Ted Cruz is more than a demagogue

He’s a very dangerous man who uses the illusion of candor to hide his lies:

No one doubts that Cruz is a very clever rhetorician. Note how effortlessly he justifies the claim that Manchin-Toomey would create a slippery slope to gun registration by eliding the legal issues involved and sliding right into a broader discussion of Obama’s alleged desire to violate the Constitution wherever possible, which (in Cruz’s telling) essentially ensures that Obama would pursue such a registry.

As it happens, Cruz is right to be concerned about the Justice Department’s seizure of reporter phone records, the weak legal rationale for drone strikes, and the IRS targeting of conservative groups (though note that Cruz deftly slips in the claim that this was “politically minded,” which has not been shown to be the case). But to use serious issues such as these to bolster the completely phony claim that Manchin-Toomey would lead to a gun registry only illustrates how misleading and willfully paranoid the “slippery slope” argument, as applied to the common-sense solution of expanding the already existing background check law, really is.

C-section okayed

Here’s hoping it’s not too late to save her life:

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — A seriously ill Salvadoran woman whose struggle to get a medical abortion drew international attention received permission on Thursday to end the troubled pregnancy with a Caesarean section.

El Salvador’s health minister on Thursday approved the C-section for the 22-year-old woman suffering from kidney failure and lupus, a day after the Supreme Court ruled that she could not have an abortion despite her lawyers’ appeal that the pregnancy was life-threatening.

Ultrasound images indicate that her fetus is developing with only a brain stem and is given no chance of surviving.

The case of the mother, known only as Beatriz, drew widespread attention and criticism as she sought to end the pregnancy in a country with some of the strictest abortion laws in Latin America. Salvadoran laws prohibit all abortions, even when a woman’s health is at risk, and the woman and any doctor who terminated her pregnancy would face arrest and criminal charges.

Florida bans EBT cards from strip clubs…

I am sooooo relieved that the State of Florida had enough sense to stop this fraud and abuse of  taxpayers dollars…

Gov. Rick Scott signed bill HB 701 on Thursday, making the use of state-issued electronic benefits cards at strip clubs, liquor stores, or casinos verboten.

You’re just going to have to get a second or third job to get yourself a lap dance now, poor people.

Republican state Rep. Jimmie Smith introduced this bill. He also was the person who introduced drug testing for recipients of assistance.