Federal Discrimination Marriage Amendment, yet again…
This abomination is being used, once again, to try to rally the ultra-conservatives to prevent the expected (and in my case, welcomed) Democratic take-over of Congress. The Republicans are just running scared.
Send a postcard to Congress here and let them know you don’t approve of the FMA.
I just found out about this from Planned Parenthood:
Throughout the country, at both the federal and state levels, there has been a frontal assault on virtually all forms of reproductive health care, from abortion to birth control, from emergency contraception to sex education.
The significance of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld by Glenn Greenwald
States Mr. Greenwald: For the past 10 years, I was a litigator in NYC specializing in First Amendment challenges, civil rights cases, and corporate and securities fraud matters. I am the author of the New York Times Best-Selling book, How Would A Patriot Act?, a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released May, 2006.
Excerpt from the actual analysis:
Nonetheless, opponents of monarchical power should celebrate this decision. It has been some time since real limits were placed on the Bush administration in the area of national security. The rejection of the President’s claims to unlimited authority with regard to how Al Qaeda prisoners are treated is extraordinary and encouraging by any measure. The decision is an important step towards re-establishing the principle that there are three co-equal branches of government and that the threat of terrorism does not justify radical departures from the principles of government on which our country was founded.
There are several other salient points made, regarding how the current regime could go about ignoring this (by making legislative changes), as well as what this means for the central defense offered to date to support the illegal wiretapping and surveillance schemes. Well worth the read.
In addition, it looks like I have found yet another book I need to read. (And to try and find it in a library near you, click here.)
Rain falls hard on doubts about global warming
I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” for the second time last night. lasarina and I took unarmed_dreamer and ergothevirgo to see it for their first time.
In words of one syllable: It makes you think.
Yes, that’s a quote from Leonard Pitts. Here’s another one:
As I write these words, it is sunny, 79 degrees and easy to be sanguine. Except, sanguinity has come to feel a little like New Orleans before Katrina, or New York on Sept. 10. For me, at least, the word ”can’t” washed away last week in the deluge of a day when the rain would not stop.
Read the article.
Here’s a link to my original post about the film.
Vatican Vows To Expel Stem Cell Scientists From Church
I am really tempted to just say “Who cares?”, but the reality is that roughly 1.1 billion people will at least take note of this pronouncement from on high. I could go on at length about the so many ways this is wrong. However, I think I will simply leave it as an exercise for the reader.
. . . For three years, Administration lawyers have argued that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to its “war on terror”. That argument is finished. . . .
A President Rebuked by Bruce Shapiro in The Nation
