The Stormy Daniels Interview Should Scare Republicans

I, like I suspect many, I watched the 60 Minutes interview of Stormy Daniels last evening.  My take away?  Donald Trump is an adulterous pig.   In my view, a very unattractive adulterous pig.  Perhaps my favorite part of the interview was this:

Anderson Cooper: You were 27, he was 60. Were you physically attracted to him?

Stormy Daniels: No.

Anderson Cooper: Not at all?

Stormy Daniels: No.

I suspect that this exchange will most enrage Der Trumpenführer since it dismisses his delusional attractive image of himself.   

On a more serious note, what the Daniels interview may do is further alienate women voters - a demographic with whom Trump does poorly - by reminding them of Trump and the GOP's anti-women agenda.  With the 2018 mid terms a little more than seven months away, the last thing Republicans need is more alienation of women voters or, in the alternative, energized women voters out for retribution.  A piece in CNN looks at why Republicans should be worried.  Here are excerpts:

But one way that the Daniels story could have a very real political effect is in its ability to further energize the women's vote, especially that of white college-educated females. From the start of his presidency, Trump has had a gender problem. Hillary Clinton won 54% of the women's vote. The first mass protest against his presidency, the Women's March on January 21, 2017, drew hundreds of thousands of women from all over the country.
 The president has done nothing to allay the concerns that he is a sexist-in-chief who is dismissive of any policies that aim to achieve gender equity and who is prone to espousing the kind of "locker room talk," as he called it, that was on display in the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape that emerged during the election. While many Americans had been hopeful that Clinton's candidacy would signal a historic milestone in the fight for gender quality, the story turned out differently. The victory of Trump felt to many women like a huge step backward. In the period that has his followed his election, many women voters have only become more determined to reverse the damage that his victory caused. The #Metoo movement pushed the issue of sexual harassment to the front and center of our national conversation. Activists brought down numerous leading figures in key industries and have created immense pressure to transform the rules and norms of workplace behavior. The anger among women in the electorate could be decisive in the midterm elections. With a record-breaking number of female candidates running for office, many women are clearly determined to shake up Washington. If women voters who oppose President Trump turn out in large numbers, they can provide the key to electing a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. Ronald Brownstein has noted that 62% of college-educated women are planning to vote for Democrats in November. According to an NBC News/Wall Street poll, the president's favorability rating among college-educated white women has fallen from 32% to 27%. And the Republicans only receive positive marks from 23% of this pool. In the special elections in Virginia, Alabama, and Pennsylvania, the Republicans performed poorly with women voters. And [Trump's] the president's numbers have also fallen among blue-collar white women who were important to his victory last November. In RealClear Politics, David Brady and Brett Parker recently recounted how weak the enthusiasm is for his presidency among female voters, and the widening gender gap between the parties. Donald Trump has represented, both symbolically and in terms of the policy agenda, a reactionary presidency toward the feminist movement that has pushed the country toward greater gender equality. The daily tumult in the White House and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation create woes for Trump. But the decisive factor that could put real institutional brakes on this [Trump] President may well turn out to be the women's vote.

Inconvenient and Ugly Truths about Billy Graham

Some say that it is bad form to speak ill of the dead.  I view it as even worse form, however, to rewrite history and avoid the truth about public figures, especially when the truth involves bigotry and self-enrichment.  While much of the mainstream media is engaged something akin to self-felatio in mourning over the death of Billy Graham - I omit the designation "Reverend" since I hold bible colleges and the Southern Baptist Convention in very low esteem - very little is being said about the ugly side of Graham who was a homophobe, a make chauvinist, and an anti-Semite.  Yes, unlike most Southern Baptists of his era, Graham disavowed outright segregation, but that hardly merits forgiving his other transgressions  against decency.    It also bears remembering that Graham set the model for today's self-enriching scamvangelists - i.e., so called pastors and evangelists who laugh all the way to the bank - and played a role in evangelical Christians' toxic role in American politics.   A piece in The Raw Story looks at the ugly underbelly of Graham's "career."   Here are excerpts:

Graham is getting tributes from all corners right now. And he deserves praise for supporting the civil rights movement, supporting Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment and embracing Muhammad Ali during the fall-out of his conversion to Islam. All those good deeds will be covered in great detail today.

But while Graham certainly did many great things, he also said and did some awful things. And because he was so respected, his deeds were very influential.

Graham helped normalize ultra-rich pastors. Graham’s wealth, and focus on more wealth, was modest compared to the televangelists preaching the prosperity gospel today. His net worth was estimated at $25 million.

Graham once preached that AIDS was the judgement of God. “Is AIDS a judgment of God? . . . Graham quickly backtracked on this one, saying that he didn’t believe that and didn’t know why he said it. Nevertheless, this dog-whistle was heard by too many.

Graham wrote a memo to President Nixon urging him to commit a war crime in Vietnam. Unlike many Christian leaders, Graham supported a very specific military strategy in the Vietnam war. He wanted Nixon to use nuclear weapons to destroy the dikes that manage flooding in North Vietnam. This plan was something Henry Kissinger dismissed as “just too much.”

Graham was anti-Semitic. . . . . For example, after taped conversations revealed that Graham made anti-Semitic statements to President Nixon. Specifically, he told the president that Jews control the media, and that this was dangerous: “This stranglehold has got to be broken or this country’s going down the drain.” Nixon agreed with this, and Graham suggested that if he got elected to a second term “we might be able to do something.” Graham would later point out that he had Jewish friends.
 Graham had backward views on women. He criticized feminism, and is the namesake of that weird rule that Mike Pence lives by, never spending any time alone with any woman besides his wife.
 Graham raised his boy wrong. In his 1997 autobiography, Graham was regretful of his involvement in politics, writing that, “If I had to do it all over again, I would also avoid any semblance of involvement in partisan politics… And yet, Graham failed to impart this wisdom on his son Franklin Graham, who took over the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and who has taken the lead in defending and legitimizing Donald Trump to evangelicals.

The comment in the piece about Graham's son is an understatement as to the lengths Franklin Graham has thrown aside supposed "Christian" values in supporting Trump, Roy Moore and other morally bankrupt Republicans.  His sister Ann Graham Lotz is no better and fully fits the scamvangelist model established by her father who made being a "professional Christian" a route to personal financial wealth.  Graham and his children excelled at claiming the Bible inerrant yet ignored any passages not supportive of their personal and political agendas. 

One of Billy Graham's last public acts was in 2012 - possible under his son's coercion - when he was trotted out to endorse North Carolina's Amendment 1 that banned marriage equality.  As a piece in Huffington Post by an activist friend notes, Graham's statement appeared in full page ads in 14 newspapers across North Carolina.  Graham was no friend to the LGBT community and he was no supporter of equality under the law. 

Anti-Abortion Republican Lawmaker Says Women Are Merely "Hosts"

Anti-woman extremist Justin Humphreys

I am not a proponent of abortion.  But, that said, I do not support totally outlawing abortion and second guessing women and their physicians or, worse yet, forcing rape victims to carry to term the results of sexual assault or fetuses plagued by serious disabilities and abnormalities. Sadly, that is not the mindset of far, far too many Republicans - or the Christofascists to whom they prostitute themselves - who want to make such decisions for women and, as illustrated by Oklahoma GOP Rep. Justin Humphrey who views women's bodies as mere "hosts" for the for the results of the sexual issue of men.  How any self-respecting woman or a man who has a wife and/or daughters can support such misogyny is mind numbing.  New York Magazine looks at the batshitery that is far too prevalent in today's GOP, which would outlaw contraception, if possible.  Here are article excerpts:

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma state legislature will hold a hearing on a bill that would require a woman seeking an abortion to first get written permission from her male sexual partner. In an interview, the Republican lawmaker who authored the bill explained that a woman’s body, well, simply isn’t her own. Instead, a woman’s body is merely a “host.”

The Intercept has a detailed report about the bill, known as HB 1441, as well as another bill that would block women from aborting fetuses with genetic anomalies, called HB 1559. In a surprising move (as Oklahoma has passed 20 strict abortion regulations since 2011), the latter failed to pass last Wednesday while the former was tabled without comment. However, by Thursday, both measures were put back on the House Public Health Committee’s agenda, with a vote slated for February 14.

In an interview with the Intercept, Representative Justin Humphrey explained why he decided to author HB 1441. His first intention with the bill, he said, was to ensure men would have to pay child support from the beginning. He also wanted to give men a say in the decision of whether a woman gets an abortion or not, because women tend to make these decisions with the mistaken with belief that their bodies are their own, he said.

Per the Intercept:

“I understand that they feel like that is their body,” he said of women. “I feel like it is a separate — what I call them is, is you’re a ‘host.’ And you know when you enter into a relationship you’re going to be that host and so, you know, if you pre-know that then take all precautions and don’t get pregnant,” he explained. “So that’s where I’m at. I’m like, hey, your body is your body and be responsible with it. But after you’re irresponsible then don’t claim, well, I can just go and do this with another body, when you’re the host and you invited that in.”

I'm sure that Humphreys views himself as a godly Christian.  To me, he is an example of why religion has no place in public policy. No place whatsoever.  

Joan Walsh: Why I’m Supporting Hillary Clinton

While conservative pundits continue to engage in a circular firing squad as they either decry or support Donald Trump, there is similar back biting going on among some Democrats who seem to forget that the number one goal is to make sure that a Republican is not elected to the White House in November.  Unlike on the GOP side of the aisle, none of the Democrat candidates are insane or extremists, and thus, the issue becomes (i) who is most electable and (ii) who best represents all Democrats.  In a piece in The Nation, Joan Walsh makes the case that she believes Hillary Clinton is best qualified and deserving of support.  Here are excerpts:

Invited by the French Institute for International Relations to join its Annual Conference on the United States in Paris, along with my new friend Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review, I went on to address several classrooms of university students in Toulouse. I got the most questions about Donald Trump, of course, but the Hillary Clinton–Bernie Sanders race was a close second. French students are excited to know there’s an actual socialist in the race; female French students are worried that Clinton could lose, yet again.

I did something in France I don’t often do at home: I came out of the closet as a full-fledged Hillary Clinton supporter. And this time, as opposed to 2008, I’m backing her without apology, as the right and even radical choice. More than without apology; after 40 years of voting for male presidents, I’m supporting Hillary with excitement, even joy.

Had I not declared myself last week, in a Toulouse university lecture hall, I’d have probably done it here anyway, after watching the CNN Democratic presidential town-hall meeting Monday night. The town hall itself was great; Clinton, Sanders, and Martin O’Malley all looked admirable and presidential, in contrast to their awful Republican rivals. Democrats have a lot to be excited about this year.

But one moment got me particularly excited, and not in a good way. It came when a young white man—entitled, pleased with himself, barely shaving yet—broke the news to Clinton that his generation is with Bernie Sanders. “I just don’t see the same enthusiasm from younger people for you. In fact, I’ve heard from quite a few people my age that they think you’re dishonest. But I’d like to hear from you on why you feel the enthusiasm isn’t there.” 

Yes, the “likability” issue. I found myself thinking: Not again. Why the hell does she have to put up with this again?
 
My problem wasn’t merely with the insulting personal tone of the question. It was also the way the young man anointed himself the voice of his generation, and declared it the Sanders generation. Now, I know Bernie is leading among millennials by a lot right now in the polls. Nonetheless, millions of millennials, including millions of young women, are supporting Hillary Clinton. And my daughter, as Nation readers know, is one of them. I find it increasingly galling to see her and her friends erased in this debate.

Which brings me to another reason I’ve felt compelled in the last week to come out publicly and forcefully for Clinton, which is Sanders’s dismissing Planned Parenthood’s endorsement (and that of NARAL Pro-Choice America) by labeling them part of the “establishment.” I appreciated Sanders supporter Kathy Geier’s acknowledgment here in The Nation that her candidate once again came off as tone-deaf on an issue of gender. Yet Geier seconded Sanders’s assertion that these two groups fighting for reproductive justice deserve to be termed “establishment”—and therefore unfavorably compared to the upstart, grassroots, and genuinely radical groups that back Sanders. 

 Just like my lefty friends who praise Sanders for loudly promoting the single-payer solution to healthcare because it’s important to raise the issue’s standing and profile, I praise Clinton for making repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bars Medicaid from paying for abortion for poor women, a major public campaign issue. I acknowledge Sanders has voted the right way, and I’m grateful for it. But Clinton is leading on it, the same way she brought up the vile Planned Parenthood video hoax in the very first Democratic debate. That leadership matters to me. 

Finally, I’m struck by the insistence among Sanders supporters that Democrats who support Clinton—and right now, we are still the majority—are doing so joylessly, like party automatons. On Monday, on my Facebook page, where a lot of my close friends are supporting Sanders, three people I love shared the same op-ed by Republican operative Alex Castellanos, which purported to explain why Clinton’s campaign “sags” (get it?) while Sanders “surges.” This is the same Castellanos, by the way, who defended calling Hillary Clinton a “white bitch” during the 2008 campaign, when Jeffrey Toobin complained about it. “Some women, by the way, are named that, and it’s accurate,” he said smoothly. Trust me: If Castellanos had used a racial slur against Obama eight years ago—”Some black men, by the way, are named [N-word, or your slur du jour], and it’s accurate,” for instance—no progressive would be enthusiastically touting his views on the 2016 Democratic campaign. Not one. Could I really be the only one who remembered his ugly sexist attack on Clinton?  

Eight years ago, I found myself drawn into the media vortex, standing up for Clinton in the face of extraordinary media bias and sexism of the type Castellanos typified. I styled myself as a Clinton defender, not exactly a supporter, partly for journalistic reasons, and partly because I was genuinely torn about not supporting the amazing African-American senator running in the primary against her.

I’m being told it should be, that once again the historic quest of the first front-running female presidential candidate should take a backseat to another historic crusade, that of our first Brooklyn-born Jewish socialist.

I’ve always admired Sanders, but I happen to think he has more than a tin-ear on gender. He routinely talks about “mothers” needing family leave, and he doesn’t even seem to try to substitute the now-customary (on the left, anyway) “he or she” or “him or her” into his speeches.

Still, the larger message to Clinton supporters is that our demand for equal representation at the highest level of government at last, by a supremely qualified woman who is thoroughly progressive if not a socialist, must sadly wait. Again.

I won’t wait. I’m supporting Clinton, joyfully and without apologies. That’s not the same as without reservations; I continue to wonder whether she’ll be more hawkish on foreign policy than is advised in these dangerous times. I’m concerned that she’s too close to Wall Street; I really wish she hadn’t given those six-figure talks to Goldman Sachs. But I genuinely believe she’ll make the best president.

I’ve come to feel passion for Clinton herself, and for what I see as a movement that supports her, even though only Sanders is judged a “movement” candidate. I believe she’s evolved back to be the progressive Democrat she used to be, more progressive than her liberal husband. Some of my feelings remain defensive, but in a warmer sense: I really don’t want to see her abused again. I’m tired of seeing her confronted by entitled men weighing in on her personal honesty and likability, treating the most admired woman in the world like a woman who’s applying to be his secretary. I’m stunned anew by the misogyny behind the attacks on her, and her female supporters . . .

[W]omen will be hurt the most by a GOP presidency. Naturally, I will back Sanders if he’s the nominee. I promise I’ll eventually feel joy about it—after grieving, if Clinton were to lose again. But if that were to happen, it wouldn’t be because I was too busy protecting my lefty bona fides to say I support her, enthusiastically, this time around. I stand with a lot of women who feel the same way, including my daughter, and we won’t be erased. 

The University of Virginia - Searing Allegations of Campus Rape

It has been decades since I graduated the University of Virginia, first with a history major and then with a law degree.  During my days at "UVA," I attended many a fraternity party and it is not without reason that the school is known as a party school despite the rigorous academics that are the norm.  This week, Rolling Stone published a story that has sent the University administration reeling and let to the unusual move of the suspension of all fraternity and sorority activities until January 9, 2015.  The story alleges a gang rape in 2012 at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house (pictured above).  I did not belong to Phi Kappa Psi but did attend some parties there from time to time (I initially belonged to Zeta Psi and shifted my allegiance to Kappa Sigma later).  Back then, let's just say the Phi Kappa Psi parties were wild even by UVA standards.   

I don't know if the allegations of the rape are true or not, but I do know two things: (i) like most institutions, UVA tends to place maintaining its reputation above all else and (ii) here in Virginia, too often the authorities, including the police, tend to put too little effort into protecting the rights of minorities, gays, and yes women.  In the latter regard, we have a bunch of aging white male Republicans in the General Assembly striving to maintain control of women's uterus yet paying little attention to the other needs of women.  The male chauvinism can be intense, especially when Republicans hold power.  The problem is part of the overall problem of needing to drag Virginia fully into the 21st century and insuring that ALL Virginians are protected be they male or female, gay or straight, white or belonging to to a racial minority.  

The Rolling Stone articles is in many ways not accurate - e.g., most students are from average family backgrounds and while there are still self-imagined "Southern aristocrats," things today are far more egalitarian than 40 years ago - and doesn't paint an unbiased picture of the university.   Here are some article highlights that seem off the mark:

But the dearth of attention isn't because rape doesn't happen in Charlottesville. It's because at UVA, rapes are kept quiet, both by students – who brush off sexual assaults as regrettable but inevitable casualties of their cherished party culture – and by an administration that critics say is less concerned with protecting students than it is with protecting its own reputation from scandal. Some UVA women, so sickened by the university's culture of hidden sexual violence, have taken to calling it "UVrApe."

"University of Virginia thinks they're above the law," says UVA grad and victims-rights advocate Liz Seccuro. "They go to such lengths to protect themselves. There's a national conversation about sexual assault, but nothing at UVA is changing."

Prestige is at the core of UVA's identity. Although a public school, its grounds of red-brick, white-columned buildings designed by founder Thomas Jefferson radiate old-money privilege, footnoted by the graffiti of UVA's many secret societies, whose insignias are neatly painted everywhere. At $10,000 a year, in-state tuition is a quarter the cost of the Ivies, but UVA tends to attract affluent students, and through aggressive fundraising boasts an endowment of $5 billion, on par with Cornell. "Wealthy parents are the norm," says former UVA dean John Foubert.

Attorney Wendy Murphy, who has filed Title IX complaints and lawsuits against schools including UVA, argues that in matters of sexual violence, Ivy League and Division I schools' fixation with prestige is their downfall. "These schools love to pretend they protect the children as if they were their own, but that's not true: They're interested in money," Murphy says. "In these situations, the one who gets the most protection is either a wealthy kid, a legacy kid or an athlete. The more privileged he is, the more likely the woman has to die before he's held accountable."

Thankfully, the story does contain a small amount of somewhat balanced language:

S. Daniel Carter, who as former director of public policy for the advocacy group Clery Center for Security on Campus is a national expert on college safety, points out that UVA's sexual assault problems are not much worse than other schools; if anything, he says, the depressing reality is that UVA's situation is likely the norm. Decades of awareness programming haven't budged the prevalence of campus rape: One in five women is sexually assaulted in college, though only about 12 percent report it to police.

UVA president Teresa Sullivan denies the administration sweeps sexual assault under the rug. "If we're trying to hide the issue, we're not doing a very good job of it," she says, noting that this past February UVA hosted the first-ever sexual-assault summit for college administrators. It's true that recently, while under close government scrutiny, the school has made some encouraging changes, including designating most UVA authority figures as mandatory reporters of sexual assault and teaming up with student activists to create a bystander-intervention campaign. Students praise UVA's deans as caring folks who answer late-night calls from victims and even make emergency-room visits.

Am I saying that things cannot be improved at UVA?  Certainly not.  But,  I cannot help but suspect that if UVA were a lesser tier school, this story would never have been written.  Especially, if the S. Daniel Carter is correct that its problems are not out of the norm.  I further know that of my family members who attended the University, none to my knowledge ever encountered anything like what this article would have readers believe is a rampant problem (my oldest daughter graduated from UVA with an undergraduate degree and I have 6 other relatives - not counting my former wife and her family members - who have attended UVA).  Were we all living in a vacuum?

Justice Alito: 'The Idea That Romantic Love Is a Prerequisite to Marriage' is the Problem

If there's any doubt about the backward thinking of supposed "thinkers" and "intellectuals on the far right, one need look no further than Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's (Alito is pictured at left) recent dissent in United States v. Windsor in which this Neanderthal bemoans that the idea of romantic love should be a part of marriage began all the problems surrounding marriage and gay marriage in particular.  Alito seemingly longs for the days when women were bartered by their male relatives for livestock and other financial or political benefits with out a care as to whether the woman involved could even tolerate her often much older husband.  Alito's creepy views are certainly in keeping with the Christofascist agenda of subservient wives and sex being only for procreation (and male pleasure).  Huffington Post looks at Alito's batshitery.  Here are excerpts:

There's been lots of discussion about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's off-the-rails DOMA dissent, but if you really want a peek into the mind of someone living a couple of centuries in the past -- and using pseudo-academic rationales rather than pure emotion, like Scalia -- you've got to read Justice Samuel Alito's concurring dissent on DOMA.  In it we learn that the problem with the decline of marriage really began with "the ascendence of the idea that romantic love is a prerequisite to marriage."

This makes me think that a) Justice Alito purchased his wife at an auction, or from her parents in exchange for a plot of land and a couple of mules, or b) she kicked him out of the house the moment he walked in the door after she read his dissent.

Is this what conservatives really think, that the real problem is that we're marrying for love?

The family is an ancient and universal human institution. Family structure reflects the characteristics of a civilization, and changes in family structure and in the popular understanding of marriage and the family can have profound effects. Past changes in the understanding of marriage -- for example, the gradual ascendance of the idea that romantic love is a prerequisite to marriage -- have had far-reaching consequences.... We can expect something similar to take place if same-sex marriage becomes widely accepted. The long-term consequences of this change are not now known and are unlikely to be ascertainable for some time to come.

I can't imagine that Alito really believes we should go back to arranged marriages. But the man who stated during oral arguments on DOMA that gay unions are "newer than cellphones and the Internet" does appear to believe that the shift to "romantic love" was a dramatic change that caused such a jolt to the institution of marriage

"At present, no one -- including social scientists, philosophers, and historians -- can predict with any certainty what the long-term ramifications of widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage will be," Alito warns. And for that reason Alito believes the court should have upheld DOMA. The logical conclusion of this reasoning is that if the government could have enforced arranged marriage with a federal law, it should have, since no one could predict the outcome of these newfangled romantic-love marriages, which altered the institution of marriage forever.

The descent of the far right into utter insanity continues and it is frightening that someone as out of touch with normal reality is on the Supreme Court.

Romney, the GOP and Employment Discrimination

I've been asked at times why gays and the pro-choice movement often seem to team up together.  I tell those who ask the question that the answer is really very simple: we have a common enemy in the Republicans and Christofascists who seek to force their religious beliefs on all Americans be they gay, female, or non-Christian.  

The same situation holds true for gays and women in general.  Both groups face inequality and discrimination in the work place which is a circumstances which is just fine with today's GOP and the Christianists who (i) prefer to see gays fired at will by employers (ii) believe that women should be subordinate to men (and ideally in the home, barefoot and pregnant).   For LGBT Americans the map below shows the reality of employment discrimination largely due to Republican/Christianist anti-gay policies.  And this situation is just fine with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan who - does the GOP party platform - oppose the enactment of employment protections for LGBT Americans such as ENDA at the federal level.  The Center for American Progress quantifies what this equates to:

Click image to enlarge

• 76,300,000 workers, or 55% of all workers, can be unduly forced into unemployment based on sexual orientation- or gender identity-discrimination

• 42,044,205 children currently live in a state that has failed to pass a law that would make firing their parent, guardian, or other caretaker illegal

• In terms of area, 71%of the square mileage in the United States are in states that afford no legal protections for gay and transgender workers

• 75% of all US counties are in states where it remains legal to fire someone for being gay or transgender under state law

As for women, Romney/Ryan and the GOP oppose equal pay for women performing the same job as men.  While they may dance around the topic and/or seek to avoid answering questions put to them, actions and laudatory words of Mitt Romney tell the real story.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the issue of equal pay for women and the type of Supreme Court Justice a president Romney would appoint.  It should frighten all women (other than those born to wealth and privilege such as Ann "Marie Antoinette" Romney.  Here are excerpts:

The truth, however, is that we do not have to wonder about what Romney’s view on equal pay for women is. We do not even have to wait for his campaign to reveal Romney’s unspoken view on this issue, because the question can be answered in just one picture. This one:

 

That’s Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Ledbetter opinion stripping many women of their right to equal pay for equal work. When asked how he would select his Supreme Court appointments if elected president, Romney named Alito, along with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas, as his models. All four of Romney’s model justices voted against Lilly Ledbetter and against equal pay for women.  Romney’s promise to place more Alitos on the Supreme Court matters much more than his claim that he is not currently interested in enacting anti-woman legislation.

Justice Alito’s Ledbetter opinion did not simply reject a woman’s claim that could enforce her right to equal pay, it thumbed its nose at a unanimous Supreme Court precedent and relied, at least in part, upon a precedent that had been overruled by an Act of Congress. The sort of justice that would do this does not care whether Congress enacted a law protecting equal pay for women, and Romney wants to put even more of them on the Supreme Court.  . . . .Until he takes back his promise to give America more Sam Alitos, anything else he says about equality is empty words.