Senate Renews Violence Against Women Act - Republican Men Don't Like It

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Tress

Tress

If you object to same-sex couples being protected under this law, does that mean you actually encourage violence against people in same-sex relationships? Whether the answer is yes or no, objecting to the law on those grounds is a huge PR mess. It certainly makes it look that way. They are never going to make any progress with national voters if they keep trying to pull this shit.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Zappit said:
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/...omen-act-sending-to-house-for-action#comments

The Democrat-controlled Senate voted 78-22 to renew the VAWA, which expired late last year. A number of Republicans objected because the new version extends protections to minority groups like Native Americans, immigrants, and the LGBT community. It's no sure thing that the Republican-controlled House approves it, either.

Republicans...still doing great with the laaaadies.
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And once again, the left is fudging words to make things out like the republicans want to reduce women to handbaggage. The objections were not about "extending protections" to native americans, it was about non-natives being subject to tribal courts, where consitutional protections may not apply. That's a different ball of wax than what NBC et al are painting. And even with that objection, half the republicans voted for it.
 
Tress

Tress

Don't forget about the specific objections to same-sex couples being covered. Or is that the left fudging words too?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Tress said:
Don't forget about the specific objections to same-sex couples being covered. Or is that the left fudging words too?
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Actually, I don't see any mention of that in the article at all. All it says about the opposition is:

"Republicans have objected to elements of the reauthorization, most specifically a technical dispute over jurisdiction for Native American tribal authorities in the instances of certain crimes."

If not even NBC mentions it, is it perhaps not as striking as you make it out to be?

But here, let me do your guys' homework for you and dig deeper and actually post some sources that talk about points you are trying to make.

From the HuffPo (note, another notoriously leftist rag), parts bolded for emphasis:

n a Feb. 2 hearing, Grassley said he backs VAWA reauthorization, but he could not support the Leahy-Crapo version, in part because of the aforementioned provisions on LGBT individuals, immigration and tribal authority.
"The substitute creates so many new programs for underserved populations that it risks losing focus on helping victims, period," he said of the new LGBT protections, adding, "If every group is a priority, no group is a priority."
Grassley also objected to the tribal language, saying it was the first time the committee would "extend tribal jurisdiction over non-Indians."
On the immigration front, Grassley said, "VAWA is meant to protect victims of violence. It shouldn't be an avenue to expand immigration law or give additional benefits to people here unlawfully."
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But to hear you guys talk about it, it's more like Grassley stood up in the Senate and yelled "BURN THE QUEERS!"

The fact of the matter is that social-issue leftists are super-psyched and feeling their wheaties at the moment and any concerned clearing of throats in the midst of all the enthusiasm is treated as the attempted rise of the fourth reich.

And that's coming from someone who is pro-gay marriage and pro-choice.
 
Zappit

Zappit

Staff member
Well, let's look at it, then. Native American tribal lands are sovereign nations and legally recognized as such. If a non-native commits a crime in a sovereign nation, should they not be subject to that nation's laws? Should an American who beats the hell out of a Canadian woman in Quebec not be subject to their criminal system? Our country has made the effort to treat the tribes as their own countries, but we should ignore that if it seems slightly inconvenient?

Why not protect illegal immigrants? They may be in violation of the law, but they are undoubtably one of the most vulnerable groups. Protecting them under the law could contribute to the break-up of human trafficking rings, expose employers who use and abuse migrant workers, and let's face it - if we're such a moral nation, how can we turn our backs on people being abused?

The LGBT community doesn't have domestic violence problems? Of course it does. A segment of the population that has long been marginalized, openly despised, and forced into hiding has simply made far too many turn their head away, pretending that they don't even exist. It leaves this portion of Americans vulnerable to domestic violence and lacking options afforded to same sex couples.

If this new version creates different departments that focus on different groups, then we can address their needs. That's what this bill does. People like Grassley, who I never singled out to begin with, simply seems to just give up, claiming it's not even worth trying. Why do I dismiss their reasoning? It's coming from a party that has targeted Mexicans as a scapegoat for the country's problems and targeted Hispanics to the point that it will be generations before they could get their support. Let's not forget Republicans who were at the forefront of the party, such as Herman Cain, who wanted to put up a lethal electric fence on the border. It's a party that historically has moved to block rights for homosexuals - not simply marriage, but visiting a partner in the hospital and denying adoptions to homosexuals. Influential blocks of the religious right preach hate against their fellow man and presume to know what God wants, even if it contradicts other parts of the Bible or a Commandment. It comes from a party whose members have actually debated what constitutes a legitimate rape. It's a party that has worked to undermine the law of the land by stripping away abortion rights wherever they can. It's a party that held a committee on women's health and did not have one woman on the panel. A party that was perfectly happy to pass a law in Texas that forced women to be subjected to an invasive ultrasound prior to an abortion that featured getting penetrated by a wand. A party that finds it perfectly acceptible that insurance should cover Viagra but not birth control.

So yes, I'm just a wee bit suspicious of their motives in rejecting this bill. It just happens that they reject it when it includes groups they've targeted. It just happens that it protects a group they've been more recently working on. It also happens that every single Republican that voted against the Act's renewal is a man. http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/02/12/1556601/senate-passes-vawa-again/?mobile=wt
 
Tress

Tress

Sorry Gas, I got my quote from a different article and didn't notice it wasn't mentioned in this thread's news. I'll find the quote tomorrow to show you what I'm talking about.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
This is all the fault of the Supreme Court. Congress got a line-item veto passed during Clinton's time and the court deemed it unconstitutional. This means that these little things that are deal-breakers can't be stripped out. So the bills that should pass easily are killed because opponents put in bullshit that nobody can stomach.

A bill to fund storm relief? Sweet! Oh wait! representative Buttplug (W - State) just put in a rider that says passage of this bill allows for the arbitrary killing of puppies by hanging them from the ceilings of preschools. Bill fails.

I know that's an extreme example, but essentially that's how it works. And the ability to do that has broken our congress. Until they stop the addition of unrelated pork, gridlock will be the norm and not the exception.
 
strawman

strawman

Why should we give the executive branch more power? Just because the house and senate can't clean up their own act?

They should remove the pork themselves before sending it on. They are broken because they are adding these things in, not because the supreme court, correctly in many people's eyes, has prevented the executive branch from holding too much power.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
You really think the congress will police themselves? Who would vote for something that would prevent their party from possibly blocking unwanted legislation by the opposition? Answer: They wouldn't. So something needs to be done. Either the Executive branch needs to act, or a lawsuit needs to be brought forth and have it go to the Supreme Court. But I doubt that it would pass muster in the SCOTUS, because it would be seen as limiting the ability of the congress to govern.

So we're back to either congress polices itself - which it won't - or the executive branch taking the reins and actually leading.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
At what point does it just become the "violence against everybody act" then, invalidating the entire idea of there being "special protections?" It's like I have to explain to my boss at least once a year. When you give me 5 things to do that are all "priority 1," the fact of the matter is there is no priority one.
Zappit said:
Well, let's look at it, then. Native American tribal lands are sovereign nations and legally recognized as such. If a non-native commits a crime in a sovereign nation, should they not be subject to that nation's laws? Should an American who beats the hell out of a Canadian woman in Quebec not be subject to their criminal system? Our country has made the effort to treat the tribes as their own countries, but we should ignore that if it seems slightly inconvenient?
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I chuckle that you equate the Canadian justice system with tribal court. At any rate, the main purpose of establishing the tribal court system was to grant that the native tribes would not be in a position where their members were being plucked out and tried by US state or federal courts - that they could police their own membership. However, the maximum penalty a tribal court can decree is 6 months of jail and a $5000 fine. Does that seem like enough to you for such an offense? Being that the primary motivation of tribal law is to keep the natives out of US courts, why should the opposite not apply?

Why not protect illegal immigrants? They may be in violation of the law, but they are undoubtably one of the most vulnerable groups. Protecting them under the law could contribute to the break-up of human trafficking rings, expose employers who use and abuse migrant workers, and let's face it - if we're such a moral nation, how can we turn our backs on people being abused?
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That's a very tinted picture you paint, and a logically fallacious one as well. If vulnerability trumps legality, why not go one further? Undoubtedly there are even more vulnerable groups of women being straight-up-murdered in northern Mexico right this very second. Never mind that it'd be illegal of us to unilaterally intervene... there's vulnerability at stake!

Why do I dismiss their reasoning? It's coming from a party that has targeted Mexicans as a scapegoat for the country's problems and targeted Hispanics to the point that it will be generations before they could get their support. Let's not forget Republicans who were at the forefront of the party, such as Herman Cain, who wanted to put up a lethal electric fence on the border.
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Let's just pause a moment and point out that I think an electric fence at the border is objectionable, but due to cost vs effectiveness, not because OH MY GOD YOU'RE ELECTROCUTING THE POOR POOR PITIFUL IMMIGRANTS.
It's a party that historically has moved to block rights for homosexuals - not simply marriage, but visiting a partner in the hospital and denying adoptions to homosexuals. Influential blocks of the religious right preach hate against their fellow man and presume to know what God wants, even if it contradicts other parts of the Bible or a Commandment. It comes from a party whose members have actually debated what constitutes a legitimate rape. It's a party that has worked to undermine the law of the land by stripping away abortion rights wherever they can. It's a party that held a committee on women's health and did not have one woman on the panel. A party that was perfectly happy to pass a law in Texas that forced women to be subjected to an invasive ultrasound prior to an abortion that featured getting penetrated by a wand. A party that finds it perfectly acceptible that insurance should cover Viagra but not birth control.
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If you want a laundry list of everything objectionable that any given democrat has supported going back to and including slavery, we would be here all day. The fact of the matter is half the senate republicans supported this bill, and the other half have objections to how it goes about trying to attain its aims. Not because they don't think these groups are deserving of help, but because they don't think this is the way to do it. It's a classic false choice that democrats present to public scrutiny. I'll quote Marco Rubio's response to the State of the Union Address:

"When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can't control the weather - he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air.
When we suggest we strengthen our safety net programs by giving states more flexibility to manage them - he accuses us of wanting to leave the elderly and disabled to fend for themselves.
And tonight, he even criticized us for refusing to raise taxes to delay military cuts - cuts that were his idea in the first place."

This is what the democrat party does. If you don't support what they support the way they want to support them verbatim, you're worse than satan and need to be destroyed. No debate. No discussion.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
This is what the democrat party does. If you don't support what they support the way they want to support them verbatim, you're worse than satan and need to be destroyed. No debate. No discussion.
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Don't pretend this is a Democrat only issue. The Left had to endure 7 years of being called un-American cowards and being systemically undermined because they weren't on board with the Right's war agenda, despite the obvious and objectionable power grabs that were going on at the time. This is a sword that has always cut both ways and it's the Republican's turn for the next 4 years.

American politics has become a zero sum game because ANY compromise or acceptance of criticism is interpreted by the fringe elements as weakness and used as a reason not to vote. Any lost votes are worrisome in the electoral system we currently have.
 
Zappit

Zappit

Staff member
Now, Gas, I'm not bringing up Republican sins from the time of slavery. I'm merely highlighting the ones of the last five years or so.

And really, that's what Democrats do - demonizing those who don't agree with them? You're kidding here, right? The Democrats spent the 2000's being characterized by the right as treasonous, Marxist, anti-American subversive elements, and dismissed as such. We spent most of the decade getting pushed aside without debate and without discussion. And we didn't wield the filibuster as a cudgel to disrupt the flow of government in general. Oh, and your argument doesn't really hold up, anyway. Obama gave in to the Republicans fairly often in his first term, offered pretty serious concessions in the fiscal cliff talk, but was rebuffed in that last negotiation. Once he realized the House Republicans just weren't going to give up on this political tantrum, when he won reelection by a sizable margin, and when Republicans lost seats in both houses, he stopped making such offers. There's a lot of people who are just sick of them right now.

It's a cycle, Gas. This is what the majority wants now, until they don't want it anymore. Then we'll be right back here, having the same argument, only with roles reversed.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
Don't pretend this is a Democrat only issue. The Left had to endure 7 years of being called un-American cowards and being systemically undermined because they weren't on board with the Right's war agenda, despite the obvious and objectionable power grabs that were going on at the time. This is a sword that has always cut both ways and it's the Republican's turn for the next 4 years.
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Actually, the democrats were directly undermining the war effort to try to make Bush look bad, like he needed help with that. From Harry Reid's constant refrain of "all is lost in the middle east" to Dick Durbin's crusade against any interrogation techniques stronger then stern looks, to pretty much their entire party line reading word for word like an Al Qaeda press release while they hope and prayed for (and actively attempted to achieve) military quagmire for political gain. (And decried the 5.5% unemployment rate as evidence of a failed economy). All the while, the compliant press counted off the american body count in the headlines like a gleeful, macabre high score on a pinball machine. The left has used personal destruction as a political tool all the way back to Robert Bork, who was top rated by the American Bar Association when Reagan attempted to appoint him to the supreme court. Before then, even Joe Biden had said he was a shoo-in for the supreme court. But to stop the nomination of a conservative for the supreme court, democrats went so far as to even dig through his past video rentals. Ted Kennedy came close to slander, in my opinion, when he said “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government.” None of that was even remotely true, but it was all justified because he disagreed with their political thought.


Zappit said:
We spent most of the decade getting pushed aside without debate and without discussion. And we didn't wield the filibuster as a cudgel to disrupt the flow of government in general.
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Actually, you did, which is why the whole debate over the "nuclear option" got started. Then of course, democrats who vehemently denounced the changing of senate rules to castrate the filibuster went on to endorse those exact same rules changes later when, yes, republicans excercised the filibuster in the same way later.

It's a cycle, Gas. This is what the majority wants now, until they don't want it anymore. Then we'll be right back here, having the same argument, only with roles reversed.
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Well, we may be in some level of agreement there. It's just that one of these cycles, perhaps this one, the oscillation may go so far as to not being able to go back. For instance, when the bottom falls out of the dollar.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
Seriously democrats swung the filibuster around just as much as the republicans. Same with gerrymandering or all the other scummy things they do. I'm consistently astounded by people who don't recognize that.

stienman said:
Why should we give the executive branch more power? Just because the house and senate can't clean up their own act?
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I think you answered your own question.
 
Covar

Covar

Necronic said:
Seriously democrats swung the filibuster around just as much as the republicans. Same with gerrymandering or all the other scummy things they do. I'm consistently astounded by people who don't recognize that
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Not my guys, clearly. It's those other bastards.;)

If the House and Senate can't get their act together then bills shouldn't be passed. The system isn't designed to make bills easy to pass, and that's ultimately a good thing.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Covar said:
Not my guys, clearly. It's those other bastards.;)

If the House and Senate can't get their act together then bills shouldn't be passed. The system isn't designed to make bills easy to pass, and that's ultimately a good thing.
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The system wasn't designed with the idea that pretty much anyone could torpedo anything by hanging random amendments on any bill or law they like, either.
 
Eriol

Eriol

Bubble181 said:
The system wasn't designed with the idea that pretty much anyone could torpedo anything by hanging random amendments on any bill or law they like, either.
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Do you guys not need to pass a vote for amendments, or does everybody just blindly vote "yes" no matter what the dumb amendment says? I'm not up on your system, so I wonder about this.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Bubble181 said:
The system wasn't designed with the idea that pretty much anyone could torpedo anything by hanging random amendments on any bill or law they like, either.
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Well, there IS a voting process for amending a bill, so it's not absolutely unfettered.

Really, everybody, of course there's going to be a fair degree of just plain old obstructionism - be it RvD or DvR - and you know some of that plays in here as well. But my point wasn't that democrats being scummy excuses republicans being scummy, the point was it's all political. Reid didn't want terrorists to harm America, no matter what he said. And Grassley doesn't want women, aboriginal or otherwise, or LGBT people or even illegal immigrants to be subjected to violence. Both senators just didn't agree with HOW laudable goals were being pursued.[DOUBLEPOST=1360860061][/DOUBLEPOST]
Eriol said:
Do you guys not need to pass a vote for amendments, or does everybody just blindly vote "yes" no matter what the dumb amendment says? I'm not up on your system, so I wonder about this.
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I might be mistaken, but I think amendments to ordinary bills only require a simple majority to pass, so if one party has 51 votes, they can get the amendment passed if they move in lockstep. Of course, if there's a filibuster, they need 60 votes, but right now they have 53 democrats and two "independents" who caucus with them, and really it's pretty easy to find 5 turncoat republicans most days.
 
strawman

strawman

The main way to get pork in the bill is to tell the supporting group that you won't vote for it unless it includes your special interest.

This is also why the democrats had such a hard time passing bills when they had control of congress and the White House.

Also the procedure of actually bringing a bill to the floor and voting on it doesn't involve any soul searching. By the time it gets to the floor people already know how they're going to vote, and most of them don't want to publicly hash out all the pork, they just want to sweep it under the carpet and pass it along, everyone furtively hoping no one will call them out on their special interest, but keeping everyone else's special interest in mind so if someone dares go back on their word they gave you in the back room, you can stab them just as publicly.

It ain't called politickin' fer nothin'
 
Eriol

Eriol

GasBandit said:
I might be mistaken, but I think amendments to ordinary bills only require a simple majority to pass, so if one party has 51 votes, they can get the amendment passed if they move in lockstep. Of course, if there's a filibuster, they need 60 votes, but right now they have 53 democrats and two "independents" who caucus with them, and really it's pretty easy to find 5 turncoat republicans most days.
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My point was, how can a party complain about crazy amendments, when they're the one approving them. Put a clean bill forth, and don't support crazy amendments that you KNOW will mean that the opposition won't vote for the whole thing.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Eriol said:
My point was, how can a party complain about crazy amendments, when they're the one approving them. Put a clean bill forth, and don't support crazy amendments that you KNOW will mean that the opposition won't vote for the whole thing.
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Well, because they think they can keep their party in lockstep (which, often enough, they can't) and pass the bill with the amendments regardless of the opposition. And, after all, the bill DID pass the senate.

But they don't control the House of Representatives, so it's probably DOA there. They probably thought they could bully it through by .. you guessed it... demonizing any opposition as homophobic racists.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Eriol said:
Do you guys not need to pass a vote for amendments, or does everybody just blindly vote "yes" no matter what the dumb amendment says? I'm not up on your system, so I wonder about this.
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No amendments over here. A law stays on one topic. That's a good thing.

On the other hand, our parliament and senate are really compeltely powerless particratic machines blindly following whatever our ministers or, more often, party leadership, dictates. The last time there was any disagreement between a party's fraction in any of the houses and government must date back 20 years. Sadly, I really like the theory behind the Belgian system, but in practice, we're a particracy instead of a democracy.
 
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