Did you know? Tuesday, Republicans shot down a Senate effort to reverse the effects of the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision, the decision that gave religious rights to corporations, allowing them to deny contraception coverage to women.
Like most news in Washington these days, this Senate Republican blockage went practically unnoticed. Our news media is more interested in covering the dumbest factions of the Republican Party, then they are covering actual news. Like when Elizabeth Warren stood up and slammed the Republicans for continuing their war on women, that is something that should be talked about.
“I’ll be honest,” Warren said on the Senate floor. “I cannot believe we are even having a debate about whether employers can deny women access to birth control. Guys, this is 2014, not 1914. Most Americans thought this was settled long, long ago. But for some reason, Republicans keep dragging us back here over and over and over again.”
Warren called the Hobby Lobby case “just the most recent battle in an all-out Republican assault on women’s access to basic health care” and said while she found the Supreme Court ruling “stunning,” it was not entirely “surprising.”
“Giant corporations and their right-wing allies fight every day in Congress to protect their own privileges and to bend the laws to benefit themselves. They devote enormous resources to the task,” Warren said. “Sometimes, we beat them anyway.”
But while the Senate voted 56 to 43 to continue debate on the proposed bill — with three Republicans joining Democrats on the majority side — it did not reach the 60 vote threshold never to move forward.
