#Missouri Independent

[thatstormygeek]

Those in favor of the ban argue child marriage is coercive and can transform into forced marriage, especially because children lack the legal rights of adulthood. Almost all minors married to adults are girls, data shows, and child marriage is associated with higher rates of dropping out of high school and later poverty. But while Rehder’s bill, which she co-sponsored with Democratic state Sen. Lauren Arthur of Kansas City, sailed through the Senate nearly unanimously, it is stuck in a House committee due to critics who say a ban constitutes government overreach and would clash with parental rights. 

Hang on...what was that?

"a ban constitutes government overreach and would clash with parental rights"

That's what I thought it said.

First, these are three of the men in Missouri who think it's fine that teen girls are sometimes forced into marriages they can't legally escape:

(considering that context, Baker's family photo was more unsettling than it otherwise might have been)

As everyone who is paying any attention at all right now is aware, Republicans only care about stopping government "overreach" and protecting "parental rights" when doing so agrees with their idea of what's right (white, Christian, cisheteropatriarchal authoritarianism). So I'm sure nobody is at all surprised that these three voted in favor of extending the reach of the government and overriding parental rights last year when they decided to block trans kids in Missouri from accessing affirming healthcare.

As is increasingly happening on the right, however, they are fighting their own party. The bill was co-sponsored by a Republican woman (yesh, I don't get it either) who was married off when she was 15. She is understandably frustrated that the men putting up resistance pretend to know better about what's at stake than she does. That's the problem with leaning into fascist authoritarianism, though. The lines keep moving until you're on the outside, too.

[infamousbrad]

"After months of internal debate, abortion-rights organizations settled on a proposed constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to 'regulate the provision of abortion after fetal viability provided that under no circumstance shall the government deny, interfere with, delay or otherwise restrict an abortion that in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional is needed to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.'

"While many say they see a clear path to victory for the amendment if it makes it to the ballot, the coalition still faces a tight timeline. The group estimates it will need to raise $5 million to successfully gather the more than 171,000 signatures needed by May 5 in order to appear on the statewide ballot."

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A bill that would add child sex trafficking and statutory rape to the crimes eligible for the death penalty was debated Monday in a Missouri Senate committee — despite conflicting with U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

The legislation is sponsored by state Sen. Mike Moon, an Ash Grove Republican who said Monday that one of the “principal purposes of government” is to “punish evil.”

Rape of children under 14 and child trafficking of children under 12 would be crimes eligible for the death penalty under his bill.

“And what’s more evil than taking the innocence of the child during the act of a rape? Children are in large part defenseless and an act such as rape can kill the child emotionally,” he said.

“And so I believe a just consequence, after a reasonable opportunity for defense, is death.”

The Senate Judiciary and Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence Committee heard the bill Monday.

State Sen. Karla May, a Democrat from St. Louis, pointed to Moon’s stance of “believing in life” as an outspoken opponent of abortion without exception for rape or incest, yet supporting expanding the death penalty.

“A 12 year old who gets pregnant, you believe that she should bring that child in the world, am I correct?” May asked.

“What crime did that child, that developing human child, commit to deserve death?” Moon replied.

“…But you believe in killing the father to that child?” May asked, if the father is a rapist.

“Yes,” Moon said. “If an attacker commits a heinous crime such as the ones that I mentioned in this presentation, I believe that if they’re charged and convicted, absolutely.”

The Rev. Timothy Faber testified in support of Moon’s bill, pointing to the “lifelong repercussions” of child rape and trafficking.

“It’s also a well established fact that those who commit sexual crimes seldom if ever change their ways,” he said. “Once a sexual offender, always a sexual offender.”

Elyse Max, co-director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, opposed the bill during Monday’s hearing.

“If the goal is to overturn established U.S. Supreme Court precedent, it’s far from a guarantee,” Max said, “and the amount of resources the state of Missouri would have to spend as well as the trauma to child victims during the process cannot be understated.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in the 2008 case Kennedy v. Louisiana ruled giving the death penalty to those convicted of child rape violates the constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment unless the crime results in the victim’s death or is intended to. Only homicide and a narrow set of “crimes against the state” can be punishable by death, the court ruled.

“Adding statutory rape and trafficking as death-eligible crimes are a slippery slope,” Max said, “of expanding the death penalty to non-murder crimes that would bring the constitutionality of Missouri’s death penalty into doubt.”

“Instead of spending millions of dollars to possibly change long-standing precedent, Missouri resources should be spent to protect children from abuse in the first place, and ensure survivors have access to mental health treatment and proper support, following the offense,” Max said.

Moon said, regarding the Supreme Court precedent, that it’s worth challenging.

“That’s something that we need to start the conversation about,” he said, “and those things need to be challenged.”

Florida passed a similar law for victims of rape under age 12 last year. It received bipartisan support. In December, prosecutors in that state announced they’d seek the death penalty in a case of a man accused of sexually abusing a child.

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis has said the state’s bill could lead the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the issue.

Mary Fox, director of Missouri State Public Defender, which provides defense for the majority of death penalty cases in the state, argued Monday that the death penalty is “no deterrent to a crime.”

Fox also noted that an 18 year old dating a 14 year old could be executed under Moon’s legislation because that would be considered statutory rape.

Mei Hall, a resident of Columbia who also said she was a victim of sexual abuse, also testified in opposition.

“I don’t wish my abuser death,” Hall said. “I wish them to be sequestered away and unable to harm more people, for sure. But I don’t think it’s the state’s place to kill people in general and I don’t think it’s the state’s place to make it more difficult for child victims to come forward.”

Lobbyists from Empower Missouri and Missouri Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also testified against the bill. A lobbyist from ArmorVine, testified in support.

Missouri was one of only five states to carry out death sentences last year, along with Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and Alabama. There are two executions scheduled for this year.

Three House bills filed this year would eliminate the state’s death penalty, but none has made it to a committee hearing.

[subsidystadium]

The Kansas City Royals ask taxpayers to give them $1 billion. Then ask for additional $700 million...maybe more?

The Kansas City Royals must love keeping secrets. After announcing to everyone in 2022 that they were leaving their current ballpark, it took two years for them to finally tell us where the new one would be built. But anything else? Good luck. Things got so bad last year that the team owner had to write a public letter telling everyone to relax and just wait for the new ballpark to be announced.…

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

A rare party switch in the Missouri House could be in the offing after one Republican on Wednesday wasn’t allowed to speak against a GOP plan to restrict gender-affirming care for minors.

Rep. Chris Sander, R-Lone Jack, one of two openly gay Republicans in the Legislature, said Wednesday that local, state and national Republicans needed to decide whether gay and transgender Republicans were welcome.

“If they want to tell all Republicans who are gay to get out and go to the Democrat Party, they just need to do that,” Sander, a 2001 graduate of Hazelwood West High School in St. Louis County, told the Post-Dispatch.

Sander was one of three Republicans to vote against the restrictions, which are headed to Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, for his consideration.

House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, R-Lee’s Summit, and Rep. Gary Bonacker, R-House Springs, also broke with their party to vote with Democrats against the ban.

Sander, who said he is Republican committeeman for the Van Buren Township in Jackson County, said he planned to speak at the county party’s May 22 meeting.

Members of the county GOP have tried to censure Sander for filing a resolution that would overturn Missouri’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, which was nullified by a 2015 Supreme Court decision.

“I’m going to rail against them and I’m going to say how I think it should be, and if they don’t like it, they can just get rid of me, and if that happens then I’ll be an independent or a Democrat,” Sander said, adding he might also consider becoming a Libertarian if he left the GOP.

“If they kick me off that (Jackson County GOP) committee, I will not be a Republican,” Sander said.

If Sander were to quit the GOP, he would join a short list of other House members over the past decade to leave their political party.

In 2015, then-Rep. Keith English, a Florissant Democrat, said he was leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent.

“This is no longer the Democrat Party of Bill Clinton or John F Kennedy. I’m leaving the party because I love my state,” English said at the time.

English’s decision to ditch the Democrats followed another Democratic defection a day after the 2014 midterms.

Then-Rep. Linda Black, who had been a Democrat from Desloge, switched to the Republican Party a day after the election after she ran unopposed.

Her St. Francois County district had a long history of electing Democrats but voters there have bolted to the Republicans in recent election cycles.

Sander’s eastern Jackson County 33rd District is roughly 58% Republican and 39% Democrat, according to an analysis of the district’s partisan makeup.

“I can see myself winning an election as a Republican or a Democrat or an independent,” he said.

Republicans controlled 117 seats in the House in 2015 following Black’s switch.

The GOP now controls 111 seats despite continuing to hold a two-thirds majority.

Democrats hold 51 seats following Democratic Rep. Rasheen Aldridge’s resignation this year to join the St. Louis Board of Aldermen. Parson has not called a special election to replace him.

[carrickbender]

Photo dump from the Missouri trip for my brother's wedding. We had a blast!

[denisenini]

Le vrai Charles Ingalls

[sassytail]

SO, HEY YALL KNOW HOW SICK IVE BEEN THIS WEEK ??????

YALL I MIGHT HAVE DYSENTERY????????

[mybrainproblems]

brain is just mii waiting room music as i consider where i've ended up in my supernatural fandom journey

[thatstormygeek]

“If God doesn’t intervene in this process,” Paul Shipman, with the Christian radio program Bott Radio Network, said at a rally on the statehouse steps Wednesday,  “it just kind of shows you the direction where the nation is going and the direction where the state of Missouri is going.”

Interesting how if they lose, they never think it might mean that God isn't on their side. If your all-powerful sky daddy can't keep the majority of people in a very right-wing dominated state from voting in favor of abortion care being available, maybe your all-powerful sky daddy doesn't have the problems with abortion you tell people He does.

[divinum-pacis]

St Louis, Missouri: Flag bearers kick off the 139th America’s birthday party parade.

Photograph: Bill Greenblatt/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock

[castielhoney]

just got through talking to my mom's childhood best friend about 1. me being gay [still] 2. me being trans [still] 3. destiel going canon (she isn't active on social media but i was still very surprised she didn't know) and 4. the fact that i have photos of dean and cass via tombstone in my wallet. that woman is the only good thing about the 4th of july.

[spookyfoxdreamer]

[spdk1]

REVIEW: Kansas City Xtreme Wrestling - Destiny (2024)

A live professional wrestling show in Independence, MO from KCXW Considering how many local wrestling shows I’ve been to in the past year, it’s not often that I get to experience a number of firsts, but that is exactly what Saturday, January 20th signified for me as I attended KCXW Destiny in Independence, MO. Unless you count a co-branded show I attended years ago in Sedalia, Missouri (with…