Tuesday, February 04, 2014 5:56:09 AM
Elisabeth Hasselbeck Really Asked This About Feminism
By Katherine Fung
Posted: 01/17/2014 4:44 pm EST | Updated: 01/21/2014 8:10 pm EST
Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked a guest on Thursday whether he believes that feminism is hurting American's national security.
Nick Adams argued in his new book "American Boomerang [ http://www.amazon.com/The-American-Boomerang-Nick-Adams/dp/1492398470 ]" that men around the world are no longer allowed to be "manly." In an appearance on Thursday's "Fox and Friends," he said it was a "dangerous" phenomenon, claiming, "American men are of course very susceptible to it. It's really important particularly in America given the leadership role that America has in the world that American men be allowed to be men."
"Is this in direct relation to feminism on the rise?" Hasselbeck asked. "Is it a result just sort of society seeing men that are not as masculine and men that are as masculine being kind of demonized?"
"Elisabeth, you've hit the nail on the head," Adams said.
"Do you see this affecting national security, how a nation operates in terms of being a strong presence globally?" Hasselbeck asked later.
Adams said that it "absolutely" does have an effect on national security. "Wimps and wussies deliver mediocrity, and men win," he added. "And what America’s always been about is winning."
(h/t Raw Story [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/17/foxs-elisabeth-hasselbeck-are-male-wussifying-feminists-a-national-security-problem/ ])
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/elisabeth-hasselbeck-feminism_n_4619669.html [the YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=292rVp8tlic (with comments), embedded; with comments]
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(from slideshow at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/nun-gives-birth-baby-italy-francis_n_4619218.html ; http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-angrily-clarifies-dont-kill-rule,222/ )
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Maajid Nawaz's Tweet Of Jesus And Muhammad ["Jesus and Mo"] Cartoon Sparks Death Threats, Conversation
British muslim Maajid Nawaz[, currently a Liberal Democrat candidate for Parliament,] addresses a press conference in London, 03 March 2006.
01/29/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/maajid-nawaz-cartoon-jesus-muhammad_n_4683010.html [with comments]
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(from slideshow at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/nun-gives-birth-baby-italy-francis_n_4619218.html ; http://www.theonion.com/articles/wartorn-middle-east-seeks-solace-in-religion,2027/ )
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SARAH SILVERMAN IS VISITED BY JESUS CHRIST
Published on Jan 21, 2014 by Sarah Silverman [ http://www.youtube.com/user/SilvermanVideos ]
Jesus Christ visits Sarah Silverman to discuss women's reproductive rights.
For more information on how you can get involved, visit http://www.ladypartsjustice.com
Fact-checking provided by:
RH Reality Check, an online publication covering reproductive health and justice news, analysis, and commentary.
Visit: http://rhrealitycheck.org/
NARAL, a national organization advocating for and providing comprehensive information on reproductive rights in the U.S. Numerous local affiliates.
Visit: http://www.naral.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahdR6aHQvMQ [with comments]
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Kansas court says sperm donor must pay child support
January 24, 2014
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/ [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Rand Paul worries women ‘won’ the war and are ‘conquering’ men, taking their jobs
By David Edwards
Sunday, January 26, 2014 13:08 EST
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Sunday declared that the so-called Republican war on women was over and women had “won,” but a new war was being waged by women who were taking jobs from men.
“We have a lot of debates in Washington that get dumbed down and are used for political purposes,” Paul told NBC’s David Gregory. “This whole sort of war on women thing, I’m scratching my head because, if there was a war on women, I think they won.”
As evidence, the Kentucky senator pointed out that none of the women in his family were complaining about inequality or having their health care rights curtailed by Republicans.
“You know, I don’t see so much that women are downtrodden, I see women rising up and doing great things,” he remarked. “In fact, I worry about our young men sometimes because I think the women really are out-competing the men in our world.”
Paul added that he tried to never talk about the female anatomy and that Republicans did not start the war on women “debate.”
“The facts show that women are doing very well, have come a long way,” he explained. “And I have a lot of successful women in my family. And I don’t here them saying, ‘Oh, woe is me, this terrible misogynist world.’ They look out and they’re conquering the world.”
Paul later suggested that for President Bill Clinton was responsible for the “war on women” because he had an affair with an intern while he was in office during the 1990s.
“The media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this,” Paul insisted. “There is no excuse for that, that is predatory behavior and it shouldn’t be something — we should’t want to associate with people who would take advantage of a young girl in his office.”
The potential Republican 2016 presidential candidate said that it was difficult to unlink Bill Clinton’s behavior from potential Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I think in my state, people tend to frown upon that,” he declared. “If there were someone in my community who did that in my community, they would be socially — we would disassociate from somebody who would take advantage of a young woman in a workplace.”
Watch this video from NBC’s Meet the Press, broadcast Jan. 26, 2013.
[video embedded]
Copyright © 2014 Raw Story Media, Inc.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/26/rand-paul-worries-women-won-the-war-and-are-conquering-men-taking-their-jobs/ [with comments]
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Mike Huckabee offers his expertise on the female sex drive
Channeling Todd Akin, the former Arkansas governor has ideas about birth control and "libido"
Jan 23, 2014
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/23/mike_huckabee_offers_his_expertise_on_the_female_sex_drive/ [with comments]
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Mike Huckabee mansplains women's libidos and contraception at RNC
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks at the Republican National Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. He told Republicans that Democrats insult women by telling them "they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government."
(Susan Walsh / Associated Press / January 23, 2014)
By Robin Abcarian
January 23, 2014, 3:40 p.m.
I am genuinely starting to feel sorry for the Republican Party [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/parties-movements/republican-party-ORGOV0000004.topic ], which has become so adept at shooting itself in the foot over women’s issues that it should probably put a moratorium on discussing them for a while.
The Democrats’ accusation that the GOP has waged a “war on women” has so rattled the party that its pooh-bahs cannot think straight. They keep making the same mistakes over and over. Insanity!
Thursday, at the annual meeting of the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., once and possibly future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/elections/u.s.-elections/mike-huckabee-PEPLT000123.topic ] became the latest Republican to step into the quicksand that women’s issues have become for the GOP. The one-time Arkansas governor and talk show host told a roomful of party officials that Democrats insult women by telling them “they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government.”
Oh dear. Not again.
Here’s a remedial lesson for Gov. Huckabee: That is not what Democrats tell women; it’s what Republicans tell them.
Republicans call women “sluts” [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfb9f7yFYgw (next below)]
Republicans talk about “legitimate rape [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/us/politics/todd-akin-provokes-ire-with-legitimate-rape-comment.html ].”
Republicans say pregnancies as a result of rape are a “gift from God [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/10/23/1078181/gop-us-senate-candidate-calls-rape-pregnancies-a-gift-from-god/ ]” and should be carried to term.
Republicans say: “One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about is, I think, the dangers of contraceptives in this country. The whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, 'Contraception's OK.' It is not OK [ http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/24/nation/la-na-gop-race-sixties-20120325 ].”
Democrats know that invoking women’s sex drives in conversations about healthcare mandates is demeaning, patronizing and wrong.
What Democrats tell women is that women have the right to comprehensive health coverage, which should include access to contraception -- even if you work at Hobby Lobby [ http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/26/nation/la-na-court-contraceptives-20131127 ].
I don’t really want to get inside their heads too far, but Republicans like Huckabee seem metaphorically stuck in some arrested stage of adolescent development that equates any discussion of reproductive issues with sexuality. Contraception? Hubba hubba. Not.
And here’s what I mean about GOP’s women voter death wish: Huckabee’s faux pas comes exactly two days after CNN’s Peter Hamby reported [ http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/21/first-on-cnn-gop-urges-candidates-to-stand-ground-on-abortion/ ] that the RNC was working on a plan to strike back at the Democrats’ successful “war on women” strategy.
On Friday, the RNC is expected to take up a proposal urging anti-abortion Republicans -- candidates, consultants and political action committees -- to “reject a strategy of silence on the abortion issue when candidates are attacked with ‘war on women’ rhetoric.”
The proposal’s author, Delaware RNC member and anti-abortion activist Ellen Barrosse, told Hamby that she was partly moved to action by the failure of presidential nominee Mitt Romney [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/government/mitt-romney-PEPLT007376.topic ] and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/government/ken-cuccinelli-PEPLT00007614.topic ] to effectively respond to the “war on women” rhetoric in 2012 and 2013.
She thinks that because the Gallup Poll [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/economy-business-finance/gallup-inc.-ORCRP0000017179.topic ] has since 1975 found some areas of agreement between a majority of Americans and the Republican Party on some aspects of abortion law -- such as parental consent or bans on late-term abortion -- Republicans have an opening.
But they don’t.
Despite the fact that Republican-dominated state legislatures have chipped away at abortion rights for years, the big picture has not changed: a huge majority of Americans believe that abortion should remain legal. This has been the consistent response since Gallup began polling the issue two years after the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.
As this chart shows [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx ], only around 20% of Americans believe that abortion should be against the law in all circumstances. That number has been more or less consistent for nearly 40 years.
In a Gallup Poll from last May, 26% said abortion should be legal in all circumstances, and 52% said it should be legal in some circumstances. That’s a combined total of 78% of Americans who believe abortion should remain legal.
At some point, the Republicans will have to understand: Mansplaining women -- as Huckabee did Thursday -- is not helping. The party must find a way to turn women on, not off. Don’t smirk. You know what I mean.
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times (emphasis in original)
http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-mike-huckabee-mansplains-womens-libidos-and-contraception-at-rnc--20140123,0,6457380.story [with comments]
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Allen West: Mike Huckabee 'Has No Reason to Apologize,' Government Is 'Trying To Be The Sugar Daddy'
By Paige Lavender
Posted: 01/25/2014 12:15 pm EST | Updated: 01/25/2014 12:59 pm EST
Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) has "no reason to apologize [ http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/allen-west-mike-huckabee-democrats-women/2014/01/24/id/548930 ]" for saying Democrats tell women they "cannot control their libido [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/mike-huckabee-women_n_4653426.html ]" without the government.
"If anything the Democrats should be apologizing," West told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
West said Huckabee is "right."
"Government is trying to be the sugar daddy," West said.
At this week's Republican National Committee meeting [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/25/rnc-meeting_n_4665430.html ] in Washington, D.C., Huckabee said [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/24/mike-huckabee-birth-control_n_4659975.html ] the Republican party "stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women." He followed those comments by saying Democrats "want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control."
"Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have the government provide for them birth control medication," Huckabee said. "Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything that anybody else can do."
Huckabee made the comments despite having signed a health insurance mandate [ http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/02/15/huckabee-for-contraception-mandate-before-he-opposed-it ] that included contraception in preventative care into law while serving as governor of Arkansas.
Watch West's remarks on Huckabee in the video [of the West segment on The Steve Malzberg Show, embedded] above.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/25/allen-west-mike-huckabee_n_4665601.html [with the embedded video, and comments]
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GOP Congressman: Wives Should 'Voluntarily Submit' To Their Husbands
01/23/2014
A Republican congressman published a memoir last month in which he expresses his belief that "the wife is to submit to the husband," The Washington Post reported on Wednesday [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/01/22/gop-congressmans-book-the-wife-is-to-voluntarily-submit-to-her-husband/ ].
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), a Vietnam veteran, explains in his book that families, like the military command, need a leadership structure in which every person has a role. He says the wife's role, according to the Bible, is to be obedient to her husband.
"The wife is to voluntarily submit, just as the husband is to lovingly lead and sacrifice," he writes. "The husband’s part is to show up during the times of deep stress, take the leadership role and be accountable for the outcome, blaming no one else."
Pearce goes on to write that the wife should have a say in important family decisions and that her submission does mean the husband should have "authoritarian control" or be considered superior.
"The wife’s submission is not a matter of superior versus inferior; rather, it is self-imposed as a matter of obedience to the Lord and of love for her husband," he writes.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/steve-pearce-wife-submit_n_4646605.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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'Red' States Have Higher Divorce Rates Than 'Blue' States, And Here's Why
Posted: 01/21/2014 6:20 pm EST | Updated: 01/25/2014 4:01 pm EST
It may seem counterintuitive, but divorce rates are higher in religiously conservative "red" states than "blue" states, despite a Bible-based culture that discourages divorce.
In a new study titled "Red States, Blue States, and Divorce: Understanding the Impact of Conservative Protestantism on Regional Variation in Divorce Rates," which will be published later this month in the American Journal of Sociology [ http://www.jstor.org/page/journal/amerjsoci/about.html ], demographer and University of Texas at Austin professor Jennifer Glass set out to discover [ http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/impact-of-conservative-protestantism-on-regional-divorce-rates/ ] why divorce rates would be higher in religious states like Arkansas and Alabama -- which boast the second and third highest divorce rates, respectively -- but lower in more liberal states like New Jersey and Massachusetts.
It was previously thought that socioeconomic hardships in the South were largely to blame for high divorce rates [ http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/marital_status_living_arrangements/cb11-144.html ], however Glass and her fellow researchers concluded that the conservative religious culture is in fact a major contributing factor thanks to "the social institutions they create" that "decrease marital stability."
Specifically, putting pressure on young people to marry sooner, frowning upon cohabitation before marriage, teaching abstinence-only sex education and making access to resources like emergency contraception more difficult all result in earlier childbearing ages and less-solid marriages from the get-go, Glass writes in the paper.
“It’s surprising,” W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, told The Los Angeles Times [ http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-sci-sn-red-states-religious-conservative-divorce-20140116,0,7835151.story ]. “In some contexts in America today, religion is a buffer against divorce. But in the conservative Protestant context, this paper is showing us that it’s not.”
Glass and her colleagues also concluded that the religious culture of the area permeated into the divorce rates of even the non-religious people who lived there. In other words, simply by living in counties that were dominated by conservative Protestantism, people were at a higher risk for getting divorced.
As Glass told The Los Angeles Times, “If you live in a marriage market where everybody marries young, you postpone marriage at your own risk. The best catches … are going to go first.”
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/divorce-study_n_4639430.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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19 Democratic Senators To File Amicus Brief In Hobby Lobby Contraception Case
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.)
Bloomberg via Getty Images
By Shadee Ashtari
Posted: 01/28/2014 11:27 am EST | Updated: 01/28/2014 5:59 pm EST
Nineteen Democratic senators, including Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and four other women, are filing an amicus brief Tuesday in support of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate under the Affordable Care Act.
The provision is being challenged [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/supreme-court-hobby-lobby_n_4343794.html ] by Hobby Lobby [ http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-13/lifestyle/sns-rt-us-usa-health-hobby-lobbybre88c0uc-20120913_1_hobby-lobby-healthcare-mandate-health-mandate ], an arts and crafts retailer that is arguing that the mandate violates the company’s religious freedoms under the First Amendment, according to Yahoo News [ http://news.yahoo.com/democratic-senators-to-file-amicus-brief-in-hobby-lobby-birth-control-case-025129006.html ].
"As the federal government embarks on an unprecedented foray into health care replete with multiple overlapping mandates, few issues are more important than the extent to which the government must recognize and accommodate the religious exercise of those it regulates," Hobby Lobby's attorneys wrote [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/supreme-court-hobby-lobby_n_4343794.html ] to the Supreme Court in October.
A June 2013 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, arguing that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies to corporate entities (via Citizens United [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/27/us/justices-take-companies-cases-challenging-contraception-rule.html ]), thereby shielding Hobby Lobby founder David Green from providing insurance plans that abide by Obamacare’s contraception provision.
The Democratic senators, all of whom voted in favor of the RFRA, contend that the 1993 law does not apply to for-profit companies, characterizing Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit as a “gross misapplication” of the law, according to the brief obtained by Yahoo [ http://news.yahoo.com/democratic-senators-to-file-amicus-brief-in-hobby-lobby-birth-control-case-025129006.html ].
Murray, who spearheaded the amicus brief, also plans to knock Republican colleagues, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, for their opposition to the mandate during Tuesday's announcement of the brief on the Senate floor, according to Yahoo.
“Allowing a woman’s boss to call the shots about her access to birth control should be inconceivable to all Americans in this day and age, and takes us back to a place in history when women had no voice or choice,” according to the prepared remarks provided to Yahoo that Murray has planned.
The other senators who signed the brief are: Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
The Supreme Court will hear the case on March 25, with a likely decision in June.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/hobby-lobby-birth-control-lawsuit_n_4680163.html [with comments]
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Dem senators intervene in Hobby Lobby case, urge justices to deny ObamaCare exemption
Published January 28, 2014
Democratic senators intervened Tuesday in the Supreme Court fight over whether ObamaCare can force the company Hobby Lobby to provide contraceptive coverage to workers, arguing that "secular" businesses should not be exempt from the mandate.
The 19 senators planned to file a brief before the court, which is still weeks away from considering the closely watched case. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who planned to make her case on the Senate floor, adamantly defended the Obama administration's side.
"What's at stake in this case before the Supreme Court is whether a CEO's personal beliefs can trump a woman's right to access free or low-cost contraception under the Affordable Care Act," she said in prepared remarks.
But Republican senators returned fire, jumping to Hobby Lobby's defense in a brief of their own.
"The ability to practice the faith we choose is one of our great constitutional rights. The Obama administration's contraceptive mandate stomps on that right," Sen. David Vitter said in a statement. He joined Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; John Cornyn, R-Texas; and Mike Lee, R-Utah in the brief.
The dueling arguments come as the Supreme Court prepares to consider the case. The justices said in November they would take up the issue, which has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits from for-profit companies asking to be spared from having to cover some or all forms of contraception.
The Obama administration promotes the law's provision of a range of preventive care, free of charge, as a key benefit of the health care overhaul. Contraception is included in the package of cost-free benefits, which opponents say is an attack on the religious freedom of employers.
The court will consider two cases. One involves Hobby Lobby Inc., an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees. Hobby Lobby won in the lower courts.
The other case is an appeal from Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., a Pennsylvania company that employs 950 people in making wood cabinets. Lower courts rejected the company's claims.
The court said the cases will be combined for arguments, probably in late March. A decision should come by late June.
The cases center on the provision of the law that requires most employers that offer health insurance to their workers to provide the range of preventive health benefits. In both instances, the Christian families that own the companies say that insuring some forms of contraception violates their religious beliefs.
The key issue is whether profit-making corporations may assert religious beliefs under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act or the First Amendment provision guaranteeing Americans the right to believe and worship as they choose.
The brief from Democratic senators on Tuesday argued that exempting for-profit businesses from the mandate would be "inconsistent" with that 1993 law.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
©2014 FOX News Network, LLC
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/28/dem-senators-intervene-in-hobby-lobby-case-urge-justices-to-deny-obamacare/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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The Missing Voices in the Contraception Mandate Cases
James Lawler Duggan/Reuters
American democracy has always left room for conscientious objectors. But two current cases are more like ordinances of secession.
Garrett Epps
Jan 30 2014, 8:00 AM ET
Lawyers should always listen to what judges say. Believing it, though, is often a mistake.
Take these words [ http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Litttle-Sisters-order-1-24-13.pdf ]: “This order should not be construed as an expression of the Court’s views on the merits.” It’s the last sentence of the Court’s order, issued Friday, in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius [ http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/13a691.htm ], a religious order's challenge to a portion of the Affordable Care Act dealing with contraception.
Formally, the words are true. The Court hasn’t voted on the issue, and technically may not ever end up hearing it. So thing for a lawyer to say is, “Thank you, Your Honor.”
The correct thing to think, however, echoes George Orwell: “There are ... about eighty ways in the English and American languages of expressing incredulity—for example, garn, come off it, you bet, sez you, oh yeah, not half, I don’t think, less of it or and the pudding! But I think and then you wake up is the exactly suitable answer.”
As Cornell Professor Michael Dorf explains [ http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2014/01/rfra-v-bueaucracy-scotus-order-in.html ], the Court’s grant of a stay to Little Sisters “suggests that, at least at this stage of the litigation, the plaintiffs have made out a colorable claim.” The nature of that claim offers a glimpse of some toxic ideas floating around in American law.
What do the nuns object to? As Lyle Deniston of SCOTUSblog explains [ http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/01/partial-win-for-little-sisters/ ], they object to the simple act of asking for a religious exemption to providing their lay employees with insurance coverage for contraceptive services. “The Little Sisters told the Supreme Court that even filing that form would make them a part of the scheme, and thus draw them into support for abortions or abortion-related services,” Deniston writes.
The Little Sisters object to filling out the form even though they are a “church plan.” This means, as the government noted in its brief [ http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/13a691-little-sisters-injunction-opp.pdf ], their employees won’t get contraceptive care no matter what form they fill out. The third party running their health plan will be “under no legal obligation to provide the coverage after applicants certify that they object to providing it.”
In other words, the Little Sisters want to be exempt from even telling the government that they are exempt from a plan that, in any case, would not require them to do anything they object to doing. Couple that with the pending claim by Hobby Lobby Stores that a for-profit corporation has a “free exercise” right to block its employees from being compensated for contraceptive methods their employers object to. Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. [ http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/sebelius-v-hobby-lobby-stores-inc/ ], which will be argued on March 25, was brought by corporations owning two retail chains. The stock is held by a conservative Christian family, the Greens, who believe that destroying a fertilized egg is the equivalent of killing a living person. The corporations demand exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employee health insurance policies cover a full range of contraceptive options. The corporations are for-profit businesses that employee 13,000 people. They are being regulated as part of a general regulation of commerce. But their owners don’t want to take part. Who is mere government to ask them to do so?
Taken together, these two cases aren’t claims for religious exemption. They are more like an ordinance of secession—a statement that religious bodies, and people, and even commercial businesses, no longer belong to society if they decide they’d rather not. The idea depends on an assumption that government itself is sinful, and presumptively illegitimate. If courts follow this notion, they risk making it impossible to have an effective government at all. And ineffective or weak government, as Peter Shane explained [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/the-myth-of-the-anti-government-constitution/283005/ ] here a few weeks ago, was no part of the Founders’ vision for America.
Nor is there any warrant in our history for blanket religious exemptions from social norms. Consider conscientious objection. When the people’s representatives decide the nation is in danger, citizens may be asked give up their liberty and, if necessary, their lives to defend it. But in the United States, at least since World War I, religious people who object to war have been permitted to refuse to bear arms in their country’s defense.
What they get, though, is not immunity. Instead, they have been required to certify their religious objection and, if necessary, prove that it is sincere. Then they have been required to perform alternate service—working in a hospital, for example, or in a national park—to aid the nation’s survival in ways that do not involve personally killing. It is a compromise between conscience and the collective.
By analogy to the Little Sisters claim, however, truly devout conscientious objectors wouldn't be required to perform any service—since, of course, any service would contribute to the country that's at war. In fact, they would refuse to request an exemption; even filling out the form would make them complicit.
The assumption seems to be that religion releases you from any obligation of any kind to the state. And that’s apparently even true if you are a giant for-profit corporation.
I do not question that the nuns, and the Green family, are sincere. But why are they the only ones whose interest matter? These cases involve the government and the employees covered by the Act. Their interests should count, too.
In the case of the Little Sisters, government has a clear interest in keeping track of which organizations claim exemptions and making sure those claims are genuine. What judge, until recently, would have thought that interest illegitimate?
In Hobby Lobby in particular, the government has a powerful interest in making sure that its comprehensive insurance scheme provides uniform opportunities to all employees in commerce. That interest can sometimes overcome even the most sincere religious objection. In 1964, many people had sincere religious beliefs that African Americans and whites should not mix in restaurants, stores, and hotels—that this violated the words of Acts 17:26 [ http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+17:26&version=RSV ] that God had fixed boundaries for the nations of man and expected them to remain within them. (There are sincere believers of this idea even today within the so-called “British Israel” and “Christian Identity” sects.)
The Civil Rights Act did not demand that these people change their beliefs. It did not demand that they desegregate their churches, or open their homes. But it did embody a judgment by society that, in order to engage in business, they had open their businesses to all.
The same kind of governmental interest is present in the contraceptive-mandate cases: If you want to engage in interstate commerce, cover your employees. The peoples’ representatives have determined that both public health and the economy will function better if you do.
And that brings in the employees’ interests: first, in making their own health choices from a full range of options; second, in earning full benefits for their work, whether they are men or women; and finally—this one seems to be mentioned by almost no one—in their own religious liberty. For most of us, choices about contraception arise from our own consciences. In a free country, the boss doesn’t collect the employees’ beliefs at the workplace door.
The Tenth Circuit opinion upholding Hobby Lobby’s supposed right to an exemption is a remarkable document. It does not say that the Greens’ beliefs outweigh those of government and employees. It simply pretends that only the Greens have any interests at all. As Chief Judge Mary Briscoe points out in her dissent, the Tenth Circuit’s opinion “does not mention the public interest that the government had relied on at the preliminary-injunction hearing: the health reasons for promoting employee access to emergency contraceptives.” (Briscoe is the only woman on the Court. The plurality of male judges did not balance women’s health away—they just forgot it was an issue.)
How can it be that in a case concerning health-care, health interests somehow don’t matter? Whether among married or unmarried women, planned pregnancies produce better outcomes, both for mother and child and for the families involved. In other words, mothers raising children are healthier if they can space their pregnancies—and are less likely to have premature or low-birth-weight babies. Some women have chronic medical conditions and should never become pregnant; others need to manage their own health in order to prepare for pregnancy. And some contraceptive methods have important health benefits that don’t relate to contraception at all.
To effectively make their health choices, women need not only “some” contraception, or only those methods that lay employers approve; they need access to the full spectrum of medically safe methods. The public’s interest in their freedom to make those choices is huge. “There's a reason why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed family planning as one of the 10 great public health achievements [ http://www.cdc.gov/about/history/tengpha.htm ] of the 20th century,” Adam Sonfield, a senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute [ http://www.guttmacher.org/about/index.html ], said in an interview.
And beyond the health question, for heaven’s sake, think for a moment about “liberty”: A country where employees have both jobs and religious freedom will be freer than one where they must choose between the two.
Copyright © 2014 by The Atlantic Monthly Group (emphasis in original)
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/the-missing-voices-in-the-contraception-mandate-cases/283452/ [with comments]
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Contraception, Abortion Issues Arise In Close North Carolina Senate Race
By Samantha Lachman
Posted: 02/03/2014 2:45 pm EST | Updated: 02/03/2014 2:59 pm EST
All five Republican candidates vying to unseat Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) believe that states have the authority to ban contraceptives and would support a fetal "personhood" amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the News and Observer reported Monday [ http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/31/3581067/abortion-question-divides-north.html ].
At a Republican candidate forum last month and in interviews with the News and Observer, the candidates clarified where they stand on issues such as abortion, banning contraceptives and the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate.
The Republican candidates all favor a “personhood” constitutional amendment that would grant legal protections to a fertilized human egg. According to experts, such an amendment could also ban some forms of birth control [ http://www.acog.org/About_ACOG/News_Room/News_Releases/2012/Personhood_Measures ].
Three of the leading contenders -- North Carolina's House speaker, Thom Tillis, obstetrician Greg Brannon and Rev. Mark Harris -- said they believe abortion should be illegal except to save the life of the mother (Brannon and Harris) or in those cases, plus in cases of rape and incest (Tillis).
Hagan, who supports abortion rights, could capitalize on the stances of her opponents as the Republican field heats up [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/03/north-carolina-senate_n_4538188.html ] before the May 6 primary.
“Kay has always trusted women to make their own healthcare decisions in consultation with their doctors, but the Republican primary candidates in this race have taken their anti-woman positions to a new level by supporting a ‘personhood’ amendment to the Constitution and declaring that states have the authority to ban contraception,” Hagan Communications Director Sadie Weiner said in a statement. “These candidates must want to distinguish their primary field as the most fringe in the nation if they believe that states have the authority to ban a safe, approved medication prescribed to countless North Carolina women. This type of anti-woman platform is dangerous for North Carolina.”
EMILY’s List, a political action committee that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, is one of Hagan's top contributors. The senator recently announced [ http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/21/3551507/morning-memo-hagan-posts-another.html ] a strong fundraising haul in the last three months of 2013, bringing in over $2 million to her campaign.
Tillis supported a bill, famously attached to another concerning motorcycle safety [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/north-carolina-abortion_n_3575566.html ], that placed restrictions on abortion providers last year. The restrictions on abortion were unpopular with the state's residents [ http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_NC_071613.pdf ]; a poll conducted last July by the liberal leaning Public Policy Polling found that just 34 percent of voters supported the bill.
“I am pro-life, I believe all life is sacred, and I am proud that we have made real progress on this issue since I am speaker,” Tillis told the News and Observer. “The country is moving in our direction on this issue.”
The crowded Republican primary is forcing each candidate to prove their right-wing credentials. At a separate forum last month, Brannon and Army veteran Heather Grant suggested President Barack Obama could be impeached [ http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/30/3575623/tillis-wont-attend-another-nc.html ].
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/03/abortion-north-carolina-senate_n_4718164.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Abortions Declining in U.S., Study Finds
By ERIK ECKHOLM
FEB. 2, 2014
The abortion [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/surgery/abortion/overview.html ] rate among American women declined to its lowest level in more than three decades in 2011, according to a new report [ http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/psrh.46e0414.pdf ] released Monday that is widely considered the country’s most definitive examination of abortion trends.
The 1.1 million abortions reported in 2011 represented a rate of 16.9 per thousand women of childbearing age, down from 2008, when a similar study estimated that 1.21 million abortions were performed at a rate of 19.4 per thousand women.
Resuming a long-term downward trend that stalled in the middle of the last decade [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11abortion.html ], the 2011 rate was far below the peak, in 1981, of 29.3 per thousand, according to the report from the Guttmacher Institute [ http://www.guttmacher.org/ ], a private research group that supports abortion rights.
The decline in abortions from 2008 to 2011 was mirrored by a decline in pregnancy rates [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/health/research/pregnancy-rates-sank-over-last-20-years.html ]. The report did not include a detailed analysis of the reasons for these trends, which pose complicated research issues.
But the decline in abortions, the researchers said, appears in part to reflect the growing use, especially among younger women, of nearly foolproof long-term contraceptives like intrauterine devices. It may also reflect the impact of the recession and economic uncertainty, which can lead to fewer pregnancies, births and abortions, according to the authors, Rachel K. Jones and Jenna Jerman.
The authors concluded that anti-abortion laws had only a minimal impact on the number of women obtaining abortions during the study period. For one thing, many of the state laws most likely to curb abortions were passed in 2011 or later. In addition, the report notes, large declines were recorded in states with relatively liberal abortion laws, like California, New Jersey and New York.
But they added: “Some of the new regulations undoubtedly made it more difficult, and costly, for facilities to continue to provide services and for women to access them.” The researchers said that future studies would need to monitor the effects of laws that restrict abortions.
Responding to an advance copy of the report, Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group, called it “long on strained conclusions” and said it understated the impact of anti-abortion education and laws.
Carole Joffe [ http://bixbycenter.ucsf.edu/fs/bios/joffe-carole.html ], a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a historian of abortion, said that while the effects were difficult to quantify, the anti-abortion movement had “been very successful at stigmatizing abortion” and that this had most likely influenced the long-term downward trend.
But Dr. Joffe agreed with the report that the wider use of contraceptives — IUDs that can prevent pregnancy [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/pregnancy/index.html ] for up to 10 years and injectable hormonal drugs that do so for months — appears to be an important factor in the reported recent decline.
These long-term, more reliable methods can have high upfront costs, Dr. Joffe noted. The cost may be a factor in the significantly higher rates of abortion among black and Hispanic women and the poor compared with white women, she said, and also points up the importance of providing health insurance [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/index.html ] that covers contraception [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/birth-control-and-family-planning/overview.html ] to low-income women.
To conduct the study, which will be published in the March issue of Perspective on Sexual and Reproductive Health, the Guttmacher Institute contacted every known clinic, hospital and independent physician performing abortions with questionnaires and follow-up calls.
The data are more comprehensive than those collected by the federal government, which receives incomplete reports from some state governments and none from California. But it might still be an undercount, the researchers said, to the extent that they did not learn about private doctors who quietly offer nonsurgical medication abortions.
One striking development revealed in the survey is the rising use of medication abortions, normally within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. In 2011, medication abortions accounted for 23 percent of abortions reported by clinics and private doctors. Several states have recently acted to limit access to such abortions.
© 2014 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/us/abortions-declining-in-us-study-finds.html
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U.S. Abortion Rate Hits Lowest Point Since 1973
By Laura Bassett
Posted: 02/02/2014 7:13 pm EST | Updated: 02/03/2014 11:59 am EST
The U.S. abortion rate dropped significantly from 2008 to 2011 and hit its lowest point since 1973 (the year Roe v. Wade was decided), according to a new report [ http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/psrh.46e0414.pdf ] by the Guttmacher Institute. The big drop occurred just prior to an unprecedented wave of state anti-abortion restrictions going into effect.
The rate declined to 16.9 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age in 2011, a 13 percent drop from 2008. The rate had peaked in 1981 at 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women -- roughly twice the 2011 rate -- and plateaued at about 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women from 2005 to 2008.
Researchers found no evidence that the drop in abortions was related to new legal restrictions on the procedure. The total number of abortion clinics declined only 1 percent between 2008 and 2011, and the number of providers dropped by 4 percent. Rachel Jones, lead author of the study, said the decline had more to do with an increase in contraceptive use.
"The decline in abortions coincided with a steep national drop in overall pregnancy and birth rates," she said. "Contraceptive use improved during this period, as more women and couples were using highly effective, long-acting reversible contraceptive methods, such as the IUD. Moreover, the recent recession led many women and couples to want to avoid or delay pregnancy and childbearing.”
According to the latest Guttmacher data [ http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html ], more than half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended, and about 40 percent of unintended pregnancies end in abortion. About three-fourths of women who have abortions say they can't afford a child; three-fourths say having a child would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for other dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.
While the overall abortion rate was declining, the Guttmacher study found that the percentage of medication-induced abortions was increasing relative to surgical abortions among women in their first trimester of pregnancy. Nearly a quarter of nonhospital abortions were early medication procedures in 2011 -- a 6 percent increase from 2008.
“Clearly, the availability of medication abortion does not lead women to have more abortions,” said Jones. “However, it has likely helped women obtain abortion care earlier in pregnancy, as evidenced by a shift toward very early abortions.”
Medication abortions are typically prescribed by a health care provider in two doses, the second of which can be taken at home. They are extremely safe and can work up to nine weeks into a pregnancy. But state legislatures have been passing legislation to restrict medication abortions [ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/09/oklahoma_and_mifiprex_supreme_court_considers_law_about_fda_approved_medical.html ] since 2011.
State legislatures enacted a record number of anti-abortion laws [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/2011-the-year-of-the-abortion-restrictions/2011/12/29/gIQAbJqjOP_blog.html ] in 2011, including mandatory waiting periods, mandatory ultrasound laws, strict new building requirements for clinics, gestational limits on abortion and requirements that abortion providers have admitting privileges at local hospitals. The study notes that most of these restrictions were passed in the second half of 2011, and because there is typically a lag between a law's passage and its implementation, they would not have affected the 2011 abortion rate.
The Guttmacher study concluded that further research is needed to determine what effect the new laws will have on the abortion rate and access to services.
"Although we found no evidence that new abortion restrictions affected abortion incidence or services at the national level during the study period, this does not mean these laws are not problematic," the study authors wrote. "Some of the new regulations undoubtedly made it more difficult, and costly, for facilities to continue to provide services and for women to access them."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/02/abortion-rate-_n_4704986.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Sam Brownback Compares Anti-Abortion Protests To The Slavery-Ending Abolitionist Movement
Sam Brownback, governor of Kansas, speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview inside the Bloomberg Link during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, U.S., on Tuesday Aug. 28, 2012.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
By JOHN HANNA
01/15/14 10:55 PM ET EST
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback compared past "Summer of Mercy" anti-abortion protests in Wichita to the abolitionist movement that helped end slavery in a major speech Wednesday night.
The Republican governor, who opposes abortion, included the reference to the 1991 and 2001 protests outside the clinic of Dr. George Tiller — the late-term abortion provider who was gunned down in 2009 — in his State of the State address.
Brownback said that in the past, Kansas has been called "to blaze the trail for America out of the wilderness" on moral issues. He also said Kansas "marked the bloody trail out of slavery" when the nation was undecided on the issue.
"The chains of bondage of our brothers rubbed our skin and our hearts raw until we could stand it no more and erupted into 'Bleeding Kansas,'" Brownback said. "The Summer of Mercy sprung forth in Kansas as we could no longer tolerate the death of innocent children."
The address is often a governor's biggest speech of the year in which he or she lays out a legislative agenda. Wednesday's address was broadcast live statewide on public television and radio.
The first "Summer of Mercy" demonstrations in 1991 brought thousands of anti-abortion protesters to Wichita, putting national attention on Tiller, who was among a handful of U.S. physicians performing abortions in the final weeks of pregnancies. The 2001 anniversary demonstrations were smaller.
Tiller was shot to death in the foyer of his church in 2009 by Scott Roeder, who professed strong anti-abortion views. Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to serve a minimum of 50 years in prison. His appeal will be heard by the Kansas Supreme Court later this month.
Peter Brownlie, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said called Brownback's remarks "insensitive" and said the 1991 protests started a cycle of violent anti-abortion rhetoric that led to Tiller's death.
"That event brought thousands of extremists into Kansas from around the country," Brownlie said.
But Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy director for Operation Rescue, which organized the protests, was pleased by the reference. She said they inspired people to enter politics or take other steps, such as opening crisis pregnancy centers.
She said if Brownback had failed to mention abortion Wednesday, it would have been "kind of a slap."
Online:
Brownback's State of the State address
https://governor.ks.gov/media-room/media-releases/2014/01/16/2014-state-of-the-state-of-kansas ( http://1.usa.gov/1d9aDGX )
© 2014 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/sam-brownback-abortion_n_4606791.html [with comments]
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Scott DesJarlais, Embattled Republican, Reports Dismal Campaign Fundraising
U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), announces he will run for a third term in Winchester, Tenn., on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013. DesJarlais said "mistakes" he made before running for Congress should have no bearing on his ability to represent Tennessee's 4th Congressional District.
(AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 02/03/2014 1:11 pm EST | Updated: 02/03/2014 1:59 pm EST
Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), the anti-abortion doctor who became an embarrassment to his party in 2012 following revelations [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/scott-desjarlais-abortion-pro-life_n_1953136.html ] that he had urged a mistress to get an abortion, reported dismal campaign fundraising numbers over the weekend.
DesJarlais is facing a primary challenge from state Sen. Jim Tracy. But he raised less money than he spent in the final quarter of 2013, bringing in just $17,580 against $33,156 worth of spending, according to his Federal Election Commission filing [ http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/664/14940275664/14940275664.pdf ].
With the primary election coming just six months from now, DesJarlais' campaign nearly has been in hibernation for the last three months. His filing lists no staffers, and an accountant and a party planner account for two-thirds of his expenditures. He had just $154,000 in the bank.
Tracy raised [ http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/100/14940278100/14940278100.pdf ] more than $151,000 in the quarter and had nearly $850,000 in the bank.
When DesJarlais appeared to be at risk of losing to a pro-life Democrat in the 2012 election, many Republicans stood by him, in spite of the revelations that he had sex with a patient and urged her to abort a possible pregnancy. DesJarlais has since been sanctioned by the state medical board, and now that there's less of a Democratic threat to take the seat, Republicans finally have abandoned him in favor of Tracy [ http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/194622-tn-gop-leaders-back-desjarlais-challenger ].
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/03/scott-desjarlais-fundraising_n_4717889.html [with comments]
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Fox News Gets Four Men To Debate The War On Women
01/28/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/fox-news-war-on-women_n_4679405.html [with comments]
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Four things I've learned from conservatives about successful liberal women
attribution: REUTERS
by Susan Gardner
Mon Jan 27, 2014 at 01:12 PM PST
1. If you're a woman married to a successful politician, and you are a successful politician, you only got there because of your man. Duh [ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/17/1270472/-Bill-Kristol-mansplains-why-Hillary-Clinton-not-running-for-president-would-be-inspiring-to-women ]. Even if you were considered a rising political star [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton#cite_ref-57 ] before you married him. [Note: This doesn't apply to Elizabeth Dole. OBVIOUSLY.]
2. If you've ever been a single mom and broke, scared and working several jobs to get through school, that part of your past doesn't count in your life story if you marry a supportive nice guy [ http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/23/fox-wendy-davis-and-her-stilettos-are-more-scan/197716 ] later. As Disney has taught us, princes wipe the slate clean.
3. If a man leaves his wife in charge of the kids while he advances his career—basically every family man who's ever been deployed in the military—he's a hero. If a woman does it, she's a criminally horrible mom [ http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/national-interest/item/64211 ].
4. If you're single woman and successful in high political circles, you're probably a lesbian [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/geraldo-rivera-janet-napolitano-lesbian-rumors_n_1836793.html ]. If you're not, you're a slut [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/sexist-attacks-wendy-davis_n_4673495.html ].
© Kos Media, LLC
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/27/1272888/-Four-things-I-ve-learned-from-conservatives-about-successful-liberal-nbspwomen [with comments]
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Ryan Zinke, GOP House Candidate, Calls Hillary Clinton The 'Anti-Christ'
Republican Ryan Zinke is running for Congress in Montana.
01/31/2014
WASHINGTON -- Ryan Zinke, a former Navy SEAL and state senator who is now running for Congress in Montana, said during a campaign stop this week that he is worried the country is losing sight of the real threat to the nation: Hillary Clinton.
“We need to focus on the real enemy [ http://www.flatheadnewsgroup.com/bigforkeagle/article_14a08878-89e0-11e3-8e50-001a4bcf887a.html ],” said Zinke on Monday, referring to Clinton, according to the Bigfork Eagle. He also called the former Secretary of State the "anti-Christ."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/ryan-zinke_n_4702765.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Wendy Davis' Daughters: No, We're Not Upset Our Mom Went To Harvard Law
By Samantha Lachman
Posted: 01/28/2014 3:49 pm EST | Updated: 01/29/2014 11:59 am EST
Texas state Senator Wendy Davis' (D) daughters, Amber and Dru Davis, are defending their mother's parenting amid attacks from conservatives that Davis 'abandoned' her children to pursue higher education. Davis' gubernatorial campaign issued a press release Tuesday that contained the daughters' response in an open letter [ https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B28vK5rggYPwOG9GNFkzRU8xMTVCdmpUVXdWeXl1VWptME5J/view?sle=true ].
After a Dallas Morning News [ http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20140118-as-wendy-davis-touts-life-story-in-race-for-governor-key-facts-blurred.ece ] article called into question certain aspects of Davis' history as described on the campaign trail, such as when she was divorced (officially at 21, and not at 19) and for exactly how long she and her family lived in a mobile home, those opposed to Davis' candidacy began picking apart her background [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/wendy-davis-sexism_n_4638465.html ].
Erick Erickson, a Fox News pundit and founder of RedState.com, tweeted "Abortion Barbie had a Sugar Daddy Ken," referencing the fact that Davis' second husband helped pay for a portion of her law degree. Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol Palin [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/wendy-davis-bristol-palin_n_4677070.html ] criticized Davis last week for attending Harvard Law School in the early 1990s while her daughters stayed with her second husband in Texas.
"She left her kid, husband, made it into a false 'made-for-TV-movie-type-tale' and then demanded that Texans have the right to kill babies," Palin wrote. "That’s the woman you libs can really get behind!"
Amidst all the noise, Davis' daughters' attempted to set the record straight about their mother's history as a wife and parent.
Dru Davis called the attacks against her mother "malicious," and a "false charge of abandonment:"
Yes, she went to law school after my sister and I were born. We lived with her the first semester, but I had severe asthma and the weather there wasn't good for me. My parents made a decision for my sister and me to stay in Texas while my mom kept going to school. But that doesn't mean she wasn't there for us. She traveled back and forth all the time, missing so many classes so that she could be with us. Her friends were such a big help. Especially her third year, when she would only go to school two weeks out of the month and her friends would share class notes so she could try to keep up while she was home with us in Fort Worth. I love that my mom went to law school and was dedicated to both her work and us. Watching her work so hard to achieve something great has been one of the most important lessons in my life.
Amber Davis added to the family's narrative about Davis' time at Harvard Law School, and called the comments about her mother "ludicrous:" "Yes, we lived in a trailer. Does it matter how long?"
Dru and I lived with her the first semester but our parents soon realized that it would be better if we stayed in our childhood home in Texas, be around extended family and attend our regular schools. This was a decision made by both parents. I have recently heard the phrase "abandoned" quite often in the past week. That our mother "left us to be raised by our father" while she went on to pursue her education. Not only is this ridiculously unfair; it's completely untrue. Dru and I have always been her number one priority. Always. And every decision our parents made was with our best interests at heart. We had an amazing support system while she was at Harvard and she was constantly traveling back and forth from school to be with us. I’m proud that my parents were able to make this arrangement work. People should be less concerned about who paid for what and pay more attention to the fact that she was accepted to Harvard law school, a dream she believed was unachievable.
Becky Haskins, a Republican who served with Davis on the Fort Worth City Council, has also come to the gubernatorial candidate's defense and deemed the attacks sexist [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/wendy-davis-attack_n_4645187.html ].
"If this involved a man running for office, none of this would ever come up," Haskins told the Star-Telegram. "It’s so sad. Every time I ran, somebody said I needed to be home with my kids. Nobody ever talks about men being responsible parents."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/wendy-davis-daughters_n_4682150.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Anti-Choice Groups Launch National Boycott Of Girl Scout Cookies For ‘Endorsing’ Wendy Davis
CREDIT: Girl Scouts USA
By Tara Culp-Ressler
January 30, 2014 at 10:09 am
Toward the end of December, Girl Scout USA’s official Twitter account tweeted [ https://twitter.com/girlscouts/statuses/413413863988539392 ] out a Huffington Post story about the inspiring individuals who should be considered to be 2013's “women of the year [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/17/women-of-the-year-2013_n_4461327.html ].” The article included figures like Beyonce, Malala Yousafzai, and Wendy Davis — and the organization asked its followers who else should be added to the list of “incredible ladies.” That was enough for anti-choice activists to call for a national boycott [ http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/29/Wendy-Davis-Triggers-National-Boycott-of-Girl-Scout-Cookies ] of the organization’s popular cookies, claiming the Girl Scouts have endorsed [ http://cookiecott.com/ ] “pro-abortion politician Wendy Davis.”
“We’re asking you to boycott Girl Scout cookies in 2014,” reads a new site [id.] dedicated to the boycott, explaining that Davis should not be lifted up as a “worthy role model for our children.” The same accusation is being leveled against the group in regard to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was included in a different news article [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/12/30/seven-american-women-who-made-a-difference-in-2013/ ] about influential U.S. women that the Girl Scouts shared on its Facebook page [ https://www.facebook.com/GirlScoutsUSA/posts/10153703245700393 ].
The controversy has been building for several weeks. At the beginning of this month, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly hosted a panel discussion [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI9abWQcRFY (next below)]
Davis, who is currently running for governor [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2014/01/21/3184391/sexist-wendy-davis-attacks/ ] in Texas, rose to prominence over the summer when she filibustered [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/06/26/2216191/texas-sb-5-defeated/ ] a package of stringent abortion restrictions. That move transformed the state senator into the public face of a large grassroots movement in Texas fighting back against attacks on reproductive rights. Since then, Davis has become somewhat of a symbol for the anti-choice community, which sometimes refers to her as an “Abortion Barbie [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08/06/2422981/wendy-davis-abortion-barbie/ ]” and suggests that she stands with illegal abortion provider and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/07/08/2267251/no-wendy-davis-doesnt-stand-with-gosnell/ ].
The Girl Scouts’ supposed endorsement of the Democratic lawmaker is hardly the first time that the organization has landed in hot water with conservative groups. The national organization has been harshly criticized [ http://cookiecott.com/concerns/ ] for its ties with Planned Parenthood over the past several years, and some anti-choice activists suggest that Girls Scouts USA actively promotes a “radical feminist agenda [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/21/girl-scouts-and-abortion-pro-life-groups-target-gsusa.html ].” Last year, one right-wing preacher and radio host suggested that the organization is a “wicked” group that is an agent of lesbianism [ http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/pastor-blasts-wicked-girl-scouts-agent-lesbianism-abortion-article-1.1493120 ].
In reality, Girl Scouts USA takes no official position [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/robert-mccartney-dont-fall-for-smears-against-the-girl-scouts/2012/01/27/gIQAEJtMYQ_story.html ] on either abortion or birth control. Organization officials repeatedly emphasize [ http://www.snopes.com/politics/sexuality/girlscouts.asp ] that these are topics best discussed between girls and their parents.
“CookieCott 2014? is encouraging supporters to share a flier [ http://cookiecott.com/wp-content/uploads/CookieCott2014Flier.pdf ] to spread the word about the “pro-life concerns” with the national organization.
© 2014 Center for American Progress Action Fund
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/30/3225571/anti-choice-boycott-girl-scouts/ [with comments]
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Conservative groups call for national boycott of Girl Scout cookies
The organization tweeted a link about Wendy Davis, and now all Thin Mints must be thrown into the sea
Jan 30, 2014
[...]
The boycott website [ http://cookiecott.com/wp-content/uploads/CookieCott2014Flier.pdf ] also warns that the organization’s curriculum for girls celebrates “pro-abortion role models” like Hillary Clinton.
[...]
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/30/conservative_groups_call_for_national_boycott_of_girl_scout_cookies/ [with comments]
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Baseless Christian-Right Attacks on the Girl Scouts (Yes, the Girl Scouts) Go Big Time
Adorable Girl Scouts selling cookies - or abortions?
Jan. 31 2014
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/01/31/girl_scout_cookie_boycott_does_this_mean_more_thin_mints_for_us.html [with comments]
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Girl Scouts’ cookie money stolen outside Phoenix store
Feb 1, 2014
http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/20140201phoenix-girl-scout-cookie-money-stolen-at-grocery-store-brk.html [with comments]
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Millions more asked to 'just say no' to Girl Scout cookies
Buying 'serves only to facilitate a very liberal pro-abortion agenda'
February 3, 2014
An organization with millions of supporters that focuses on family and biblical values has joined the boycott of Girl Scout cookies.
In a statement on its website [ http://afa.net/Detail.aspx?id=2147542941 ], the American Family Association [ http://www.afa.net/ ] said, “It’s hard to say no to those little girls in the green and brown sashes, but buying Girl Scout cookies serves only to further facilitate a very liberal pro-abortion agenda.”
WND reported [ http://wnd.com/?p=625443 ] the American Life League [ http://www.all.org/ ], the nation’s oldest Catholic pro-life education and advocacy group, recently warned people away from purchasing Girl Scout cookies.
“The Girl Scouts was once a trusted organization dedicated to character building in young girls and women. Now, GSUSA is abusing that trust,” said Judie Brown, president of ALL. “Most parents and grandparents remain painfully unaware the GSUSA has introduced so-called ‘family planning’ ideology in its curriculum and promotes groups like Planned Parenthood to our daughters and granddaughters.”
The American Family Association, with its several million constituents, said that as Girl Scouts USA begins its annual cookie sale, it is asking people “to consider what the organization supports with all that dough.”
AFA has built a reputation for mobilizing constituents to act on its boycotts, and has special divisions called OneMillionMoms.com and others that specifically work to influence corporate America.
[...]
http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/millions-more-asked-to-just-say-no-to-girl-scout-cookies/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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In the Spirit: Pro-Life Wisconsin takes aim at Girl Scout cookies
Towering cases of Girl Scout cookies are organized at the Badgerland Girl Scout office in Madison by Terri Graffin, left, and Emily Loew, in this 2012 file photo.
February 3, 2014
Not everyone is loving those thin mints.
Pro-Life Wisconsin is asking its members to reconsider purchasing Girl Scout cookies, saying the organization is too closely linked to the abortion rights movement.
In an email to supporters Monday, Pro-Life Wisconsin said that "while some local troops' activities may be wholesome, sadly, Girl Scouts USA promotes radically, anti-life women, such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, as role models, regularly partners with pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood for 'educational' activities, and encourages girls to fight for abortion on demand."
The annual six-week period of Girl Scout cookie sales kicks off this Saturday.
Pro-Life Wisconsin told its supporters that "approximately 15 percent of each box sold goes to the troop. The rest goes to the regional and national organizations of Girl Scouts USA."
That's not true, said Christy Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the Badgerland Council, a regional body that provides Girl Scouting in south-central and southwest Wisconsin. No portion of cookie proceeds goes to the national Girl Scouts organization, she said.
[...]
For those who want to read more, here's a story [ http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/29/National-Pro-Life-Groups-Join-Girl-Scout-Boycott ] Pro-Life Wisconsin is sharing with its supporters, and here's a response [ http://blog.girlscouts.org/2014/01/get-facts-about-girl-scout-cookies.html ] from Girl Scouts of the USA.
[...]
http://host.madison.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/religion/in-the-spirit-pro-life-wisconsin-takes-aim-at-girl/article_289e265f-82d0-510e-b37c-f3a6efb22e95.html [with comments]
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TEMECULA: Authorities say shotgun pointed at 7-year-old Girl Scout
John M. Dodrill
BY AARON CLAVERIE | STAFF WRITER | February 03, 2014; 07:11 PM
Police seized numerous weapons from the home of the 59-year-old Temecula man who was arrested after allegedly pointing a shotgun at a 7-year-old Girl Scout selling cookies door-to-door, said Temecula Police Sgt. Daniel Decker.
After the girl’s father [who witnessed the incident, see http://www.riversidesheriff.org/press/sws14-0202.asp ] called the police, the suspect, John Michael Dodrill, was arrested around 1 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 2, on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and booked into the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley with bail set at $25,000. He was still listed as being in custody Monday evening.
If Dodrill, posts bail, he may eventually be allowed to recover the weapons -- a mix of handguns and long guns -- but that won’t happen prior to the completion of the department’s investigation, Decker said.
The department was expected to forward the case to the District Attorney’s office for review Monday. If the office decides to file charges, Dodrill could be arraigned sometime this week.
The girl reportedly encountered the suspect while walking door-to-door in the 31000 block of Strawberry Tree Lane in the Temecula Lane condominium complex, a gated community near the Pechanga Resort & Casino in southern Temecula.
People who live in on and near Strawberry Tree Lane said they were shocked to hear the incident happened on their street, which is normally chock full of children playing and hanging out.
Jua-Nita Houston, spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council, said the youngster was shaken up by the incident but she plans to continue selling cookies.
“She set very strong goals for herself and she’s going to meet those goals,” she said.
Although it may seem quaint to see Girl Scouts walking door-to-door, Houston said about 90 percent of scouts still go on “walkabouts” in addition to more modern sales approaches such as social media pitches and setting up tables at shopping centers.
In the 90-year history of the Girl Scouts in the area, Houston said there has not been a similar case of a scout threatened while walking door-to-door.
After reading of the little girl’s rude encounter, some area residents have tried to seek her out in order to buy up her cookies.
Houston said any donations for her will be accepted at the Southwest Riverside County office, 26855 Jefferson Ave., Suite B, in Murrieta.
“We love that the public is so willing to step up and help one of our scouts,” she said.” It gives us great pride to know we operate in such an awesome community.”
©2014, Enterprise Media
http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/temecula/temecula-headlines-index/20140203-temecula-authorities-say-shotgun-pointed-at-7-year-old-girl-scout.ece [the YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yLXinzyXCA (with comments); no comments yet]
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HPV Vaccine Beliefs Don’t Lead To Risky Sexual Behavior In Teens, Dispelling Prevention Controversy
Teen girls and young women who receive the HPV vaccine aren't more likely to initiate risky sexual behavior or believe safe sex is unnecessary.
Feb 3, 2014
Despite many parents’ fear that acknowledging their daughters’ sexuality may cause her to make riskier decisions when it comes to sex, a new study [ http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/01/28/peds.2013-2822.abstract ] suggests that one concession in particular — getting young teen girls vaccinated for HPV (human papillomavirus) — produces far safer outcomes than ignoring it.
A common misconception in parenting is that exposing children to a specific subject necessarily makes that thing more desirable, especially if parents forbid it. Sex is one of those things. Yet despite the fact HPV is far and away the leading cause of cervical cancer worldwide, and that nearly all sexually active adults will contract the virus at some point in their lives, many parents refuse to get their children vaccinated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/vaccine.html ], all boys and girls aged 11 or 12 should receive the vaccine.
Researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center now show that such parent fear may be baseless, as a survey of more than 300 girls and women, both sexually experienced and not, showed that vaccination did not result in greater sexual risk-taking two and six months after vaccination. Girls and women aged 13 to 21 didn’t begin having more sex or more unsafe sex, nor did they think protection was less important after getting the vaccine. ...
[...]
http://www.medicaldaily.com/hpv-vaccine-beliefs-dont-lead-risky-sexual-behavior-teens-dispelling-prevention-controversy-268429 [no comments yet]
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Former Nevada Lt. Gov. Leaves Republican Party: It's Too 'Tea-Party Orientated'
01/30/2014
Former Nevada Lieutenant Gov. Sue Wagner told the Reno Gazette-Journal [ http://blogs.rgj.com/politics/2014/01/28/washoe-gop-chairman-resigns-while-former-lt-gov-wagner-leaves-republican-party/ ] that she has left the Republican Party because she thinks hardline conservatives have pushed the party too far to the right.
[...]
"I did it as a symbol, I guess, that I do not like the Republican Party and what they stand for today," Wagner told the paper. "I've been a Republican all my life. My dad was active [in the GOP] in the state of Maine where I was born. It was more of a moderate, liberal Republican Party."
In 1991, Wagner became the first woman in Nevada's history [ http://nsla.nevadaculture.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2081:lt-gov-sue-wagner-biography&catid=134&Itemid=418 ] to be elected lieutenant governor.
A Gallup poll [ http://www.businessinsider.com/fewer-people-identify-as-republicans-now-than-at-any-point-in-the-past-25-years-2014-1 ] released earlier this month found that the proportion of Americans who identify as Republicans has fallen to 25 percent, down from a high of 34 percent in 2004.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/sue-wagner-republican-party_n_4688509.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Another Nevada Republican Leaves The GOP
01/31/2014
Days after Nevada's first female lieutenant governor left the GOP [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/sue-wagner-republican-party_n_4688509.html (excerpted just above)], a member of a notable Silver State Republican family is following suit.
The Associated Press reported Friday that lobbyist Neena Laxalt [ http://lasvegassun.com/news/2014/jan/31/neena-laxalt-leaves-gop-files-nonpartisan/ ], daughter of former Nevada governor and U.S. Sen. Paul Laxalt (R), decided to register as nonpartisan.
[...]
HuffPost Pollster's latest compilation of 57 publicly available polls [interactive graph embedded] shows that the Republican Party's favorable rating [ http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/republican-party-favorable-rating ] has decreased steadily over the past two years. Back in January 2012, 43.3 percent viewed the GOP unfavorably. As of January 27, 2014, that number ballooned to 66.4 percent.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/neena-laxalt-gop_n_4704296.html [with comments]
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Controversial Republican State Senator Dick Black Withdraws From House Race
01/23/2014
Republican Virginia State Sen. Richard H. Black, who incited controversy [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/dick-black-rape_n_4602683.html ] with his comments about spousal rape, military sexual assault and homosexuality, announced Wednesday that he will no longer run for the U.S. House seat of retiring Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.).
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/dick-black-congress-_n_4651884.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Reports: 3 teens admit assaulting NorCal girl who later killed herself
Pott's attackers — 16-year-old boys and one 17-year-old boy — admitted in a juvenile court in September that they committed the heinous crime and later shared photos of the awful encounter. The three received between 30 and 45 days in a juvenile detention center.
AP
[ http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/audrie-pott-attackers-admit-attack-caused-commit-suicide-article-1.1580284 ]
CBS/AP
January 16, 2014, 5: 27 AM
SARATOGA, Calif. -- Three teenage boys have admitted sexually assaulting a 15-year-old Northern California girl [ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/audrie-pott-suicide-three-teens-arrested-for-alleged-sexual-assault-of-calif-girl-who-committed-suicide/ ] who later committed suicide after photographs of the attack were circulated to some classmates, according to published reports.
The San Jose Mercury News first reported the case, soon followed by the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday.
In September, two 16-year-old boys admitted in Santa Clara County Juvenile Court to participating in the sexual assault and possessing photos of the girl, Audrie Pott, the newspapers reported, citing documents and other sources. Both crimes are felonies.
In addition, a 17-year-old boy admitted to the same two felonies, the papers said.
The boys' names have not been released, but two were ordered to serve 30 days - during weekends - in juvenile detention, and the third was sentenced to 45 consecutive days. That is in stark contrast to the maximum 10-year sentence they might have received as adults.
The Mercury News cites sources [ http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_24913018/audrie-pott-boys-admit-sexually-assaulting-saratoga-teen?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com ] close to the case as saying the two with the 30-day sentences have finished serving them, and the third is in the midst of his 45-day term.
Their sentences are also more lenient than those imposed on two 16-year-olds in Steubenville, Ohio [ http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/teens-in-steubenville-rape-case-found-guilty/ ], who received one and two years in juvenile detention, respectively, in a case that has been widely compared to the Pott case.
Audrie Pott hanged herself on Sept. 10, 2012, eight days after attending a party at a friend's house in Saratoga, Calif. After drinking Gatorade laced with alcohol, she fell asleep and later woke with her pants off and with lewd comments scribbled all over her body.
In the week following the party, Audrie learned that cellphone photos had been taken of her during the assault and shared through text messages, her family said.
In April 2013, students at the high school Pott attended told the campus newspaper that a photo from the night of Pott's alleged rape did not go "viral," but rather was seen by an estimated 10 people [ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/audrie-pott-suicide-update-alleged-rape-victims-school-newspaper-reports-her-photos-never-went-viral/ ].
According to the Saratoga High School Falcon [ http://saratogafalcon.org/content/sources-say-%E2%80%9Caround-10-students%E2%80%9D-saw-illicit-photos-audrie-pott ], two unnamed male students said the only people who saw the picture in question were at the party where the alleged rape occurred.
"The media said the pictures were all over," one student told the Falcon. "That's not true."
The three defendants have been sued by Audrie's parents, Lawrence and Sheila Pott.
The Mercury News reports that, "New court records also indicate that two of the boys -- months after Audrie killed herself but before they were arrested in April 2013 -- were found with additional photos of naked girls on their phones. Both boys admitted to extra felonies of possessing or controlling sexual photos of girls under 18."
"In a statement released last week," the newspaper continues, "the Pott family lawyer, Robert Allard, alluded to those charges, saying, 'It has become quite clear to us that the suspects refuse to accept responsibility or show remorse for their actions. The fact that they have not learned their lesson is demonstrated by the fact that two of these young adults, even after Audrie's death, have continued to engage in 'slut shaming' other young women through, for example, the dissemination of nude photographs."'
"We cannot publicly comment on any aspect of any criminal proceedings involving these young men," Allard said in a statement Tuesday.
Christopher Arriola, Santa Clara County's supervising deputy district attorney for juvenile justice, said he was also prohibited from commenting on the case.
Calls and e-mails to the boys' lawyers Tuesday were not returned, the Mercury News said.
© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. / © 2014 Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/reports-3-teens-admit-assaulting-norcal-girl-who-later-killed-herself/ [with comments]
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Hanover College Told Rape Victim That Attempting To Have Her Alleged Rapist Punished Is Harassment
01/28/2014
A female student at Hanover College in Indiana is accusing the school of retaliating against her for reporting that she was raped, harassed and physically abused by a former boyfriend.
In response to a complaint filed by the female student, named Samantha, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights informed the small liberal arts college, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, last week that it is under investigation. Samantha, who requested The Huffington Post only identify her by her first name, claims she faced possible expulsion for reporting sexual assault and harassment.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/hanover-college-rape-investigation_n_4670543.html [with comments]
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Sasha Menu Courey's Death Casts Light On Campus Sexual Assaults
In this 2010 photo provided by the University of Missouri Athletic Department is Sasha Menu Courey.
01/29/14
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/sasha-menu-courey-campus-sexual-assault_n_4686289.html [with comments]
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Indian Woman Gang-Raped By 13 Men On Orders Of Village Court In West Bengal: Police
By Sujoy Dhar
Posted: 01/23/2014 7:48 am EST | Updated: 01/23/2014 2:59 pm EST
KOLKATA, Jan 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A 20-year-old woman in eastern India was gang-raped by 13 men on the orders of a village court as punishment for having a relationship with a man from a different community, a senior police officer said on Thursday.
The woman, who is now recovering in hospital, told police she was assaulted by the men on the night of Jan. 20 in Birbhum district in West Bengal.
Police said that her male companion was tied up in the village square, while the assault on the woman happened in a mud house.
"We arrested all the 13 men, including the village chief who ordered the gang rape. The accused have been produced in court which remanded them to jail custody," Birbhum's Superintendent of Police, C. Sudhakar, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
India toughened laws on sex crimes in March last year following the fatal gang rape of a physiotherapist on a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012. The case led to nationwide protests for better security and has helped sparked national debate about gender inequalities in India.
The issue was highlighted in local media again last week after a 51-year-old Danish tourist was gang-raped in central Delhi by at least five men whom she had asked for directions.
The West Bengal victim's family told media that she was assaulted because the court believed she had violated the rules of her tribe by falling in love with a man from another community.
The couple were ordered to pay a fine of 25,000 rupees ($400), said the victim's mother, adding that the village head then ordered the rape of her daughter.
Human rights groups say diktats issued by kangaroo courts are not uncommon in rural regions.
In northern parts of India, illegal village councils known as "Khap Panchayats" act as de-facto courts settling rural disputes on everything from land and cattle to matrimony and murder.
But such councils are coming under growing scrutiny as their punitive edicts grow more regressive - ranging from banning women from wearing western clothing and using mobile phones to supporting child marriage and sanctioning the lynching of young couples in so-called "honour killings".
The assault comes after a spate of high profile rapes in West Bengal which have brought Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee under fire for not doing enough to stop violence against women.
West Bengal recorded the highest number of gender crimes in the country at 30,942 in 2012 - 12.7 percent of India's total recorded crimes against women. These crimes include rape, kidnapping and sexual harassment and molestation.
Earlier this month, West Bengal's capital, Kolkata, witnessed public protests against police who have been accused of failing to act on the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl who was later murdered. ($1 = 61.8 rupees)
(Writing and additional reporting by Nita Bhalla; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Nick Macfie)
Copyright 2014 Thomson Reuters Foundation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/india-gang-rape-west-bengal_n_4650743.html [with comments]
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Asha Mirje, Indian Politician, Says Women Invite Rape With Their Clothes, Behavior
Indian people hold candles to pay tribute to last year's gang rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi, in Ahmadabad, India, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013. The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, was heading home with a male friend after an evening showing of the movie "Life of Pi" when six men lured them onto a private bus.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Shyamantha Asokan and Angus MacSwan
Posted: 01/29/2014 7:49 am EST | Updated: 01/29/2014 3:59 pm EST
NEW DELHI, Jan 29 (Reuters) - An Indian female politician and activist has said rape victims may have invited attacks by their clothes and behaviour, fuelling a national debate over a series of incidents of sexual violence against women.
Asha Mirje, a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader in western Maharashtra state, questioned at a meeting on Tuesday why a 23-year-old physiotherapy student who was gang-raped on a bus in Delhi in 2012 was out late at night.
The student died of her injuries and thousands of people took to the streets in nationwide protests against the prevalence of rape and sexual assault in the world's largest democracy.
A number of shocking incidents have since been highlighted in Indian media, most recently the case of 20-year-old woman who said she was gang-raped in a rural area of West Bengal in eastern India on the orders of a village court last week.
Mirje, who is a member of the state women's commission, said in reference to the Delhi assault: "Did Nirbhaya really have go to watch a movie at 11 in the night with her friend?"
"Nirbhaya", a Hindi word meaning "fearless", has been widely adopted by the Indian media as a name for the victim.
She also commented on the gang rape of a photojournalist who was on assignment at a disused mill in Mumbai last year, asking why the victim had gone to such an isolated place.
"Rapes take place also because of a woman's clothes, her behaviour and her presence at inappropriate places," she said.
Women must be "careful", she said, and think if they are inviting assault.
Sexual violence has become a huge social and political issue since the Delhi rape and India toughened laws on sex crimes in March last year. Public anger over the poor state of women's safety in Delhi was one reason that the ruling Congress Party was wiped out in local elections in the city last month.
SWIFT REACTION
Mirje's party belongs to the Congress-led national coalition government and her comments caused an immediate stir, with several television reports pouring scorn on her.
"Every time such a statement is made by a public figure it justifies rape," Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association, a lobby group, told Reuters.
"It's unconscionable that people in public posts make such remarks."
Even members of her own party distanced themsleves from her remarks. NCP member of parliament Supriya Sule told reporters she was sorry Mirje had made them and that they reflected her personal views, not those of the party.
"She did make a mistake yesterday. She should not have said it," she said
While Mirje is thought to be the first senior female public figure to make such comments about the Delhi rape, other members of commissions looking after women's affairs have made similar remarks about less high-profile attacks.
"Mirje is reflecting what is a much larger problem. There are many others who hold such views," Krishnan said.
Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, initially dismissed a gang rape in her state in 2012 as a fabricated incident aimed at tarnishing her government.
Assaults have tarnished the reputation of a country that has enjoyed growing prosperity in the past decade and is modernising fast. Still, Mirje's comments were a reminder that conservative and traditional mores are still deeply held by many of its 1.2 billion people, women as well as men.
In the most recent case involving a foreigner, a 51-year-old Danish tourist was gang-raped in the back-packers' district of Delhi last month by men she asked for directions to her hotel.
(Editing by Ron Popeski)
Copyright 2014 Thomson Reuters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/asha-mirje-rape-comments_n_4686379.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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(from slideshow at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/nun-gives-birth-baby-italy-francis_n_4619218.html ; http://www.theonion.com/articles/manmohan-singh-the-first-sikh-prime-minister-ofoka,18629/ )
===
this is part 4 of a multi-part post -- continues with my next post, a reply to this one
By Katherine Fung
Posted: 01/17/2014 4:44 pm EST | Updated: 01/21/2014 8:10 pm EST
Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked a guest on Thursday whether he believes that feminism is hurting American's national security.
Nick Adams argued in his new book "American Boomerang [ http://www.amazon.com/The-American-Boomerang-Nick-Adams/dp/1492398470 ]" that men around the world are no longer allowed to be "manly." In an appearance on Thursday's "Fox and Friends," he said it was a "dangerous" phenomenon, claiming, "American men are of course very susceptible to it. It's really important particularly in America given the leadership role that America has in the world that American men be allowed to be men."
"Is this in direct relation to feminism on the rise?" Hasselbeck asked. "Is it a result just sort of society seeing men that are not as masculine and men that are as masculine being kind of demonized?"
"Elisabeth, you've hit the nail on the head," Adams said.
"Do you see this affecting national security, how a nation operates in terms of being a strong presence globally?" Hasselbeck asked later.
Adams said that it "absolutely" does have an effect on national security. "Wimps and wussies deliver mediocrity, and men win," he added. "And what America’s always been about is winning."
(h/t Raw Story [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/17/foxs-elisabeth-hasselbeck-are-male-wussifying-feminists-a-national-security-problem/ ])
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/elisabeth-hasselbeck-feminism_n_4619669.html [the YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=292rVp8tlic (with comments), embedded; with comments]
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(from slideshow at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/nun-gives-birth-baby-italy-francis_n_4619218.html ; http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-angrily-clarifies-dont-kill-rule,222/ )
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Maajid Nawaz's Tweet Of Jesus And Muhammad ["Jesus and Mo"] Cartoon Sparks Death Threats, Conversation
British muslim Maajid Nawaz[, currently a Liberal Democrat candidate for Parliament,] addresses a press conference in London, 03 March 2006.
01/29/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/maajid-nawaz-cartoon-jesus-muhammad_n_4683010.html [with comments]
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(from slideshow at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/nun-gives-birth-baby-italy-francis_n_4619218.html ; http://www.theonion.com/articles/wartorn-middle-east-seeks-solace-in-religion,2027/ )
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SARAH SILVERMAN IS VISITED BY JESUS CHRIST
Published on Jan 21, 2014 by Sarah Silverman [ http://www.youtube.com/user/SilvermanVideos ]
Jesus Christ visits Sarah Silverman to discuss women's reproductive rights.
For more information on how you can get involved, visit http://www.ladypartsjustice.com
Fact-checking provided by:
RH Reality Check, an online publication covering reproductive health and justice news, analysis, and commentary.
Visit: http://rhrealitycheck.org/
NARAL, a national organization advocating for and providing comprehensive information on reproductive rights in the U.S. Numerous local affiliates.
Visit: http://www.naral.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahdR6aHQvMQ [with comments]
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Kansas court says sperm donor must pay child support
January 24, 2014
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/ [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Rand Paul worries women ‘won’ the war and are ‘conquering’ men, taking their jobs
By David Edwards
Sunday, January 26, 2014 13:08 EST
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Sunday declared that the so-called Republican war on women was over and women had “won,” but a new war was being waged by women who were taking jobs from men.
“We have a lot of debates in Washington that get dumbed down and are used for political purposes,” Paul told NBC’s David Gregory. “This whole sort of war on women thing, I’m scratching my head because, if there was a war on women, I think they won.”
As evidence, the Kentucky senator pointed out that none of the women in his family were complaining about inequality or having their health care rights curtailed by Republicans.
“You know, I don’t see so much that women are downtrodden, I see women rising up and doing great things,” he remarked. “In fact, I worry about our young men sometimes because I think the women really are out-competing the men in our world.”
Paul added that he tried to never talk about the female anatomy and that Republicans did not start the war on women “debate.”
“The facts show that women are doing very well, have come a long way,” he explained. “And I have a lot of successful women in my family. And I don’t here them saying, ‘Oh, woe is me, this terrible misogynist world.’ They look out and they’re conquering the world.”
Paul later suggested that for President Bill Clinton was responsible for the “war on women” because he had an affair with an intern while he was in office during the 1990s.
“The media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this,” Paul insisted. “There is no excuse for that, that is predatory behavior and it shouldn’t be something — we should’t want to associate with people who would take advantage of a young girl in his office.”
The potential Republican 2016 presidential candidate said that it was difficult to unlink Bill Clinton’s behavior from potential Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I think in my state, people tend to frown upon that,” he declared. “If there were someone in my community who did that in my community, they would be socially — we would disassociate from somebody who would take advantage of a young woman in a workplace.”
Watch this video from NBC’s Meet the Press, broadcast Jan. 26, 2013.
[video embedded]
Copyright © 2014 Raw Story Media, Inc.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/26/rand-paul-worries-women-won-the-war-and-are-conquering-men-taking-their-jobs/ [with comments]
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Mike Huckabee offers his expertise on the female sex drive
Channeling Todd Akin, the former Arkansas governor has ideas about birth control and "libido"
Jan 23, 2014
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/23/mike_huckabee_offers_his_expertise_on_the_female_sex_drive/ [with comments]
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Mike Huckabee mansplains women's libidos and contraception at RNC
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks at the Republican National Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. He told Republicans that Democrats insult women by telling them "they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government."
(Susan Walsh / Associated Press / January 23, 2014)
By Robin Abcarian
January 23, 2014, 3:40 p.m.
I am genuinely starting to feel sorry for the Republican Party [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/parties-movements/republican-party-ORGOV0000004.topic ], which has become so adept at shooting itself in the foot over women’s issues that it should probably put a moratorium on discussing them for a while.
The Democrats’ accusation that the GOP has waged a “war on women” has so rattled the party that its pooh-bahs cannot think straight. They keep making the same mistakes over and over. Insanity!
Thursday, at the annual meeting of the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., once and possibly future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/elections/u.s.-elections/mike-huckabee-PEPLT000123.topic ] became the latest Republican to step into the quicksand that women’s issues have become for the GOP. The one-time Arkansas governor and talk show host told a roomful of party officials that Democrats insult women by telling them “they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government.”
Oh dear. Not again.
Here’s a remedial lesson for Gov. Huckabee: That is not what Democrats tell women; it’s what Republicans tell them.
Republicans call women “sluts” [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfb9f7yFYgw (next below)]
because women tell Congress they want access to insurance-covered contraception [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/health/birth-control-HETHT000011.topic ].
Republicans talk about “legitimate rape [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/us/politics/todd-akin-provokes-ire-with-legitimate-rape-comment.html ].”
Republicans say pregnancies as a result of rape are a “gift from God [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/10/23/1078181/gop-us-senate-candidate-calls-rape-pregnancies-a-gift-from-god/ ]” and should be carried to term.
Republicans say: “One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about is, I think, the dangers of contraceptives in this country. The whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, 'Contraception's OK.' It is not OK [ http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/24/nation/la-na-gop-race-sixties-20120325 ].”
Democrats know that invoking women’s sex drives in conversations about healthcare mandates is demeaning, patronizing and wrong.
What Democrats tell women is that women have the right to comprehensive health coverage, which should include access to contraception -- even if you work at Hobby Lobby [ http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/26/nation/la-na-court-contraceptives-20131127 ].
I don’t really want to get inside their heads too far, but Republicans like Huckabee seem metaphorically stuck in some arrested stage of adolescent development that equates any discussion of reproductive issues with sexuality. Contraception? Hubba hubba. Not.
And here’s what I mean about GOP’s women voter death wish: Huckabee’s faux pas comes exactly two days after CNN’s Peter Hamby reported [ http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/21/first-on-cnn-gop-urges-candidates-to-stand-ground-on-abortion/ ] that the RNC was working on a plan to strike back at the Democrats’ successful “war on women” strategy.
On Friday, the RNC is expected to take up a proposal urging anti-abortion Republicans -- candidates, consultants and political action committees -- to “reject a strategy of silence on the abortion issue when candidates are attacked with ‘war on women’ rhetoric.”
The proposal’s author, Delaware RNC member and anti-abortion activist Ellen Barrosse, told Hamby that she was partly moved to action by the failure of presidential nominee Mitt Romney [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/government/mitt-romney-PEPLT007376.topic ] and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/government/ken-cuccinelli-PEPLT00007614.topic ] to effectively respond to the “war on women” rhetoric in 2012 and 2013.
She thinks that because the Gallup Poll [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/economy-business-finance/gallup-inc.-ORCRP0000017179.topic ] has since 1975 found some areas of agreement between a majority of Americans and the Republican Party on some aspects of abortion law -- such as parental consent or bans on late-term abortion -- Republicans have an opening.
But they don’t.
Despite the fact that Republican-dominated state legislatures have chipped away at abortion rights for years, the big picture has not changed: a huge majority of Americans believe that abortion should remain legal. This has been the consistent response since Gallup began polling the issue two years after the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.
As this chart shows [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx ], only around 20% of Americans believe that abortion should be against the law in all circumstances. That number has been more or less consistent for nearly 40 years.
In a Gallup Poll from last May, 26% said abortion should be legal in all circumstances, and 52% said it should be legal in some circumstances. That’s a combined total of 78% of Americans who believe abortion should remain legal.
At some point, the Republicans will have to understand: Mansplaining women -- as Huckabee did Thursday -- is not helping. The party must find a way to turn women on, not off. Don’t smirk. You know what I mean.
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times (emphasis in original)
http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-mike-huckabee-mansplains-womens-libidos-and-contraception-at-rnc--20140123,0,6457380.story [with comments]
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Allen West: Mike Huckabee 'Has No Reason to Apologize,' Government Is 'Trying To Be The Sugar Daddy'
By Paige Lavender
Posted: 01/25/2014 12:15 pm EST | Updated: 01/25/2014 12:59 pm EST
Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) has "no reason to apologize [ http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/allen-west-mike-huckabee-democrats-women/2014/01/24/id/548930 ]" for saying Democrats tell women they "cannot control their libido [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/mike-huckabee-women_n_4653426.html ]" without the government.
"If anything the Democrats should be apologizing," West told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
West said Huckabee is "right."
"Government is trying to be the sugar daddy," West said.
At this week's Republican National Committee meeting [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/25/rnc-meeting_n_4665430.html ] in Washington, D.C., Huckabee said [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/24/mike-huckabee-birth-control_n_4659975.html ] the Republican party "stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women." He followed those comments by saying Democrats "want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control."
"Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have the government provide for them birth control medication," Huckabee said. "Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything that anybody else can do."
Huckabee made the comments despite having signed a health insurance mandate [ http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/02/15/huckabee-for-contraception-mandate-before-he-opposed-it ] that included contraception in preventative care into law while serving as governor of Arkansas.
Watch West's remarks on Huckabee in the video [of the West segment on The Steve Malzberg Show, embedded] above.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/25/allen-west-mike-huckabee_n_4665601.html [with the embedded video, and comments]
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GOP Congressman: Wives Should 'Voluntarily Submit' To Their Husbands
01/23/2014
A Republican congressman published a memoir last month in which he expresses his belief that "the wife is to submit to the husband," The Washington Post reported on Wednesday [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/01/22/gop-congressmans-book-the-wife-is-to-voluntarily-submit-to-her-husband/ ].
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), a Vietnam veteran, explains in his book that families, like the military command, need a leadership structure in which every person has a role. He says the wife's role, according to the Bible, is to be obedient to her husband.
"The wife is to voluntarily submit, just as the husband is to lovingly lead and sacrifice," he writes. "The husband’s part is to show up during the times of deep stress, take the leadership role and be accountable for the outcome, blaming no one else."
Pearce goes on to write that the wife should have a say in important family decisions and that her submission does mean the husband should have "authoritarian control" or be considered superior.
"The wife’s submission is not a matter of superior versus inferior; rather, it is self-imposed as a matter of obedience to the Lord and of love for her husband," he writes.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/steve-pearce-wife-submit_n_4646605.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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'Red' States Have Higher Divorce Rates Than 'Blue' States, And Here's Why
Posted: 01/21/2014 6:20 pm EST | Updated: 01/25/2014 4:01 pm EST
It may seem counterintuitive, but divorce rates are higher in religiously conservative "red" states than "blue" states, despite a Bible-based culture that discourages divorce.
In a new study titled "Red States, Blue States, and Divorce: Understanding the Impact of Conservative Protestantism on Regional Variation in Divorce Rates," which will be published later this month in the American Journal of Sociology [ http://www.jstor.org/page/journal/amerjsoci/about.html ], demographer and University of Texas at Austin professor Jennifer Glass set out to discover [ http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/impact-of-conservative-protestantism-on-regional-divorce-rates/ ] why divorce rates would be higher in religious states like Arkansas and Alabama -- which boast the second and third highest divorce rates, respectively -- but lower in more liberal states like New Jersey and Massachusetts.
It was previously thought that socioeconomic hardships in the South were largely to blame for high divorce rates [ http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/marital_status_living_arrangements/cb11-144.html ], however Glass and her fellow researchers concluded that the conservative religious culture is in fact a major contributing factor thanks to "the social institutions they create" that "decrease marital stability."
Specifically, putting pressure on young people to marry sooner, frowning upon cohabitation before marriage, teaching abstinence-only sex education and making access to resources like emergency contraception more difficult all result in earlier childbearing ages and less-solid marriages from the get-go, Glass writes in the paper.
“It’s surprising,” W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, told The Los Angeles Times [ http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-sci-sn-red-states-religious-conservative-divorce-20140116,0,7835151.story ]. “In some contexts in America today, religion is a buffer against divorce. But in the conservative Protestant context, this paper is showing us that it’s not.”
Glass and her colleagues also concluded that the religious culture of the area permeated into the divorce rates of even the non-religious people who lived there. In other words, simply by living in counties that were dominated by conservative Protestantism, people were at a higher risk for getting divorced.
As Glass told The Los Angeles Times, “If you live in a marriage market where everybody marries young, you postpone marriage at your own risk. The best catches … are going to go first.”
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/divorce-study_n_4639430.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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19 Democratic Senators To File Amicus Brief In Hobby Lobby Contraception Case
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.)
Bloomberg via Getty Images
By Shadee Ashtari
Posted: 01/28/2014 11:27 am EST | Updated: 01/28/2014 5:59 pm EST
Nineteen Democratic senators, including Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and four other women, are filing an amicus brief Tuesday in support of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate under the Affordable Care Act.
The provision is being challenged [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/supreme-court-hobby-lobby_n_4343794.html ] by Hobby Lobby [ http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-13/lifestyle/sns-rt-us-usa-health-hobby-lobbybre88c0uc-20120913_1_hobby-lobby-healthcare-mandate-health-mandate ], an arts and crafts retailer that is arguing that the mandate violates the company’s religious freedoms under the First Amendment, according to Yahoo News [ http://news.yahoo.com/democratic-senators-to-file-amicus-brief-in-hobby-lobby-birth-control-case-025129006.html ].
"As the federal government embarks on an unprecedented foray into health care replete with multiple overlapping mandates, few issues are more important than the extent to which the government must recognize and accommodate the religious exercise of those it regulates," Hobby Lobby's attorneys wrote [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/supreme-court-hobby-lobby_n_4343794.html ] to the Supreme Court in October.
A June 2013 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, arguing that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies to corporate entities (via Citizens United [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/27/us/justices-take-companies-cases-challenging-contraception-rule.html ]), thereby shielding Hobby Lobby founder David Green from providing insurance plans that abide by Obamacare’s contraception provision.
The Democratic senators, all of whom voted in favor of the RFRA, contend that the 1993 law does not apply to for-profit companies, characterizing Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit as a “gross misapplication” of the law, according to the brief obtained by Yahoo [ http://news.yahoo.com/democratic-senators-to-file-amicus-brief-in-hobby-lobby-birth-control-case-025129006.html ].
Murray, who spearheaded the amicus brief, also plans to knock Republican colleagues, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, for their opposition to the mandate during Tuesday's announcement of the brief on the Senate floor, according to Yahoo.
“Allowing a woman’s boss to call the shots about her access to birth control should be inconceivable to all Americans in this day and age, and takes us back to a place in history when women had no voice or choice,” according to the prepared remarks provided to Yahoo that Murray has planned.
The other senators who signed the brief are: Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
The Supreme Court will hear the case on March 25, with a likely decision in June.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/hobby-lobby-birth-control-lawsuit_n_4680163.html [with comments]
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Dem senators intervene in Hobby Lobby case, urge justices to deny ObamaCare exemption
Published January 28, 2014
Democratic senators intervened Tuesday in the Supreme Court fight over whether ObamaCare can force the company Hobby Lobby to provide contraceptive coverage to workers, arguing that "secular" businesses should not be exempt from the mandate.
The 19 senators planned to file a brief before the court, which is still weeks away from considering the closely watched case. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who planned to make her case on the Senate floor, adamantly defended the Obama administration's side.
"What's at stake in this case before the Supreme Court is whether a CEO's personal beliefs can trump a woman's right to access free or low-cost contraception under the Affordable Care Act," she said in prepared remarks.
But Republican senators returned fire, jumping to Hobby Lobby's defense in a brief of their own.
"The ability to practice the faith we choose is one of our great constitutional rights. The Obama administration's contraceptive mandate stomps on that right," Sen. David Vitter said in a statement. He joined Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; John Cornyn, R-Texas; and Mike Lee, R-Utah in the brief.
The dueling arguments come as the Supreme Court prepares to consider the case. The justices said in November they would take up the issue, which has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits from for-profit companies asking to be spared from having to cover some or all forms of contraception.
The Obama administration promotes the law's provision of a range of preventive care, free of charge, as a key benefit of the health care overhaul. Contraception is included in the package of cost-free benefits, which opponents say is an attack on the religious freedom of employers.
The court will consider two cases. One involves Hobby Lobby Inc., an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees. Hobby Lobby won in the lower courts.
The other case is an appeal from Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., a Pennsylvania company that employs 950 people in making wood cabinets. Lower courts rejected the company's claims.
The court said the cases will be combined for arguments, probably in late March. A decision should come by late June.
The cases center on the provision of the law that requires most employers that offer health insurance to their workers to provide the range of preventive health benefits. In both instances, the Christian families that own the companies say that insuring some forms of contraception violates their religious beliefs.
The key issue is whether profit-making corporations may assert religious beliefs under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act or the First Amendment provision guaranteeing Americans the right to believe and worship as they choose.
The brief from Democratic senators on Tuesday argued that exempting for-profit businesses from the mandate would be "inconsistent" with that 1993 law.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
©2014 FOX News Network, LLC
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/28/dem-senators-intervene-in-hobby-lobby-case-urge-justices-to-deny-obamacare/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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The Missing Voices in the Contraception Mandate Cases
James Lawler Duggan/Reuters
American democracy has always left room for conscientious objectors. But two current cases are more like ordinances of secession.
Garrett Epps
Jan 30 2014, 8:00 AM ET
Lawyers should always listen to what judges say. Believing it, though, is often a mistake.
Take these words [ http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Litttle-Sisters-order-1-24-13.pdf ]: “This order should not be construed as an expression of the Court’s views on the merits.” It’s the last sentence of the Court’s order, issued Friday, in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius [ http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/13a691.htm ], a religious order's challenge to a portion of the Affordable Care Act dealing with contraception.
Formally, the words are true. The Court hasn’t voted on the issue, and technically may not ever end up hearing it. So thing for a lawyer to say is, “Thank you, Your Honor.”
The correct thing to think, however, echoes George Orwell: “There are ... about eighty ways in the English and American languages of expressing incredulity—for example, garn, come off it, you bet, sez you, oh yeah, not half, I don’t think, less of it or and the pudding! But I think and then you wake up is the exactly suitable answer.”
As Cornell Professor Michael Dorf explains [ http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2014/01/rfra-v-bueaucracy-scotus-order-in.html ], the Court’s grant of a stay to Little Sisters “suggests that, at least at this stage of the litigation, the plaintiffs have made out a colorable claim.” The nature of that claim offers a glimpse of some toxic ideas floating around in American law.
What do the nuns object to? As Lyle Deniston of SCOTUSblog explains [ http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/01/partial-win-for-little-sisters/ ], they object to the simple act of asking for a religious exemption to providing their lay employees with insurance coverage for contraceptive services. “The Little Sisters told the Supreme Court that even filing that form would make them a part of the scheme, and thus draw them into support for abortions or abortion-related services,” Deniston writes.
The Little Sisters object to filling out the form even though they are a “church plan.” This means, as the government noted in its brief [ http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/13a691-little-sisters-injunction-opp.pdf ], their employees won’t get contraceptive care no matter what form they fill out. The third party running their health plan will be “under no legal obligation to provide the coverage after applicants certify that they object to providing it.”
In other words, the Little Sisters want to be exempt from even telling the government that they are exempt from a plan that, in any case, would not require them to do anything they object to doing. Couple that with the pending claim by Hobby Lobby Stores that a for-profit corporation has a “free exercise” right to block its employees from being compensated for contraceptive methods their employers object to. Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. [ http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/sebelius-v-hobby-lobby-stores-inc/ ], which will be argued on March 25, was brought by corporations owning two retail chains. The stock is held by a conservative Christian family, the Greens, who believe that destroying a fertilized egg is the equivalent of killing a living person. The corporations demand exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employee health insurance policies cover a full range of contraceptive options. The corporations are for-profit businesses that employee 13,000 people. They are being regulated as part of a general regulation of commerce. But their owners don’t want to take part. Who is mere government to ask them to do so?
Taken together, these two cases aren’t claims for religious exemption. They are more like an ordinance of secession—a statement that religious bodies, and people, and even commercial businesses, no longer belong to society if they decide they’d rather not. The idea depends on an assumption that government itself is sinful, and presumptively illegitimate. If courts follow this notion, they risk making it impossible to have an effective government at all. And ineffective or weak government, as Peter Shane explained [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/the-myth-of-the-anti-government-constitution/283005/ ] here a few weeks ago, was no part of the Founders’ vision for America.
Nor is there any warrant in our history for blanket religious exemptions from social norms. Consider conscientious objection. When the people’s representatives decide the nation is in danger, citizens may be asked give up their liberty and, if necessary, their lives to defend it. But in the United States, at least since World War I, religious people who object to war have been permitted to refuse to bear arms in their country’s defense.
What they get, though, is not immunity. Instead, they have been required to certify their religious objection and, if necessary, prove that it is sincere. Then they have been required to perform alternate service—working in a hospital, for example, or in a national park—to aid the nation’s survival in ways that do not involve personally killing. It is a compromise between conscience and the collective.
By analogy to the Little Sisters claim, however, truly devout conscientious objectors wouldn't be required to perform any service—since, of course, any service would contribute to the country that's at war. In fact, they would refuse to request an exemption; even filling out the form would make them complicit.
The assumption seems to be that religion releases you from any obligation of any kind to the state. And that’s apparently even true if you are a giant for-profit corporation.
I do not question that the nuns, and the Green family, are sincere. But why are they the only ones whose interest matter? These cases involve the government and the employees covered by the Act. Their interests should count, too.
In the case of the Little Sisters, government has a clear interest in keeping track of which organizations claim exemptions and making sure those claims are genuine. What judge, until recently, would have thought that interest illegitimate?
In Hobby Lobby in particular, the government has a powerful interest in making sure that its comprehensive insurance scheme provides uniform opportunities to all employees in commerce. That interest can sometimes overcome even the most sincere religious objection. In 1964, many people had sincere religious beliefs that African Americans and whites should not mix in restaurants, stores, and hotels—that this violated the words of Acts 17:26 [ http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+17:26&version=RSV ] that God had fixed boundaries for the nations of man and expected them to remain within them. (There are sincere believers of this idea even today within the so-called “British Israel” and “Christian Identity” sects.)
The Civil Rights Act did not demand that these people change their beliefs. It did not demand that they desegregate their churches, or open their homes. But it did embody a judgment by society that, in order to engage in business, they had open their businesses to all.
The same kind of governmental interest is present in the contraceptive-mandate cases: If you want to engage in interstate commerce, cover your employees. The peoples’ representatives have determined that both public health and the economy will function better if you do.
And that brings in the employees’ interests: first, in making their own health choices from a full range of options; second, in earning full benefits for their work, whether they are men or women; and finally—this one seems to be mentioned by almost no one—in their own religious liberty. For most of us, choices about contraception arise from our own consciences. In a free country, the boss doesn’t collect the employees’ beliefs at the workplace door.
The Tenth Circuit opinion upholding Hobby Lobby’s supposed right to an exemption is a remarkable document. It does not say that the Greens’ beliefs outweigh those of government and employees. It simply pretends that only the Greens have any interests at all. As Chief Judge Mary Briscoe points out in her dissent, the Tenth Circuit’s opinion “does not mention the public interest that the government had relied on at the preliminary-injunction hearing: the health reasons for promoting employee access to emergency contraceptives.” (Briscoe is the only woman on the Court. The plurality of male judges did not balance women’s health away—they just forgot it was an issue.)
How can it be that in a case concerning health-care, health interests somehow don’t matter? Whether among married or unmarried women, planned pregnancies produce better outcomes, both for mother and child and for the families involved. In other words, mothers raising children are healthier if they can space their pregnancies—and are less likely to have premature or low-birth-weight babies. Some women have chronic medical conditions and should never become pregnant; others need to manage their own health in order to prepare for pregnancy. And some contraceptive methods have important health benefits that don’t relate to contraception at all.
To effectively make their health choices, women need not only “some” contraception, or only those methods that lay employers approve; they need access to the full spectrum of medically safe methods. The public’s interest in their freedom to make those choices is huge. “There's a reason why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed family planning as one of the 10 great public health achievements [ http://www.cdc.gov/about/history/tengpha.htm ] of the 20th century,” Adam Sonfield, a senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute [ http://www.guttmacher.org/about/index.html ], said in an interview.
And beyond the health question, for heaven’s sake, think for a moment about “liberty”: A country where employees have both jobs and religious freedom will be freer than one where they must choose between the two.
Copyright © 2014 by The Atlantic Monthly Group (emphasis in original)
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/the-missing-voices-in-the-contraception-mandate-cases/283452/ [with comments]
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Contraception, Abortion Issues Arise In Close North Carolina Senate Race
By Samantha Lachman
Posted: 02/03/2014 2:45 pm EST | Updated: 02/03/2014 2:59 pm EST
All five Republican candidates vying to unseat Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) believe that states have the authority to ban contraceptives and would support a fetal "personhood" amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the News and Observer reported Monday [ http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/31/3581067/abortion-question-divides-north.html ].
At a Republican candidate forum last month and in interviews with the News and Observer, the candidates clarified where they stand on issues such as abortion, banning contraceptives and the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate.
The Republican candidates all favor a “personhood” constitutional amendment that would grant legal protections to a fertilized human egg. According to experts, such an amendment could also ban some forms of birth control [ http://www.acog.org/About_ACOG/News_Room/News_Releases/2012/Personhood_Measures ].
Three of the leading contenders -- North Carolina's House speaker, Thom Tillis, obstetrician Greg Brannon and Rev. Mark Harris -- said they believe abortion should be illegal except to save the life of the mother (Brannon and Harris) or in those cases, plus in cases of rape and incest (Tillis).
Hagan, who supports abortion rights, could capitalize on the stances of her opponents as the Republican field heats up [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/03/north-carolina-senate_n_4538188.html ] before the May 6 primary.
“Kay has always trusted women to make their own healthcare decisions in consultation with their doctors, but the Republican primary candidates in this race have taken their anti-woman positions to a new level by supporting a ‘personhood’ amendment to the Constitution and declaring that states have the authority to ban contraception,” Hagan Communications Director Sadie Weiner said in a statement. “These candidates must want to distinguish their primary field as the most fringe in the nation if they believe that states have the authority to ban a safe, approved medication prescribed to countless North Carolina women. This type of anti-woman platform is dangerous for North Carolina.”
EMILY’s List, a political action committee that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, is one of Hagan's top contributors. The senator recently announced [ http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/21/3551507/morning-memo-hagan-posts-another.html ] a strong fundraising haul in the last three months of 2013, bringing in over $2 million to her campaign.
Tillis supported a bill, famously attached to another concerning motorcycle safety [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/north-carolina-abortion_n_3575566.html ], that placed restrictions on abortion providers last year. The restrictions on abortion were unpopular with the state's residents [ http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_NC_071613.pdf ]; a poll conducted last July by the liberal leaning Public Policy Polling found that just 34 percent of voters supported the bill.
“I am pro-life, I believe all life is sacred, and I am proud that we have made real progress on this issue since I am speaker,” Tillis told the News and Observer. “The country is moving in our direction on this issue.”
The crowded Republican primary is forcing each candidate to prove their right-wing credentials. At a separate forum last month, Brannon and Army veteran Heather Grant suggested President Barack Obama could be impeached [ http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/30/3575623/tillis-wont-attend-another-nc.html ].
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/03/abortion-north-carolina-senate_n_4718164.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Abortions Declining in U.S., Study Finds
By ERIK ECKHOLM
FEB. 2, 2014
The abortion [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/surgery/abortion/overview.html ] rate among American women declined to its lowest level in more than three decades in 2011, according to a new report [ http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/psrh.46e0414.pdf ] released Monday that is widely considered the country’s most definitive examination of abortion trends.
The 1.1 million abortions reported in 2011 represented a rate of 16.9 per thousand women of childbearing age, down from 2008, when a similar study estimated that 1.21 million abortions were performed at a rate of 19.4 per thousand women.
Resuming a long-term downward trend that stalled in the middle of the last decade [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11abortion.html ], the 2011 rate was far below the peak, in 1981, of 29.3 per thousand, according to the report from the Guttmacher Institute [ http://www.guttmacher.org/ ], a private research group that supports abortion rights.
The decline in abortions from 2008 to 2011 was mirrored by a decline in pregnancy rates [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/health/research/pregnancy-rates-sank-over-last-20-years.html ]. The report did not include a detailed analysis of the reasons for these trends, which pose complicated research issues.
But the decline in abortions, the researchers said, appears in part to reflect the growing use, especially among younger women, of nearly foolproof long-term contraceptives like intrauterine devices. It may also reflect the impact of the recession and economic uncertainty, which can lead to fewer pregnancies, births and abortions, according to the authors, Rachel K. Jones and Jenna Jerman.
The authors concluded that anti-abortion laws had only a minimal impact on the number of women obtaining abortions during the study period. For one thing, many of the state laws most likely to curb abortions were passed in 2011 or later. In addition, the report notes, large declines were recorded in states with relatively liberal abortion laws, like California, New Jersey and New York.
But they added: “Some of the new regulations undoubtedly made it more difficult, and costly, for facilities to continue to provide services and for women to access them.” The researchers said that future studies would need to monitor the effects of laws that restrict abortions.
Responding to an advance copy of the report, Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group, called it “long on strained conclusions” and said it understated the impact of anti-abortion education and laws.
Carole Joffe [ http://bixbycenter.ucsf.edu/fs/bios/joffe-carole.html ], a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a historian of abortion, said that while the effects were difficult to quantify, the anti-abortion movement had “been very successful at stigmatizing abortion” and that this had most likely influenced the long-term downward trend.
But Dr. Joffe agreed with the report that the wider use of contraceptives — IUDs that can prevent pregnancy [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/pregnancy/index.html ] for up to 10 years and injectable hormonal drugs that do so for months — appears to be an important factor in the reported recent decline.
These long-term, more reliable methods can have high upfront costs, Dr. Joffe noted. The cost may be a factor in the significantly higher rates of abortion among black and Hispanic women and the poor compared with white women, she said, and also points up the importance of providing health insurance [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/index.html ] that covers contraception [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/birth-control-and-family-planning/overview.html ] to low-income women.
To conduct the study, which will be published in the March issue of Perspective on Sexual and Reproductive Health, the Guttmacher Institute contacted every known clinic, hospital and independent physician performing abortions with questionnaires and follow-up calls.
The data are more comprehensive than those collected by the federal government, which receives incomplete reports from some state governments and none from California. But it might still be an undercount, the researchers said, to the extent that they did not learn about private doctors who quietly offer nonsurgical medication abortions.
One striking development revealed in the survey is the rising use of medication abortions, normally within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. In 2011, medication abortions accounted for 23 percent of abortions reported by clinics and private doctors. Several states have recently acted to limit access to such abortions.
© 2014 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/us/abortions-declining-in-us-study-finds.html
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U.S. Abortion Rate Hits Lowest Point Since 1973
By Laura Bassett
Posted: 02/02/2014 7:13 pm EST | Updated: 02/03/2014 11:59 am EST
The U.S. abortion rate dropped significantly from 2008 to 2011 and hit its lowest point since 1973 (the year Roe v. Wade was decided), according to a new report [ http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/psrh.46e0414.pdf ] by the Guttmacher Institute. The big drop occurred just prior to an unprecedented wave of state anti-abortion restrictions going into effect.
The rate declined to 16.9 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age in 2011, a 13 percent drop from 2008. The rate had peaked in 1981 at 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women -- roughly twice the 2011 rate -- and plateaued at about 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women from 2005 to 2008.
Researchers found no evidence that the drop in abortions was related to new legal restrictions on the procedure. The total number of abortion clinics declined only 1 percent between 2008 and 2011, and the number of providers dropped by 4 percent. Rachel Jones, lead author of the study, said the decline had more to do with an increase in contraceptive use.
"The decline in abortions coincided with a steep national drop in overall pregnancy and birth rates," she said. "Contraceptive use improved during this period, as more women and couples were using highly effective, long-acting reversible contraceptive methods, such as the IUD. Moreover, the recent recession led many women and couples to want to avoid or delay pregnancy and childbearing.”
According to the latest Guttmacher data [ http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html ], more than half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended, and about 40 percent of unintended pregnancies end in abortion. About three-fourths of women who have abortions say they can't afford a child; three-fourths say having a child would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for other dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.
While the overall abortion rate was declining, the Guttmacher study found that the percentage of medication-induced abortions was increasing relative to surgical abortions among women in their first trimester of pregnancy. Nearly a quarter of nonhospital abortions were early medication procedures in 2011 -- a 6 percent increase from 2008.
“Clearly, the availability of medication abortion does not lead women to have more abortions,” said Jones. “However, it has likely helped women obtain abortion care earlier in pregnancy, as evidenced by a shift toward very early abortions.”
Medication abortions are typically prescribed by a health care provider in two doses, the second of which can be taken at home. They are extremely safe and can work up to nine weeks into a pregnancy. But state legislatures have been passing legislation to restrict medication abortions [ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/09/oklahoma_and_mifiprex_supreme_court_considers_law_about_fda_approved_medical.html ] since 2011.
State legislatures enacted a record number of anti-abortion laws [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/2011-the-year-of-the-abortion-restrictions/2011/12/29/gIQAbJqjOP_blog.html ] in 2011, including mandatory waiting periods, mandatory ultrasound laws, strict new building requirements for clinics, gestational limits on abortion and requirements that abortion providers have admitting privileges at local hospitals. The study notes that most of these restrictions were passed in the second half of 2011, and because there is typically a lag between a law's passage and its implementation, they would not have affected the 2011 abortion rate.
The Guttmacher study concluded that further research is needed to determine what effect the new laws will have on the abortion rate and access to services.
"Although we found no evidence that new abortion restrictions affected abortion incidence or services at the national level during the study period, this does not mean these laws are not problematic," the study authors wrote. "Some of the new regulations undoubtedly made it more difficult, and costly, for facilities to continue to provide services and for women to access them."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/02/abortion-rate-_n_4704986.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Sam Brownback Compares Anti-Abortion Protests To The Slavery-Ending Abolitionist Movement
Sam Brownback, governor of Kansas, speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview inside the Bloomberg Link during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, U.S., on Tuesday Aug. 28, 2012.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
By JOHN HANNA
01/15/14 10:55 PM ET EST
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback compared past "Summer of Mercy" anti-abortion protests in Wichita to the abolitionist movement that helped end slavery in a major speech Wednesday night.
The Republican governor, who opposes abortion, included the reference to the 1991 and 2001 protests outside the clinic of Dr. George Tiller — the late-term abortion provider who was gunned down in 2009 — in his State of the State address.
Brownback said that in the past, Kansas has been called "to blaze the trail for America out of the wilderness" on moral issues. He also said Kansas "marked the bloody trail out of slavery" when the nation was undecided on the issue.
"The chains of bondage of our brothers rubbed our skin and our hearts raw until we could stand it no more and erupted into 'Bleeding Kansas,'" Brownback said. "The Summer of Mercy sprung forth in Kansas as we could no longer tolerate the death of innocent children."
The address is often a governor's biggest speech of the year in which he or she lays out a legislative agenda. Wednesday's address was broadcast live statewide on public television and radio.
The first "Summer of Mercy" demonstrations in 1991 brought thousands of anti-abortion protesters to Wichita, putting national attention on Tiller, who was among a handful of U.S. physicians performing abortions in the final weeks of pregnancies. The 2001 anniversary demonstrations were smaller.
Tiller was shot to death in the foyer of his church in 2009 by Scott Roeder, who professed strong anti-abortion views. Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to serve a minimum of 50 years in prison. His appeal will be heard by the Kansas Supreme Court later this month.
Peter Brownlie, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said called Brownback's remarks "insensitive" and said the 1991 protests started a cycle of violent anti-abortion rhetoric that led to Tiller's death.
"That event brought thousands of extremists into Kansas from around the country," Brownlie said.
But Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy director for Operation Rescue, which organized the protests, was pleased by the reference. She said they inspired people to enter politics or take other steps, such as opening crisis pregnancy centers.
She said if Brownback had failed to mention abortion Wednesday, it would have been "kind of a slap."
Online:
Brownback's State of the State address
https://governor.ks.gov/media-room/media-releases/2014/01/16/2014-state-of-the-state-of-kansas ( http://1.usa.gov/1d9aDGX )
© 2014 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/sam-brownback-abortion_n_4606791.html [with comments]
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Scott DesJarlais, Embattled Republican, Reports Dismal Campaign Fundraising
U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), announces he will run for a third term in Winchester, Tenn., on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013. DesJarlais said "mistakes" he made before running for Congress should have no bearing on his ability to represent Tennessee's 4th Congressional District.
(AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 02/03/2014 1:11 pm EST | Updated: 02/03/2014 1:59 pm EST
Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), the anti-abortion doctor who became an embarrassment to his party in 2012 following revelations [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/scott-desjarlais-abortion-pro-life_n_1953136.html ] that he had urged a mistress to get an abortion, reported dismal campaign fundraising numbers over the weekend.
DesJarlais is facing a primary challenge from state Sen. Jim Tracy. But he raised less money than he spent in the final quarter of 2013, bringing in just $17,580 against $33,156 worth of spending, according to his Federal Election Commission filing [ http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/664/14940275664/14940275664.pdf ].
With the primary election coming just six months from now, DesJarlais' campaign nearly has been in hibernation for the last three months. His filing lists no staffers, and an accountant and a party planner account for two-thirds of his expenditures. He had just $154,000 in the bank.
Tracy raised [ http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/100/14940278100/14940278100.pdf ] more than $151,000 in the quarter and had nearly $850,000 in the bank.
When DesJarlais appeared to be at risk of losing to a pro-life Democrat in the 2012 election, many Republicans stood by him, in spite of the revelations that he had sex with a patient and urged her to abort a possible pregnancy. DesJarlais has since been sanctioned by the state medical board, and now that there's less of a Democratic threat to take the seat, Republicans finally have abandoned him in favor of Tracy [ http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/194622-tn-gop-leaders-back-desjarlais-challenger ].
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/03/scott-desjarlais-fundraising_n_4717889.html [with comments]
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Fox News Gets Four Men To Debate The War On Women
01/28/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/fox-news-war-on-women_n_4679405.html [with comments]
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Four things I've learned from conservatives about successful liberal women
attribution: REUTERS
by Susan Gardner
Mon Jan 27, 2014 at 01:12 PM PST
1. If you're a woman married to a successful politician, and you are a successful politician, you only got there because of your man. Duh [ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/17/1270472/-Bill-Kristol-mansplains-why-Hillary-Clinton-not-running-for-president-would-be-inspiring-to-women ]. Even if you were considered a rising political star [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton#cite_ref-57 ] before you married him. [Note: This doesn't apply to Elizabeth Dole. OBVIOUSLY.]
2. If you've ever been a single mom and broke, scared and working several jobs to get through school, that part of your past doesn't count in your life story if you marry a supportive nice guy [ http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/23/fox-wendy-davis-and-her-stilettos-are-more-scan/197716 ] later. As Disney has taught us, princes wipe the slate clean.
3. If a man leaves his wife in charge of the kids while he advances his career—basically every family man who's ever been deployed in the military—he's a hero. If a woman does it, she's a criminally horrible mom [ http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/national-interest/item/64211 ].
4. If you're single woman and successful in high political circles, you're probably a lesbian [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/geraldo-rivera-janet-napolitano-lesbian-rumors_n_1836793.html ]. If you're not, you're a slut [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/sexist-attacks-wendy-davis_n_4673495.html ].
© Kos Media, LLC
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/27/1272888/-Four-things-I-ve-learned-from-conservatives-about-successful-liberal-nbspwomen [with comments]
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Ryan Zinke, GOP House Candidate, Calls Hillary Clinton The 'Anti-Christ'
Republican Ryan Zinke is running for Congress in Montana.
01/31/2014
WASHINGTON -- Ryan Zinke, a former Navy SEAL and state senator who is now running for Congress in Montana, said during a campaign stop this week that he is worried the country is losing sight of the real threat to the nation: Hillary Clinton.
“We need to focus on the real enemy [ http://www.flatheadnewsgroup.com/bigforkeagle/article_14a08878-89e0-11e3-8e50-001a4bcf887a.html ],” said Zinke on Monday, referring to Clinton, according to the Bigfork Eagle. He also called the former Secretary of State the "anti-Christ."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/ryan-zinke_n_4702765.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Wendy Davis' Daughters: No, We're Not Upset Our Mom Went To Harvard Law
By Samantha Lachman
Posted: 01/28/2014 3:49 pm EST | Updated: 01/29/2014 11:59 am EST
Texas state Senator Wendy Davis' (D) daughters, Amber and Dru Davis, are defending their mother's parenting amid attacks from conservatives that Davis 'abandoned' her children to pursue higher education. Davis' gubernatorial campaign issued a press release Tuesday that contained the daughters' response in an open letter [ https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B28vK5rggYPwOG9GNFkzRU8xMTVCdmpUVXdWeXl1VWptME5J/view?sle=true ].
After a Dallas Morning News [ http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20140118-as-wendy-davis-touts-life-story-in-race-for-governor-key-facts-blurred.ece ] article called into question certain aspects of Davis' history as described on the campaign trail, such as when she was divorced (officially at 21, and not at 19) and for exactly how long she and her family lived in a mobile home, those opposed to Davis' candidacy began picking apart her background [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/wendy-davis-sexism_n_4638465.html ].
Erick Erickson, a Fox News pundit and founder of RedState.com, tweeted "Abortion Barbie had a Sugar Daddy Ken," referencing the fact that Davis' second husband helped pay for a portion of her law degree. Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol Palin [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/wendy-davis-bristol-palin_n_4677070.html ] criticized Davis last week for attending Harvard Law School in the early 1990s while her daughters stayed with her second husband in Texas.
"She left her kid, husband, made it into a false 'made-for-TV-movie-type-tale' and then demanded that Texans have the right to kill babies," Palin wrote. "That’s the woman you libs can really get behind!"
Amidst all the noise, Davis' daughters' attempted to set the record straight about their mother's history as a wife and parent.
Dru Davis called the attacks against her mother "malicious," and a "false charge of abandonment:"
Yes, she went to law school after my sister and I were born. We lived with her the first semester, but I had severe asthma and the weather there wasn't good for me. My parents made a decision for my sister and me to stay in Texas while my mom kept going to school. But that doesn't mean she wasn't there for us. She traveled back and forth all the time, missing so many classes so that she could be with us. Her friends were such a big help. Especially her third year, when she would only go to school two weeks out of the month and her friends would share class notes so she could try to keep up while she was home with us in Fort Worth. I love that my mom went to law school and was dedicated to both her work and us. Watching her work so hard to achieve something great has been one of the most important lessons in my life.
Amber Davis added to the family's narrative about Davis' time at Harvard Law School, and called the comments about her mother "ludicrous:" "Yes, we lived in a trailer. Does it matter how long?"
Dru and I lived with her the first semester but our parents soon realized that it would be better if we stayed in our childhood home in Texas, be around extended family and attend our regular schools. This was a decision made by both parents. I have recently heard the phrase "abandoned" quite often in the past week. That our mother "left us to be raised by our father" while she went on to pursue her education. Not only is this ridiculously unfair; it's completely untrue. Dru and I have always been her number one priority. Always. And every decision our parents made was with our best interests at heart. We had an amazing support system while she was at Harvard and she was constantly traveling back and forth from school to be with us. I’m proud that my parents were able to make this arrangement work. People should be less concerned about who paid for what and pay more attention to the fact that she was accepted to Harvard law school, a dream she believed was unachievable.
Becky Haskins, a Republican who served with Davis on the Fort Worth City Council, has also come to the gubernatorial candidate's defense and deemed the attacks sexist [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/wendy-davis-attack_n_4645187.html ].
"If this involved a man running for office, none of this would ever come up," Haskins told the Star-Telegram. "It’s so sad. Every time I ran, somebody said I needed to be home with my kids. Nobody ever talks about men being responsible parents."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/wendy-davis-daughters_n_4682150.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Anti-Choice Groups Launch National Boycott Of Girl Scout Cookies For ‘Endorsing’ Wendy Davis
CREDIT: Girl Scouts USA
By Tara Culp-Ressler
January 30, 2014 at 10:09 am
Toward the end of December, Girl Scout USA’s official Twitter account tweeted [ https://twitter.com/girlscouts/statuses/413413863988539392 ] out a Huffington Post story about the inspiring individuals who should be considered to be 2013's “women of the year [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/17/women-of-the-year-2013_n_4461327.html ].” The article included figures like Beyonce, Malala Yousafzai, and Wendy Davis — and the organization asked its followers who else should be added to the list of “incredible ladies.” That was enough for anti-choice activists to call for a national boycott [ http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/29/Wendy-Davis-Triggers-National-Boycott-of-Girl-Scout-Cookies ] of the organization’s popular cookies, claiming the Girl Scouts have endorsed [ http://cookiecott.com/ ] “pro-abortion politician Wendy Davis.”
“We’re asking you to boycott Girl Scout cookies in 2014,” reads a new site [id.] dedicated to the boycott, explaining that Davis should not be lifted up as a “worthy role model for our children.” The same accusation is being leveled against the group in regard to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was included in a different news article [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/12/30/seven-american-women-who-made-a-difference-in-2013/ ] about influential U.S. women that the Girl Scouts shared on its Facebook page [ https://www.facebook.com/GirlScoutsUSA/posts/10153703245700393 ].
The controversy has been building for several weeks. At the beginning of this month, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly hosted a panel discussion [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI9abWQcRFY (next below)]
about the organization’s tweet. Panelists suggested that sharing any material related to Davis violates the Girl Scouts’ policy to remain uninvolved in politics.
Davis, who is currently running for governor [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2014/01/21/3184391/sexist-wendy-davis-attacks/ ] in Texas, rose to prominence over the summer when she filibustered [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/06/26/2216191/texas-sb-5-defeated/ ] a package of stringent abortion restrictions. That move transformed the state senator into the public face of a large grassroots movement in Texas fighting back against attacks on reproductive rights. Since then, Davis has become somewhat of a symbol for the anti-choice community, which sometimes refers to her as an “Abortion Barbie [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08/06/2422981/wendy-davis-abortion-barbie/ ]” and suggests that she stands with illegal abortion provider and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/07/08/2267251/no-wendy-davis-doesnt-stand-with-gosnell/ ].
The Girl Scouts’ supposed endorsement of the Democratic lawmaker is hardly the first time that the organization has landed in hot water with conservative groups. The national organization has been harshly criticized [ http://cookiecott.com/concerns/ ] for its ties with Planned Parenthood over the past several years, and some anti-choice activists suggest that Girls Scouts USA actively promotes a “radical feminist agenda [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/21/girl-scouts-and-abortion-pro-life-groups-target-gsusa.html ].” Last year, one right-wing preacher and radio host suggested that the organization is a “wicked” group that is an agent of lesbianism [ http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/pastor-blasts-wicked-girl-scouts-agent-lesbianism-abortion-article-1.1493120 ].
In reality, Girl Scouts USA takes no official position [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/robert-mccartney-dont-fall-for-smears-against-the-girl-scouts/2012/01/27/gIQAEJtMYQ_story.html ] on either abortion or birth control. Organization officials repeatedly emphasize [ http://www.snopes.com/politics/sexuality/girlscouts.asp ] that these are topics best discussed between girls and their parents.
“CookieCott 2014? is encouraging supporters to share a flier [ http://cookiecott.com/wp-content/uploads/CookieCott2014Flier.pdf ] to spread the word about the “pro-life concerns” with the national organization.
© 2014 Center for American Progress Action Fund
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/30/3225571/anti-choice-boycott-girl-scouts/ [with comments]
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Conservative groups call for national boycott of Girl Scout cookies
The organization tweeted a link about Wendy Davis, and now all Thin Mints must be thrown into the sea
Jan 30, 2014
[...]
The boycott website [ http://cookiecott.com/wp-content/uploads/CookieCott2014Flier.pdf ] also warns that the organization’s curriculum for girls celebrates “pro-abortion role models” like Hillary Clinton.
[...]
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/30/conservative_groups_call_for_national_boycott_of_girl_scout_cookies/ [with comments]
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Baseless Christian-Right Attacks on the Girl Scouts (Yes, the Girl Scouts) Go Big Time
Adorable Girl Scouts selling cookies - or abortions?
Jan. 31 2014
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/01/31/girl_scout_cookie_boycott_does_this_mean_more_thin_mints_for_us.html [with comments]
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Girl Scouts’ cookie money stolen outside Phoenix store
Feb 1, 2014
http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/20140201phoenix-girl-scout-cookie-money-stolen-at-grocery-store-brk.html [with comments]
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Millions more asked to 'just say no' to Girl Scout cookies
Buying 'serves only to facilitate a very liberal pro-abortion agenda'
February 3, 2014
An organization with millions of supporters that focuses on family and biblical values has joined the boycott of Girl Scout cookies.
In a statement on its website [ http://afa.net/Detail.aspx?id=2147542941 ], the American Family Association [ http://www.afa.net/ ] said, “It’s hard to say no to those little girls in the green and brown sashes, but buying Girl Scout cookies serves only to further facilitate a very liberal pro-abortion agenda.”
WND reported [ http://wnd.com/?p=625443 ] the American Life League [ http://www.all.org/ ], the nation’s oldest Catholic pro-life education and advocacy group, recently warned people away from purchasing Girl Scout cookies.
“The Girl Scouts was once a trusted organization dedicated to character building in young girls and women. Now, GSUSA is abusing that trust,” said Judie Brown, president of ALL. “Most parents and grandparents remain painfully unaware the GSUSA has introduced so-called ‘family planning’ ideology in its curriculum and promotes groups like Planned Parenthood to our daughters and granddaughters.”
The American Family Association, with its several million constituents, said that as Girl Scouts USA begins its annual cookie sale, it is asking people “to consider what the organization supports with all that dough.”
AFA has built a reputation for mobilizing constituents to act on its boycotts, and has special divisions called OneMillionMoms.com and others that specifically work to influence corporate America.
[...]
http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/millions-more-asked-to-just-say-no-to-girl-scout-cookies/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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In the Spirit: Pro-Life Wisconsin takes aim at Girl Scout cookies
Towering cases of Girl Scout cookies are organized at the Badgerland Girl Scout office in Madison by Terri Graffin, left, and Emily Loew, in this 2012 file photo.
February 3, 2014
Not everyone is loving those thin mints.
Pro-Life Wisconsin is asking its members to reconsider purchasing Girl Scout cookies, saying the organization is too closely linked to the abortion rights movement.
In an email to supporters Monday, Pro-Life Wisconsin said that "while some local troops' activities may be wholesome, sadly, Girl Scouts USA promotes radically, anti-life women, such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, as role models, regularly partners with pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood for 'educational' activities, and encourages girls to fight for abortion on demand."
The annual six-week period of Girl Scout cookie sales kicks off this Saturday.
Pro-Life Wisconsin told its supporters that "approximately 15 percent of each box sold goes to the troop. The rest goes to the regional and national organizations of Girl Scouts USA."
That's not true, said Christy Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the Badgerland Council, a regional body that provides Girl Scouting in south-central and southwest Wisconsin. No portion of cookie proceeds goes to the national Girl Scouts organization, she said.
[...]
For those who want to read more, here's a story [ http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/29/National-Pro-Life-Groups-Join-Girl-Scout-Boycott ] Pro-Life Wisconsin is sharing with its supporters, and here's a response [ http://blog.girlscouts.org/2014/01/get-facts-about-girl-scout-cookies.html ] from Girl Scouts of the USA.
[...]
http://host.madison.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/religion/in-the-spirit-pro-life-wisconsin-takes-aim-at-girl/article_289e265f-82d0-510e-b37c-f3a6efb22e95.html [with comments]
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TEMECULA: Authorities say shotgun pointed at 7-year-old Girl Scout
John M. Dodrill
BY AARON CLAVERIE | STAFF WRITER | February 03, 2014; 07:11 PM
Police seized numerous weapons from the home of the 59-year-old Temecula man who was arrested after allegedly pointing a shotgun at a 7-year-old Girl Scout selling cookies door-to-door, said Temecula Police Sgt. Daniel Decker.
After the girl’s father [who witnessed the incident, see http://www.riversidesheriff.org/press/sws14-0202.asp ] called the police, the suspect, John Michael Dodrill, was arrested around 1 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 2, on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and booked into the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley with bail set at $25,000. He was still listed as being in custody Monday evening.
If Dodrill, posts bail, he may eventually be allowed to recover the weapons -- a mix of handguns and long guns -- but that won’t happen prior to the completion of the department’s investigation, Decker said.
The department was expected to forward the case to the District Attorney’s office for review Monday. If the office decides to file charges, Dodrill could be arraigned sometime this week.
The girl reportedly encountered the suspect while walking door-to-door in the 31000 block of Strawberry Tree Lane in the Temecula Lane condominium complex, a gated community near the Pechanga Resort & Casino in southern Temecula.
People who live in on and near Strawberry Tree Lane said they were shocked to hear the incident happened on their street, which is normally chock full of children playing and hanging out.
Jua-Nita Houston, spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council, said the youngster was shaken up by the incident but she plans to continue selling cookies.
“She set very strong goals for herself and she’s going to meet those goals,” she said.
Although it may seem quaint to see Girl Scouts walking door-to-door, Houston said about 90 percent of scouts still go on “walkabouts” in addition to more modern sales approaches such as social media pitches and setting up tables at shopping centers.
In the 90-year history of the Girl Scouts in the area, Houston said there has not been a similar case of a scout threatened while walking door-to-door.
After reading of the little girl’s rude encounter, some area residents have tried to seek her out in order to buy up her cookies.
Houston said any donations for her will be accepted at the Southwest Riverside County office, 26855 Jefferson Ave., Suite B, in Murrieta.
“We love that the public is so willing to step up and help one of our scouts,” she said.” It gives us great pride to know we operate in such an awesome community.”
©2014, Enterprise Media
http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/temecula/temecula-headlines-index/20140203-temecula-authorities-say-shotgun-pointed-at-7-year-old-girl-scout.ece [the YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yLXinzyXCA (with comments); no comments yet]
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HPV Vaccine Beliefs Don’t Lead To Risky Sexual Behavior In Teens, Dispelling Prevention Controversy
Teen girls and young women who receive the HPV vaccine aren't more likely to initiate risky sexual behavior or believe safe sex is unnecessary.
Feb 3, 2014
Despite many parents’ fear that acknowledging their daughters’ sexuality may cause her to make riskier decisions when it comes to sex, a new study [ http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/01/28/peds.2013-2822.abstract ] suggests that one concession in particular — getting young teen girls vaccinated for HPV (human papillomavirus) — produces far safer outcomes than ignoring it.
A common misconception in parenting is that exposing children to a specific subject necessarily makes that thing more desirable, especially if parents forbid it. Sex is one of those things. Yet despite the fact HPV is far and away the leading cause of cervical cancer worldwide, and that nearly all sexually active adults will contract the virus at some point in their lives, many parents refuse to get their children vaccinated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/vaccine.html ], all boys and girls aged 11 or 12 should receive the vaccine.
Researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center now show that such parent fear may be baseless, as a survey of more than 300 girls and women, both sexually experienced and not, showed that vaccination did not result in greater sexual risk-taking two and six months after vaccination. Girls and women aged 13 to 21 didn’t begin having more sex or more unsafe sex, nor did they think protection was less important after getting the vaccine. ...
[...]
http://www.medicaldaily.com/hpv-vaccine-beliefs-dont-lead-risky-sexual-behavior-teens-dispelling-prevention-controversy-268429 [no comments yet]
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Former Nevada Lt. Gov. Leaves Republican Party: It's Too 'Tea-Party Orientated'
01/30/2014
Former Nevada Lieutenant Gov. Sue Wagner told the Reno Gazette-Journal [ http://blogs.rgj.com/politics/2014/01/28/washoe-gop-chairman-resigns-while-former-lt-gov-wagner-leaves-republican-party/ ] that she has left the Republican Party because she thinks hardline conservatives have pushed the party too far to the right.
[...]
"I did it as a symbol, I guess, that I do not like the Republican Party and what they stand for today," Wagner told the paper. "I've been a Republican all my life. My dad was active [in the GOP] in the state of Maine where I was born. It was more of a moderate, liberal Republican Party."
In 1991, Wagner became the first woman in Nevada's history [ http://nsla.nevadaculture.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2081:lt-gov-sue-wagner-biography&catid=134&Itemid=418 ] to be elected lieutenant governor.
A Gallup poll [ http://www.businessinsider.com/fewer-people-identify-as-republicans-now-than-at-any-point-in-the-past-25-years-2014-1 ] released earlier this month found that the proportion of Americans who identify as Republicans has fallen to 25 percent, down from a high of 34 percent in 2004.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/sue-wagner-republican-party_n_4688509.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Another Nevada Republican Leaves The GOP
01/31/2014
Days after Nevada's first female lieutenant governor left the GOP [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/sue-wagner-republican-party_n_4688509.html (excerpted just above)], a member of a notable Silver State Republican family is following suit.
The Associated Press reported Friday that lobbyist Neena Laxalt [ http://lasvegassun.com/news/2014/jan/31/neena-laxalt-leaves-gop-files-nonpartisan/ ], daughter of former Nevada governor and U.S. Sen. Paul Laxalt (R), decided to register as nonpartisan.
[...]
HuffPost Pollster's latest compilation of 57 publicly available polls [interactive graph embedded] shows that the Republican Party's favorable rating [ http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/republican-party-favorable-rating ] has decreased steadily over the past two years. Back in January 2012, 43.3 percent viewed the GOP unfavorably. As of January 27, 2014, that number ballooned to 66.4 percent.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/neena-laxalt-gop_n_4704296.html [with comments]
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Controversial Republican State Senator Dick Black Withdraws From House Race
01/23/2014
Republican Virginia State Sen. Richard H. Black, who incited controversy [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/dick-black-rape_n_4602683.html ] with his comments about spousal rape, military sexual assault and homosexuality, announced Wednesday that he will no longer run for the U.S. House seat of retiring Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.).
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/dick-black-congress-_n_4651884.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Reports: 3 teens admit assaulting NorCal girl who later killed herself
Pott's attackers — 16-year-old boys and one 17-year-old boy — admitted in a juvenile court in September that they committed the heinous crime and later shared photos of the awful encounter. The three received between 30 and 45 days in a juvenile detention center.
AP
[ http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/audrie-pott-attackers-admit-attack-caused-commit-suicide-article-1.1580284 ]
CBS/AP
January 16, 2014, 5: 27 AM
SARATOGA, Calif. -- Three teenage boys have admitted sexually assaulting a 15-year-old Northern California girl [ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/audrie-pott-suicide-three-teens-arrested-for-alleged-sexual-assault-of-calif-girl-who-committed-suicide/ ] who later committed suicide after photographs of the attack were circulated to some classmates, according to published reports.
The San Jose Mercury News first reported the case, soon followed by the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday.
In September, two 16-year-old boys admitted in Santa Clara County Juvenile Court to participating in the sexual assault and possessing photos of the girl, Audrie Pott, the newspapers reported, citing documents and other sources. Both crimes are felonies.
In addition, a 17-year-old boy admitted to the same two felonies, the papers said.
The boys' names have not been released, but two were ordered to serve 30 days - during weekends - in juvenile detention, and the third was sentenced to 45 consecutive days. That is in stark contrast to the maximum 10-year sentence they might have received as adults.
The Mercury News cites sources [ http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_24913018/audrie-pott-boys-admit-sexually-assaulting-saratoga-teen?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com ] close to the case as saying the two with the 30-day sentences have finished serving them, and the third is in the midst of his 45-day term.
Their sentences are also more lenient than those imposed on two 16-year-olds in Steubenville, Ohio [ http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/teens-in-steubenville-rape-case-found-guilty/ ], who received one and two years in juvenile detention, respectively, in a case that has been widely compared to the Pott case.
Audrie Pott hanged herself on Sept. 10, 2012, eight days after attending a party at a friend's house in Saratoga, Calif. After drinking Gatorade laced with alcohol, she fell asleep and later woke with her pants off and with lewd comments scribbled all over her body.
In the week following the party, Audrie learned that cellphone photos had been taken of her during the assault and shared through text messages, her family said.
In April 2013, students at the high school Pott attended told the campus newspaper that a photo from the night of Pott's alleged rape did not go "viral," but rather was seen by an estimated 10 people [ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/audrie-pott-suicide-update-alleged-rape-victims-school-newspaper-reports-her-photos-never-went-viral/ ].
According to the Saratoga High School Falcon [ http://saratogafalcon.org/content/sources-say-%E2%80%9Caround-10-students%E2%80%9D-saw-illicit-photos-audrie-pott ], two unnamed male students said the only people who saw the picture in question were at the party where the alleged rape occurred.
"The media said the pictures were all over," one student told the Falcon. "That's not true."
The three defendants have been sued by Audrie's parents, Lawrence and Sheila Pott.
The Mercury News reports that, "New court records also indicate that two of the boys -- months after Audrie killed herself but before they were arrested in April 2013 -- were found with additional photos of naked girls on their phones. Both boys admitted to extra felonies of possessing or controlling sexual photos of girls under 18."
"In a statement released last week," the newspaper continues, "the Pott family lawyer, Robert Allard, alluded to those charges, saying, 'It has become quite clear to us that the suspects refuse to accept responsibility or show remorse for their actions. The fact that they have not learned their lesson is demonstrated by the fact that two of these young adults, even after Audrie's death, have continued to engage in 'slut shaming' other young women through, for example, the dissemination of nude photographs."'
"We cannot publicly comment on any aspect of any criminal proceedings involving these young men," Allard said in a statement Tuesday.
Christopher Arriola, Santa Clara County's supervising deputy district attorney for juvenile justice, said he was also prohibited from commenting on the case.
Calls and e-mails to the boys' lawyers Tuesday were not returned, the Mercury News said.
© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. / © 2014 Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/reports-3-teens-admit-assaulting-norcal-girl-who-later-killed-herself/ [with comments]
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Hanover College Told Rape Victim That Attempting To Have Her Alleged Rapist Punished Is Harassment
01/28/2014
A female student at Hanover College in Indiana is accusing the school of retaliating against her for reporting that she was raped, harassed and physically abused by a former boyfriend.
In response to a complaint filed by the female student, named Samantha, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights informed the small liberal arts college, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, last week that it is under investigation. Samantha, who requested The Huffington Post only identify her by her first name, claims she faced possible expulsion for reporting sexual assault and harassment.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/hanover-college-rape-investigation_n_4670543.html [with comments]
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Sasha Menu Courey's Death Casts Light On Campus Sexual Assaults
In this 2010 photo provided by the University of Missouri Athletic Department is Sasha Menu Courey.
01/29/14
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/sasha-menu-courey-campus-sexual-assault_n_4686289.html [with comments]
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Indian Woman Gang-Raped By 13 Men On Orders Of Village Court In West Bengal: Police
By Sujoy Dhar
Posted: 01/23/2014 7:48 am EST | Updated: 01/23/2014 2:59 pm EST
KOLKATA, Jan 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A 20-year-old woman in eastern India was gang-raped by 13 men on the orders of a village court as punishment for having a relationship with a man from a different community, a senior police officer said on Thursday.
The woman, who is now recovering in hospital, told police she was assaulted by the men on the night of Jan. 20 in Birbhum district in West Bengal.
Police said that her male companion was tied up in the village square, while the assault on the woman happened in a mud house.
"We arrested all the 13 men, including the village chief who ordered the gang rape. The accused have been produced in court which remanded them to jail custody," Birbhum's Superintendent of Police, C. Sudhakar, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
India toughened laws on sex crimes in March last year following the fatal gang rape of a physiotherapist on a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012. The case led to nationwide protests for better security and has helped sparked national debate about gender inequalities in India.
The issue was highlighted in local media again last week after a 51-year-old Danish tourist was gang-raped in central Delhi by at least five men whom she had asked for directions.
The West Bengal victim's family told media that she was assaulted because the court believed she had violated the rules of her tribe by falling in love with a man from another community.
The couple were ordered to pay a fine of 25,000 rupees ($400), said the victim's mother, adding that the village head then ordered the rape of her daughter.
Human rights groups say diktats issued by kangaroo courts are not uncommon in rural regions.
In northern parts of India, illegal village councils known as "Khap Panchayats" act as de-facto courts settling rural disputes on everything from land and cattle to matrimony and murder.
But such councils are coming under growing scrutiny as their punitive edicts grow more regressive - ranging from banning women from wearing western clothing and using mobile phones to supporting child marriage and sanctioning the lynching of young couples in so-called "honour killings".
The assault comes after a spate of high profile rapes in West Bengal which have brought Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee under fire for not doing enough to stop violence against women.
West Bengal recorded the highest number of gender crimes in the country at 30,942 in 2012 - 12.7 percent of India's total recorded crimes against women. These crimes include rape, kidnapping and sexual harassment and molestation.
Earlier this month, West Bengal's capital, Kolkata, witnessed public protests against police who have been accused of failing to act on the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl who was later murdered. ($1 = 61.8 rupees)
(Writing and additional reporting by Nita Bhalla; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Nick Macfie)
Copyright 2014 Thomson Reuters Foundation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/india-gang-rape-west-bengal_n_4650743.html [with comments]
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Asha Mirje, Indian Politician, Says Women Invite Rape With Their Clothes, Behavior
Indian people hold candles to pay tribute to last year's gang rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi, in Ahmadabad, India, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013. The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, was heading home with a male friend after an evening showing of the movie "Life of Pi" when six men lured them onto a private bus.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Shyamantha Asokan and Angus MacSwan
Posted: 01/29/2014 7:49 am EST | Updated: 01/29/2014 3:59 pm EST
NEW DELHI, Jan 29 (Reuters) - An Indian female politician and activist has said rape victims may have invited attacks by their clothes and behaviour, fuelling a national debate over a series of incidents of sexual violence against women.
Asha Mirje, a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader in western Maharashtra state, questioned at a meeting on Tuesday why a 23-year-old physiotherapy student who was gang-raped on a bus in Delhi in 2012 was out late at night.
The student died of her injuries and thousands of people took to the streets in nationwide protests against the prevalence of rape and sexual assault in the world's largest democracy.
A number of shocking incidents have since been highlighted in Indian media, most recently the case of 20-year-old woman who said she was gang-raped in a rural area of West Bengal in eastern India on the orders of a village court last week.
Mirje, who is a member of the state women's commission, said in reference to the Delhi assault: "Did Nirbhaya really have go to watch a movie at 11 in the night with her friend?"
"Nirbhaya", a Hindi word meaning "fearless", has been widely adopted by the Indian media as a name for the victim.
She also commented on the gang rape of a photojournalist who was on assignment at a disused mill in Mumbai last year, asking why the victim had gone to such an isolated place.
"Rapes take place also because of a woman's clothes, her behaviour and her presence at inappropriate places," she said.
Women must be "careful", she said, and think if they are inviting assault.
Sexual violence has become a huge social and political issue since the Delhi rape and India toughened laws on sex crimes in March last year. Public anger over the poor state of women's safety in Delhi was one reason that the ruling Congress Party was wiped out in local elections in the city last month.
SWIFT REACTION
Mirje's party belongs to the Congress-led national coalition government and her comments caused an immediate stir, with several television reports pouring scorn on her.
"Every time such a statement is made by a public figure it justifies rape," Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association, a lobby group, told Reuters.
"It's unconscionable that people in public posts make such remarks."
Even members of her own party distanced themsleves from her remarks. NCP member of parliament Supriya Sule told reporters she was sorry Mirje had made them and that they reflected her personal views, not those of the party.
"She did make a mistake yesterday. She should not have said it," she said
While Mirje is thought to be the first senior female public figure to make such comments about the Delhi rape, other members of commissions looking after women's affairs have made similar remarks about less high-profile attacks.
"Mirje is reflecting what is a much larger problem. There are many others who hold such views," Krishnan said.
Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, initially dismissed a gang rape in her state in 2012 as a fabricated incident aimed at tarnishing her government.
Assaults have tarnished the reputation of a country that has enjoyed growing prosperity in the past decade and is modernising fast. Still, Mirje's comments were a reminder that conservative and traditional mores are still deeply held by many of its 1.2 billion people, women as well as men.
In the most recent case involving a foreigner, a 51-year-old Danish tourist was gang-raped in the back-packers' district of Delhi last month by men she asked for directions to her hotel.
(Editing by Ron Popeski)
Copyright 2014 Thomson Reuters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/asha-mirje-rape-comments_n_4686379.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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(from slideshow at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/nun-gives-birth-baby-italy-francis_n_4619218.html ; http://www.theonion.com/articles/manmohan-singh-the-first-sikh-prime-minister-ofoka,18629/ )
===
this is part 4 of a multi-part post -- continues with my next post, a reply to this one
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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