OK, It's Obvious. When It Comes to Rights, Republicans Are So Retro

We as a nation have steadily moved to expand rights for women, gays, and minority voting. Republicans' go-to reaction is "Just Say No."

Republicans pass bad laws and courts fix them. Weird mechanism.

It's past time we recognized that Republican-led states spend an inordinate amount of time passing laws that restrict abortion, gay rights, voting rights, and, more recently, bathroom rights to transgender people.

Examples are in Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, Indiana (again!), and on and on and on.

This is expensive, if nothing else. These same states tend to be against Obamacare and expanded Medicaid to the poor. They go so far as to refuse billions of dollars of virtually free federal money, having the effect of denying hospitals payments they would receive from the feds under the law. These same states often decide to drug test welfare recipients, a practice also proven to be a waste of money, as welfare recipients quite rarely test positive.

Now, let's combine this with the Republicans in the Senate deciding they will not confirm any of President Obama's judicial nominations, including Obama's pick for the Supreme Court.

Those nasty federal judges who rule against those endless laws that restrict minority and women's rights!

It's no wonder Donald Trump has found a following among those who would love to go back to the 1950s, you know, that wonderful time when Joe McCarthy found communists under every bed, racial segregation was rampant, and kids across the country lived in iron lungs as they fought polio. Happy days!

Remember "duck and cover" drills in the 1950s? I do. Freaky, huh?