until just a few years ago, when Clean Elections and hyper-partisan primaries ushered into office a bunch of disagreeable unwashed ruffians with extreme views. On both sides! The obvious solution, therefore, is to do whatever it takes...

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On the Twitters yesterday some Tea Party trolls were baiting AZ House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, accusing him and other Dems in the Legislature of saying they wouldn’t support the Medicaid expansion unless it “funds abortion”. When asked to substantiate the claim, they cited this article, with no reporter named in the byline, from the “Arizona Daily Independent”.

That is complete hogwash. No Democratic lawmaker said that and no taxpayer funds are allowed to go...

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If you worship the concept of “states rights” and revere the 10th Amendment, this proposed resolution in the North Carolina General Assembly/a> should be no problem for you at all.

SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings whic...

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In 2006 Prop 107 would have added the following words to the Arizona State Constitution:

“To preserve and protect marriage in this state, only a union between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage by this state or its political subdivisions and no legal status for unmarried persons shall be created or recognized by this state or its political subdivisions that is similar to that of marriage.”

It was defeated by nearly three points in the election that year,...

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Late Wednesday afternoon, the Arizona House of Representatives Appropriations Committee made a large group of people wait several hours before they could hear testimony and comment on committee chair John Kavanagh’s “bathroom bill”. Kavanagh’s bill is basically retribution for the recent Phoenix City Council vote to include gender expression and disability in the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance, which gave Cathi Herrod of Center for Arizona Policy a big old con...

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As the Supreme Court hears arguments in the California Prop 8 case today, Center for Arizona Policy president Cathi Herrod lectures us moral degenerates with a My Turn column about the wonders of straight marriage, while dumping on single parents of all orientations.

That may sound a little overstated, but it is in the union of one man and one woman that you’ll find the ideal environment for personal independence, wealth creation and, most importantly, the nurturing of future generations, or...

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I am speaking, of course, of Arizona Republic columnist Bob Robb patiently white man-splaining race relations to us.

Racism is ugly and has been a searing experience in American history. It undoubtedly still exists.

Unjustified accusations of racism are perhaps less ugly, but intolerably ugly nonetheless. And a decent case can be made that the false claim of racism is at least as prevalent in today’s politics as is racism itself.

Take the reckless accusations in Arizona about supposed attempt...

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