Posts by Hines Brian

   A 1 1/2 minute video of the Republican effort to squash the voices of women and uncrazy Catholics shows how outrageous G.O.P. attempts to politicize basic preventive health care has become. The photo above shows who Darrell Issa (R-California) believes should command women's birth control decisions. Watch how Democratic Representatives urge the committee to "let one woman speak."  

This is how politicians drive citizens crazy and get super-low approval ratings. Republicans in the House of Representatives, along with quasi-Democrat Rep. Mike Schaufler, have blocked approval of Oregon's health insurance exchange, seemingly in an attempt to get some crappy bills passed by holding this much-needed bill hostage. The state budget isn't affected by the health care bill. Billions of dollars in federal funding is at stake. Competition between insurance companies, supposedly a GOP priority, will be greatly enhanced.  But since the health care bill is so good for Oregon, Schaufler and his Republican buddies want to make sure that…

Amazing. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia agrees with President Obama and other progressives about something: that religious organizations which enter into commercial activity have to follow the same laws everybody else does. We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition. When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as…

After getting several unwanted email "newsletters" from the Oregon legislature's unchallenged Spam King, Rep. Dennis Richardson, tonight I followed the Golden Rule and sent him one of my own. Richardson used a public records request to get hundreds of thousands of personal email addresses from the state computer system. Well, give spam and you deserve to get spam.  Here's the email message I just sent to the Spam King. Subject: "Great offer." Rep. Richardson, thanks for sending me another of your unwanted emails. I've sent you a "DELETE" request, but wanted you to enjoy some spam email from me. Since…

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation's outrageous decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood's breast cancer screening efforts is a case study in disastrous public relations. Overnight, Komen for the Cure went from "great public-spirited organization" to "handmaiden of right-wing crazies" in the minds of countless Americans. Like me. Until the Planned Parenthood defunding hit the Internet airwaves, I hadn't paid much attention to Komen for the Cure. A couple of times a year I'd see a positive story on the evening news about women (and some men) dressed in pink running together to raise funds and publicize the…

I'm no economic expert. But much of economics is simple common sense. So it's no big surprise to me that the British economy is faltering after David Cameron's conservative government decided several years ago that cutting government spending in a recession was the best way to stimulate growth and job creation. Huh? This "expansionary austerity" notion is another example of faith-based voodoo economics, like believing that cutting taxes results in more revenue. That's also a myth. Recently Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote about Europe's continuing economic problems that have been exacerbated by austerity measures. "The Austerity Debacle" shows why it's…