OLYMPIA, Wash. — Gov. Chris Gregoire has signed into law a bill that legalizes gay marriage in Washington state, making it the nation’s seventh to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
It’s a historic moment, but same-sex couples can’t walk down the aisle just yet.
The law takes effect June 7, but opponents are already mounting challenges on multiple fronts.
Opponents planned to file a challenge Monday that could put the law on hold pending the outcome of a November vote.
Good on you, sister.
Virginia state Sen. Janet Howell (D) thinks that if the government is going to force women to undergo medically unnecessary tests, then it is only fair to apply the same standards to men.
Republican lawmakers are pushing for legislation that would require pregnant women to have an ultrasound before terminating their pregnancy. In response, Howell introduced an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining erectile dysfunction medication like Viagra.
“We need some gender equity here,” she told the Huffington Post. “The Virginia Senate is about to pass a bill that will require a woman to have totally unnecessary medical procedure at their cost and inconvenience. If we’re going to do that to women, why not do that to men?”
The Republican-led Senate narrowly rejected her proposed amendment by a 21 to 19 vote.
Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq. has been instigating her Flying Monkeys to harass state officials and elections boards around the country, with piles of paper she filed in Taitz v. Fuddy in Hawaii; a hilarious hearing on this case was held on November 30. The package is making the rounds, state to state, from Tennessee to Indiana.
On Tuesday, this week, a Birther named Danny Alan Vestal requested that Don Wright, General Counsel of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, advise him on the status of what Vestal considers a “complaint” he filed with the North Carolina agency, but is pretty much a copy-paste job of Taitz v. Fuddy, which Vestal forwarded to Mr. Wright.
Mr. Wright explained to Vestal:
You have filed nothing with this agency. You have sent us e-mails involving a matter filed under Hawaiian law. The North Carolina State Board of Elections does not have jurisdiction over social security numbers, the President’s birth records from another state, or whether the name he uses for legal purposes today is different from his passport records when he was a child. Finally, any question about his eligibility to be on the ballot in the future is not yet ripe as he has not been named the nominee of a political party for 2012.
Several court decisions have confirmed that he was and is qualified to hold the office of President. They have been no court decisions to the contrary.
Again we have received your e-mails, but they are not considered as filings since they are under Hawaiian law and we lack jurisdiction over the subject matter. Also I know of no provision in North Carolina law that allows the State Board of Elections to hold an emergency hearing on the qualifications of a setting U.S. President.
Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq. responds in that polite, respectful, professional way she has, to Wright:
5. I demand an immediate hearing for me and for Danny Vestal to appear before the Secretary of State or the elections board and provide all the evidence, Mr. Obama can provide his rebuttle and a decision has to be made, if he can be on the ballot in N.C. primary. If this is not done, than you are criminally complicit in elections fraud, forgery, uttering of forged identification documents by Obama, obstruction of justice, misprision of multiple felonies and possibly treason, and a criminal complaint will be filed with all the proper agencies against you, elections board and the Secretary of state in due time.
6. I would like to remind you that some 40 high ranked governmental officials, including Attorney General of the United States and White House Counsel went to prison during Watergate. ObamaFraudGate and ObamaForgeryGate is much bigger than Watergate. You and your clients, Elections Board of NC, as well as Secretary of State of NC need to think long and hard, whether you want to end up in the same predicament, as governmental officials who were aiding and abetting Nixon in Watergate.
She should start to reconsider this tack, wouldn’t you say, in view of the Rules of Professional Conduct for The State Bar of California, Rule 5-100. But Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq.’s unprofessional behavior is old news. The California Bar’s allowing it to continue is old news. Her involving herself with felons, also old news. But there is a bit more interesting old news here concerning Danny Alan Vestal.
The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit levied sanctions against Vestal, imposed by published per curiam opinion, back during the Clinton Administration. So, frivolous litigating, sanctions, these are things, besides Birtherism, that Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq. and Danny Alan Vestal have in common. To my knowledge, Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq. has ever been in prison for rape, though.
INITIAL 86050801 RAPE SECOND DEGREE (PRINCIPAL) FELON CLASS D
CONSOLIDATED FOR JUDGMENT 00000000 INDECENT LIBERTY W/CHILD (PRINCIPAL)
Birthers do spend an inordinate time in jail. I can probably think of a half-dozen off the top of my head just in the past year and ex-cons abound in the Birther ranks. Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq. was bound to bump up against another one, but a child rapist? Jesus, Orly, can’t even you do better than this?
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NOTE 1/14/2012: Having heard a number of recent reports of computer virus infections suffered by visitors to Orly Taitz’s web site, OFGS has deadened links leading there. As we have done in the past, when such problems have arisen, we will not be linking to her site for the foreseeable future.
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Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, has been noting of late that he is not getting enough media attention. He is getting it today, though not about his Birther Posse. To Sheriff Joe, chasing after the President’s birth certificate must be a more important law enforcement matter than children being raped and abused in his county.
Critics: ‘Tough’ sheriff botched sex-crime cases
Both cases were among more than 400 sex-crimes reported to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office during a three-year period ending in 2007 — including dozens of alleged child molestations — that were inadequately investigated and in some instances were not worked at all, according to current and former police officers familiar with the cases.
In El Mirage alone, where Arpaio’s office was providing contract police services, officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations — with victims as young as 2 years old — where the sheriff’s office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases. …
Arpaio’s office was under contract to provide police services in El Mirage as the city struggled with its then dysfunctional department. After the contract ended and El Mirage was re-establishing its own police operation, the city spent a year sifting through layers of disturbingly incomplete casework.
El Mirage Detective Jerry Laird, who reviewed some the investigations, learned from a sheriff’s summary of 50 to 75 cases files he picked up from Arpaio’s office that an overwhelming majority of them hadn’t been worked. …
El Mirage police files obtained by The Associated Press through public records requests establish a pattern of sex-crimes not actually being investigated after the crimes were reported to Arpaio’s office.
There have been various posts around the Birfistani circuit of responses the nitwits have received from New Hampshire legislators they are harassing, following on Dr. Orly Taitz Esq.’s outstanding performance at a hearing of the state’s Ballot Law Commission recently. I like this one a Post & Email reader made public. It came from Deputy Majority Leader Shawn Jasper (R), Hudson, NH:
I have searched and I have looked, but I have seen nothing that shows me any proof that President Obama was not born a Natural U. S. Citizen. All of the information that has been sent to me is just a matter of opinion; nothing more. More over, because so much of the “information” that has been sent to me is obviously just plain silly, it lessons the impact and credibility of all of it. I have looked at online copies of the certified birth certificate and can not find any of the “obvious” areas of forgery that I hear about. I would expect the date stamp and the type written certificate to be different. I am not surprised that Mrs. Obama’s first name is in parenthesis; who would name their daughter Stanley?
I have seen nothing to suggest that the S.S. number being attributed to Obama is actually his. There is no certified source or any source at all, it is just stated as being his. That is bizarre, coming from people who doubt everything. I have seen a copy of his selective service registration, there is no S.S. number on it, yet the claim is that is where it came from. Even if it were from an on line copy what would that prove, we already told not to trust any copy of anything. I am told that Barrack Obama has used 18 different S.S numbers. Could it be that those are the numbers assigned to the 18 Barrack Obamas who can be found, by using people finder,living in the United States.
Where are the certified copies of anything proving anything? None have been produced. All we have is “experts”, who have examined copies and given their opinion. What is that worth in proving anything? No you can’t get the originals, all you can ever get is certified copies, we have those. You expect that we will take the word of some unknown “expert” over a certified copy from the state, just because you believe in a fantastic conspiracy that goes back to the Hospital placing two notices of birth in newspapers in 1961.
It was the job of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who administered the oath of office; who is our Ballot Law Commission to question that? The bottom line was that nothing was presented to the commission that proved anything. Questions were raised, but proof needed to be presented; none was. We can’t investigate every time some one has a theory and raises a question. The issue of his S.S. number is not even relevant to the case. We all know that Hawaii released a certified copy of his long form birth certificate. End of story for NH. The question of what is a Natural citizen is one for the courts, not the Ballot Law Commission. To me if you are born in this country you are a natural born citizen. You may disagree and frankly I wish that at least one parent had to be a citizen, but the courts have ruled that any child born in this country is a citizen, to me that makes them natural born. I have seen nothing that says otherwise, except opinions, which don’t have legal standing. I believe that Barrack Obama is worst President in the history of the Country and we must unite and defeat him, but we are defeating ourselves by keeping up this stupid fight.
Shawn Jasper
Okay, so he can’t spell the President’s first name too good and Rep. Jasper is a poor judge of presidents, but he knows how to answer a Birther. Nice job, sir.
But Demon-Nazis on the loose in the First-In-The-Nation state?
E-MAIL NH GOV LYNCH, DEMAND AN IMMEDIATE REMOVAL FROM OFFICE OF DEMON-NAZI AG MIKE DELANEY, DEMAND URGENT AUDIENCE RE ELECTIONS FRAUD AND TREASON IN NH
Haha, Governor Lynch, stay away, stay far, far away.
She also says:
In just 2 days nearly 8,000 people watched this clip of my testimony to NH Ballot Law Commission of traitors, who disregarded all evidence and allowed usurper Obama on the ballot
But, Orly. Seven thousand of them watched for the laughs.
Here is the “hundred” supporters claimed by Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq. to have been in attendance last Friday, as they react to the 5-0 decision of the Ballot Law Commission to keep President Barack Obama on the presidential ballot.
Last night, in between approving city expenditures and other routine agenda items, the Topeka, Kansas City Council debated one rather controversial one: decriminalizing domestic violence.
Here’s what happened: Last month, the Shawnee County District Attorney’s office, facing a 10% budget cut, announced that the county would no longer be prosecuting misdemeanors, including domestic violence cases, at the county level. Finding those cases suddenly dumped on the city and lacking resources of their own, the Topeka City Council is now considering repealing the part of the city code that bans domestic battery. …
Since the county stopped prosecuting the crimes on September 8th, it has turned back 30 domestic violence cases. Sixteen people have been arrested for misdemeanor domestic battery and then released from the county jail after charges weren’t filed. “Letting abusive partners out of jail with no consequences puts victims in incredibly dangerous positions,” said Becky Dickinson of the YWCA. “The abuser will often become more violent in an attempt to regain control.”
Little by little, we may get there:
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer Will Seek Health Care Law Waiver To Establish Single Payer In His State …
As ThinkProgress previously reported, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) made history earlier this year when he signed into law legislation that would make his state the first state to lay the groundwork for a single payer health care system. In order to enact this system, the state needs a waiver from the federal health care law, which it will be able to obtain in 2017. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) has introduced legislation to move the waiver date up to 2014, an idea President Obama has endorsed.
Now, another governor is looking to take advantage of flexibility in Obama’s health care law in order to establish a single payer system. Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) announced yesterday that he will be seeking a waiver to set up his own universal health care system in his state modeled after the single payer Canadian health care system that began in the province of Saskatchewan:
Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Wednesday he will ask the U.S. government to let Montana set up its own universal health care program, taking his rhetorical fight over health care to another level. … The popular second-term Democrat would like to create a state-run system that borrows from the program used in Saskatchewan. He said the Canadian province controls cost by negotiating drug prices and limiting non-emergency procedures such as MRIs.
Local news station KRTV covered Schweitzer’s bid for a new universal health care system for his state. Schweitzer said that under his ideal system patients can still buy private insurance if they want to, but that it’ll be a “lonely place over there at Blue Cross Blue Shield” due to the superior public health insurance he plans to provide.