Arizona Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments on Dispute over the State’s Two Restrictive Abortion Laws

The Arizona Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case involving challenges to Arizona’s 1864 law that mostly banned abortion. The Arizona Legislature passed a law in 2022 banning abortions after 15 weeks, anticipating the U.S. Supreme Court reversing Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson. The reversal also revived the older law, which was initially passed when Arizona was still a territory. In October 2022, the Arizona Court of Appeals found that the two laws were in conflict, and placed an injunction on the older law from going into effect as to physicians, effectively allowing abortions to take place up to 15 weeks under the new law.

Since Attorney General Kris Mayes declined to pursue the case after the appeals court ruling, Dr. Eric Hazelrigg, an obstetrician and medical director of Choices Pregnancy Center in Arizona, filed a petition in March asking the state’s high court to review the ruling and the injunction, which it agreed to do. Former Attorney General Mark Brnovich had initially asked a court to reinstate the original pro-life law, which was blocked in 1973 due to Roe, but the trial court’s revival of the law was quickly reversed by the appeals court. 

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Ohioans Gather from Across the State to March for Life

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio March for Life – together with the Center for Christian Virtue – held the first of what they hope to be a new tradition of annual gatherings to March for Life on the Capital Square in front of the state house on Wednesday.

“So many people in our lives said that Roe v Wade would never be overturned. Now we have the opportunity to say no more holding us back. The fight in Ohio is just beginning. All of us together using our voices to ensure abortion will no longer happen here in Ohio. We need pro-life, pro-family policies where families flourish and children are protected. We need to be able to say that not only is abortion illegal in Ohio it’s unthinkable. We want to make Ohio the most pro-life state in the nation,” State Representative Jena Powell (R-Arcanum) told the exuberant crowd.

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Commentary: It’s Time to Impeach Larry Krasner

Philadelphia is in a crime crisis, and District Attorney Larry Krasner has been willfully derelict in doing anything to stop it. Since he will not stand up for the people of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by enforcing the laws to keep people safe, we will.

Thomas Paine once wrote: “That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.” Krasner has created an environment where breaking the law is easily gotten away with, and where Philadelphia criminals need not fear the tough-on-crime laws already on the books.

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Joe Biden and the Uses of Nihilism

Chaos is the new, the intentional, normal. A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land. As in Lord of the Flies, when laws, rules, protocols, traditions, and customs are mocked and dismantled, primitive human nature in the raw is unleashed. 

Madness now reigns in every quarter, from the iconic to the irrelevant to the fundamental. Statues of Lincoln, Douglass, and Jefferson are toppled or defaced. The rules of capitalization have been altered. We are told that 1619, not 1776, was our founding date—and this by a “civil rights” activist-journalist who had no idea of the date that the Civil War began.

Quite quickly after the revolutionary boilerplate, America began reverting to its natural Hobbesian or Thucydidean essence. If you dispute that, look at looted packages along the Union Pacific tracks in Los Angeles. Try walking the nocturnal streets of Chicago or Baltimore. Visit the sidewalk homeless of San Francisco. Fly over our constipated ports. Drive into our empty new car dealerships. Pull up to our European-priced gas pumps. Shop in the emptying shelves of our Sovietizing food and discount stores. The common theme of the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, apparently, is that the entertainers must have written lyrics threatening the police, denigrating women, using the N-word . . . and be worth $100 million.

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Anti-Second Amendment Professor Speaks About His New ‘Weaponized Whiteness’ Book

Fran Shor

The Literati Bookstore, an independent book shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, invited progressive author and Wayne State University professor emeritus Fran Shor to discuss his book Weaponized Whiteness: The Constructions and Deconstructions of White Identity Politics. 

Literati Bookstore advertised the Oct. 12 event as a discussion on “the meanings and implications of white supremacy and, more specifically, white identity politics from historical and sociological perspectives.

But Shor’s presentation, “Weaponizing whiteness: past terrors, present predicaments,” also criticized a range of conservative policy including gun rights, policing, voter ID laws, the large defense budget, and the pro-life movement.

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In a Reversal, Gov. Ducey Tells Two School Districts Their Quarantine Policy for Unvaccinated Students is Illegal

An advisor for Governor Doug Ducey sent letters Wednesday to two Arizona school superintendents letting them know their policies of requiring unvaccinated students exposed to COVID-19 to quarantine is illegal. Education policy advisor Kairlin Harrier told the superintendents of Peoria Unified School District and Catalina Foothills School District their policies violate a new law, HB 2898, which states, “A school district or charter school may not require a student or teacher to receive a vaccine for covid-19 or to wear a face covering to participate in in-person instruction.” 

Harrier went on, “The policy must be rescinded immediately.” She pointed out that children under age 12 haven’t even received approval from the federal government to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Children ages 12-15 only received approval for the vaccine in May.

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Arizona Gov. Ducey Signs Bill Banning Critical Race Theory in Government

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed HB 2906 on Friday, banning government agencies from requiring critical race theory, known as CRT. The budget bill he signed last week, HB 2898, banned critical race theory in schools. Ducey also signed 22 other bills, including one restricting sex education in schools, HB 2035. He has until Monday to sign or veto 11 remaining bills. 

“I am not going to waste public dollars on lessons that imply the superiority of any race and hinder free speech,” Ducey declared. The law prohibits the state, cities and counties from requiring employees to participate in orientation, training or therapy that suggests an employee is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. 

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Five Voting-Related Ballot Proposals Seek to Make Arizona 2022 Ballot

Five ballot proposals addressing voting may be on this fall’s ballot if their sponsors collect enough signatures. Three of them, known as referendums, seek to stop legislation from becoming law, requiring 118,823 signatures each. The other ballot initiatives need 237,645 signatures each. Even if all the signatures are collected, a successful legal challenge could keep them off the ballot.

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Ten Laws That Spell Major Changes for Ohio in 2019

In terms of legislation, 2018 may be considered one of Ohio’s most impactful years in recent history. From the approval of the first medicinal marijuana dispensary to new abortion limitations, 2019 will see a dramatic change for many Ohioans. Compiled below are ten of the most significant changes coming to the Buckeye State. Expanded Gun Ownership Rights – House Bill 228 Through an override of Ohio Governor John Kasich’s veto, the Ohio congress passed HB 228, expanding a citizen’s right to self-defense. The bill was originally intended to be a ‘stand your ground’ law but shifted following the significant public controversy. As passed,  the law shifts the burden of proof in self-defense cases to the prosecution. Before passage, Ohio was the only state in America in which a defender had to prove that they were acting in self-defense. Dismemberment Abortion Ban – Senate Bill 145 While Governor Kasich’s received widespread conservative criticism for his veto of the “Heartbeat Abortion Bill,” the Governor did sign one of the most extensive abortion limits in the country. SB 145, signed into law in late December, has banned one of the most commonly used second-trimester abortion procedures currently practiced nationwide. Governor Kasich has signed more than 20 abortion limitations during…

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Ohio Minimum Wage to Increase at Start of New Year

The Ohio hourly minimum wage will be increasing on January 1, 2019. For non-tipped employees, hourly earnings will increase to $8.55 per hour, from $8.30. For tipped employees, hourly earnings will increase to $4.30 per hour, from $4.15. In addition, working longer than 40 hours will be considered overtime and employers will be required to pay one and a half times their normal wage, unless the employer grosses less than $150,000 a year. In 2006, Ohio passed the Ohio Minimum Wage Increase Amendment commonly referred to as Amendment 2 (II.34a Minimum Wage). The amendment increased the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.85 and stipulated that the: state minimum wage rate shall be increased effective the first day of the following January by the rate of inflation for the twelve month period prior to that September according to the consumer price index. From June 2017 to June 2018 the Consumer Price index increased by 2.9 percent. However, there are notable exceptions to the wage increase. Employers whose gross income is less than $314,000 will still be required to adhere to the federal minimum wage standard. The minimum wage for employees 16 and younger will also remain at the federal minimum wage level, which…

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