Changing a diaper is now child molestation in Arizona.

[Alyrium Denryle]

PS, you sound like you are arguing from common sense, but I assume you know that Court decisions do not necessarily have to follow common sense. They can rule whatever the fuck they want.

They can. And yeah, this particular ruling will have to go to a higher court because the legal question might well be unresolved. But they typically dont make rulings that are completely "LOLDONGS", there is SOME logic behind the decision. Criminalizing parenting is not something the supreme court is going to do.

Oh ok, I see our problem. I have a much lower opinion of the courts and their rulings than you do. I can think of many court rulings that could be replaced with "LOLDONGS" repeated over and over again and still make the same amount of sense.

I concede, or at least I'm dropping this debate because we are basically arguing past each other.

Probably. Though, keep in mind, even with decisions I disagree with, I can see and understand the logic (both legal and factual) behind a given decision. Particularly in the federal courts which are unelected. With elected judges anything goes because they have to win re-election yo.

In this case, there is not much in the way of basic logic and there is little direct precedent other than the plain-faced criminalization of a legal obligation that still stands, and they will have to resolve it one way or the other. I am pretty sure they will resolve it in a way that makes sense. Especially because it will be heard in the 9th circuit before it reaches the supreme court, and by then the state legislature is pretty likely to be like "Oh Shit. We Fucked Up By Accident." and fix the law.

I actually enjoyed visiting Arizona - but then being a business traveler or tourist is very different than actually living somewhere.

I've lived in AZ off and on for 20 years (basically everything but graduate school past the age of 10). And honestly, it is not that terrible a place to live, at least not the phoenix area. The roads are well-maintained and the urban planning is not an elaborate murder plot, there is a lot of green energy (nuclear, solar, hydroelectric), the (permanent) population tends to be civic minded, tolerant, and cosmopolitan. Even our (local) conservatives in the city tend to be of the "get off my lawn" actual small government types that are not terrible as living near them goes. There are urban greenspaces aplenty, including artificial wetlands used for tertiary water treatment and groundwater recharge. If you look at an election map, the urban regions of Maricopa County is strongly blue, except eastern Mesa, Gilbert, and Northern Scottsdale, which I will get into.

http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/ ... 22_n1.jpeg

But.

But....

Several problems.

The first problem is that we have a migratory population of some quarter to half million in this county alone. That migratory population is geriatric and from places like Idaho, the Dakotas, and Montana. They are from places that are lilly white, they are predominantly conservative, and most of them vote here. The population of Maricopa County is only 4 million, a few hundred thousand voters is an appreciable swing in county and state level politics.

The second problem... Mormons. Fucking Mormons. They are largely resident in, you guessed it, Gilbert and Mesa. North Scottsdale is where the fucking mansions are, and we know how their residents tend to vote.

The third problem is the size of the county. Maricopa County is geographically huge and contains a lot of unincorporated county land and small towns. It is enough to mute the central liberal tendencies of the cities.

Gerrymandering at the national congressional level is not terrible, so that is good. The house of representatives evenly represents the state. On the local level though, holy shit.

Our board of supervisors have the following districts.

http://www.maricopa.gov/BOS/images/distMap.jpg

You will notice that one representative (District 5) contains ALL the democrats.

And that is why we get Joe Arpaio, for instance. State Wide is also how we got governor Douchebag Ducey

As far as shit like THIS is concerned... well in our primaries we get fights between religious conservatives, white nationalists like Russell Pearce, and lolbertarians. Who wins depends on the district. The migratory geese come down and vote for whoever has an R next to their name, and so we get more republicans in the state house and senate than the permanent population would indicate. They are of course a mix of religious conservatives, white nationalists, and lolbertarians in an uneasy coalition against the democrats.