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Tag: susan collins
Top Senate Leaders See Bipartisan Support To Pass Gay Marriage Bill

Top Senate Leaders See Bipartisan Support To Pass Gay Marriage Bill


By Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Top Senate Democrats and Republicans said on Wednesday they may have the votes to pass a bill protecting same-sex marriage rights nationwide, the day after the measure passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan majority.

The measure, intended to head off any Supreme Court effort to roll back gay marriage rights, passed the House on Tuesday with all Democrats and 47 Republican representatives - just over a fifth of their caucus - voting in favor.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday said he was "really impressed by how much bipartisan support it got in the House."

When the Supreme Court last month struck down its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling protecting the right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court should also reconsider its past rulings that guaranteed access to contraception and the right to gay marriage because they relied on the same legal arguments as Roe.

Under Senate rules, Schumer would need at least 10 Republicans in favor to pass the bill in the 50-50 Senate.

Senator John Thune, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, said he believed a bill codifying gay marriage could receive enough Republican support to pass.

"I wouldn’t be surprised. We haven't assessed that at all, yet," he told reporters when asked if 10 Republicans could back such legislation. "But as a general matter, I think that is something people in the country have come to accept."

Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on Saturday that the Supreme Court was "clearly wrong" in establishing a federal right to gay marriage. Senator Lindsey Graham said he would not support a bill codifying same sex marriage.

Several other Republicans have said they could support the bill. Senator Susan Collins co-sponsored a Senate version of the House bill. Senator Thom Tillis told CNN on Wednesday that he would "probably" vote in favor.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton, additional reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller)

Susan Collins Is Shocked

Susan Collins Is Shocked! That Gorsuch And Kavanaugh Lied About Abortion

Sen. Susan Collins, ostensibly one of two Republicans who support abortion rights in the Senate, is of course very concerned that the radical Supreme Court has just ended a federal guarantee of abortion rights in the United States, and is very disappointed that the nominees she voted for did this thing. Because, gosh, none of us could have foreseen that Lyin’ Brett Kavanaugh, who lied in two separate confirmation processes, was not being honest with her.


Collins didn’t vote for Amy Coney Barrett. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell let her off the hook on that one because he didn’t need her. He made Lisa Murkowksi do it.

When Collins stood on the Senate floor on Oct. 5, 2018 and announced what everyone already knew already—she was voting for Kavanaugh—she said: “Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition, but rooted in Article III of our Constitution itself.”

“He believes that precedent ‘is not just a judicial policy … it is constitutionally dictated to pay attention and pay heed to rules of precedent,’” Collins said. “In other words, precedent isn’t a goal or an aspiration; it is a constitutional tenet that has to be followed except in the most extraordinary circumstances.” Ha. “The judge further explained that precedent provides stability, predictability, reliance, and fairness.” Ha, again.

That’s after Kavanaugh’s lies to the Senate Judiciary Committee for his lower court nomination were exposed. It was not secret that Kavanaugh is a liar.

It was no secret that Kavanaugh was hostile to abortion rights: Just a year before his confirmation, Kavanaugh would have denied a 17-year-old detained immigrant an abortion while he was on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “The Government has permissible interests in favoring fetal life, protecting the best interests of a minor, and refraining from facilitating abortion,” Kavanaugh wrote, dissenting from the majority. He called their decision “a radical extension of the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence.”

And now he has his revenge. And now Susan Collins owns this.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Susan Collins Calls Cops Over Polite Sidewalk Chalk Message

Susan Collins Calls Cops Over Polite Sidewalk Chalk Message

How thin can one person’s skin possibly be? Sen. Susan Collins tested the limits of that question with her response to a sidewalk chalk message asking her to vote for the Women’s Health Protection Act, codifying the abortion rights of Roe v. Wade into law.

“Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —–> vote yes, clean up your mess,” the chalk message outside Collins’ home in Bangor, Maine, read. They said please, in a medium that causes no damage, and she called the police.

“The message was not overtly threatening,” a police spokesman said. You think?

That didn’t stop Collins from talking like she was bravely maintaining her composure in the face of a grave infringement, saying, “We are grateful to the Bangor police officers and the City public works employee who responded to the defacement of public property in front of our home.”

Lia Russell of the Bangor Daily News reports, deadpan, “The sidewalk message was not visible on Monday afternoon.” Because it was chalk.

Collins’ whole victim act is a blatant ploy to distract from the fact that she got us here. Collins was part of the Republican push to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing extremists, and now that the court is on the brink of officially striking down Roe v. Wade in the harshest and most extreme way while also teeing up the evisceration of a series of other rights and protections, she wants us to be talking not about the fact that she claimed to believe Brett Kavanaugh when he told her he wouldn’t overturn Roe but about the freaking sidewalk chalk outside her house.

It would be absurd if it weren’t such a clear illustration of how Collins has been fully complicit as the Republican Party has done its level best to destroy the government and the nation. She is right there with them 99 out of 100 steps of the way, and then the media uses that one step Collins didn’t take to paint her as some kind of principled moderate. People are going to suffer and die because of votes Collins took—and ones she didn’t—and she’s trying to play the victim over a chalk “please.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Defense Contractors Indicted For Illegal Donations To Susan Collins

Defense Contractors Indicted For Illegal Donations To Susan Collins

On Thursday, February 10, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release announcing that three former defense contractors based in Hawaii had been indicted on federal charges for “allegedly making unlawful campaign contributions to a candidate for Congress and a political action committee.” The candidate, according to Gizmodo’s Matt Novak, was Sen. Susan Collins of Maine — and the political action committee was hers.

All three of the men indicted — Martin Kao, Clifford Chen and Lawrence “Kahele” Lum Kee — are Honolulu residents and “are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and to make conduit and government contractor contributions, making conduct contributions, and making government contractor contributions,” according to the DOJ’s February 10 press release.

On Thursday, February 10, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release announcing that three former defense contractors based in Hawaii had been indicted on federal charges for “allegedly making unlawful campaign contributions to a candidate for Congress and a political action committee.” The candidate, according to Gizmodo’s Matt Novak, was Sen. Susan Collins of Maine — and the political action committee was hers.

All three of the men indicted — Martin Kao, Clifford Chen and Lawrence “Kahele” Lum Kee — are Honolulu residents and “are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and to make conduit and government contractor contributions, making conduct contributions, and making government contractor contributions,” according to the DOJ’s February 10 press release.

Novak notes that Kao, former CEO of Navatek, “was also charged, in late 2020, with fraudulently receiving too much money under the Paycheck Protection Program, set up in 2020 to assist private businesses at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Kao, who allegedly lied about the number of employees his company had to receive more funds, has pleaded not guilty to those charges,” Novak reports.

Collins was elected to a fifth term in the U.S. Senate when she defeated Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon by 8% in 2020. The Maine senator and moderate conservative was among the minority of Republicans who voted “guilty” in former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet