Time to quit

      In a column in the Villages Daily Sun of January 24, Phyllis Schlafly makes myriad assertions without substantiation regarding early voting in national elections. Most, reading between the lines, seem to center far more on her concerns about just who benefits from early voting. She is also adamantly opposed to absentee balloting. As so many on the lunatic Far Right fringe do, she throws up the bloody shirt of "voting fraud", and in a leap of illogic, attributes it to early and absentee voting. During the Bush administration, the Justice Department conducted a 5 year study and found zero prosecutable cases of federal election fraud related to illegal voting! In point of fact Ms. Schafley's sole example of an actual instance in justification of her rant is a case of fraud in an Arkansas State legislature (not Federal) election! 
     
      As a serviceman, I sometimes voted absentee because I was deployed; as a public school teacher and Registered Nurse, we usually voted early because there was generally one day we could get away early and do it, instead of just one day when we had to do it. In truth, early voting enfranchises those who, unlike Ms. Schlafly, have to work every day to feed their families. In typical Schlafly style, she cites statistics from one state (Ohio) in which election turnout (2012) was a bit lower than the previous election (2008). Looking at the lines on election day nationwide it seems obvious that not only was Ohio an anomaly, but that her candidate for Anti-Christ (you know him as President Barack Obama) won the state both times, which is her real problem. In an even more desperate attempt to make her point, she cites the example of a "videographer" noting a Virginia Democratic (of course) Congressman showing a reporter how it was possible to fake a utility bill on the internet to bypass Va. voter ID laws. She neglects to point that this was Congressman Jim Moran commenting on what he thought needed to be more stringent requirements.

     So who is Phyllis Schlafly? She is a political activist who, for over 60 years of her life has been afforded the luxury of telling women they should not want what she has! A married mother, she lobbied against the Equal Rights Amendment. She has lost every election in which she has been a candidate. Although vocal about stay at home moms and opposed to many laws protecting women, she has been an attorney and public figure for more than half a century, including her childbearing years.

         

     What does she believe ? "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape." Women's lives are better today primarily because of "clothes dryers and paper diapers" She supported "impeachment of Justice Anthony Kennedy, citing as grounds his deciding vote to abolish the death penalty for minors. Apparently in Schlafly World killing kids is ok, but only after they're born. She also adamantly opposes marriage equality. I wonder how her openly gay son feels about that? 

     Phyllis Schlafly, much like Pat (Voldemort) Robertson is an embarrassing anachronism who should just go gently into that goodnight.