North Korea shoots off three short-range missiles.
Group finds use of torture in Syria.
Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, says accusations that he smoked crack are “ridiculous.”
A huge asteroid will just miss hitting Earth this month.
Judge blocks Arkansas abortion law.
The Tigers beat the Rangers 2-1.
President Obama reiterates that chemical weapons in Syria would be a “game changer.”
Planned Parenthood gets its first-ever presidential visit.
Debris found in New York could be from crashed jet from September 11, 2001.
R.I.P. George Jones, 81, country singer.
The Tigers walloped the Braves 10-0 behind Anibal Sanchez’s record 17 strike-outs.
Someone needs to explain the meaning of “pro-life” to this guy.
A Des Moines anti-abortion activist has publicly proclaimed that “it will be a blessing to the babies” if someone shoots the people who recently reopened a Kansas abortion clinic.
Dave Leach’s comments are being denounced by the leader of Iowa’s largest anti-abortion group, who says such talk is immoral and hurts the cause.
Leach posted the comments this month on YouTube. His posting includes a recorded phone conversation he had with another man, whom Leach identifies as abortion opponent Scott Roeder. Roeder is serving a life prison sentence for the 2009 shooting death of the Wichita clinic’s then-owner, Dr. George Tiller.
Leach has previously suggested that other men were justified in killing other abortion providers. He notes in the video that Tiller’s old clinic was recently reopened by a new abortion agency.
HT to LGF.
Updates on the bombing from the Boston Globe.
Supreme Court hears arguments on gene patents.
Protests erupt in Venezuela after government rejects recount.
New York gun control law kicks in.
Last remaining abortion provider in Mississippi gets reprieve.
The Pulitzer Prizes were announced, including one for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
I guess all that talk about “rebranding” and “autopsy” at the RNC really didn’t take hold. Even party chairman Reince Priebus is ditching all that introspection about reaching out to women and minorities when it comes to raising money from the gullible and the paranoid.
“The President, the Senate Majority Leader, the House Democratic Leader, and the Chair of the Democratic National Committee (in whose home state this hearing occurred) made funding Planned Parenthood an issue in the 2012 campaign,” Priebus wrote. “They should now all be held to account for that outspoken support. If the media won’t, then voters must ask the pressing questions: Do these Democrats also believe a newborn has no rights? Do they also endorse infanticide?”
The case in question was testimony before a Florida legislative committee on really vague hypothetical questions about Planned Parenthood’s position on what to do if a baby survives an abortion, or something like that. The implication is that PP and all the liberals would try to kill it. At least that’s what it sounds like when he uses the word “infanticide.” But then, he’s writing to an audience that he thinks doesn’t know the difference between a newborn baby and a clump of cells floating around in a uterus.
This is the new GOP model: cynically exploit the ignorant because you think you can get away with it. Every politician tries it, but this brings it to a whole new level.
At least 54 are dead in a Taliban attack in Afghanistan.
The U.S. deployed an anti-missile defense system to Guam to guard against North Korea.
Alabama passes uterine control measures.
West Virginia — Sheriff shot to death.
Payback — President Obama will return 5% of his salary in solidarity with sequestered federal workers.
Rutgers fires basketball coach Mike Price after a video of his coaching style goes viral.
The Tigers got stunned in the ninth by the Twins.
Old Warriors — Jill Filipovic at The Nation explores the myth that Roe v. Wade started the culture war and that marriage equality will further it.
Numerous commentators, most notably at The New York Times, have expressed concern that a broad ruling on marriage equality could turn into the next Roe v. Wade, igniting decades-long culture wars and damaging public perception of the Supreme Court. Better to rule narrowly, they say, and let the states follow the emerging trajectory towards marriage equality.
That argument, though, is not only totally ahistorical, but dangerous for both civil rights and the Court’s credibility.
Contrary to the current mythology, Roe didn’t incite the culture wars, and before the case was decided in 1973, the right to abortion across the fifty states was far from a foregone conclusion. As Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel detail in their book Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling, an organized, primarily Catholic Church–backed anti-abortion movement existed in force before Roe. Although abortion rights were initially championed by Republicans and favored by a majority of Americans, social conservatives saw an opening to exploit for political gain. According to Greenhouse, before the Court decided Roe, conservative architects of the “New Right” had already decided to use opposition to abortion as part of a strategy for party realignment that would come to fruition with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. “New Right” leaders sought to bring Catholics and into the party and politicize Evangelicals to form a coalition of traditionalists based on hostility to progress and change.
Abortion was hardly their only issue. The new conservative coalition opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, claiming that gender equality would destroy the family and send our daughters to war. They stoked white voters’ fears of full racial integration with racist tropes about black criminals and welfare queens. Those narratives and appeals to tradition continue today, with social conservatives hoping for a return to a gauzy vision of Good Old Days America before the social upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s—and before women, people of color, religious minorities and other marginalized groups were able to secure a full range of rights.
A different ruling in Roe—or none at all—wouldn’t have prevented a Republican Party realignment that was already underway. It wouldn’t have prevented abortion, and the rights of women and other traditionally disempowered groups, from becoming controversial political issues. But a Roe-free United States would almost certainly mean a United States wherein abortion laws were wildly varied, with women in many parts of the country having no legal right to abortion at all. Similarly, even though Brown v. Board of Education inspired an immediate backlash from Southern racists, it’s tough to argue that without court intervention, racial integration of public schools and other facilities would be better without Brown than the (admittedly lacking) state of racial equality today.
Acceptance — Aaron Hartzler tells how he gets along with his parents who would rather see him dead than gay.
“Honey, we’re praying for you.”
This is how my mother ends every email she sends me. Typed in italics and peppered with smiling emoticons, Mom’s electronic missives are as precious as she is — as earnest as the Empty Tomb Cake she bakes each spring on Good Friday. An edible replica of the cave where Jesus was buried after dying on the cross for our sins, the Empty Tomb Cake is the standard passion week centerpiece in my childhood home. It is frosted in gray, surrounded by a field of green coconut grass, and finished off with a Hostess Ding-Dong as the stone that was rolled away. On Saturday night, after everyone goes to bed, Mom steals into the kitchen under cover of night and rolls the Hostess Ding-Dong away from the door of the Empty Tomb Cake, then retouches the frosting. On Easter morning Jesus has risen — right there in the middle of the kitchen table.
As sweet as Mom’s loving messages and born-again baked goods appear at face value, there’s a silent threat in “we’re praying for you” that sticks in my craw. I came out to my parents the first time at the age of 19 when I was kicked out of the Bible college where my dad taught. Since then, their ongoing prayers for my “deliverance” from “Satan’s lie of homosexuality” have continued unabated in the presence of my four younger siblings and the unsuspecting wait staffs of Olive Garden restaurants nationwide. Indeed, my parents offer a never-ending stream of supplication to a God they’re certain is testing them with a son who has been blinded to the righteous pursuit of a female partner by the penis-shaped temptation of Satan.
“We’re praying for you” isn’t a harmless afterthought. It’s not a pleasant wish for my general well-being, continued physical health or financial security. No, my mother’s “we’re praying for you” is an italicized baseball bat, a silent plea for God to change her oldest son from something abhorrent and abominable back to the fresh-faced young man who dated the captain of the Bible college cheerleading squad, before it was discovered he was also sleeping with the captain of the boy’s soccer team.
Very Natural Gas — A dairy farm in Indiana goes for recycling in a big way.
Here at one of the largest dairy farms in the country, electricity generated using an endless supply of manure runs the equipment to milk around 30,000 cows three times a day.For years, the farm has used livestock waste to create enough natural gas to power 10 barns, a cheese factory, a cafe, a gift shop and a maze of child-friendly exhibits about the world of dairy, including a 4D movie theater.
All that, and Fair Oaks Farms was still using only about half of the five million pounds of cow manure it vacuumed up from its barn floors on a daily basis. It burned off the excess methane, wasted energy sacrificed to the sky.
But not anymore.
The farm is now turning the extra manure into fuel for its delivery trucks, powering 42 tractor-trailers that make daily runs to raw milk processing plants in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Officials from the federal Department of Energy called the endeavor a “pacesetter” for the dairy industry, and said it was the largest natural gas fleet using agricultural waste to drive this nation’s roads.
“As long as we keep milking cows, we never run out of gas,” said Gary Corbett, chief executive of Fair Oaks, which held a ribbon-cutting event for the project this month and opened two fueling stations to the public.
“We are one user, and we’re taking two million gallons of diesel off the highway each year,” he said. “That’s a big deal.”
Doonesbury — Live birth.
The state of North Dakota has three new laws that basically make abortion impossible. And knowing full well that these laws are constitutionally “questionable,” the governor has asked the state legislature to appropriate funds to defend them in court.
Meanwhile, one of the bills passed that restricts a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body was amended to defund a Planned Parenthood sex education program.
So they’re spending money defending the indefensible and taking away money from a program that could prevent the reason to have an abortion in the first place.
What the hell is wrong with these people?
Judge strips gag order off secret FBI letters.
U.S. bolstering missile defense after North Korean threats.
Syria — Regime using more cluster bombs.
North Dakota basically bans abortion.
Embattled Albuquerque police chief to retire.
Not the brightest — Man threatens Obama on White House website.
State Sen. Jason Rapert (R-AR) introduced a bill this week in the Arkansas state legislature to ban abortion as early as six weeks. Here he is speaking in 2011 at Nuremberg a Tea Party rally:
We’re going to take this country back for the Lord. We’re going to try to take this country back for conservatism. And we’re not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in!
What was it that someone said about not being “the stupid party” any more?
U.S. considers hitting back at China’s cyberattacks.
Egypt — Army chief says military on the streets is “very risky.” Really?
Chuck Hagel had a full rich day on Capitol Hill.
Alabama hostage drama goes to day 3.
Debt limit extension passes Congress.
Arkansas passes “fetal heartbeat” law to ban most abortions.
A couple of interesting entries in this vast collection, both touching on reproductive rights:
First we head out to the Land of Enchantment:
Should a recently introduced bill in New Mexico become law, rape victims will be required to carry their pregnancies to term during their sexual assault trials or face charges of “tampering with evidence.” Under HB 206, if a woman ended her pregnancy after being raped, both she and her doctor would be charged with a felony punishable by up to 3 years in state prison.
Fortunately, this bill hasn’t much of a chance of becoming law because the New Mexico legislature is dominated by Democrats and other people who are not unhinged in their view of the law and women.
In Colorado, a Catholic hospital management company is arguing that one of their facilities is not guilty of wrongful death because a fetus is not a person.
A major Catholic health provider has successfully dismantled a wrongful death lawsuit brought against it by arguing — in defiance of its own long-held doctrine — that a dead fetus is not the same as a dead person.
The case involves the 2006 death of 31-year-old Lori Stodghill, a woman seven months pregnant with twin boys, who was brought in to the emergency room at St. Thomas More Hospital in Cañon City, Colorado, on New Year’s Day.
[...]
CHI claims to follow the tenets of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care [PDF], which clearly state that “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn.”
But when push came to shove, CHI abandoned their beliefs in order to win a malpractice lawsuit.
CHI’s lawyer, Jason Langley, successfully convinced both the Fremont County District Court and the Colorado Court of Appeals to throw out Jeremy’s lawsuit on the basis that CHI can not be sued for the wrongful death of a fetus, because it is not a person.
So every sperm is sacred and fertilized eggs are entitled to all the rights of personhood… unless there’s a lawsuit to be won. How convenient.
Israel — Benjamin Netanyahu won a narrow victory in his re-election bid.
Secretary of State Clinton will testify about Benghazi.
Poll — A majority of Americans want abortion to be legal.
Three people were shot at a community college near Houston.
Rhode Island moves closer to approving marriage equality.
GOP offers a plan on the debt ceiling.
U.S. delays decision on Keystone pipeline.
It’s very cold in the Midwest.
Roe v. Wade at Forty — Jill LePore of The New Yorker looks back at the legacy of the Supreme Court decision after forty years, and looks ahead.
Looking back, it seems clear that the abortion-rights movement embraced the rhetoric of privacy at the cost of making an argument about equality. National political figures rarely use the word “poverty” any more, but the Guttmacher Institute this year reports that among poor women, the rate of unwanted pregnancy is five times higher than for wealthier women: four in ten women who have abortions are poor. The Institute, founded in 1968, took Guttmacher’s name in 1977. Its mission is to advance “sexual and reproductive health and rights.” But the political discussion of abortion involves more talk about rights than about health. That’s one problem. Another is that most of that talk has been coming from the right. The assertion of a constitutional right to privacy has been answered by the assertion of fetal rights, a claim that challenges not only Roe but also several forms of contraception and, possibly, Griswold itself. Guttmacher’s two key ideas—that contraception would replace abortion and that public health would trump politics—seem, in retrospect, regrettably naïve.
In 2011, when I was researching an article for the magazine about Planned Parenthood, one of the people with whom I talked was Reva Siegel, and one of the most remarkable things she said had to do with how effectively the backlash narrative has intimidated the left. “The right has raised a generation of people who understand that courts matter and who will vote on that basis and can be mobilized to vote on that basis and who are willing to pay political costs for votes,” Siegel said. “This is completely lacking on the other side.” Law students and young lawyers, Siegel believes, are convinced that Roe is the source of the polarization of Americans politics. In response, those on the left “have an inhibition about using litigation for social-change purposes,” while appeals to the courts are “the bread and butter of the right, whether it’s campaign finance or guns or affirmative action.”
If so, Roe’s legacy has hardly begun.
Dangerous Mixture — Puneet Opal, MD, PhD, writes in The Atlantic on the perils of treating science like a political weapon.
We in democracies should make every effort to promote the objectivity of scientists so they can seek and communicate the best approximation of truth in the natural world, using their training and resources. And the approximation, is only because we will never know reality, but we can get amazingly close with scientific evidence and logical thinking.
Political choices can be made after the evidence is presented, but the evidence should stand for what it is. If the evidence itself is rejected by politicians — as is currently going on — then the ignorance of the political class should indeed be exposed, and all threats resisted.
This should be the case regardless of where across the political spectrum the ignorance is coming from. This might seem to be a diatribe against conservatives. But really this criticism is aimed at all unscientific thinking.
Just to be sure, there are a number on the left who have their own dogmatic beliefs; the most notable are unscientific theories with regard to the dangers of vaccinations, genetically modified produce, or nuclear energy.
It is also important to note that there have been exceptional Republican champions of science. In the U.S. Senate, the late Arlen Spector and in Congress, John Porte were two who stood out, lauded by scientists as advocates for scientific inquiry.
In other words, threats to scientific thinking can come from any quarter. What must be preserved is the pursuit of science away from irrational dogma. In that sense scientists should be completely nonpartisan. After all, the universe is what it is. The hurricanes, the flu epidemics, indeed all of reality does not really care about our political affiliations, but we distance ourselves from scientific thinking at our own peril.
Dear Abby — Rick Perlstein of The Nation has an appreciation of the late Pauline Phillips — “Dear Abby” — who passed away this week.
In August of 1980 the director of the ballet company of which Ron Reagan, son of the presidential candidate, was a member for some reason felt moved to put out a statement that Reagan and all the other men in his group had “nice girlfriends.”
In the notion that ballet dancers must be gay, and that this was a shamefully horrible thing, he spoke to a fear shared by Ron Reagan’s father, who when Ron dropped out of college in 1977 to become a dancer immediately phoned up Gene Kelly to ask if that meant he was gay. Later, his adopted son Michael helped him process a disturbing discovery: he caught Ron with a woman in his and Nancy’s (gross!) bed. Said Michael, “The bad news is that you came home early and you caught him. The good news is that you found out he isn’t gay.”
“Dear Abby” had a different view. Of the ballet director, a reader wrote in to decry the “sad commentary on our society’s attitude toward human sexuality that such a statement was made at all. Implicity in that announcement were the following erroneous assumptions: 1) That male participation in ballet requires lengthy justification lest it threaten our traditional views of masculinity; 2) that all male ballet dancers are suspect and therefore proof of their masculinity is required—i.e., having girlfriends; 3) that without proof of their manliness, people might think they were gay; and 4) that being gay is bad.”
The reader asked Abby if she had anything to add. She didn’t. She just wrote, “No. Right on!” (And: “Readers? Write on.” She was democratic that way.) The same column (August 20, 1980) printed a letter of thanks “for your explanation as to why the ERA is a national need,” noting that still, in 1980, the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women’s sufferage was still ritually voted down every year in the Mississippi legislature.
Good thing Mississippi newspaper readers could read Dear Abby. Good thing Mormons could, too; indeed the link to the August 1980 column above is to the Deseret News—Salt Lake City’s Mormon-owned newspaper. Abby blazed trails for liberalism in the most reactionary precincts. People trusted her that way.
Doonesbury — After-market options.
The backlash against Indiana senate candidate Richard Mourdock and his comments about God and rape continues. Some notable Republicans (John McCain and Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire) are distancing themselves while others (Mitch McConnell) are supporting him.
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, who cut a commercial endorsing Mr. Mourdock, is still with him. Via TPM:
[Wednesday] night the Romney campaign put out a statement disagreeing with Mourdock’s comment but not denouncing him. And the campaign did not respond to questions about whether he was withdrawing his endorsement.
The key though is the ad. Democrats are pushing hard for him to ask Mourdock to take it down. And if the Mourdock story grows, I suspect he’ll have to ask him to take it down, which would be devastating for Mourdock — not so much because of the ad not showing but because of the merciless press it could spawn so close to election day.
The fate of the ad is what I’d watch to see where this story is going over the course of the day.
Late Update: The Romney campaign has now said they have not asked Mourdock to take down the ad.
Later Update: Freshman GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte cancels trip to campaign with Mourdock.
Even Later Update: Romney reaffirms support for Mourdock candidacy.
One reason might be is that Paul Ryan’s view on abortion is basically the same as Mr. Mourdock’s.
When Missouri senate candidate Todd Akin brought up the subject of “legitimate rape” back in August, the GOP couldn’t run away fast enough. Now Mr. Mourdock has said something equally outrageous, and yet he’s still got support from big names in the party. Why?
It may have something to do with the fact that Mr. Mourdock invoked God in his statement, whereas Mr. Akin only went with pseudo-science. It’s far easier to distance yourself from someone who only offers what he thinks are scientific facts as proof rather than incur the wrath of the Almighty by seeming to contradict His Will. Scientific facts are debatable; God is not.
PS: According to The Onion, God is not pleased with these recent developments.
Yet another right-wing loon steps on the rake:
Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said Tuesday when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape, “that’s something God intended.”
Mourdock, who’s been locked in one of the country’s most watched Senate races, was asked during the final minutes of a debate with Democratic challenger Rep. Joe Donnelly whether abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest.
“I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen,” Mourdock said.
Mourdock became the second GOP Senate candidate to find himself on the defensive over comments about rape and pregnancy. Missouri Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin said during a television interview in August that women’s bodies have ways of preventing pregnancy in cases of what he called “legitimate rape.” Since his comment, Akin has repeatedly apologized but has refused to leave his race despite calls to do so by leaders of his own party, from GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on down.
At the risk of sounding facetious — who, me? — what kind of supreme being would choose to communicate with mere mortals through this idiot? What is up with that?
This is not the first time that the Almighty has chosen to speak through the mouths of assholes. We’ve been hearing from crackpots like Mr. Mourdock for thousands of years, and recently this deity has been telling people like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain to run for president. (Obviously, God is also a prankster.) Now we get this jackass telling us that a rape-induced pregnancy is God’s will. I have to say that that is one messed-up God.
Seriously, though, it’s not God or his intention or anything whatsoever to do with a supreme being. It has to do with a bunch of control freaks trying to justify their obsession with other people’s lives and bodies. God and his intentions are just the excuses they hide behind to foist their bigotry and hatred of other people on the world.
This is what tells me there really isn’t a God that watches and controls every little thing in our lives. Because if there was, he wouldn’t allow people like Richard Mourdock to open their mouths, much less likely win a seat in the United States Senate.
A 6.6 earthquake struck off Costa Rica.
Shelling in Syria kills 20.
U.S. suspects Iran launched a cyber attack against a Saudi oil company.
Court blocks Indiana ban on funding Planned Parenthood.
Drug firm tied to meningitis outbreak had cleanliness issues.
Tropical Update: TS Sandy will soak Jamaica, cross Cuba, and head for the Bahamas. TS Tony is heading east away from anything.
The Marlins fired Ozzie Guillen.
The World Series starts tonight.
The Etch-A-Sketch strikes again.
Anti-abortion groups are thoroughly convinced Mitt Romney is still one of them, despite his remarks Tuesday in Iowa that abortion would not be a part of his legislative agenda if elected.
“No alarm bells here,” Tony Perkins, president of the anti-abortion Family Research Council, told TPM on Wednesday.
Perkins said the Romney campaign called him soon after Romney’s remarks were published by the Des Moines Register and assured him it didn’t represent a shift by Romney from his support for pro-life issues.
“As they explained it to me, it was from the way the question was asked,” Perkins said of Romney’s quote. He said the campaign told him the interviewer was “talking about economic issues” when the quote came up.
David O’Sheen, executive director of the National Right To Life Committee, also told TPM the phrasing of the Des Moines Register question was responsible for Romney’s quote, not a change in Romney’s policy.
Well, of course… he wasn’t asked the right question, that’s all. It’s all the interviewer’s fault.
I freely admit that I didn’t watch one live minute of the Republican convention in Tampa this week, so perhaps I missed it. But in all of the wrap-ups, the discussions, the blog posts, the RSS feeds, twitterpations, and whatever else passes for news coverage, I did not hear one candidate, surrogate, pundit, spokesperson, or delegate say anything that made me consider — even for a nanosecond — voting for a Republican.
Maybe I’m in the wrong demographic: I’m a middle-aged gay man with a middle-class income that I earn from working in public education. Right there I see three strikes against me in the GOP platform: my rights as a person are not the same as the straight people, my taxes will probably go up under the GOP budget, and they want to rip the guts out of public sector jobs. In the rest of my family, my parents are at risk if Medicare is gutted, my sister stands to lose healthcare because she doesn’t get full benefits from her job, my brother’s two kids in college could lose Pell grants and cheaper student loans, and my nieces, nephews, and cousins who are under 26 could lose their health insurance if they can’t be included on their parents’ policies.
Those are just the bean-counter reasons. Then there’s the whole attitude about widening the gap between the rich benevolent overlords and placating the “job creators” with even lower taxes so they would be coerced into tossing a few crumbs to the hoi polloi. There’s the attitude of manifest destiny for the great white Christian race who know better than the unsaved souls of the world, and while the idea that E Pluribus Unum looks great on a presidential seal, we all know that women can’t be trusted to make their own decisions about their bodies, immigrants just want to mooch off the system, food stamps are for the lazy ni-CLANGS, and those queers should really keep to themselves. That, more than anything said from the dais in Tampa, is what defines the modern GOP. And I can’t imagine aligning myself with any of it.
So I ask you:
Did you hear anything from the Republican convention that would make you consider voting for their candidates? If so, what?
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on the prospects for the Republicans:
We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.
So I guess their plan is to reach out to women, minorities, newly-arrived immigrants, and even the LGBT community (as long as they don’t get icky). Good luck with that.
