the kookster Wrote:
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> Virginia’s Republican Party appears poised to
> nominate state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to
> be its candidate for governor in 2013 —
> embracing a man whose extreme political views bear
> striking resemblance to those of unsuccessful 2012
> Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO).
>
> With his fervent anti-science, anti-choice, and
> anti-LGBT, anti-federal government activism,
> Akin’s extreme positions were well known long
> before his infamous August pronouncement that
> victims of “legitimate rape” are unlikely to
> become pregnant helped derail his 2012 U.S. Senate
> campaign. Cuccinelli’s views closely mirror
> Akin’s in all of those areas.
>
> Over seven-and-a-half years as a Virginia state
> senator and three years as the commonwealth’s
> attorney general, Republican Ken Cuccinelli II has
> been, in the words of the Washington Post’s
> editorial board,
“the most overtly partisan
> attorney general in Virginia’s history.”
> Though he claims he is “best known for his
> efforts to preserve liberty and defend the US
> Constitution,” it is his
opposition to
> liberty for women and LGBT Americans and his
> frequent court losses based on his flawed
> constitutional theories that have defined his
> political career to date.
>
> While perhaps not as careless as Akin with his
> rhetoric, Cuccinelli has embraced many of the same
> extreme positions:
>
>
> 1. He wants an abortion ban with no exceptions for
> rape or incest. His 2002 campaign website laid out
> Cuccinelli’s abortion views clearly: “Ken
> believes that human life begins at conception, and
> that human beings should be respected and
> protected from conception to natural death,” it
> said. “Ken would seek to require sonograms to be
> part of a 24-hour waiting period with an informed
> consent requirement. Ken opposes abortions that
> are not for the purpose of saving the mother’s
> life.” Over his political career, he has pushed
> to defund Planned Parenthood and embryonic stem
> cell research. He pushed for a ban on third
> trimester abortions — making no exception for
> serious health risks on the woman — and for
> “safety” regulations for abortion providers
> designed to force clinics to close. He has also
> highlighted his opposition to RU-486 and his
> support for a “conscience” law protecting the
> “right of professionals to refuse to perform an
> action that is inconsistent with their moral
> convictions” — such as providing emergency
> contraception — “without losing their job.”
> Cuccinelli frequently attacks Planned Parenthood
> and has suggested that the fact that abortion
> clinics in Virginia are in urban areas with large
> African American populations is an example of
> white racism. His “ultimate goal,” he has
> said, is to “make abortion disappear in
> America.”
>
> 2. He does not believe LGBT people deserve legal
> protections. Cuccinelli has made it clear that he
> believes same-sex relationships are immoral. In
> 2009, he told a Virginia newspaper, “My view is
> that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but
> homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically
> wrong. And I think in a natural law based country
> it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect
> that.” After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its
> 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case that such bans were
> unconstitutional, he still voted against repealing
> a state law making consensual sodomy a felony. He
> has actively pushed for state and federal
> constitutional amendments to prevent any legal
> recogntition of what he terms “what they’d
> like to refer to as ‘homosexual families,’”
> authoring a resolution calling for a federal
> amendment to invalidate any same-sex marriage,
> civil union, domestic partnership, or “other
> relationship analogous to marriage.” He has
> opined that “giving public sanction to
> homosexual marriage ends up redefining marriage
> and it’s certain to harm children.” He even
> opposed a state bill that allowed private
> companies to voluntarily provide health insurance
> benefits to employees’ domestic partners,
> warning it might “encourage this type of
> behavior.” His advisory opinion that
> Virginia’s public colleges and universities
> should rescind their non-discrimination policies
> was called “reprehensible” by a former
> Republican state legislator.
>
>
> 3. He is a climate-change denier. As part of his
> efforts to cast doubt on climate-change science,
> he used his position to launch an inquisition
> against a former University of Virginia climate
> scientist. Citing possible “fraud against
> taxpayers,” Cuccinelli demanded the university
> provide him with a wide range of records relating
> Dr. Michael E. Mann’s grant applications. A
> circuit judge and then the Virginia Supreme Court
> ruled that the Attorney General was incorrect in
> believing he had the legal authority to undertake
> such a fishing expedition. He blasted the ruling,
> newspapers blasted him for wasting Virginia tax
> dollars. He also failed in his federal lawsuit
> challenging the Environmental Protection
> Agency’s power to regulate carbon dioxide as a
> greenhouse gas — a unanimous appeals court
> upheld the agency’s regulations as based on an
> “unambiguously correct” reading of the law.
> Since his legal efforts for climate-change denial
> failed, he often relies on mockery, asking
> audiences to exhale carbon dioxide in unison,
> during his speeches, to annoy the EPA.
>
> 4. He suggested President Obama stole the 2012
> election. In a radio interview, Cuccinelli told
> the host he completely agreed with her assertion
> that investigations are needed to determine why
> President Obama lost “every one” of the states
> with photo identification requirements for voting,
> yet won re-election. Though studies have shown
> Americans are more likely to be struck by
> lightning than to commit voter fraud, he told the
> host she was “preaching to the choir” with her
> unfounded theory.
>
> 5. He wants Arizona-style anti-immigrant policies
> and self-deportation. On his 2007 campaign
> website, he explained that since the federal
> government “has been negligent in its
> responsibility to secure our borders,” he was
> “committed to passing legislation that removes
> the economic incentives that fuel illegal
> immigration.” To do this, he opposed in-state
> tuition for undocumented students, embraced limits
> on the number of people who can live in a house,
> and supported civil litigation so competitors
> could sue when a rival “employer knowingly hires
> illegal aliens.” He opposed bipartisan
> immigration reform efforts as “amnesty” for
> the “illegal aliens in the job market” who are
> “depressing wages and reducing American’s
> standard of living.” In 2010, he wrote in an
> opinion that “Virginia law enforcement officers,
> including conservation officers may, like Arizona
> police officers, inquire into the immigration
> status of persons stopped or arrested.” And
> Cuccinelli joined an amicus brief defending key
> provisions of Arizona’s immigration reform law
> which were later ruled unconstitutional by the
> U.S. Supreme Court.
>
> 6. He is a “tenther.” Cuccinelli has embraced
> a radical interpretation of the constitution that
> the federal government should cede much more power
> to the states under the 10th Amendment. At a 2010
> Tenth Amendment rally in Richmond, he told
> supporters of the view that “what we can do,
> where we live, is advocate again to bring back to
> life the 10th amendment, to bring back to life
> those boundaries in our constitutional system that
> were supposed to be the critical checks in the
> checks and balances system. Without them, we lose
> – gradually, we lose our liberty.” In one of
> his briefs challenging health reform, Cuccinelli
> suggested that Congress is allowed to regulate
> “commerce on one hand” but not
> “manufacturing or agriculture.” This is
> exactly the same discredited vision of the
> Constitution the Supreme Court implemented in the
> late 19th and early 20th century, and it would
> strike down child labor laws, the minimum wage,
> the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters, and
> countless other cherished laws.
>
> On top of all of this, he also opposed a 2004 bill
> to require members of the clergy to report child
> abuse — a bill supported by almost every
> religious group in the state — and was the lone
> vote against another bill aimed as strengthening
> domestic violence protections.
>
>
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/03/125953
> 1/meet-ken-cuccinelli-virginias-todd-akin/
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