Huckabee: Connecting End-of-Life Issues with Abortion Reveals Republican Weakness

by Nomad

Mike Huckabee in an attempt to garner attention, has managed to connect the abortion debate and end-of-life matters. Although Huckabee appears unaware of it, that connection actually highlights the problem with the Republican stand on abortion. On top of that, both subjects are toxic to winning the 2016 election.

The other day, while making a speech at the Susan B. Anthony List, a 501 (c)4 anti-abortion organization, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee attempted to play the "Scare the oldies" card. (It's been Fox News' bread and butter since its inception.)

As reported by Politico,

The former Arkansas governor and one-time presidential candidate said women typically cite hardship or inconvenience as their reason for getting an abortion — the same reasons that he said could be used to justify ending the lives of the elderly.

The same technique of scaring the senior voters was used by Sarah Palin in her death panel nonsense. Huckabee told the audience:

“If we teach the generation coming after us that it’s okay to terminate a human life because it represents a financial hardship or social disruption, what are we telling them?”

Huckabee is the kind of politician that doesn't fear to tread the paths where other GOP angels tend to slither away from.    

In this speech, Huckabee chided his compatriots for shying away from the subject of abortion which he sees as a sure-fire election-winning issue. (Somebody should have told him that according to a 2013 poll, seven in ten Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade)

Huckabee ironically is attempting to connect a pair of unpopular positions and is expecting some kind of political gain.

Lebanon Suddenly Became More Gay-Friendly than 14 US states

by Nomad

Despite its myriad problems, (such as marketplace suicide bombings, factional divisions and refugees), the Middle-Eastern nation of Lebanon appears to be more progressive when it comes to equality rights for its gay minority than, say, Texas or Oklahoma.

According to Victoria Kim writing for PolicyMic:

LGBT rights activists in Lebanon are celebrating a historic ruling that reversed the criminalization of gay sex in Lebanon.

The recent case was highlighted a quarterly magazine called Legal Agenda, published by an NGO of the same name.

Judge Naji El Dahdah, of Jdeide Court, Beirut, threw out the case, in which the Lebanese state accused a transgender woman of having a same-sex relationship with a man, on January 28. The verdict relied on a December 2009 ruling by Judge Mounir Suleiman that consensual homosexual relations were not "against nature" and could therefore not be prosecuted under article 534 of Lebanon's penal code, which prohibits sexual relations that are "contradicting the laws of nature," and makes them punishable by up to a year in prison. "Man is part of nature and is one of its elements, so it cannot be said that any one of his practices or any one of his behaviors goes against nature, even if it is criminal behavior, because it is nature's ruling," Suleiman said.

This latest development comes after what some saw as last years' crackdown of a very discreet underground gay scene.

Compare that to the states in the US that  still have anti-sodomy laws on their books. Despite a 2003 Supreme Court decision  to invalidate an earlier ruling in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, fourteen states have yet to abolish the laws. The Supreme Court ruled that this private sexual conduct is protected by the liberty rights implicit in the due process clause of the United States Constitution. 

And yet, Alabama,  Florida, Idaho,  Kansas,  Louisiana,  Michigan,  Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia all have retained the unconstitutional laws. While these states have no way to enforce the laws, they have also not been repealed at a state level. Although obsolete, the laws have been used have been used to stop gay Americans from adopting and fostering children and gaining custody of their own kids.

History's Echo: Mr. Flower and His Warning Against Corporations

by Nomad

Let's take a glance back over a hundred years ago to an era suspiciously like our own. 

I'd like you to meet Mr. Flower, a now forgotten progressive journalist with a word of warning about the growth of corporations.

History is full of surprises and hidden secrets. One such surprise is how epochs and eras often repeat themselves at regular intervals- never quite the same, but the same echoes vibrate through our own time.

Take the Progressive Era which started in the late 1800s and lasted to about the 1920s.  Ever wonder why this important time of American history gets so little attention? 

To answer that, we can peer into Arena Magazine, Volume 19, dated 1898. In it, we discover an article written by the magazine's editor, B.O. Flower which is entitled "The Corporation Against The People." The article warns its readers about an encroaching menace- the monopolies of corporations:

Monopoly in money, monopoly in transportation, monopoly in all public utilities... and monopoly in commodities essential for man's life, comfort or well-being are the offspring of corporate control, ... in which great profits of the few are acquired at the expense of the many.

Against this evil.. all reformers, all friends of liberty, freedom and justice should unite.

The forces of freedom and the forces of oppression are being rapidly marshalled, the lines of battle are being drawn. The tendencies of the opposing theories are no longer vague or doubtful. If corporations are to continue, a popular government cannot live, any more than liberty can exist under the rule of absolutism.

Over a hundred years have passed and the subject- and the Flower's viewpoint  - is just as important as it was then.