Supreme Court

I am sure many readers read with disgust the Supreme Court's decision to let Exxon/Mobil off the hook for the Valdez oil disaster, which devastated Alaska's coastline. This just reminds us YET AGAIN that America doesn't matter to the right wing Republicans. Only big oil companies, Halliburton and cronyism matters to these fools.

Here is a video of Alaska's Democratic Congressional Candidate, Diane Benson's, response to the recent Exxon/Valdez decision:

And here is a statement from Alaska's Democratic Senate Candidate, Mark Begich:

“The thousands of Alaskans whose lives were devastated by this disaster are hurt, once again, by this ruling," Begich said. "What we’re seeing today is another example of how Washington is out of touch with real people. The justices have sided with corporate America rather than with Alaska families who have suffered for nearly 20 years.”

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia US Supreme Court decision to strike down the bans against interracial marriage that in 1967 where still in the books of 16 states.

Just to put matters into perspective, I am biracial (even though both my parents are from Puerto Rico). They married in New York City, so the issue of their interracial marriage was moot. Had they been in Maryland or Florida, they technically could have ended up in jail --but maybe not if they could prove even if they were US citizens by birth (all Puerto Ricans are), the 'being Puerto Rican' may have then exempted them from the law.

Anyhow, it is amazing to see over at Loving Day's legal map that Florida had even codified the 1/8 drop rule into the marriage ban --exactly because the ban was about protecting the supremacy of a group of people who, if you look real close, have always been the minority (with the most wealth and political power) in this country. All the white-looking octaroons (at least at that time) need not apply for enjoying the perks of their physical (yet not genetic) whiteness.

So it's 40 years later and the same-sex marriage movement is using Loving vs. Virginia as the standard for all people who want to marry, be fruitful and multiply.

Here's the money quote from Justice Warren's decision :

from Talk to Action

About the author: In addition to the less noteworthy accomplishment of being my friend, Carole Joffe is Professor of Sociology at UC-Davis and the author of Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe V. Wade . With co-author Diane di Mauro, Professor Joffe recently published The Religious Right and the Reshaping of Sexual Policy: An Examination of Reproductive Rights and Sexuality Education [pdf link] in Sexuality Research & Social Policy, the journal of the National Sexuality Resource Center. She has granted permission to post the text of her essay in full. -- moiv

“Well, I used to do them—there is less blood loss, and in some situations, it just seems safer. I’m not sure what I will do now.”

The speaker is Dr. Jacob Clark (not his real name), a fit man in his 60s, an obstetrician/gynecologist who has spent his life serving poor women in an East Coast city. Over coffee, he is discussing over with me his deep frustration and confusion over the recent Supreme Court decision, Gonzales v Carhart, upholding an abortion ban.

The banned procedure—referred to by medical professionals as “Intact Dilation and Extraction”, and by antiabortionists as “Partial Birth Abortion”—is quite rare, less than 1% of all abortions performed in the United States. But Dr. Clark is one of those who performs this procedure, when the situation, in his judgment, calls for it.

Dr. Clark and I are attending a medical conference, shortly after the Court announced its decision. We’ve just heard the medical director of a large clinic address her colleagues from across the country, and succinctly state the dilemma that abortion providers now face: “We’ve got to keep our patients safe—and ourselves out of jail.”

It's not just what happened on April 18 when the über-cons that Bush appointed to the Supreme Court set a dangerous precedent by refusing to consider risks to a woman's health to be a valid medical concern anymore. It's how and why it happened at all.

As Katha Pollitt points out in an excellently angry rant in her 'The Nation' column, it really does matter which party you vote for. A Democratic-controlled Congress would never have passed the draconian Partial-Birth Abortion Act. A Democratic President would never have signed it. And a pre-Bush SCOTUS would never have upheld it. (In fact they already didn't, once. But that was before people who really should have known better let the Rethuglican camel's nose into the tent.)

So, NARAL Pro-Choice America -- or whatever your latest bland, pandering brand name is -- maybe, much too late, you'll rethink your policy of supporting pro-choice Republicans, who made the majorities that set the agenda that led us to this very bad place. And maybe, Tom Frank and assorted liberal know-it-alls of the op-ed page and blogosphere who've been telling us to calm down because Republicans are all bark and no bite on abortion, you'll take a look at the real world. Sometimes politicians deliver on their promises. As for all you pro-choicers with qualms out there -- who think abortion is icky and "late term" abortion especially so, although you couldn't say exactly when that even is, and who wonder why women are so careless and shouldn't emergency contraception have taken care of this already? -- maybe it's time to start defending the right you say you believe in, instead of cutting the ground out from under it.

Yeah. What she said.

from Talk to Action

The deadline for filing new bills in the Texas Legislature passed some weeks ago, but State Senator Dan Patrick is so very special that he's been granted a very special suspension of the rules to file yet another of his very special anti-abortion bills. His Texas Baby Purchasing Act of 2007 drew more snickers than sponsors, and his co-effort with Rep. Warren Chisum to ban abortion entirely remains in committee, but the legislative session's not over yet. And the religious right never gives up.

Women in Texas already are denied abortion care until after a doctor warns them of nonexistent risks of breast cancer and mental illness, after which they must spend at least 24 hours pondering misinformation that no responsible physician would have given them, nor ever did, until forced by law to do so. Patrick's SB 920 adds yet another moralistic barrier by denying a woman abortion care unless she examines an ultrasound image of her pregnancy, whether she wants to see it or not.

Patrick (left), a Christian conservative talk show host and first-term senator who broadcasts his radio show from the Capitol, had his own vasectomy performed live and on the air. Had a compulsory ultrasound viewing been a part of that procedure, we would all be grateful that Patrick is one publicity hound who didn't have a television gig.

Women who seek abortion care deserve to have much more medical privacy than that, along with a lot more respect for their constitutional rights.

Where is St. Patrick now that we need him?

One of the legendary saint's big claims to fame -- other than eventually becoming the nominal excuse for what a friend of mine once called "Mardi Gras for red-haired people with freckles," of course -- is that he is said to have chased all the snakes out of Ireland way back when.

Too bad he's not around today, because we could sure use somebody to chase all the snakes out of Washington. Our own national Babylon-on-the-Potomac is heavily over-infested with them these days, too.

Snakes to the left of us, snakes to the right of us. You can't cross the Mall in D.C. anymore without stepping over (or, preferably, on) some scaly serpent. You can't hit a K Street lobbyist with a wad of hundreds without staring some spineless viper right in the eyes.

And if you happen to work for the VP's office or the DOJ, well, you'll have to look straight up just to watch one of those nasty aspies slither on by over your head. The place really is crawling with snakes, especially after the last six years or so. Those nine guys in the black robes couldn't figure out how to count votes, but they were still adders anyway.

Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes? We hate snakes.

Thoughts about the vagaries of voting machines today put me in mind of the mandatory tests used once upon a time--not just in the South either-- to prequalify voter fitness by proving oneself to the government already in power, by passing whatever tests it sees fit to impose on you, without your consent to be governed by test results because you can't vote yet.

Talk about a high stakes Catch-22!
I feel a rant coming on --

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. . . Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

[via TomPaine.com - Pushing Back On Roe]:

Democrats do need to understand that the pro-choice majority encompasses a variety of views. Many who want to preserve reproductive freedom are also troubled by the large number of abortions performed in this country. Abortion rates are far lower in Europe (due in part, to superior health care systems delivering birth-control services).

But Democrats should reject the conservative proposition that freedom to obtain abortion causes the high abortion rates in America. Abortion rates have actually been declining since the mid-1980s. And they would be even lower today but for a falling percentage of poor American women with access to contraception, according to a newstudy from the Guttmacher Institute. The study found that, in 2001, 14 percent of poor women were not using contraception, compared with 8 percent in 1994. The institute blames the resulting rise in this group's rate of unintended pregnancies on cuts in government family planning programs.

So when Hillary Clinton and other Democrats call for reducing the number of abortions in America, they strike a chord among many basically pro-choice people who want abortion kept legal but not regarded as casual. Many of these voters support Republicans for cultural reasons. Democrats can win them back.

I was attacked once, in a televised crowd of almost 100,000 people in the streets -- assaulted and battered on the sidewalk after a huge hometown football game in Gainesville, Florida.

Please understand I was hometown fan but no fanatic, a sober, sanguine 40-year-old mom who'd just succeeded in becoming pregnant again though I didn't show, didn't yet even know. I'd been faithfully abstaining --from alcohol, obviously not from sex!-- with the hope in mind.

So why did the attack happen to me, what did it mean?

I was on foot with my husband, leaving the stadium across the grassy field where some brash, privileged young frat boy type (wearing the same team colors as I, does that mean he was "on my side?") had parked his sporty first-tier-access car. Maybe Daddy was a big booster? Or the kid could have been a Master of the Universe himself -- it WAS the '90s.

Our team had just lost a fair --and fairly humiliating-- fight to our major in-state rival. We were the team the TV commentators loved to hate, so no one wearing orange and blue was feeling great.

But it was objectively beautiful weather (my happy hormones might have been kicking in already?) and win or lose the game, I had every reason to be enjoying it among my fellows, or so it had seemed.

[via YouTube - Scalia in Switzerland (Fribourg, March 2006)]:

the problem with Guantanamo ... is that there may be no end to this war ... who makes peace in this war? ... how long are you going to keep these people in there? ... that's the problem [and] not that we're not giving people captured in the battlefield a civil trial.