OK, it’s true: Rick Santorum didn’t sponsor Virginia legislation to require that women seeking abortion undergo an ultrasound – and in cases of very early pregnancy, when a fetus is hard to see, a creepy and intrusive transvaginal ultrasound. But seven states have already passed ultrasound requirements for women seeking abortion. The Virginia bill is galvanizing opposition nationally at least partly due to the climate of crazy that’s been fomented by Santorum’s backward candidacy. The man who calls contraception “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be” went from being a failed Pennsylvania senator, Mr. “Man on Dog,” to GOP presidential frontrunner over the last month. Now he’s crusading against prenatal testing because he claims it encourages abortion (when in fact most prenatal testing helps women help babies who develop in utero health issues ) and claiming President Obama’s policies will ultimately send Christians to the guillotine. (By the way, I apologize for harping on the way Protestants have persecuted Catholics in the U.S., because Santorum reminded me of some of the reason why, with his charge that mainline Protestant churches are a Satan-sponsored “shambles” that are “gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”) He and Mitt Romney, who’s trying to match him outrage for outrage, having been chasing women voters away from the GOP in droves over the last couple of months. Continue Reading…
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Thanks, Rick Santorum! No, really
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How Obama’s financial watchdog can prove himself
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The 99ers’ unemployment fix
When you fall in love, it’s all about what you have in common, and you can hardly imagine that there are differences, let alone that you will quarrel over them, or weep about them, or be torn apart by them — or if all goes well, struggle, learn, and bond more strongly because of, rather than despite, them. The Occupy movement had its glorious honeymoon when old and young, liberal and radical, comfortable and desperate, homeless and tenured all found that what they had in common was so compelling the differences hardly seemed to matter. Until they did. Revolutions are always like this: at first all men are brothers and anything is possible, and then, if you’re lucky, the romance of that heady moment ripens into a relationship, instead of a breakup, an abusive marriage, or a murder-suicide. Occupy had its golden age, when those who never before imagined living side-by-side with homeless people found themselves in adjoining tents in public squares. Continue Reading…
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The truth about violence at Occupy
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Climate scientist admits swiping documents
Khader Adnan may live to see his 34 th birthday after all. He has been on hunger strike for 66 days to protest against his “administrative detention,” which allows the Israeli military to detain Palestinians without charge, indefinitely, on the basis of evidence the detainees are not allowed to see. Today, in the face of mounting pressure, Israel reportedly promised to release him in April if it could not discover any new evidence against him. His lawyer said that Adnan will end his strike. Israeli, Palestinian and international rights groups have long said that Israel’s administrative detention practices are unlawful , but Adnan – whose hunger strike was the longest of any Palestinian prisoner –gained particular attention. Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and members of Palestinian political factions had gone on solidarity hunger strikes, and demonstrators in the West Bank, Gaza and in Tel Aviv called for Israel to end arbitrary administrative detentions. Security forces dispersed protests outside the Ofer military jail in the West Bank with rubber bullets and tear gas. Continue Reading…
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Israel relents on hunger striker Adnan Khader
These days, watching politicians debate sex legislation feels a lot like watching footage from decades ago. In the last few months alone, Rick Santorum has called contraception “dangerous,” Mississippi’s Initiative 26 nearly granted “personhood” to fertilized eggs and thereby potentially made birth control illegal, and the anti-gay rights movement once again garnered headlines around the country. While politicians argue endlessly over what Americans should be doing in their bedrooms, statistics show that middle America agrees on legal abortion, gay civil unions and access to birth control. So why are politicians debating issues that have long been settled, while more pressing topics like unemployment, renewable energy and overseas wars remain on the back burner? Historian Nancy L. Cohen, author of the new book, “Delirium: How the Sexual Counterrevolution is Polarizing America,” explains how America’s conflicted attitudes toward the sexual revolution have fueled America’s political wars for the past 40 years, causing a deep divide that has remade the cultural landscape. Cohen describes how a minority of America’s population is making antiquated decisions about legislation that infringes dangerously on the rights of America’s majority. Continue Reading…
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Inside the sexual counterrevolution
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JFK: “Better red than dead”
Early this year, the United Methodist Church Board of Pension and Health Benefits voted to withdraw nearly $1 million in stocks from two private prison companies, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The decision by the largest faith-based pension fund in the United States came in response to concerns expressed last May by the church’s immigration task force and a group of national activists. “Our board simply felt that it did not want to profit from the business of incarcerating others,” said Colette Nies, managing director of communications for the board. “Our concern was not with how the companies manage or operate their business, but with the service that the companies offer,” Nies added. “We believe that profiting from incarceration is contrary to church values.” It was an important success for a slew of activists across the country who are pushing investors and institutions to divest from the private prison industry. Continue Reading…
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The end of the for-profit prison era?
If in the year 2000 the U.S. president had told the American people that the government would soon begin using robot planes to track people, including U.S. citizens, all over the world, and would reserve to itself the right to kill them without trial, it is safe to say there would have been an enormous uproar. But that is exactly what is happening today, and nobody cares. The majority of Americans, including those who were opposed to the war in Iraq, have no problems with their government killing at will, so long as the killing is done in the name of “national security.” How did this happen? In retrospect, the war in Afghanistan was the prime culprit. That endless, Sisyphean war was the thin end of the wedge. In that murky, shifting struggle, it was normal for the U.S. to arrogate to itself the right to kill the Taliban wherever they were in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Once that precedent was established, it was an small step to killing bad guys in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. And so, by imperceptible steps we arrived at the place we are now, where 77 percent of liberals support President Obama’s vastly expanded killer drone campaign, where an American citizen can be remotely vaporized at the touch of a button and no one cares. The war on Afghanistan set the precedent that shaped the entire “war on terror” paradigm. The chimera of “safety from terrorism” led us by easy stages to begin waging dirty war across the globe — changing the definition of war, eroding moral and legal standards and greatly increasing the likelihood of ugly future consequences. Continue Reading…
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Hypnotized into an endless dirty war