Third woman, and first Latino/a confirmed to the Supreme Court. And she really pisses off the Wrong Wingers, so it’s all good with me.
For now, anyway. We’ll see what happens when my rights are on the block.
I also like what NOW president Terry O’Neill had to say:
“Women have every reason to be outraged about gender disparity on the Supreme Court. When Sotomayor joins Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court this fall, women will occupy a whopping 22 percent of the bench. Sixteen years passed between the confirmations of Ginsburg and Sotomayor, and three men were elevated to the high court during that time. At that unacceptable rate, it could take decades, maybe even centuries, to achieve a gender balanced court. There’s no excuse to wait for equality: NOW calls for every open seat on the Supreme Court to be filled by a woman until there are four, if not five women justices.”
The Catholic Church lost another round today when Italy approved the use of RU-486, the abortion drug. The Vatican warned of immediate excommunication for doctors prescribing the pill and for women taking it.
Yeah, like, women are going to tell the Vatican they used it? So what happens if a Catholic woman confesses her “sin”to her priest? Does he keep his mouth shut, or is she bounced out of the confessional with a scarlet “R” on her cheek before she can finish the Act of Contrition?
A county attorney in Kansas violated a girl’s privacy by showing around photos of her sexual assault, the teen and her mother claim in Topeka Federal Court. The Anderson County Attorney refused to prosecute the assailant, but showed other parents photos of the sexual assault, and was suspended from practicing law for 6 months for it, the family says.
The parents say their 17-year-old daughter attended an outdoor party in May 2007, where four men or boys forced her to take off her clothes. One of them had sex with her in the bed of a truck, despite her repeated pleas for him to stop, while others took photos of it, according to the complaint. …
The charismatic widow of assassinated opposition leader drove dictator from office, but the head of the ‘people power’ movement left a mixed legacy of political and natural disasters. …
Deliberately inflammatory headline designed to make wrong-wingers insane. But that’s what it boils down to — no matter how Cincinnati.com tries to spin the reality of with the cutesy “dad” in its headline:
A preliminary hearing for Scott Roeder, the man charged with the May 31 murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, is set for Tuesday, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports. …
In related news, the New York Times on Sunday examined the life and career of Tiller…
According to the Times, advocates on both sides of the abortion-rights debate “have been measuring the larger ramifications” of Tiller’s murder. Abortion-rights opponents are “bracing for a drop in support, especially from those in the murky middle ground of the debate.” …
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Star on Sunday included an interview with Roeder, during which he said he was “elated” that Tiller was dead and that he considers killing abortion providers to be justifiable homicide. …
More at the link, including links to cited articles.
Nicaragua’s total ban on abortions is endangering the lives of girls and women, denying them life-saving treatment, preventing health professionals from practicing effective medicine and contributing to an increase in maternal deaths across the country, concludes Amnesty International in a new report [issued] on Monday.
According to official figures, 33 girls and women have died in pregnancy this year as compared to 20 in the same period last year. Amnesty International believes these figures are only a minimum as the government itself has acknowledged that the number of maternal deaths is under-recorded.
The report “The total abortion ban in Nicaragua: Women’s lives and health endangered, medical professionals criminalized” is the first Amnesty International study examining the human rights implications of the denial of abortion when the life or health of a woman or girl is at risk, including when she is a victim of rape or incest.
Nicaragua’s revised Penal Code stipulates prison sentences for girls and women who seek an abortion and for health professionals who provide health services associated with abortion. Only 3% of the world’s countries have such absolute bans in place. …
More sobering information — and a call to action — at the link.
Is this Arnold’s Final Solution? Kill all of us who aren’t as rich as he and Maria?
While gutting $656 million in funding (up from an earlier $489 million) — on top of previous cuts by the state legislature for programs on which Californians’ very lives depend — Arnold Schwarzenegger simultaneously approved the construction of a new Death Row housing unit at San Quentin. Cost: $356 million, with a predicted $39 million overrun.
WASHINGTON, DC — July 21, 2009 — Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Judy Biggert (R-IL) today reintroduced the Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. House, along with Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) and over 50 other original co-sponsors.
June 16, 2009 — The National Organization for Women calls on President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to withdraw the U.S. Department of Justice brief filed in support of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and to publicly renounce this discriminatory law. The brief was reportedly written by Bush administration holdovers, and if that is the case, this administration must immediately make it clear that President Obama does not support this position.
Yes, Virginia, there are a few good congresscritters out there — and since we’re much more prone to zinging the bad ones, we’re long overdue in recognizing one of the very best.
The perfect opportunity to do just that came with Anna Eshoo’s remarks to gay and lesbian California last night.
— Wiley Drake, on the assassination of Dr. George Tiller
Yeah, these anti-abortion extremists are really way out there on the fringe, aren’t they?
No, they’re not.
You and I might think of the Southern Baptist Convention as the far-right fringe, but the truth is, the SBC is about as mainstream (albeit ridiculously* conservative) as a Protestant denomination can get.
And here’s what Wiley Drake, the SBC’s former number-two, number-two man, has to say about the assassination of Dr. George Tiller:
“What I witnessed in Bartle Hall on December 31st 2002 was the antithesis of radical Islam. Instead of people wanting to blow themselves up to kill others, I saw young adults who were so radically in love with Jesus that they were willing to become martyrs for the sake of saving other people’s lives. Someone from the stage asked, ‘who here feels like they are called to die as a martyr for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ?’ Many hands went up throughout the stadium.”
This doesn’t surprise us, nor even alarm us as much as it probably should — because we know this stuff already, which is simply: Anti-choice activists and the anti-gay activists are the same people.
“The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I’d like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for preforming [sic] abortions that I — and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.
“I am very sorry.”
Stunning piece from Frank Schaeffer, son of “the late Francis Schaeffer, a Reformed Presbyterian … influenced by Reconstructionism,” whose “widely distributed books and films of the 1970s and early 1980s are generally credited with providing an important catalyst for evangelical involvement in anti-abortion politics”:
That’s what this telegraphs to us from the right-wing Christian, anti-choice site, LifeNews.com:
Scott Roeder, the 51-year-old Kansas man who authorities have detained as the only suspect in the shooting of late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller, may have suffered from mental illness. That’s according to his ex-wife, who said in a recent interview that Roeder always held extremist views. …
Then we get the typical, frantic attempt by the anti-choice movement to dissociate itself from Roeder:
H/T to FreeStateDem for digging up some revealing — but completely unsurprising — background on Scott Roeder (such as a 1997 report from the ADL which notes the “sovereign citizen and tax protester’s” 16-month prison sentence “for parole violations following a 1996 conviction for having bomb components in his car trunk”), suspected of the murder of Dr. George Tiller this morning.
Also of interest (and of no small significance) is this comment on the Operation Rescue Web site in response to the article, “Pray in May to Stop Abortion, Wichita, KS, May 17-20, 2007” (which, disturbingly, includes a link labeled, “Click here to view our hot new video about abortionist Tiller!” as if plugging a sex video):
“This is particularly heart wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace.”
— Family of George Tiller
So, the Department of Homeland Security’s assessment, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” was dead-on — not that we ever doubted that assessment for a minute, but to hear the right-wingers themselves talk, you’d think Barack Obama was leading the DHS in some big conspiracy to attack poor, little, shat-upon conservatives who never did anything worse than vote for John McCain.
Aside from my vehement opposition to putting anyone’s rights up to a vote, ever, one of the (other) major problems I have with the idea of trying to overturn Proposition 8 by (yet another) ballot initiative is summed up perfectly by PrawfsBlawg as: “The Annoyance Effect.”
Kathy Shaidle: Proof that the Examiner is no longer worthy of catching your pet parakeet’s droppings on the bottom of the birdcage.
A horrifying homophobe (hint: she agrees with Marion Barry — whose name, by the way, she doesn’t always spell correctly), Shaidle regurgitates every lie you’ve heard about those violent homer-seck-shuls, and those poor, little shat-upon “Christian” martyrs for the cause of defaming gays and stripping us of our civil rights, while stoking the Black-v-Gay myth, and quoting the likes of Camile Paglia, professional Anti-Gay, and the Rush Limbaugh of pseudo-feminism:*
John Aravosis (whose AMERICAblog has finally been remodeled from Web 1.0 — much nicer, John, much nicer) explains — albeit with a headline that barely scratches the surface:
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