...And This is Why Republicans Are Still Wrong

Yesterday, I extended a wee tiny olive branch towards the GOP because I believe, at first glance, that I am in agreement with them over this whole digital television roll-out thing.

Today, I'd like to correct that injustice by noting just how asinine the Republican Party remains.

Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act into law today, and for those of you not familiar with Mrs. Ledbetter, here's the deal: she worked at Goodyear as a supervisor for 19 years and made less than all her male colleagues -- including those with far, far less experience -- the entire time. But she didn't find out about it until she was about to retire.

In the legal world, your cause of action doesn't usually run until you discover you've been wronged. For many practical as well as ethical reasons, we don't reward people for keeping their misbehavior secret to outlast statutes of limitation. This used to be the case in pay discrimination cases until the boneheaded Supreme Court stepped in 2 years back and said people like Mrs. Ledbetter, who had been discriminated against for decades without their knowledge, only get (drumroll) 180 days worth of recompense.

Now, I respect the Supremes to a degree. I haven't read that particular opinion lately (I read it when it first came down) but if they want to jump on a perceived ambiguity in the law, so be it. Congress has now stepped up and amended the law to give the Ledbetters of the world a lot more options for recovery when their so blatantly discriminated against. This is how the system is supposed to work.

Of course, the Republicans still opposed the law. McCain, despite having been thoroughly trounced on this issue last fall, continued to vote against it. He used the boogeyman of "trial lawyers" to excuse his utterly wretched stance on this issue, and then blamed lack of education for women.

It is appalling to me that anybody can oppose this kind of course-correction legislation. I wish that I had more Republican-leaning readers, so that one could attempt to explain this thinking. But here's a hint: "it will lead to skyrocketing attorney costs and litigation" is not the right answer. You know what else leads to skyrocketing litigation? WHEN PEOPLE DISCRIMINATE. It's not Mrs. Ledbetter's lawyers that screwed her over repeatedly for nearly 2 decades. Goodyear deserves to be hammered, and hard, for their behavior.

For my part, I'm just not going to buy their tires.