“His expression was grim, his voice cracked at just the right times, and he appeared in genuine pain — all while describing his wife.
As Bob McDonnell testified in his public corruption trial Thursday, it was easy to see why he was once regarded as one of the most talented Republican politicians in the country. He didn’t simply throw his wife, Maureen, under a bus to keep himself out of prison. He laid her down gently on the road, with a pillow and blanket.”
“Mississippi may not shift its obligation to respect the established constitutional rights of its citizens to another state.”
Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an opinion that will allow Mississippi’s only remaining abortion clinic to stay open.
A good day for the women of Mississippi and women all over America.
Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, who lost his Missouri Senate race to Claire McCaskill, is baaack, and he wants us to know he’s sorry — very, very sorry. In his new book*, Akin regrets that he apologized for claiming women can’t get pregnant if it’s a “legitimate rape.” I think we all knew at the time that his apology was as phony as his biology.
This moron genuinely believes women can magically shut down their bodies. If only we could shut up Akin and his crappy science.
* Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom
Bill Cassidy, the staunchly anti-abortion GOP candidate for Senate from Louisiana, has announced that his unmarried 17-year-old daughter will have a baby sometime this summer.
I just hope that this is what she wants, and not what Cassidy and his wife want for her. Their daughter may well want children five or ten years from now, but not as she begins her senior year in high school.
I know that many abortion opponents argue that some women are unduly pressured into having abortions by their parents or spouses or boyfriends, and that’s a terrible thing. But I think it’s equally sad if a girl is pressured into not having an abortion, if that’s what she wants. Meanwhile the boy who shares responsibility seems to be going his merry way.
There’s an article up at HuffPost entitled, “What If a Muslim Company Used the ‘Hobby Lobby’ Decision to Impose Its Values on White Christians?”
As long as Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy are on the bench, I really don’t think we have to worry about that.
Dean Baquet, who has replaced Jill Abramson as the executive editor at the NYT, told owner Arthur Sulzberger that Sulzberger had to choose between them. If Sulzberger didn’t fire Abramson, Baquet, the first African American managing editor at the paper, would quit, claiming “humiliation” over the job offer to Janine Gibson, who was going to become co-managing editor for digital.
Sulzberger, knowing he had to face a firestorm over an African American or a woman, decided to fire the woman. He may have rationalized his choice by telling himself that women aren’t really a “minority,” like African Americans. But when it comes to getting jobs like executive editor of the Times, women sure as hell are a minority.
The battle for the Senate in 2014 is shaping up not so much as Democrats versus Republicans or Tea Partiers versus Establishment as female voters versus male voters. Women want to see the Dems control Congress by a ten-point margin, while men favor the GOP by 13 points. There’s more of us than them, so women just need to show up.
Hobby Lobby may not want its employees to get contraceptives (like Plan B and IUDs) that the company claims cause abortions (even although they don’t), but they have no qualms about having more than $73 million of their 401K invested in companies that make Plan B, IUDs, and drugs that actually are used in abortions. They’re very happy to profit from these companies at the same time they’ve told the Supreme Court it violates their religious beliefs to provide certain contraceptives to their workers.
Perhaps Hobby Lobby should be found guilty of perjury.
Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, but IUDs have been widely used in this country for contraception since the late 1950’s. If IUDs cause abortions, they would have been illegal prior to Roe.
Why is Hobby Lobby even allowed to argue in court that IUDs cause abortions? Why are we going backwards?
Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby does not require any legal determination about the religious rights of for-profit corporations.
This case can, and should, be decided on the facts, which are that the birth control methods Hobby Lobby objects to (Plan B, Ella and IUD’s) are contraceptives, not abortifacients.
The religious right, willfully in my view, continues to confuse Plan B with RU-486, which is an abortifacient and is not covered under Obamacare.
This is just another infuriating example of religious nuts refusing to accept non-controversial medical and scientific facts and trying to impose their ignorant views on the rest of us.
Listening to Hobby Lobby’s lawyers and the conservative justices today, I was reminded of Galileo and the Catholic Church or the Scopes trial.
It’s going to take more than the re-make of Cosmos to turn this country around.
Embattled Farmers 