2021 Arkansas legislative nightmare: lawmakers stick it to their own constituents Kasten Searles
A year into a pandemic that stole jobs, lives and any sense of stability, Arkansans might have hoped for some help when lawmakers convened in January for the 93rd General Assembly. What they got was a kick in the face.
Untethered by any check or balance on their hefty Republican supermajority, extremist lawmakers spent their time belittling and attacking their own constituents. For transgender children, renters, would-be voters, pregnant women or public safety advocates, Arkansas senators and representatives refused aid, offering insults and punishments instead.
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A few football fields to the right of
Credit where due: Democrat minority turns back creationism and cruelty to transgender children in Senate committee
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From The ‘Can’t Fix Stupid’ Files
Closing Thought–22Apr21
This sector of IST keeps expanding…..for there is a wealth of stupid out there I intend to shine a lot on as much as possible.
Meanwhile back in the Red States of the New South….where the important issues are abortion and bathrooms….not the solutions to the problems of the residents.
This is yet another stupid law that would invade the lives of people…..
Arkansas GOP Governor Asa Hutchinson did a good thing and vetoed a bill that would criminalize healthcare for transgender kids. Naturally, the Republican-majority legislature in the state was less than pleased, but determined to make their their state even more inhospitable to transgender people than it already is just by virtue of being Arkansas. So they overrode the veto. The Arkansas House passed a bill allowing teachers to misgender their students and call them by the wrong names, and now they want to pass another, equally terrible bill meant to facil
Credit Arkansas Senate
A bill that would have prohibited public schools and state-supported higher education institutions in Arkansas from requiring educators refer to students by their preferred names or pronouns failed in a legislative committee on Wednesday.
The Senate Education Committee, through a voice vote, did not have the support needed to advance House Bill 1749 to the Senate, where if it passed again, would have gone to the governor.
Under the bill, an employee of a public school or a state-supported university would not be required to use a pronoun, title or other word to identify a student as either male or female when it is inconsistent with the student’s sex.
Little Rock, Arkansas Today, the church/state separation watchdog American Atheists praised the lawmakers on the Arkansas Senate Education Committee who rejected the controversial creationism bill (HB 1701) in a 3-3 vote yesterday evening. The Arkansas House had passed this unconstitutional bill on April 7, drawing national criticism and condemnation.
Both Arkansas Department of Education Assistant Commissioner Stacy Smith and Senator Linda Chesterfield noted the impossibility of teaching a single creationist myth that isn’t based on a particular religious tradition. “There’s lots of creation theories out there [according to] different religions,” said Smith. Senator Chesterfield noted problems arising from Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu public school instructors teaching their own creationist myths to Christian children.
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