John Muir is often called a "Scottish-American" because he was born in Scotland. But he was really an all-American hero, striding across the landscape in search of natural treasures and using his skill as a writer to help preserve the wilderness. He was key to founding our National Park System, especially the great western parks of Yellowstone and Yosemite. He founded the Sierra Club which carries on his great work to this day.
Happy Birthday, John Muir!!! How fitting that his birth is one day before Earth Day.
"The Battle for Conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong." ~ John Muir
John Muir was one of the earliest advocates of the national park idea, and its most eloquent spokesman. Born in Dunbar, Scotland, he moved with his family to a Wisconsin farm in 1849. Muir's father, an itinerant Presbyterian minister, treated him harshly and insisted that he memorize the Bible. By age 11, he was able to recite three-quarters of the Old Testament by heart, and all of the New Testament.
Muir studied botany and geology at the University of Wisconsin and had a natural flair for inventions. In 1867, after recovering from a factory accident that left him temporarily blinded for several months, he cut short a promising career in industry to walk from Indiana to Florida, creating botanical sketches on his way. From there he sailed to California and then walked from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada – the "Range of Light" that would transform his life with his "unconditional surrender" to nature.
After working as a sheepherder in the high country for a season, Muir took a job in the Yosemite Valley in 1869, building a sawmill for James Mason Hutchings. In his free time, he roamed Yosemite, where he developed a scientific theory that the valley had been carved by glaciers. Muir felt a spiritual connection to nature; he believed that mankind is just one part of an interconnected natural world, not its master, and that God is revealed through nature.
. . . he traveled to Alaska's Glacier Bay and Washington's Mount Rainier. His writings brought national attention to two more places that would eventually become national parks.
Muir would also champion protection of the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon in Arizona. He was the public voice for setting aside the high country around Yosemite Valley as a national park in 1890, as well as for General Grant and Sequoia national parks.
. . . Muir was a founder and the first president of the Sierra Club; Muir Woods National Monument, a grove of redwoods north of San Francisco, is named in his honor.
We may never get the comprehensive gun reform that Progressives want in this country, but it's not due to lack of trying on the part of Senators Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and Dianne Feinstein, D-California.
Warren gave a speech to the Consumer Federation of America in which she slammed the NRA for not allowing basic research on Gun violence so we can study just how far-reaching an epidemic it is.
“If as many people were dying of a mysterious disease as innocent bystanders are dying from firearms, a cure would be our top priority,” Warren said. “But we don’t even have good data on gun violence. Why? Because the NRA and the gun industry lobby made it their goal to prevent any serious effort to document the violence."
Feinstein had it out with Texas Tea Partier and NRA proponent Ted Cruz this week when he began lecturing her about the Second Amendment of the Constitution.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX) The question that I would pose to the senior Senator from California is would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?
Likewise, would she think that the Fourth Amendment's protection against searches and seizures could properly apply only to the following specified individuals and not to the individuals that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): Let me just make a couple of points in response. One, I'm not a sixth grader. Senator, I've been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in, I saw people shot. I've looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I've seen the bullets that implode. In Sandy Hook, youngsters were dismembered.
Look, there are other weapons. I'm not a lawyer, but after 20 years I've been up close and personal to the Constitution. I have great respect for it. This doesn't mean that weapons of war and the Heller decision clearly points out three exceptions, two of which are pertinent here.
You know, it's fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution. I appreciate it. Just know I've been here for a long time. I've passed on a number of bills. I've studied the Constitution myself. I am reasonably well educated, and I thank you for the lecture.
Incidentally, this does not prohibit — you use the word prohibit — it exempts 2,271 weapons. Isn’t that enough for the people in the United States? Do they need a bazooka?
Do they need other high-powered weapons that military people use to kill in close combat? I don’t think so. So I come from a different place then you do. I respect your views. I ask you to respect my views
FEINSTEIN: I just felt patronized. I felt he was somewhat arrogant about it. And, you know, when you've come from where I've come from and what you've seen, and when you found a dead body and you put your finger in bullet holes, you really realize the impact of weapons. And then as you go up the technical ladder with these weapons, and they become more sophisticated, and more the product of a battlefield, and you've got these huge clips or drums of 100 bullets out there that people can buy.
When you see these weapons becoming attractive to grievance killers, people who take them into schools, into theaters, into malls, you wonder, does America really need these weapons? My answer to that is no. And so it's based on my experience. And I think -- well, the bottom line is, we passed the bill out of committee by a vote of 10-8. The president has issued a very strong statement in support of it.
. . . BLITZER: Did you have a chance to speak to Senator Cruz after that public exchange?
FEINSTEIN: No, I needed to cool down.
BLITZER: Have you cooled down yet?
FEINSTEIN: I've cooled down.
BLITZER: So when you see him the next time, what will you say?
FEINSTEIN: Yes. Yes. Well, I did say, look, I'm sorry. But, you know, this is one thing that I feel very passionately about. And I appreciate the lecture, but -- that's all I'm going to say.
I watched hours of live video streaming from a local CBS station in California yesterday as police engaged in a firefight and stand-off with Chris Dorner, a revenge cop-killer who has been on a rampage threatening to shoot anyone who ever wronged him.
Investigators were picking through the rubble of a burned-out cabin in California's San Bernardino Mountains on Wednesday, trying to piece together details of the violent last stand for a fugitive former Los Angeles police officer whose life apparently ended hours earlier in a barrage of bullets and blazing fire.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office said charred human remains were found in the rubble where Christopher Dorner is said to have been cornered Tuesday. "We have reason to believe that it is him," sheriff's spokeswoman Cynthia Bachman said.
A wallet with a California driver's license bearing the name Christopher Dorner also was found . . .
. . . Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Andrew Smith said it was "highly likely" that Dorner had been inside when authorities heard a single gunshot and saw the cabin burning in Seven Oaks, a small community in the San Bernardino Mountains, about 90 miles east of Los Angeles.
But Smith said that until Dorner's body is positively identified "or he's in shackles," the LAPD is continuing under "tactical alert ... as if he's still out there." Police will continue to protect dozens of officers and others threatened in Dorner's online manifesto.
SWAT teams had fired tear gas inside of the cabin as part of a "tactical operation" and were tearing down its walls to flush out Dorner, who had reportedly been driven back inside by police when he tried to flee out the back.
Police have not explained what started the fire in the cabin. Officers had thrown tear gas canisters into the cabin and shouted to Dorner to surrender.
Prior to the fire, Dorner's vehicle had been found burned out over the mountain from the cabin. He then took two women in another cabin hostage and stole their car, wrecked that and stole a truck from a man. When wildlife and game officials stopped Dorner, he fled into the woods, ending up at the cabin where the firefight occurred.
Reporters got dangerously close to the violence yesterday while bullets were flying and two wildlfe and game officers were shot. One later died, while the other is in critical condition. Before dark smoke began to rise from the cabin, and as of today, the body has been identified as Chris Dorner. But I'm sure the story isn't over. There will always been those who think Dorner got away, or at the best think it was wrong to burn up the cabin if he was in there alive.
I always marvel at the human spirit when I hear about people who have fled oppressive fanatical churches. Imagine that moment when they finally realize that a spiritual leader they have trusted all their lives has betrayed them by creating a false world that has nothing to do with spirituality or knowledge, and everything to do with power and control. The most oppressed people are always the women and children who lead an existence of drudgery and powerlessness, sexual abuse or dysfunction. Their experiences bear little resemblance to normal family life in the outside world, which they usually realize only after leaving. Those who grow up in such churches are brainwashed into thinking everyone else in society is evil, so for years they may accept the justification that keeps them physically isolated, and become willing captives who might even view their jailors as saviors. For the more rebellious in the congregation, the church leaders intentionally block information and play emotional mind games to shame people into staying, or resort to blackmail with threats to withhold contact with loved ones, including children. To overcome such tactics you really need guts and a strong will, so to take flight from such a church is an inspiration. I wish all these women the best of luck.
Ruby Jessup grew up in the recently received custody of her ten children in Colorado City, Arizona, and escaped with them in January, helped by local law enforcement and a sister on the outside. CNN Transcript
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 26- year-old Ruby Jessop has accomplished something very few women in Warren Jeffs' fundamentalist polygamist church have done. Late last week, she escaped.
(on camera): How old were you when you got married?
RUBY JESSOP, ESCAPED FROM FLDS: I'm 14.
TUCHMAN: How old were you when you had your first baby?
JESSOP: I was 16.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): And Ruby escaped with those babies, six of them. Babies she had with a husband that is still in the church. The children are now 10, 8, 7, 6, 4 and 2.
(on camera): Do you still believe that Warren Jeffs is the prophet?
JESSOP: No.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): Warren Jeffs, the self-professed prophet of the FLDA since 2002 is now serving a life sentence in prison, but he continues to rule the religion with an iron fist from his cell. He made many of the laws here and forced countless young girls like Ruby Jessop into marriage.
Most never leave, but Ruby said she always dreamed of leaving. Hoping to get out of the twin towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hillsdale, Utah, where most FLDS members live.
But taking children away from a husband who is obedient to the church and Warren Jeffs is extraordinarily difficult. Just days ago, this was the emotional scene, Ruby receiving temporary custody of the children from a county court judge, these pictures showing Ruby being reunited with her children after this man, her husband, Haven Barlow, had allegedly kept them away from her for weeks.
JESSOP: Arizona law is very clear that one parent cannot keep another apparent from their children regardless of their religion.
TUCHMAN: Ruby then took her children and escaped into the outside world. Author and private investigator Sam Brower shot the photographs.
SAM BROWER, AUTHOR, "PROPHET'S PREY": The children were ecstatic to see their mother. They were all smiles. It was wonderful to see the looks on their faces when they saw their mom.
TUCHMAN (on camera): Ruby Jessop was raised by her father, mother, and two sister wives. She has 30 brothers and sisters. The man she was forced to marry is her second cousin. The man who presided over the wedding is Warren Jeffs. When she went to the altar, Ruby was in ninth grade. She never went back to school.
(voice-over): Ruby is filing for divorced from Haven Barlow, a man she said she never loved. We went to the house they shared to try to get her husband's response to all this.
. . . TUCHMAN (voice-over): Ruby and her children are currently living in her sister's house in Phoenix. She has no job, no high school diploma, and little knowledge of the outside world, but she said there's no turning back.
JESSOP: I want to raise my kids. I want to be free. Be able to make my own choices, to be happy.
TUCHMAN (on camera): Are you happy today?
JESSOP: I am. I am very happy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jenna Miscavige Hill, whose Uncle is a Leader of the Church of Scientology has written a book called Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Her parents were part of "Sea Org" which she described on ABC's The View as "the clergy of the church who sign billion-year contracts, sort of like a paramilitary organization." However, Jenna was separated from her parents for most of her young life, instead living in various communal camp situations where she worked at hard labor for the church for hours every day. According to Ms. Miscavige, Scientologists have no real god that they worship, which begs the question of whether the church should get tax-exempt status as a church, and why they display a big cross on top of their churches. When asked whether celebrities are treated differently than regular members, she gave an emphatic yes, saying the elite members such as Tom Cruise or Kirstie Alley wouldn't be harassed for money or favors the way ordinary members are, and their children wouldn't be expected to work at one of the camps the way she was raised. As she described it to Piers Morgan, celebraties have "willful ignorance" about what is really going on, and because they attend the fancier churches they just don't see how other members are treated. But Jenna does blame them for failing to check the internet about the realities of Scientology and Dianetics.
Jenna's parents eventually left Sea Org, but Jenna chose to stay behind, which she told Piers Morgan was due to years of brainwashing. On The View, she explained that in 2005 she could "no longer look away from the abuse, the mental, the physical, the verbal" and "realized I just wasn't helping anyone." If she had stayed with Sea Org, she wouldn't have been allowed to have children, but happily, she and her husband escaped together and they now have two children away from the world of Scientology. And to help others with the same background Jenna started a website called Ex-Scientology Kids
~~~~~~~~~~~~
And last but certainly not least, two high-profile women have fled the notorious Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, which is famous for loudly picketing any gathering they view as connected to homosexuality or gay life, even military funerals. Here are some of their craziest protests. They even threatened to come to Newtown and protest at the funerals of the dead children, but thankfully stayed away. It's really hard to understand what they hope to achieve by picketing all over the country holding signs that say "God Hates You." Nothing is more disturbing than seeing the innocent children of Westboro waving signs in the air with the word "F*g" on them as their parents have instructed them, but Leader Fred Phelps believes in all hands on deck when trying to shame the rest of the world. So Pastor Phelps must be in total shock that two of his granddaughters left the Westboro fold this week: Megan Phelps-Roper and her sister Grace Phelps.
The Westboro Baptist Church may be the most controversial religious group in the country. By some accounts, it’s not a religious group at all -- the
Southern Poverty Law Center has called it “the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America,” and a White House petition urging the government to label it as such earned more than 330,000 signatures in January.
For several years, Phelps-Roper was one of the WBC’s loudest and most
believable defenders. By age 25, she led social media efforts for the
church, gave hundreds of media interviews and tweeted regular Bible
verses and inspirational quotes to an audience of more than 10,000. She
briefly coordinated WBC protests at funerals and disaster sites, the
church’s most reviled activity.
But something changed, Phelps-Roper told journalist Jeff Chu,
when a Jewish friend she met online challenged the WBC’s teaching on
homosexuality. Didn’t Jesus say to “let he who is without sin cast the
first stone?,” he asked.
And so Phelps-Roper -- who once told the Kansas City Star the church was the only place she’d seen “people who serve God in truth” -- finally began to doubt.
To see just how confused the Phelps sisters may be as they move into the real world, watch the video below. There are several displays of pure cognitive dissonance in which the girls express both hate and love of the the people targeted by their church's hatred. While picketing the funeral of a Muslim and burning a Koran (which was 'doing the right thing,' according to Megan), the younger sister, Grace, also took a photograph of "an adorable Muslim boy," but she sees no contradiction because as Grace tells an incredulous journalist: "I didn't set the bounds of his habitation. I can't change that. And saying 'that's a cute picture' doesn't change that." You have to admire the complicated, yet innocent, use of church-speak. Megan rails about how horrible "those little Muslims" are while spewing one offensive epithet after another. She also seems to have no idea that the god of the Muslims was the same god of the Jews and Christians, and she speaks of her own "jealous and vengeful God" as if Jesus had never said "turn the other cheek." So much for her religious education, which up till now centered around targeting homosexuals and yelling at them from the side of the road.
Clearly these girls will have to relearn many things in order to function in society.
David Chu, a writer on gay issues for Medium.com, got to know Megan while interviewing her about Westboro, and now he's written the definitive article about her sudden change, her light on the Road to Damascus, so to speak.
To some, this story might seem simple—even overly so. But we all have moments of epiphany, when things that are plate-glass clear to others but opaque to us suddenly become apparent. This was, for Megan, one of those moments, and this window led to another and another and another. Over the subsequent weeks and months, “I tried to put it aside. I decided I wasn’t going to hold that sign, ‘Death Penalty for F*gs.’” (She had, for the most part, preferred the gentler, much less offensive “Mourn for Your Sins” or “God Hates Your Idols” anyway.)
What “seemed like a small thing at the time,” she says, snowballed. She started to question another Westboro sign, “F*gs can’t repent.” “It seemed misleading and dishonest. Anybody can repent if God gives them repentance, according to the church. But this one thing—it gives the impression that homosexuality is an unforgivable sin,” she says. “It didn’t make sense. It seemed a wrong message for us to be sending. It’s like saying, ‘You’re doomed! Bye!’ and gives no hope for salvation.”
. . . Once a constant Tweeter, she hasn’t posted anything online since October. “I don’t know what I believe, so I don’t know what to say,” she explains. “I haven’t been ready to talk about any of this.” She’s only doing so now, and briefly, because, she says, “I was so proactive before and vocal about the church. My name means something now to others that it doesn’t mean to me. I want people to know that it’s not now how it was.”
It's a huge turnaround for the young woman who was called the "Heir to Hate" by the Kansas City Star. But she is not the first family member to leave the fold, nor will she be the last.
Fred Phelps . . . at 82 has grown increasingly removed from the church’s everyday business. His daughter, fire-and-brimstone figurehead Shirley Phelps-Roper, handles operations. But even she’s begun delegating more to others, with much of the work falling to Megan, her oldest daughter and the one who, more than any of her brothers, sisters or cousins, has been entrusted with the most responsibility.
As Shirley puts it, “She was always kind of my right-hand man.”
Megan’s importance to the movement stems also from the fact that for the past decade, the church’s future has been walking away at an alarming rate.
Since 2004, 20 members have left the Westboro Baptist Church, three-fourths of them in their teens or 20s. The defections have left a sizable dent in the group’s third generation, which, for a church that has relied almost exclusively upon family to populate its congregation, is not an insignificant development. There are those on both sides of the family who would like to guide Megan’s future.
“There’s still an element of hope,” says Megan’s uncle, Nate Phelps, who left the church in 1976 at the age of 18 and now travels the country speaking out against its practices, “that someone can get through to her.”
Megan has watched with unease as some of those closest to her have defected and then been cut off completely from the family. The older brother who left in the middle of the night the day before her high school graduation. The cousin and best friend who decided three years ago that the church’s practices had grown too extreme. Each departure forcing her to confront the same frightening possibility: That she, too, could succumb to the same temptations.
NBC's The Today Show did an interview with a cousin of the Phelps sisters, Libby Phelps Alvarez, who said that while she misses her family, leaving the church has brought her new joy in life, such as her recent marriage. She wishes that others in the church would realize that the world is not full of evil people.
Until very recently, this is what I lived, breathed, studied, believed, preached – loudly, daily, and for nearly 27 years.
I never thought it would change. I never wanted it to.
Then suddenly: it did.
And I left.
Where do you go from there?
I don't know, exactly. My sister Grace is with me, though. We’re trying to figure it out together.
There are some things we do know.
We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that hurt.
We know that we dearly love our family. They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love them.
We know that we can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.
Up until now, our names have been synonymous with “God Hates F*gs.” Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what we did. We hope Ms. Kyle was right about the other part, too, though – that everything sticks – and that the changes we make in our lives will speak for themselves.
Megan and Grace
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996, prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriages. Both the First and Second Circuit Court of appeals have struck down a provision of the law denying federal benefits, like Social Security benefits or the ability to file joint tax returns, to same-sex couples legally married. Because of these lower court rulings, DOMA has been declared unconstitutional in some regions of the country but not others -- an issue the Supreme Court now has a chance to rectify by reviewing the Second Circuit decision.
The court will also consider California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage that voters passed in 2008. Prop. 8 passed after the California Supreme Court granted same-sex couples the right to marry, putting California voters in the unique position of taking away rights granted by the court. After Prop. 8 passed, a federal court followed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said Prop. 8 was unconstitutional.
The high court is expected to hear arguments in both cases in March and issue rulings over the summer.
"It's been our belief all along that the ultimate fate of Proposition 8 will be in the hands of the Supreme Court," said Andrew Pugno, general counsel for the advocacy group ProtectMarriage, which sought the high court's intervention.
"I fully believe that this court's going to come down on the side of freedom and equality," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which fights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights.
. . . Even if the court sides with gays and lesbians, opponents of same-sex marriage say it won't end the debate.
"The majority of Americans who have voted to protect marriage as the unity of a man and a woman are never going to go away," said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. A Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, he said, "would launch a national culture war."
Meeting in private on Friday at their last weekly conference before the court's holiday recess, the justices considered requests to review seven cases dealing with same-sex relationships. Five of them were challenges to the federal marriage law, one to California's gay marriage ban and another to an Arizona law against domestic partner benefits.
The court had been widely expected to take up at least one of the challenges to the federal marriage law, given that two federal appeals courts had found the law unconstitutional. Less clear was what the court would do with the California gay marriage ban.
"Taking both a states' rights case like Prop 8, and a case involving Congress's authority in the DOMA ... suggests that the court is ready to take on the entire issue, not just piecemeal it," said Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for the individuals defending California's gay marriage ban.
"I had thought the Court would take it in stages instead of doing DOMA and Perry at the same time," said Paul Smith of Jenner & Block, who had assisted in another DOMA challenge pending before the justices. On the DOMA grant of review, he added, "The arguments are pretty much the same in all the cases. It makes sense in some ways to have a decision below from the court of appeal."
Professor Douglas NeJaime of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles called the combination of grants in Perry and Windsor "really interesting" and added, "It's really hard to know exactly what the justices are thinking. Windsor is the DOMA case that presents the heightened scrutiny question and it was raised in Perry but the Ninth Circuit didn’t go there. The justices could be interested in saying its time to say sexual orientation classifications merit heightened scrutiny."
On the other hand, NeJaime said, "They could be prepared to split the difference and say a federal law like DOMA that denies recognition to valid state law marriages is unconstitutional, but not be prepared to find that states can't prohibit marriage themselves."
A third possibility, according to NeJaime, is that the justices will find both Prop 8 and DOMA Section 3 unconstitutional under the Constitution's lowest scrutiny—rational basis review.
Ex-Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger had some strong words for his own Republican Party members in an LA Times Op-Ed Sunday. He warned them that Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon wouldn't pass the litmus-test of the rigid purity idealogues running the present-day Republican Party and harkened back to the days of the "Big Tent" when diversity of opinion was not cause for right-wing shunning.
And while many Democrats disliked Arnold as Governor, and feel that his beliefs are almost as regressive as his Conan the Barbarian movie persona, Schwarzenegger begs to differ and calls himself a "centrist" and beseeches his party to stop judging fellow Republicans by such stern standards. Thus, he is distancing himself from the likes of fellow-Catholics Rick Santorum and Paul Ryan, as well as proven misogynists such as Rush Limbaugh, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Jan Brewer of Arizona, and backward Bob McDonnell of Virginia (Governor Ultrasound).
Schwarzenegger writes without apparent irony:
There is room for those whose views, I think, make them sound like cavemen. And there is also room for us in the center, with views the traditionalists probably think make us sound like progressive softies. What's important is our shared belief in the broad Republican principles of free enterprise and small government. If we continue to fight one another without being willing to compromise, we will keep losing to big-government advocates.
While I don't think anyone really sees Arnold as a political "softie," I have to admit that I am impressed that Arnold would stand up to his party members and say that what is needed is another Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt, and not more "cavemen." Bravo, Arnold! And I'm sure he speaks for many of his "centrist" Republican friends who would love to go back to the days of Reagan when people were statesmen first, idealogues second. We would all love that, even in the Democratic Party. The trouble is, the Republicans - Arnold included - used the ultra-wingnut and Tea Party conservatives to get them into office, and turned a blind eye to tools like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh as long as the votes came rolling in. So is it any wonder that now they've created a Frankenstein that won't stop?
The Rolling Terminator Robot of the Right is embodied now in red state legislatures that continually push the boundaries of common sense in passing laws that most people in their states never imagined and certainly don't want. These laws seek to suppress votes, stop environmental oversight, give free reign to the gun lobby, throw the poorest Americans under the bus, and discriminate against women and minorities.
So while Arnold's advice to the party is sound and they should take heed, the irony is that most Tea Baggers aren't going to pay any attention to a centrist anymore, especially an elder statesmen from "Lefty" California, who was *gasp* married to a Kennedy for all those years, and who cheated on his marriage vows *gasp* with someone Hispanic! It's enough to make Rick Santorum throw up. To paraphrase a tagline from the original Terminator Movies, the Tea Party is the thing that won't die, in the nightmare that won't end. The Republicans are stuck with it, but that's poetic justice since they created it.
