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Jaw-Dropper: Fox Affiliate in Orlando Calls Neo-Nazis a 'Civil Rights Group'

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Kragar4/08/2012 7:23:44 pm PDT

Michigan Republicans Illegally Passed Over 96% of Bills Under ‘Immediate Effect’

Last night, Rachel Maddow broke a huge story that has been happening since Republicans took over in Michigan in 2011 and has gone completely under the radar. Since January 2011, 566 bills have been signed into law. Of those, 546 of them, 96.5% were passed under “immediate effect”. Here’s the video from last night’s show that will blow your mind. Pay particular attention to around 12:30 where they show it in action. It’s astonishing. […]

As Rachel Maddow points out, if Public Act 4 had not been passed in this way, it would only have gone into effect in the past few weeks, 90 days after the last legislative session. Think about that for minute. Think about how much has been done to, using Maddow’s phrase, “rout democracy” in our state under that law in the year that it has been on the books. Think about how it could have been different if they hadn’t used immediate effect.

Maddow then went on to show just how illegal this is. It’s something that I pointed out in my piece yesterday titled “Michigan GOP appeals ruling preventing them from violating the state constitution”. It’s the fact that immediate effect can only happen if 2/3 of the members of the House vote for it. But Republicans do not HAVE 2/3 of the House. The entire reason that they have been avoiding using roll call votes is because they did not have the votes to make the laws immediate effect. In other words, over 96% of the laws passed by the Republicans since January 2011 have been illegal in their implementation. Read on…Michigan Republicans have ILLEGALLY passed over 96% (546) of their bills under “immediate effect”