When the National Organization for Marriage's summer bus tour rolled into Indianapolis, I grabbed the chance to chat one-on-one with Maggie Gallagher, NOM's President. After all, I'd already sat down with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and Ryan McCann, Director of Public Policy for the Indiana Family Institute, and I often go head to head on local media. When I realized I could interview both Ryan and Maggie, I knew I had a winning combo.

Ryan and I have a running bet for when we disagree. The losing person has to go on a date to an event of the winner's choosing. I took Ryan to the movies. He took me to an ex-gay conference. He's such a romantic.

Watch as Maggie and Ryan preach about love and truth at a rally for a group that's faced numerous electoral finance complaints and featured a sign saying that the "solution" to same-sex marriage is to lynch gay couples. But when questioned about those pesky legal troubles, they start squirming and I end up with another date.

This will be our third date and you know what that means! Will I have to take one for the team? The video is after the jump.

( Read more... )

Source: The Bilerico Project

Full interview with Mad Maggie here.

More women in the developed world are choosing not to have children. So why do friends, family, colleagues and even strangers think it's OK to question their decision?

We've come a long way, baby. Until a few decades ago, it was widely assumed that a woman would marry and, soon after, the stork would arrive with a special delivery.

Today, there are many more choices - or more openness. To have a baby out of wedlock. To have a baby without a father. To have a baby and return to work. To have a baby and give up work. To have fertility treatment, and then a baby (or not).

But what about not becoming a mother at all? Studies in the UK, Europe and the United States show this is now the choice of significant numbers of women.

Once this was considered insane or unnatural. Even today, it is viewed with suspicion - women with no desire to procreate say they sometimes face awkward questions and disapproval.

( Rest of the article under cut! )

Sauce is license-payer funded and has moar statistics!

I thought this was an interesting article, though I'm not sure if it really contributed anything new other than a more European viewpoint. I didn't like the likening of coming out as childfree to coming out as gay, but on the other hand the comments, for a wonder, were surprisingly not murder-inducing with perhaps one exception. So there's that.

Tea Partyers in Wonderland

Thursday 29 July 2010

by: Barbara Koeppel | The Nation | Op-Ed


The mythmongers in Tea Party land and millions more Americans seem to prefer fiction to fact.

Based on a mid-April New York Times/CBS News poll of about 1,600 adults, we learned that 52 percent of Tea Party supporters believe "too much has been made of the problems facing black people." Could it be because 89 percent of the Partyers polled are white? They also have above-average incomes: 31 percent of Tea Partyers earn more than $75,000 a year, as opposed to 26 percent of all poll respondents. A cool 68 percent of Tea Partyers consider themselves middle-class or above. And they're very angry about government spending. As one woman says, "I'm sick and tired of them wasting money" (though she probably doesn't want her Medicare or Social Security touched).

If the Tea Partyers think too much is made of problems facing blacks and too much is being spent, can we conclude, ergo, that they think blacks are getting too many handouts? If so, they would not be alone. And they would also be mistaken. In the 1970s their predecessors' prevailing wisdom was that welfare moms drove Cadillacs and luxuriated in government largesse while others (substitute hard-working white folks) were kept from the cookie jar.

( So let's set the record straight -- for then and now. )

Source

BOSTON (July 29) - A woman hospitalized in critical condition after sitting for a month with deep bedsores in a recliner soaked with her waste died Thursday, on her 81st birthday, prosecutors said. Five family members who lived with her face various elderly abuse charges and could see upgraded charges.

Fall River police found Mary Araujo on Saturday in a recliner, drifting in and out of consciousness, after a family member called 911.

She was hospitalized with a bacterial infection in her bloodstream and was covered with bedsores, including one so deep that tendons could be seen through her decomposing skin, said Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for Bristol District Attorney Sam Sutter. She also had 1-inch facial hair around her mouth and her toenails were so long that they were curled and bent back into her skin, he said.

The woman's 49-year-old daughter, Karen Cabral, and Cabral's 51-year-old husband, Duarte, were charged with permitting injury to an elderly or disabled person and permitting serious injury to an elderly or disabled person. Two of the woman's grandsons, Scott Cabral, 24, and Corey Cabral, 21, were arrested on the same charges. Another grandson, Keith Cabral, 28, was charged with elder neglect with serious injury.

All five lived with Araujo in a second-floor apartment in Fall River. They pleaded not guilty Tuesday and were being held at the Bristol County House of Correction on bails ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 cash.

Karen Cabral's lawyer, Kenneth van Colen, said he had not been told that Araujo had died. He declined to comment.

Lawyers for the other family members did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

During a bail hearing Tuesday, van Colen said the elderly woman had been in a slow decline, which accelerated in the few days before the family called 911. He said the family asked her to go to the hospital and bought applesauce and other soft food to try to get her to eat. He said she rejected their offers to help her bathe.

The Bristol County District Attorney's Office said no decision has been made regarding potential upgraded charges against the family members.

Source



As my best friend, who showed me this article, said: They belong under the prison. My grandmother died because her dementia made her not want to eat, but she was in hospital. We made sure they tried everything before we finally let her go, making sure she was as pain free as possible (she also had leukemia). There is no freaking excuse for the way her family just let her die

More women in the developed world are choosing not to have children. So why do friends, family, colleagues and even strangers think it's OK to question their decision?

( Read more... )

 US Senate Lockerbie bomber inquiry 'may visit UK'

The US senator, who is to chair a rescheduled congressional inquiry into the Lockerbie bomber release, has said he may send investigators to Britain.

In an interview for the BBC's Newsnight programme, Senator Robert Menendez said he wanted to take up offers from some witnesses to be questioned in the UK. Scots Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and former UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw refused to testify in the US.
BP's outgoing chief executive Tony Hayward also declined to appear. Mr Menendez has rescheduled the hearing for September and issued fresh invitations to all potential witnesses.

Oil questions

The senator told Newsnight: "In addition to making a request for them to come to the hearings, we will be sending individuals... to Great Britain and Scotland to interview the individuals and to ask questions and get a thorough understanding of how they came to their decisions."
Also speaking on the programme, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said he was happy to offer a visiting US senator "the courtesy of a meeting". But he said there was "no way on Earth" Scottish ministers would formally give evidence to a committee hearing of a foreign legislature, even if it was held in the UK. "It's a point of principle that you're not responsible to the committee of another parliament," he said.

"I don't think there is a recorded case in history of a serving American secretary going to another jurisdiction to give evidence to a committee of another parliament. That applies to the Chilcot Committee, it applies to coroners' inquests in England, it applies to extraordinary rendition and all the other controversies the US has been involved in. "You shouldn't ask other people to do things that your own government would never dream of," he said.

The proposed Senate hearing focuses on whether BP oil deals influenced the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
Megrahi is the only man to have been convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 on 21 December 1988.
The flight, from London to New York, exploded over Lockerbie in south west Scotland killing all 259 people on board, along with 11 people on the ground. Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds having been told he had three months to live but is still alive almost a year later.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill rejected moving Megrahi as part of a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA). It has been alleged BP pressed for an agreement in order to help secure an offshore deal with Libya. BP has confirmed it did press for a PTA because it was aware that a delay might have "negative consequences" for UK commercial interests. However, it has said it did not express a view about the specific form of the agreement which was a matter for the UK and Libyan governments. At the time Megrahi was the only Libyan prisoner in the UK.

The UK government said the release was a matter for the Scottish government and Scottish ministers have said they had had no representations from BP on the matter. The US Senate foreign relations committee had wanted to hold an inquiry on Capitol Hill this week but postponed it until September as none of the key witnesses it wanted to call agreed to attend.

Source:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-10810315

And I may stick a boot in your entitled, ignorant arse.

By Meena Hartenstein

A Florida man says he was the victim of a racially motivated attack Monday, when he was punched by a black teenager for listening to rap music.

David McKnight, 22, was playing the song “Wasted” by Gucci Mane when, he says, he was confronted by 14-year-old Joshua Lamb, WFTV.com reports.

"The argument involved the black male suspect saying, ‘You shouldn't be listening to rap music because you're white,' " said Palm Bay police spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez.

When McKnight, who is Caucasian, refused to turn off the music, Lamb and a group of friends assaulted him.

"I couldn't get away fast enough," McKnight told WFTV. "One of them spit on me, punched me, knocked me down ... I got a couple of kicks in from a couple of them."

McKnight told police Lamb was with at least seven others.

"I told him to drop it. I was like, ‘Just drop it, let's go, there is eight of you and one of me. Just drop it,' " McKnight said. "And he says, ‘I'm not dropping anything.’ Bam! [He] punched me."

McKnight did not retaliate and, according to the police report obtained by The Smoking Gun, he "fled before any further battery could take place."

But WFTV reported that he suffered a swollen eye, broken toe, concussion and choke marks around his neck in the fight.

"I feel it's a racial thing, really," McKnight said.

Police officers who showed up shortly after the incident arrested Lamb on battery charges, and he is currently being held in a juvenile detention center.

If state prosecutors decide to charge Lamb with a hate crime, the battery charge could turn into a felony.

Source

I really don't know what to think. Fuckin' hate crimes, how do they work?

UPDATE: Police report at The Smoking Gun

Bangalore: Bangalore University is bending the gender. It will soon allow eligible transgenders pursuing higher education to take admission and avail of the reservation quota of one seat in each of the 60 post-graduate (PG) courses that it offers.

The varsity’s academic council meeting on Monday unanimously approved the proposals of opening admissions to transgenders to PG courses and to reserve seats for them. This makes Bangalore University the first in India to open admissions as well as fix reservation for transgenders.

It in fact is already gearing up to make adjustments to accommodate its new students.

The university has changed the application format. From this year, apart from the ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ categories, the application form will have a ‘TG’ (Transgender) option.

“The transgender quota is not a transferable one. Even if the reserved seats are not filled, others cannot fill it. This reservation is meant only for transgenders, and it is not beyond rules and regulations,” said N Prabhu Dev, vice-chancellor, Bangalore University.

Members of the academic council, while appreciating the initiative, have also suggested measures to make the transgender students feel comfortable and protected against harassment or ragging by other students.

Prabhu Dev said if any student treated transgenders differently, or they were subject to mental or physical harassment, it would be considered as ragging. “The university is already zero-tolerant towards ragging. It is the responsibility of each head of department to ensure it does not happen and protect the transgenders,” he said. “We consider it as our social responsibility.”

To make students sensitive about transgenders, the university is planning to organise counselling sessions in coordination with the department of psychology.

The varsity is also all set to address the personal needs of the transgenders, like constructing separate toilets and restrooms for them.

“We want them to use the same libraries and laboratories. But in some issues we need to address their private needs, too, like separate toilets and rest rooms,” the vice chancellor said. “I came to know that some of them (transgenders) have been rejected seats in the past by our colleges. Some were hurt by the way college authorities behaved with them. As for my knowledge, many among them are really brilliant and we need to encourage them,” he said.

“We will also think of extending accommodation facilities to them,” said Dev.

BL Muralidhara, coordinator, centralised PG admissions 2010, who presented the proposal before the academic council, said: “Transgender individuals have been denied even basic human rights. It is inevitable that they be brought in the mainstream and given access to education and a better social status.”

“I have cases in that community who have completed their degree and await an opportunity to pursue higher education,” said Shobha Karandlaje, former minister for rural development and panchayat raj.

Source wants some brilliant transgender individuals all up in the house

----

I wince whenever the word "transgenders" appears in this article, but go Bangalore!

BEIJING — China, the world’s most prodigious emitter of greenhouse gas, continues to suffer the downsides of unbridled economic growth despite a raft of new environmental initiatives.

The quality of air in Chinese cities is increasingly tainted by coal-burning power plants, grit from construction sites and exhaust from millions of new cars squeezing onto crowded roads, according to a government study issued this week. Other newly released figures show a jump in industrial accidents and an epidemic of pollution in waterways.

The report’s most unexpected findings pointed to an increase in inhalable particulates in cities like Beijing, where officials have struggled to improve air quality by shutting down noxious factories and tightening auto emission standards. Despite such efforts, including an ambitious program aimed at reducing the use of coal for home heating, the average concentration of particulates in the capital’s air violated the World Health Organization’s standards more than 80 percent of the time during the last quarter of 2008.

“China is still facing a grave situation in fighting pollution,” Tao Detian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told the official China Daily newspaper.

The ministry said the number of accidents fouling the air and water doubled during the first half of 2010, with an average of 10 each month. The report also found that more than a quarter of the country’s rivers, lakes and streams were too contaminated to be used for drinking water. Acid rain, it added, has become a problem in nearly 200 of the 440 cities it monitored.

_____________

The New York Times has the entire article