Labels: vote suppression

Labels: Dexter, television

As the popularity of granite countertops has grown in the last decade — demand for them has increased tenfold, according to the Marble Institute of America, a trade group representing granite fabricators — so have the types of granite available. For example, one source, Graniteland (graniteland.com) offers more than 900 kinds of granite from 63 countries. And with increased sales volume and variety, there have been more reports of “hot” or potentially hazardous countertops, particularly among the more exotic and striated varieties from Brazil and Namibia.

“It’s not that all granite is dangerous,” said Stanley Liebert, the quality assurance director at CMT Laboratories in Clifton Park, N.Y., who took radiation measurements at Dr. Sugarman’s house. “But I’ve seen a few that might heat up your Cheerios a little.”

Allegations that granite countertops may emit dangerous levels of radon and radiation have been raised periodically over the past decade, mostly by makers and distributors of competing countertop materials. The Marble Institute of America has said such claims are “ludicrous” because although granite is known to contain uranium and other radioactive materials like thorium and potassium, the amounts in countertops are not enough to pose a health threat.

Indeed, health physicists and radiation experts agree that most granite countertops emit radiation and radon at extremely low levels. They say these emissions are insignificant compared with so-called background radiation that is constantly raining down from outer space or seeping up from the earth’s crust, not to mention emanating from manmade sources like X-rays, luminous watches and smoke detectors.

Labels: It's not nice to fool Mother Nature

Labels: bank failures, Great Depression, movies

Labels: hypocrisy, wingnuttia

Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin's Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious -- he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world.

It was a ton to absorb -- and what a stupendous ride through world history: the story of his own family, the Berlin Airlift, terrorists, poorly secured nuclear material, the polar caps, World War II, America's errors, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, freedom. It's amazing anyone could pack such a potpourri of issues into the space of a speech that lasted less than 30 minutes.

So what sticks? That Barack Obama is a passionate politician who is fixated on -- and takes very seriously -- his desire for a better world. That he is an impressive speaker who knows how to casually draw his audience into his image of the world -- one who doesn't have any need to resort to the kind of cheap effects that tend to prompt the uproarious applause of an audience. That he is a typical American -- an idealist in the true spirit of the American success story who is now very casually making his claim to becoming something akin to the president of the world.

Anyone who saw him make the short way from the Victory Column in Berlin on Thursday to the podium saw a man with the serious gait of a basketball player, a man who seemed young, decisive and focused. For those who witnessed his appearance in Berlin, it is hard to imagine that John McCain has any chance. McCain is 25 years his senior, a man who because of the torture he endured in Vietnam is in constant pain -- unable to comb his hair or lift his arm in celebration.

Europe is witnessing the 44th president of the United States during this trip. Anyone who listens to him realizes that he is not only ambitious but will also make demands. In the inner circles of Angela Merkel's Chancellery, he is reportedly seen as a pleasant person, one who arouses curiosity.

However, he is also certain to demand the help of the Germans, Brits and French in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's not going to let NATO shirk its duty -- and therein lie the perils of the engaging "we" and the catchy "Yes, we can." Otherwise all these hard-nosed Europeans will hope and pray that the future President Obama isn’t really all that serious about the saving the world of tomorrow, the polar caps, Darfur and the poppy harvest over in Afghanistan.

Labels: Barack Obama, hack journalism, real journalism

Labels: cat blogging

In the latest evidence that prices are still sliding, the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday that the median price of existing homes sold in June fell to $215,000, down 6.1 percent from a year ago. Sales fell 2.6 percent from the month before — far more than analysts had expected.

[snip]

Richard Gaylord, president of the Realtors, said a recent survey found that nearly one-quarter of potential home buyers are "waiting on the sidelines." A major housing package passed by the House Wednesday after months of debate could help boost the market by offering a credit to first-time home buyers, the group said.

Labels: economic death watch

This week, Congress issued a report, titled “Equality in Job Loss: Women are Increasingly Vulnerable to Layoffs During Recessions,” that may — if read in its entirety — finally, officially and definitively sound a death knell for the story of the Opt-Out Revolution. The report, commissioned by Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, states categorically that mothers are not leaving the workforce to stay home with their kids. They’re being forced out.

Women — all women, mothers or not — were hit “especially hard” hard by the recession of 2001 and the recovery-that-never-really-was, the report states. “Unlike in the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s, during the 2001 recession, the percent of jobs lost by women often exceeded that of men in the industries hardest hit by the downturn. The lackluster recovery of the 2000s made it difficult for women to regain their jobs — women’s employment rates never returned to their pre-recession peak.”

While prior recessions tended to spare women’s jobs relative to men’s, that trend has been reversed in the current downturn, thanks in part to women’s progress in entering formerly male industries and occupations, and in part to the fact that job sectors like service and retail, which still employ disproportionate numbers of women, have suffered disproportionate losses. And this — not a calling to motherhood — accounts for the fall, starting in 2000, of women’s labor force participation rates.

“Women may be more susceptible to the impact of the business cycle than they were when they were more highly concentrated in a smaller number of non-cyclical occupations, like teaching and nursing,” the report states. “There is no evidence, however, that mothers are increasingly ‘opting out’ of employment, in favor of full-time motherhood. For this story to be true, the employment rate of non-mothers would have had to diverge sharply from that of mothers, which has not been the case.”

In fact, Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which released the report, proved in earlier research that there was no evidence at all for the belief that having children was causing women to drop out of work. On the contrary: the likelihood that a woman with children at home would leave the labor force decreased dramatically from 1984 to 2000, and continued to fall significantly right up to 2004. This downward trend held for women of all age groups and educational levels — except for women in their thirties with advanced degrees, for whom the numbers remained stable over time. “The data stand in opposition to the media frenzy on this topic,” Boushey wrote for the Center for Economic and Policy Research in 2005. “The main reasons for declining labor force participation rates among women over the last four years appears to be the weakness of the labor market.”

Men, of course, were hit hard by the recession and weak recovery, too; in fact, as Louis Uchitelle of the Times reported earlier this week, the workforce participation rates of men aged 25 through 54 have dropped from 96 percent in 1953 to 86.4 percent today.

But when men in their prime working years drop out of the workforce we don’t say they’ve gone home to be with their kids.

We say they’re unemployed.

Labels: economic death watch, employment

Barack Obama is too young to be president. Yes I know he is 46 and the Constitution sets the presidential age qualification at 35 or higher, but Obama has said that we ought not to interpret the Constitution woodenly and formalistically. Perhaps we should look deeper at the presidential age limit. If we do, we will find that Obama really is too young to be president.

In 1789, the average life expectancy of a newborn was about 40 years, compared with about 78 today. A lot of this was because of infant mortality, but in 1789, even the average life expectancy of every man who reached age 18 was only about 47. This suggests that at best a 35-year-old age limit in 1789 might have functioned then about the way a 55- or 60-year-old age qualification would function today. On this account Obama may be old enough to drive and buy a glass of white wine, but he has a way to go before he can run for president.

Others on the legal left, such as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, argue that in choosing between different interpretations of the Constitution, we should select the one that will produce the best consequences. This method too suggests that Obama should be understood to be constitutionally barred from serving as president by reason of his age. We have had three presidents out of 43 who were younger when they took office than Obama would be on Jan. 20, 2009: Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt. All of them committed serious rookie blunders because they were too young.

Labels: John McCain, You can't make this shit up

Labels: Barack Obama

"Some airlines have elected not to do what we would like to see them do, which is take care of the innocent passengers and not inconvenience them," said TSA administrator Kip Hawley.

He told the House Aviation Safety subcommittee that airlines have not made the investment needed for pre-screening passenger name lists.

[snip]

While government auditors have put the total number of names on the government's terror watch list at 400,000, TSA officials say its list of people designated for enhanced screening or prohibited from flying contains about 50,000. Of them, Hawley said, "a very small percentage" are U.S. citizens.

Labels: air safety, Department of Homeland Security, idiocy

A February Planned Parenthood poll of 1,205 women voters in 16 battleground states found that 50 percent of women voters don't know McCain's position on abortion, and that 49 percent of women who backed McCain were pro-choice. Forty-six percent of women supporting McCain said they'd like to see Roe v. Wade upheld -- though McCain says he supports overturning the decision. When they learned of his position on Roe, 36 percent of women who identified as both pro-choice and likely McCain voters said they would be less likely to vote for him.

[snip]

One reason many pro-choice women are confused about McCain is because he has flip-flopped on the abortion issue.

In 1999, McCain said he backed Roe: "Certainly, in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations."

But on NBC's "Meet the Press" in May 2007, responding to a question about his statements in 1999, McCain said: "Well, it was in the context of conversation about having to change the culture of America as regards to this issue. I have stated time after time after time that Roe v. Wade was a bad decision."

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan says his shifting rhetoric is an attempt to "game" the electorate and confuse voters about his actual stances. "[The McCain campaign] knows full well that women in America, especially independent and pro-choice women, will not support a candidate who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade," Keenan says. "So they're still trying to make the case that he's a moderate and a maverick, when his record proves that he is neither."

The record also shows that McCain has rarely strayed outside Republican Party line on the issue of choice. He has consistently voted against measures to provide access to contraception and sex-education, and voted to approve anti-choice judges.

snip]

On the campaign trail this year, he has been adamant, telling MSNBC's Chris Matthews in April that "the rights of the unborn is one of my most important values."

And McCain has pledged that if elected president, he will appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. In February, he said he "will try to find clones of [Justice Samuel] Alito and [Chief Justice John] Roberts" -- two conservative Bush administration appointees -- to fill high court vacancies.

He has worked his pro-life ideology into other aspects of federal decisions. Perhaps the most preposterous example is his voting in favor of legislation to amend the definition of those eligible for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to include the unborn -- while voting against legislation to expand SCHIP's coverage to low-income children and pregnant women at least six times.

In 2003, he voted for a ban on so-called "partial-birth abortions." And in 2004, he supported the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which makes it a criminal offense to harm or kill a fetus while committing a violent crime -- essentially deeming the fetus a person in the eyes of the law.

[snip]

McCain is no better when it comes to the issues of providing access to contraception, family planning information and basic women's healthcare. He has voted to require parental consent for teenagers who want access to contraceptives, and against an amendment to the Senate's 2006 budget that would have allocated $100 million for the prevention of teen pregnancy by providing education and contraceptives.

He opposed legislation requiring that abstinence-only programs be medically accurate and based in science. He voted to abolish funding for birth control and gynecological care for low-income women, and against funding for public education on emergency contraception.

He also voted against a measure that would require insurance companies to cover prescription contraception, despite the fact that many currently fund male reproductive pharmaceuticals, such as Viagra.

And he supports President Bush's restoration of the "global gag rule" -- which cuts off federal funding for nongovernmental organizations that provide abortion services and information -- and he opposes funding international family planning, in general. Yet he doesn't seem particularly well-informed on the subject.

"The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel," McCain said, referring to himself and his wife, Cindy. When reporters suggested that this view made him, in fact, pro-choice, McCain became irritated. "I don't think it is the pro-choice position to say that my daughter and my wife and I will discuss something that is a family matter that we have to decide."

McCain has an equally dismal record on other issues central to women's lives -- pay equity, fighting workplace discrimination, and supporting programs that help working mothers and their families.

In April, he skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Had it passed the Senate, this bill would have restored the interpretation of the protections for pay equity in the Civil Rights Act that was overturned in a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling.

Though he didn't vote, he spoke against the bill on the campaign trail, saying in New Orleans: "They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else. And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them."

[snip]

In 1993, before voting in favor of the Family and Medical Leave Act -- which, among other things, allows pregnant women to take unpaid maternity leave if it's not automatically offered in the workplace -- McCain sought to weaken the measure. He proposed allowing the government to suspend the law if it found that the act would increase the cost to business.

His record on broader health issues for women and families isn't any better. McCain voted at least six times to reduce, eliminate or restrict health insurance programs for low-income children and pregnant women. In August 2007, he again voted against a bill to expand coverage of SCHIP.

Then there's what we know about McCain's personal interactions with women. In his book The Real McCain, Cliff Schecter describes one stop during his 1992 Senate reelection bid. He writes, "At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, 'You're getting a little thin up there.' McCain's face reddened, and he responded, 'At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.' " (Schecter confirmed this remark with three reporters who were present when it was made.)

And at a 1998 Republican Senate fundraiser, McCain proffered this "joke": "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?" Answer: "Because her father is Janet Reno."

Then, there is McCain's response to a questioner in Hilton Head, S.C., last November, who asked, referring to Sen. Clinton: "How do we beat the bitch?" McCain responded: "Excellent question."

During this election campaign, McCain has taken to talking up the sexual conquests of his youth, perhaps to appeal himself to younger voters. In March, he told a crowd in Meridian, Miss.: "I remember with affection the unruly passions of youth." He then regaled them with a story of his exploits organizing an off-base toga party for his military pals and local girls.

In another campaign stop in Pensacola, Fla., McCain recalled his days as a Florida-based fighter pilot -- dating an exotic dancer known as the "Flame of Florida" and "blowing my pay at Trader Jon's," a local strip club. Abstinence-only must not apply for the boys.

Labels: John McCain, misogyny

Global warming could lead to more kittens
By Eoin O'Carroll | 07.23.08

“Each year it seems to get worse and worse,” said Christina Gin, an animal shelter volunteer in Hayward, Calif., to the Hayward Daily Review earlier this month.

She was talking about the shelter’s surplus of kittens, a problem that animal shelters across the country face every summer. But lately, it seems that there have been more and more of the furry carnivores.

Ms. Gin blames global warming for the feline glut, and she’s not alone. The Humane Society has observed that kitten season, which usually starts in March and April, has been starting earlier and lasting longer.

Labels: I Am My Cats' Domestic Staff

Ship traffic on the lower Mississippi River stopped Wednesday as an oil spill from an early morning accident between a tanker and a barge closed a 47-mile stretch of the nation's major waterway.

The closure is likely to go on for days while remediation teams rush to clean the heavy slick of tar that is drifting southward, shutting access to all of the facilities of the Port of New Orleans.

"They say it's going to be closed for days but not weeks. It looks like a fairly extended closure, but we don't have any specifics yet," said Chris Bonura, a spokesman for the port.

The port loses about $100,000 in revenue each day it is closed, and that does not include the losses to terminal operators, stevedores, tug boat operators and other private businesses.

[snip]

Wednesday's accident closed the river from mile 50 at Venice to mile 97 at New Orleans, and its consequences for river traffic will likely reverberate far more than when the Zim Mexico III container ship slammed into a supply boat at the mouth of the Mississippi in February 2004 and closed the river for five days.

That incident took place below the Port of New Orleans, and the port remained open in its immediate aftermath. Only ships that needed to sail to or from the Gulf of Mexico were affected, and some of those vessels were able to reach open water by traveling down the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, or MR-GO.

But this time, Bonura said, the closure extends to the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, a channel that connects the river with the MR-GO. Ships can't get to the gulf outlet, and even if they could, they wouldn't be able to sail through it. Hurricane Katrina dragged silt into the waterway, and its entrance is now only 13 feet deep.

"There's just not a lot of alternatives out there right now," Bonura said.

The river could reopen gradually, as it did after Katrina, Bonura said. The Coast Guard will probably work as fast as it can to push the oil to one side and partially reopen the river, but one lane open may mean travel in one direction at a time.

The impasse at New Orleans also affected other ports in and above the slick. The St. Bernard Port, Harbor and Terminal District, which handles about 260 calls a year from ships carrying bulk and break-bulk cargo such as fertilizer, sand, iron ore, plywood, steel, metals, was shut in by the spill.

"There's no traffic moving in or out of our port," said Bobby Scafidel, its executive director.

Labels: John McCain, oil

The Arctic may contain as much as a fifth of the world’s yet to-be-discovered oil and natural gas reserves, the United States Geological Survey said Wednesday as it unveiled the largest-ever survey of petroleum resources north of the Arctic Circle.

Oil companies have long suspected that the Arctic contained substantial energy resources, and have been spending billions recently to get their hands on tracts for exploration. As melting ice caps have opened up prospects that were once considered too harsh to explore, a race has begun among Arctic nations, including the United States, Russia, and Canada, for control of these resources.

The geological agency’s survey largely vindicates the rising interest. It suggests that most of the yet-to-be found resources are not under the North Pole but much closer to shore, in regions that are not subject to territorial dispute.

“For a variety of reasons, the possibility of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic has become much less hypothetical than it once was,” Donald L. Gautier, the chief geologist for the survey, said during a news conference Wednesday. “Most of the resources are on the continental shelf in areas already under territorial claims.”

The assessment, which took four years, found that the Arctic may hold as much as 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil reserves, and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This would amount to 13 percent of the world’s total undiscovered oil and about 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas.

At today’s consumption rate of 86 million barrels a day, the potential oil in the Arctic could meet global demand for almost three years. The Arctic’s potential natural gas resources are three times bigger. That equals Russia’s proven gas reserves, which is the world’s largest.

Labels: America After Oil

44 oil spills found in southeast Louisiana

Largest is nearly 4 million gallons, most big ones are on Mississippi River

By Miguel Llanos
Reporter
MSNBC
updated 8:14 a.m. ET, Mon., Sept. 19, 2005

More than 500 specialists are working to clean up 44 oil spills ranging from several hundred gallons to nearly 4 million gallons, the U.S. Coast Guard said in an assessment that goes far beyond initial reports of just two significant spills.

The report comes nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, and reflects the fact that the Coast Guard and other agencies are able to only now tackle environmental problems since the search and rescue effort is winding down.

The Coast Guard estimates more than 7 million gallons of oil were spilled from industrial plants, storage depots and other facilities around southeast Louisiana.

Labels: John McCain, lies, oil

I get so angry at that little episode alone, I won’t bother to try and list the many, many things that you should be hiding from.
The subpoena that HJC has?
Dude, in my book, you had better stay gone, forever. You could very well be the modern Eichman, and you know it.
You know damn good and well Bush and Cheney would truss you up and use Revlon Lip Gloss and and preparation H on your pretty little mouth, right before they staked you out in front of the nearest Fire ant mound and put a can opener into a 55 gallon drum of honey dripping down the crack of yer ass while they try to make the first helicopter out of town.
Fool. they not only don’t have your back, they are hoping to use you as a distraction.
The price you pay, traitor.

Executive Privilege also means throwing chum to the investigators to keep them busy.

“Thanks to Dear Leader, now we can afford lubrication!”

Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges - the economic, environmental and national security crises.

Labels: television

Asked about Obama's contention that a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida combined with the addition of thousands of U.S. combat troops that were sent to Iraq contributed to the improved security situation there, McCain scoffed.

"I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened," McCain told "CBS Evening News," adding that Col. Sean MacFarland was contacted by a major Sunni sheik.

"Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening," McCain said, referring to the U.S.-backed revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida in Anbar province. "I mean, that's just a matter of history."

The problem with McCain's statement — as Obama's campaign quickly noted — was that the awakening got under way before President Bush announced in January 2007 his decision to flood Iraq with tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to help combat violence.

In March 2007, before the first of the additional troops began arriving in Iraq, Col. John W. Charlton, the American commander responsible for Ramadi, a city in Anbar province, said the newly friendly sheiks, combined with an aggressive counterinsurgency strategy and the presence of thousands of new Sunni police on the streets, had helped cut attacks in the city by half in recent months.

Labels: faux masculinity, John McCain

Labels: bloggers, just another outrage

Labels: Barack Obama, Chris Matthews

Labels: George W. Bush, R.I.P. America

Now I'd like to mention offshore drilling if I could. My friends, we have to drill offshore. We have to drill. The oil executives say within a couple of years we could be seeing results from it. So why not do it?

Labels: John McCain, oil

Halliburton Co., the world's second- largest oilfield-services provider, said net income dropped 67 percent after the sale of the company's stake in engineering unit KBR inflated 2007 earnings.

Second-quarter profit fell to $507 million, or 55 cents a share, from $1.53 billion, or $1.62, a year earlier, Houston- based Halliburton said today in a statement. Excluding such items as the KBR gain, a legal settlement and a failed takeover bid, per-share profit rose to 68 cents from 63 cents, matching the average of 22 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Halliburton jettisoned KBR last year, tightening its focus on oilfield work as surging crude prices spurred demand for exploration and production services. The company opened a Middle East headquarters in Dubai and added technology centers in Russia and Asia to expand its presence overseas, where services providers are benefiting as producers ratchet up oil spending.

Labels: corporatism, corruption, Halliburton

For Obama, a First Step Is Not a Misstep

The central tenet of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is suddenly aligned with what the Iraqis themselves now increasingly seem to want. Not only have the developments offered Mr. Obama a measure of credibility as a prospective world leader in a week when his every move is receiving intensive attention at home and abroad, but it has complicated Mr. McCain’s leading argument against him: that a withdrawal timeline would be tantamount to surrender and would leave Iraqis in dangerous straits.

Labels: hack journalism

Labels: Bush Administration, war crimes

As Sam rightly points out, women in Malawi, regardless of age, are not empowered to make decisions about their own health. When they are sick or giving birth, they must wait for their husband or other male relatives to decide when they should be taken to the hospital. This leads to delays – particularly when the decision-making man has gone far away from the village – and many women who come to the hospital at all come late, when complications have already set in.

[snip]

Some have described obstetrics in sub-Saharan Africa as a roller coaster of highs and lows, sometimes terrifying and sad, sometimes unpredictable, always interesting, and very rewarding to those of us who are privileged to participate in the drama of childbirth. This particular story had a happy ending. But the poverty in this area is compounded by poor education. Illiteracy rates are alarmingly high, and girls often drop out of school early. The prevailing belief in this area is that the role of a female in society is to marry, have many children, raise the children, and look to her husband for guidance in all matters. Even as we train more clinical officers and try to improve our medical services to women, we must remember that the environment we work in does not allow the women themselves to have a voice in their choices of health care or where and when they will seek medical help.

Only a Spirit-filled woman can submit to her husband's lead. It is the natural desire of a woman to lead through feminine manipulation of the man. The battle of the sexes began in Genesis 3:16, when God said to the woman, "Your craving shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you." In the Art Scroll Tanach Series, author Meir Zolotowitz stated, "Woman's punishment is measure for measure. She influenced her husband and he ate at her command. Her punishment was that she would now become subservient to him."

Why did Saint Paul say, "I do not permit a woman to ... have authority over a man" (1 Tim. 2:12)? It was because it is the natural thing for a woman to try to do. She is, by instinct, a manipulator of the situation. Fallen women will try to dominate the marriage. The man has the God-given role to be the loving leader of the home. [Pages 12-13]

• Voted to uphold the global gag rule, a policy that bans overseas health clinics from receiving U.S. family‐planning aid if they use their own funds to provide legal abortion services, give referrals, or even take a public pro‐choice position.
  
• Voted to de‐fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an organization that provides family‐planning services – not abortion – for the world’s poorest women.
  
• Voted to earmark one‐third of all HIV/AIDS prevention funds for ineffective, unproven, and dangerous “abstinence‐unless‐married” programs.
  
• Voted to take $75 million from the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant to establish a new “abstinence‐only” program that censors information about birth control.
  
• Voted to impose a federal parental‐consent law on teens seeking birth control.
  
• Declined to help reduce the need for abortion and improve maternal health by opposing effort to require insurance coverage for prescription birth control, improve access to emergency contraception, and provide more women with prenatal health care.
  
• Voted against legislation that would have prevented unintended pregnancy by investing in insurance coverage for prescription birth control, promoting family‐planning services, implementing teen‐pregnancy‐prevention programs, and developing programs to increase awareness about emergency contraception.
  

Labels: contraception, John McCain, wingnuttia

Last year, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, Virginia, declared that the government could not hold al-Marri, or any other civilian, simply on the president's orders. If it wanted to prosecute him, the court ruled, it could do so in the civilian court system.

That was the right answer. Unfortunately, last week the full 4th Circuit reversed the decision, and with a tangle of difficult-to-decipher opinions, upheld the government's right to hold al-Marri indefinitely. The court ruled that al-Marri must be given greater rights to challenge his detention. But this part of the decision is weak, and he is unlikely to get the sort of procedural protections necessary to ensure that justice is done.

The implications are breathtaking. The designation "enemy combatant," which should apply only to people captured on a battlefield, can now be applied to people detained inside the United States. Even though al-Marri is not a U.S. citizen, the court's reasoning appears to apply equally to citizens.

Equally troubling, the ruling supports President George W. Bush's ludicrous argument that when Congress authorized the use of force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, it gave the president essentially unlimited powers. If a president ever wants to round up Americans on vague charges and detain them indefinitely, this ruling gives him a dangerous green light.

Labels: executive power, Fourth Amendment, tinfoil

Labels: cute things

Labels: Barack Obama

Labels: economic death watch