RSN: US Government Finally Admits Fracking Causes Earthquakes, Flood of Foreign Money to Elections Due to FEC Decision,

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Robert Reich | Why So Many Americans Feel So Powerless

Robert Reich, Robert Reich's blog
Reich writes: "A security guard recently told me he didn't know how much he'd be earning from week to week because his firm kept changing his schedule and his pay. 'They just don't care,' he said."
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Jessica Valenti | Will It Really Take a Man's Word for People to Believe Rape Victims?
Jessica Valenti, Guardian UK
Valenti writes: "When it comes to rape, a woman's word has never been enough."
READ MORE

Clinton Foundation Admits 'Mistakes' on How It Listed Foreign Donations
Joanna Walters, Guardian UK
Walters writes: "The Clinton Foundation issued a statement on Sunday in which it admitted it 'made mistakes' over the listing of donations from foreign governments on its tax forms."
READ MORE

Obama Secretly Waived Requirement That Drone Targets Pose Imminent Threat
Adam Entous, The Wall Street Journal
Entous writes: "President Barack Obama tightened rules for the U.S. drone program in 2013, but he secretly approved a waiver giving the Central Intelligence Agency more flexibility in Pakistan than anywhere else to strike suspected militants, according to current and former U.S. officials."
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Flood of Foreign Money to Elections Due to FEC Decision
Michelle Conlin and Lucas Iberico Lozada, Reuters
Excerpt: "The Federal Election Commission has declined to investigate the funding of a campaign to defeat a Los Angeles County ballot initiative by an international conglomerate, raising fears among campaign finance reform advocates that foreign funds may flood into U.S. elections."
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Mexico Protests on Anniversary of 43 Students Disappearance
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Large protests took place Sunday in Mexico's state of Guerrero and in Mexico City, to mark seven months since the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students."
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US Government Finally Admits Fracking Causes Earthquakes
Heather Smith, Guardian UK
Smith writes: "As the US Geological Survey confirmed on Thursday, in the last seven years, geologically staid parts of the US have seen earthquakes like they haven't seen for millions of years. And they were triggered by drilling for oil and gas."
READ MORE

 

 

 

 

 

RSN: Deepwater Oil Spill: BP Steps Up PR Effort to Insist All Is Well in the Gulf, Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben Call on Paris to Divest in Le Monde Letter, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Why I Converted to Islam

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Why I Converted to Islam

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Al Jazeera America
Abdul-Jabbar writes: "When you convert to an unfamiliar or unpopular religion, it invites criticism of one's intelligence, patriotism and sanity. I should know. Even though I became a Muslim more than 40 years ago, I'm still defending that choice."
READ MORE

Woman Who Says She Miscarried Gets 20 Years in Prison for Feticide
Lisa De Bode, Al Jazeera America
De Bode writes: "Activists say the case highlights the way that prosecutors across the U.S. are increasingly using laws designed to protect expecting mothers to criminalize women for terminating a pregnancy or allegedly harming an unborn child."
READ MORE

Bernie Sanders Endorses Rahm Challenger Chuy Garcia for Chicago Mayor
David McCabe, The Hill
Excerpt: "'I support them because we need a political revolution in this country and we need the kind of working-class coalitions that Chuy and Susan [Sadlowski] are pulling together.'"
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Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben Call on Paris to Divest in Le Monde Letter
Emma Howard, Guardian UK
Howard writes: "The environmental activists have written an open letter to the Mayor of Paris, asking her to make it the first capital in the world to divest from fossil fuels."
READ MORE

American Pharmacists Association Votes Against Supply of Lethal Injection Drugs
Associated Press
Excerpt: "A leading association for US pharmacists has told its members they should not provide drugs for use in lethal injections - a move that could make carrying out executions even harder for death penalty states."
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Nashville Prosecutors Made Sterilizations Part of Plea Deal Talks
Sheila Burke, Associated Press
"Sterilization coerced by the legal system evokes a dark time in America, when minorities, the poor and those deemed mentally unfit or 'deficient' were forced to undergo medical procedures that prevented them from having children."
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Deepwater Oil Spill: BP Steps Up PR Effort to Insist All Is Well in the Gulf
Peter Moskowitz, Guardian UK
Moskowitz writes: "But evidence is mounting that five years after millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, wildlife is still struggling to rebound."
READ MORE

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Progress Report: Federal Judge Blasts Hobby Lobby Decision: Supreme Court Should ‘STFU.’

Not On Our Watch

Jul 7, 2014 | By CAP Action War Room

The Best Responses To The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby Decision

It has been a week since five men sitting on the Supreme Court decided that bosses should have the right to be able to interfere with a woman’s access to affordable birth control. In the Hobby Lobby case, the majority ruled 5-4 that owners of for-profit, secular businesses who have religious objections to birth control may defy federal rules requiring that they include contraceptive care in their employees’ health plans because it violates the employer’s religious liberty rights.

The time since has seen reactions of all kinds from across the country. We’ve rounded up some of our favorites:

• Federal Judge Blasts Hobby Lobby Decision: Supreme Court Should ‘STFU.’ Judge Richard George Kopf, a George H.W. Bush appointee to the federal bench who maintains his own personal blog, has some harsh words for the Supreme Court in the wake of their birth control decision in the closely watched Hobby Lobby case: “the Court is now causing more harm (division) to our democracy than good by deciding hot button cases that the Court has the power to avoid. As the kids says, it is time for the Court to stfu.”
• Clergy Protest Supreme Court By Handing Out Condoms At Hobby Lobby. “I’m just hoping that [people who see the demonstration] realize that this opinion [of Hobby Lobby's owners] is not the opinion of religious people as a broad spectrum, but that religious people have many different opinions,” said Rev. Emmy Lou Belcher, a Unitarian Universalist minister who was at the protest. Rev. Mark Winters, a United Church of Christ minister, added, “Jesus had a lot of issue with powerful people using power over the powerless.”
• The Birth Control That Hobby Lobby Won’t Cover Is Leading To A Drop In Teen Births. Teen births in Colorado have dropped by 40 percent over the past five years, thanks largely in part to a state program that provides affordable contraception to low-income women, the state’s governor announced late last week. The long-lasting birth control that’s being partially credited for the dramatic decline is the same contraceptive method at the center of Hobby Lobby’s recent Supreme Court case.
• Two Reasons It’s Too Soon To Panic Over The Supreme Court’s Latest Birth Control Order. An odd Supreme Court order, handed down just four days after the Court’s bombshell opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby raises serious concerns that Hobby Lobby could be even worse for women seeking birth control that was originally apparent. Yet, while these concerns are very real — real enough that all three of the Court’s women joined a blistering dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticizing the Court’s order — it is too soon to conclude with certainty that the Court will follow Thursday’s order in a case known as Wheaton College v. Burwell with the expansion of Hobby Lobby Sotomayor warns about in her dissent. The Wheaton College order should unnerve anyone who believes that a woman’s reproductive health is none of her boss’s business. But it is also far from the Court’s final word on this matter.
• Ginsburg Got It Right: Poor Women Are Getting Screwed By Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby objects to covering two types of emergency contraception and two forms of intrauterine devices (IUDs), incorrectly asserting that those birth control methods can cause abortions. And even though Hobby Lobby supporters argue that women can just pay for their own birth control, footing the full cost of these particular contraceptives is no small feat for women who are struggling to make ends meet. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in her scathing dissent to the 5-4 decision, “the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month’s full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage.”

BOTTOM LINE: Religious liberty is the right to practice religion as you wish and the freedom to not have religion imposed on you by others, especially corporations. Despite the unfortunate ruling last week, supporters of women’s rights are already starting to fight back in creative ways.

 

 

 

THINKPROGRESS | Center for American Progress Action Fund
1333 H Street NW, 10th Floor | Washington, DC 20005

 

 

 

STUNNED

Shenna Bellows is running for U.S. Senate in Maine.

Below are her comments about the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision....

 

What just happened has left me absolutely stunned. The Supreme Court just ruled 5-4 that corporations can claim religious exemptions in order to deny women insurance coverage for birth control.

Decisions like these are exactly why we need bold leaders in Congress who are willing to fight hard for women's reproductive freedoms.

We have a major deadline at midnight tonight, and we need your support right now if we're going to make sure Americans know that Shenna is the only candidate in this race who will stand up for women's health. Can you help?

Republican Susan Collins has taken votes that mirror the Supreme Court's ruling. She's voted for the Blunt Amendment, which would have allowed employers the right to deny birth control to their female employees, and recently she supported the religious exemptions in the Senate's Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would permit discrimination against LGBT Americans for "religious reasons."

These sorts of exemptions are unacceptable in 2014. Donate $5 before our big midnight deadline so that Shenna and the team can keep standing up strong for women's health and rights.

Thanks,

Abigail

Abigail Collazo
Deputy Campaign Manager

Paid For By Bellows for Senate.

Bellows for Senate
PO Box 136
Manchester ME 04351 United States

RSN: Blackwater Death Threat Said to Stifle US Inquiry

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FOCUS: James Risen | Blackwater Death Threat Said to Stifle US Inquiry

James Risen, The New York Times
Risen writes: "Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: 'that he could kill' the government’s chief investigator and 'no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,' according to department reports."
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Supreme Court Rules Against Key Obamacare Contraceptive Component
Mark Sherman, Associated Press
Sherman writes: "The Supreme Court ruled Monday that some corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women."
READ MORE

RSN: The Week the World Stood Still, Why the Exxon Valdez Spill Was a Eureka Moment for Science, et al

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"CLOSING OUR DOORS" The message on the Atlantic Free Press website was stark: closing down … cannot afford to keep it going … have a family to feed. What will it take to keep Reader Supported News from going the way of AFP? 1% of you responding our fundraising appeals. Become a Sustainer Subscriber, you will not be sorry. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Noam Chomsky | The Week the World Stood Still

Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch
Chomsky writes: "Here was the oddest thing: within weeks of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on a second Japanese city on August 9, 1945, and so obliterating it, Americans were already immersed in new scenarios of nuclear destruction."
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Jimmy Carter Issues 'Call To Action' Against Subjugation Of Women
National Public Radio
Excerpt: "Carter tackles a fundamental question of equality head-on: the subjugation of women in cultures around the world."
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Dan Froomkin | NSA Lawyer Likens Publishing NSA Secrets to Drunk Driving
Dan Froomkin, The Intercept
Froomkin writes: "The intelligence community's top lawyer on Friday defended the Obama administration's hostility toward revelations of national security secrets - and likened the act of publishing them to drunk driving."
READ MORE

Obama Meets With Facebook, Google, Others on Privacy, Surveillance
Alina Selyukh, Alexei Oreskovic, Reuters
Excerpt: "Executives of several large U.S. Internet companies, including Facebook Inc and Google Inc, met with President Barack Obama on Friday to discuss their concerns over government surveillance programs."
READ MORE

NSA Breached Chinese Servers Seen as Security Threat
David E. Sanger, Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times
Excerpt: "But even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying from Huawei, classified documents show that the National Security Agency was creating its own back doors - directly into Huawei's networks."
READ MORE

With Health Law, Workers Ponder the I-Quit Option
Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press
Johnson reports: "For Stephanie Payne of St. Louis, who already had good insurance, the law could offer another kind of escape: the chance to quit her job."
READ MORE

Why the Exxon Valdez Spill Was a Eureka Moment for Science
Elizabeth Shogren, National Public Radio
Shogren reports: "Twenty-five years of research following the Exxon Valdez disaster has led to some startling conclusions about the persistent effects of spilled oil."
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This & that......

Stop Telling Lies About Liberals And We'll Stop Telling The Truth About You shared Daily Kos's photo.

(chs)

Moving right along.

From the Planned Parenthood Action fund after last night's Republican response to the ‪#‎SOTU‬: "The politicians can say all they want, but we're paying more attention to what they do."

"We're IN! 100% ALL IN!"'s photo.

Okay, one last Rand Paul funny... LOL

350.org shared EU Climate Action's photo.

Exactly.

 

At the moment, 85% of the oil the EU uses comes from abroad. What if we paid less for importing fossil fuels and invested more in renewable energy? ‪#‎EU2030

 

 

Stop Telling Lies About Liberals And We'll Stop Telling The Truth About You shared Boycott Rush Limbaugh's Sponsors to SHUT HIM DOWN.'s photo.

(chs)

 

Insert 'Rush Limbaugh' and you have perfection! -Boycott Rush Limbaugh's Sponsors to SHUT HIM DOWN.

 

 

 

Working America's photo.

 

Yup. Thanks to Low Pay is Not OK for the image. Take action here: http://wefb.it/3AoVrw

 

 

 

Center for Biological Diversity

Today in terrible news.

Mexico's axolotl 'water monster' may be extinct in the wild

io9.com

The iconic axolotl — a salamander-like creature capable of extraordinary regenerative abilities — has disappeared from its only known natural habitat in Mexico's few remaining lakes.

 

Stop Telling Lies About Liberals And We'll Stop Telling The Truth About You shared Howard Scott Pearlman Signs's photo.

 

Please Share This Message !

 

 

Daily Kos

Another disturbing development out of West Virginia.

Scientist: Carcinogenic formaldehyde found in WV drinking water source

dailykos.com

A Marshall University environmental scientist and member of the state Environmental Quality Board said today that he has found formaldehyde in local water samples and that the continued lack of data on the chemical that

 

 

 

Daily Kos

Wow!

H/T Daily Kos user Pakalolo

BP Deepwater Supervisors Must Face Manslaughter Rap

dailykos.com

Think Progress reports that a Louisiana federal judge on Monday refused to toss manslaughter charges against two BP PLC supervisors for their roles in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster...

 

 

 

Stop Telling Lies About Liberals And We'll Stop Telling The Truth About You

(JLS) "If I hear one more boisterous asshole claim that liberals want Americans addicted to government, I’m going to plotz. Liberals are the ones fighting to give poor people a place to move up to. Conservatives keep harping on about people being too lazy to work, but they do nothing to actually create jobs — unless you call falsely claiming that that Democrats want to tax business out of operation as doing something to create jobs. The truth is that the best way for governm...ent to create jobs is to invest in them. That means not letting student loan interest rates spike. That means holding businesses that offshore all of their positions accountable via the tax code. That means spending the money we desperately need spent to upgrade and modify our aging and decaying infrastructure, but they don’t want to do any of that. Why? Because they’re the lazy the ones."

 

Republicans Hate Hunger — It Doesn’t Kill Enough People…Yet | The Political Garbage Chute

politicalgarbagechute.com

The GOP's march to outright austerity continues.

 

 

Daily Kos

Imagine America's shock when one of the nation's fine Republican congressmen turned out to be a gigantic asshole.

Balcony bully Michael Grimm has long history of being a jerk

dailykos.com

You know what's coming next, right? The part where we find out that Grimm has been a raging asshole for years on end...

 

 

Truth about Chris Christie

The graphic and email below from UltraViolet Action doesn't include Chris Christie balancing the state's budget by sucking more discretionary income from the economy with Predatory Gambling.

Funding for oversight was slashed and of course, internet gambling was legalized. Now, New Jersey residents can bankrupt themselves more conveniently.

And of course, there was the massive taxpayer subsidy for [Anti-Union] Revel's completion, including a highway that services solely that casino that filed for bankruptcy.

 

Unemployment rates:

Anyone who vaguely considered Governor Chris Christie's actions prior to Bridge-Gate recognized that he was nothing more than the typical Republican Hack.

From Ultraviolet Action:


You can't turn on a television, open a newspaper, or hop on the Internet right now without hearing about Bridge-gate--the political scandal surrounding Governor Chris Christie.

But what you may not be hearing is that Gov. Christie's bullying goes way beyond creating massive traffic problems for a mayor who didn't endorse his re-election. For years, he's been pushing extreme policies that hurt New Jersey women while framing himself as a moderate.

Right now, when he's in the national spotlight, we have a chance to let people everywhere know the truth about his policies. That's why we made this sharable graphic.

 

Thanks for speaking out.

--Nita, Shaunna, Kat, Karin, Malinda, Adam, and Gabriela, the UltraViolet team

America's War on Women

The 9 Worst Things Said About Women, Abortion, and Rape in 2013

Meet the pols and public figures who strived to fill Todd Akin's shoes in 2013.

—By Molly Redden

 

Oksana Kuzmina/ShutterStock

Opponents of reproductive rights had a busy 2013. By the end of June, state lawmakers had passed 43 abortion restrictions into law—as many restrictions as were enacted in all of 2012, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights think tank. By August, when many state legislatures had wrapped up their 2013 session, lawmakers had introduced more than 300 abortion restrictions, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Defending these restrictions inspired a string of public figures to make foot-in-mouth statements about women, their choices, and their bodies. Below, we've assembled the worst of these comments.

Pregnancy from rape is too rare too justify rape exceptions to abortion bans.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) sponsored the year's most high-profile abortion restriction—a House bill to ban all abortions in the United States at 20 weeks after conception. So it's only appropriate that he uttered the most notorious abortion-related gaffe of the year: "The incidence of pregnancy resulting from rape are very low."

Franks made that statement in June, by way of explaining to the House Judiciary Committee why it wasn't necessary to amend the bill to include an exception for women who became pregnant by rape or incest. (In fact, women who are victims of rape frequently become pregnant.) But his comment generated so much backlash that, a few days later, Republicans quietly amended the bill to add an exception for rape and incest victims. Franks' bill passed the House but was never taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate. A spokesman for Franks told Talking Points Memo later that the congressman meant to say that abortions of pregnancies that resulted from rape were rare.

Rape is like a car accident: It calls for "extra insurance."

Legislation that banned Obamacare health insurance plans from covering abortion was all the rage this year. Nearly half of all statehouses passed some form of a measure forcing women who wanted abortion coverage to purchase it as a separate abortion-only policy, called a rider.

Some of these state laws, including one the Michigan Legislature passed this month, did not include exceptions allowing insurance to cover abortions in cases of rape or incest. This May, when asked why should women be forced to pay extra to cover their abortions in these cases, Barbara Listing, the president of Michigan Right to Life, explained, "It's simply, like, nobody plans to have an accident in a car accident, nobody plans to have their homes flooded. You have to buy extra insurance for those."
Listing's statement generated a lot of outrage—but it didn't matter to Michigan legislators, who passed the ban anyway.

Male fetuses masturbate at 15 weeks—proving the need for an abortion ban.
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said as much while defending that same 20-week abortion ban that inspired Franks to doubt that rape causes pregnancy. Burgess, who is a pro-life OB-GYN, told a House committee that he was positive fetuses could feel pain at 20 weeks after conception, despite a medical consensus to the contrary: "Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful," he said. "They stroke their face. If they're a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. They feel pleasure. Why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?"

Transvaginal ultrasounds are not intrusive because women get "vaginally pregnant."

In February, abortion rights foes in the Indiana Legislature pushed a bill that would force women who wanted to use an abortion pill to end their pregnancies to undergo not one, but two medically unnecessary ultrasounds—one before taking the pill, and one after.

Many Indiana residents found the idea of forcing doctors to probe women for no good reason to be repugnant. But Indiana Right to Life legislative director Sue Swayze didn't see the problem. "I got pregnant vaginally," she said. "Something else could come in my vagina for a medical test that wouldn't be that intrusive to me. So I find that argument a little ridiculous."

The Indiana Legislature removed the second ultrasound—but not the first—from the bill before it eventually became law in May.

Moving across state lines while pregnant is "reprehensible."

Earlier this year, Olympic skier Bode Miller and his short-term girlfriend Sara McKenna became embroiled in a nasty custody battle over their newborn son. Miller—despite skipping McKenna's prenatal appointments because, as he texted her, "U made this choice against my wish"—fought for custody of the child after a pregnant McKenna moved from California to New York to attend Columbia University.

Miller briefly prevailed in May when a New York family court judge found McKenna's "appropriation of the child while in utero"—i.e., her decision to move while pregnant—to be "irresponsible, reprehensible," and just shy of abduction. The decision incensed women's rights advocates. A five-judge appeals panel reversed that decision in November, explaining, "putative fathers have neither the right nor the ability to restrict a pregnant woman from her constitutionally protected liberty."

Rape is okay when the victim seems "older than her chronological age."

Montana Judge G. Todd Baugh caused a scandal this year when he sentenced teacher Stacey Rambold, 54, to just 30 days in prison after Rambold was convicted of raping a 14-year-old student. But Baugh was resolute in the face of a national outcry. He told the Billings Gazette that the student, Cherise Moralez, was "as much in control of the situation" as Rambold, and was "older than her chronological age." Moralez committed suicide while Rambold's criminal trial was ongoing.

Baugh later apologized for his remarks, although he did not apologize for his sentencing decision. And in his apology, he took pains to explain that he didn't think Rambold's crime was that bad: "I think that people have in mind that this was some violent, forcible, horrible rape…It was horrible enough as it is, just given her age, but it wasn't this forcible beat-up rape." Montana prosecutors are still fighting for a harsher sentence for Rambold—who finished serving his 30 days this September.

Pregnant women are just "little girls" who don't understand their own bodies.

 Supporters of mandatory ultrasounds or waiting periods for women who want abortions often say they want women to fully contemplate the consequences of an abortion before having one. It's a patronizing sentiment—especially when articulated by Greg Brannon, a pro-life North Carolina OB-GYN and a GOP candidate for the US Senate. Brannon, a Rand Paul endorsee, has described pregnant women as "little girls [who] don't understand what's going on to their bodies"—adding that if they show up to his office with their boyfriends, he will "whoop on them with love" to get married.

Rape exceptions to abortion bans are "little gotcha amendments."

There are those who think that placing rape and incest exceptions in bills restricting abortion access is a common-sense nod to overwhelming public opinion in favor of these exceptions. Others think proponents of abortion rights only harp on rape and incest exceptions to embarrass abortion foes.

GOP Kansas Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce is among the latter group. This spring, his party advanced an omnibus abortion bill that would have defined life as beginning at conception. As Democrats proposed amendments, including exceptions for cases of rape and incest, to make the bill less draconian, Bruce said, "These amendments are little gotcha amendments. I'm getting a little irritated at it."

Getting an abortion after being raped is criminal evidence tampering.

In January, Republican state Rep. Cathrynn Brown of New Mexico caused an uproar with a bill to make obtaining an abortion in cases of rape or incest felony evidence tampering punishable by up to three years in prison.

Brown quickly clarified that the bill was only meant to give prosecutors a means to go after rapists.

But you'd be forgiven for fearing that the legislation could be used to target abortion providers or rape victims themselves. The bill defined tampering with evidence to include "procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime."

The bill, introduced to a Legislature controlled by Democrats, was doomed from the start, moving Huffington Post's Kate Sheppard to call it "some world-class trolling."


http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/9-worst-things-said-womens-bodies-2013

If You Liked This, You Might Also Like...

• House GOPers Are STILL Saying Dumb Things About Rape

  And the "days since a Republican lawmaker talked about rape" meter resets to zero.

• While You Weren't Looking, 23 States Radically Slashed Obamacare Abortion Coverage

  Michigan could be next.

• Texas Anti-Abortion Law Looks Likely to Survive Court Challenge

  The Supreme Court's ruling today was oddly ambiguous, but it probably won't be for long.

Some gems....

We won't pick on not-so-bright Sarah Palin....for now....at the bottom there's a great article picked up by RSN about stopping the Dirty Tar Sands pipeline....

Matt Taibbi | Sarah Palin's Impressively Incoherent 'Duck Dynasty'

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
Taibbi writes: "Palin's inability to grasp the difference between a first-amendment violation and corporate calculation is amazing because she literally just published a book on the subject."
READ MORE

Ron Wyden: NSA Review Panel Offers 'Substantial, Meaningful Reforms'
Spencer Ackerman, Guardian UK
Ackerman writes: "Wyden hailed a finding of the review group, deep into its lengthy report, that undermined the NSA's claim that the collection of all US phone records was indispensable for preventing terrorist attacks."
READ MORE

Congress Approves Reforms to Address Sexual Assault, Rape in Military
Ed O'Keefe, The Washington Post
O'Keefe reports: "The changes would be a victory for the estimated tens of thousands of troops who have been sexually abused in recent years."
READ MORE

Obama Commutes Sentences for 8 in Crack Cocaine Cases
Charlie Savage, The New York Times
Savage reports: "Mr. Obama said that each of the eight men and women had been sentenced under what is now recognized as an 'unfair system.'"
READ MORE

In North Dakota, Some Women Assume Abortion Is Now Illegal
Tara Culp-Ressler, ThinkProgress
Excerpt: "The environment surrounding reproductive rights has become so hostile that many [women] simply assume the procedure has been outlawed."
READ MORE

Meet the Texas Farmer Challenging the Keystone Pipeline From the Courtroom to the Plains
Anna Simonton, YES! Magazine
Simonton writes: "Crawford hopes that sharing her story with other landowners empowers them to challenge TransCanada's use of eminent domain and to stop the pipeline altogether."
READ MORE

The Republican Obsession with Female ...Genitalia

Daily Kos

Republicans in Wisconsin aren't done regulating lady parts despite 2 bills passed earlier that vastly restrict abortions and mandate ultrasounds.

H/T Daily Kos user Puddytat

Republicans in Wisconsin aren't done regulating lady parts despite 2 bills passed earlier that vastly restrict abortions and mandate ultrasounds. The quickly rammed through bills were signed in secret by Scott Walker who wanted to avoid the publicity that dogged Republicans in Virginia and caused the Governor of that state to be renamed "Governor Ultrasound".

They're not done exerting more control over womens bodies and one State Senator is promising "all out hell" if they proceed.

A Democratic state senator promised "all out hell" next week if Republicans stick to their plan to take up a controversial bill restricting abortion for public workers and limiting access to contraception for employees of religious organizations.Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) said Tuesday's session could mirror one in June, when Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) broke the base of his gavel as he slammed it down to quiet Democrats upset over passing a different abortion bill. Footage of those raucous proceedings was featured in an ad targeting Ellis run by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin.
Republicans who run the Senate are tentatively planning to approve two abortion bills on Tuesday.
One would ban any abortions that are sought because of the sex of the fetus. The other would prevent public employees' health plans from covering most abortions, and would also strictly limit the ability of employees of religious organizations to get contraception through their insurance plans.

That's right. If you're a public employee, you won't be able to get an abortion and if you work for a religious organization (like a hospital), no birth control for you.

In case you've forgotten, this is how Republicans rammed through these bills in June with only 1 speaker and no debate:





Yes, Mike Ellis broke his gavel telling Democrats to sit down and shut up. After the ram through, the State Senate, as you can see, quickly adjourned. Democracy doesn't exist for the GOP.

Once again, Republicans refused to hold public hearings, required for major changes. Republicans, however, say that public hearings are "stalling tactics" and refuse to hold them.

While Planned Parenthood sued and received an injunction on the recent hospital admitting privileges requirement law for abortion providers, the mandatory ultrasound law has gone into effect unchallenged. It takes money to litigate and the worst law was the one mandating that abortion providers have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

Naturally, Republican Attorney General Van Hollen has appealed the injunction to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals which has scheduled a hearing on December 3. They will then rule whether or not the injunction stands.

No one knows what's going to happen when these new atrocities become law in Wisconsin. They will, of course, become law because the GOP is in the majority and ignore democracy and even the law to ram through every extremist measure they want. The side of sanity doesn't have the deep pockets of RW billionaires to litigate everything in sight.

For Your Amusement:

The notoriously unreliable and facts optional Politifact has given a rare Pants on Fire to Scott Walker (rare for a Republican to even get questionable ratings) after his claim (in a bulk email sent to supporters) that taxpayers in Wisconsin will save about $640 over 4 years from his shiny new $100 million tax relief. Bwahahahaha!

Even Walkers puppets said it would amount to only $33 per year and others have said the "savings" on the typical home would amount to only between $11 - 13 per year.

So, yeah, Scotty. Lie all you want, but this time you went way, way too far and even your pals at Politifact had to call you out.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/07/1253910/-It-Will-Be-All-Out-Hell-Over-2-New-GOP-Anti-Abortion-Anti-Birth-Control-Bills?detail=facebook#