Eideard

The bishop knows where to send the check…

The Democratic-led Senate is expected to reject as early as Thursday a largely symbolic Republican challenge to a White House rule guaranteeing free birth control for women who work for religiously affiliated employers.

Even Senate defeat of the legislation would allow Republican lawmakers to take a stand in a rancorous election year debate over a policy that is vehemently opposed by social conservatives and Roman Catholic bishops…

The Department of Health and Human Services announced in January that employers including those with religious affiliations — such as universities, charities and hospitals — would have to provide free birth control coverage for women enrolled in their health plans. Church employees are exempt from the rule…

The birth control coverage requirement infuriated Catholic leaders…who think they have a right to overrule civil law in America…

Roy Blunt’s bill would exempt employers from providing health benefits that conflict with “beliefs and moral convictions.” Anyone standing in line to watch Congress explain their “beliefs and moral conviction”?

Democrats including California Senator Barbara Boxer denounced the measure as too broad, saying it could allow potentially any employer to deny additional types of health insurance coverage on moral grounds.

It’s only been about a day since the last time I said this: I realize Christianity may hold the copyright on hypocrisy; but, today’s Republicans – with appropriate aid from the Kool Aid Party – have perfected the process.

Now we get to witness temporary nutball unity between the 14th Century and the 19th Century in an attempt to turn this nation into a theocracy.

Contents potentially offensive to some. If you’re easily offended by George Carlin – go away!

 
The Supreme Court is poised to take a fresh look at a key aspect of multimedia regulation — “indecent” material aired on the broadcast networks during the supposedly “family friendly” prime-time hours of 8 to 10 p.m. Oral arguments in this key free-speech dispute will be held Tuesday.

Why pretend this is a “fresh” look? The fundamentalist nutballs in charge of America’s right-wing demand changes to free speech time after time. When sufficient pimps for censorship are in place in Congress and the Supreme Court – this predictable dog and pony show arrives on the set.

At issue is whether the Federal Communications Commission may constitutionally enforce its policies on “fleeting expletives” and scenes of nudity on prime-time television programs, both live and scripted. The agency had imposed hefty fines on broadcasters for separate incidents. An expected ruling by summer could establish important First Amendment guidelines over expressive content on the airwaves.

A range of competing interests are at stake: Free speech versus censorship; regulation versus responsibility; art versus indecency.

No consideration of a public capable of making a choice, competent to run their own family lives. The origins of “political correctness” in conservative censorship still rule.

ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are all parties in the case challenging the FCC regulations. A federal appeals court in 2010 for a second time struck down the government’s policies, concluding they were vague and inconsistently applied. Pending fines against the broadcasters were dismissed. The government then appealed to the high court…

Read the rest of this entry »

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to repeal the federal law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

The vote that sends the proposal to the full Senate floor was considered symbolic because the measure has no chance of getting passed by the Republican-led House.

All eight Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted “no” Thursday, while all the 10 majority Democrats supported the measure that would provide equal federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples.

Democrats and gay rights advocates hailed the vote as historic in the continuing effort to legalize same-sex marriage and end separate treatment for legally married same-sex couples.

Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vermont, called it “an historic step forward in righting an injustice that goes right to the core of what we stand for in this country — freedom and equality.”

RTFA for the details. They’re about what you would expect. The Party of NO persists in their opposition to civil rights.

Not especially different from 1964. Still cowards. Still backwards. Still opposed to equal opportunity and equal rights.

Rick Santorum is the 8th dillweed from the right
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Former U.S. Sen. and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has a well-known Google problem.

For the uninitiated, if you Google Santorum’s name, the first result you’ll probably get is not his personal website but a fake definition of “santorum,” a sexual byproduct that’s a bit too graphic to talk about in detail here.

We’ll get into how that all happened in a second, but here’s what’s new: On Tuesday, the socially conservative politician lashed out at Google, saying the company could get rid of the sexual references to his name on the search results if it wanted to — and perhaps would do so if he were a Democrat…

Santorum contacted Google and asked the company about the issue, Politico said.

In an e-mail to CNN, a Google spokeswoman said, “Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Web. Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly. Once the webmaster takes the page down from the Web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process.”

She added: “We do not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines…”

The lewd “santorum” definition popped up after the former senator compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality in a 2003 interview with The Associated Press…

That angered gay rights supporters, including gay podcast host and sex columnist Dan Savage, who launched a campaign for his listeners to redefine Santorum’s name. Savage created a website to promote the winning definition and enough bloggers linked to it that the spoof site eventually eclipsed Santorum’s campaign website in search rankings.

Danny Sullivan, who writes at the blog SearchEngineLand, notes that Google has a history of being hands-off when it comes to these controversies, regardless of the politics or sensitivities involved:

“Google is loathe to touch its results in any way, shape or form. That’s because if it does intervene in any way, there’s some interest group that will immediately claim a bias…

Just an example that reactionaries are as likely as anyone else to put in a claim for political correctness.

Yes, there are qualities of bigotry that I personally think should be shunted into the garbage can of discourse – but, I’m not in charge of anything in the public eye except this blog. Santorum is getting exactly what bigots like him deserve. A joking finger up his self-image.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken hours after the Senate passed and President Obama signed the deal, 46% disapprove of the agreement; 39% approve. Only one in five see it as a step forward in addressing the federal debt…

“Most people assume that whatever came out of this horrible process was pretty crappy,” says Joseph White, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who studies budget policy…

In the survey, 41% say the deal will make the economy worse; 17% say it will make it better. A third predict it won’t have much effect.

Who bears the most responsibility for this crap deal?

According to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll…A record 82 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job — the most since The Times first began asking the question in 1977…

More than four out of five people surveyed said that the recent debt-ceiling debate was more about gaining political advantage than about doing what is best for the country. Nearly three-quarters said that the debate had harmed the image of the United States in the world.

Republicans in Congress shoulder more of the blame for the difficulties in reaching a debt-ceiling agreement than President Obama and the Democrats, the poll found…All told, 72 percent disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress handled the negotiations, while 66 percent disapproved of the way Democrats in Congress handled negotiations.

The public was more evenly divided about how Mr. Obama handled the debt ceiling negotiations: 47 percent disapproved and 46 percent approved…and by a ratio of more than two to one, Americans said that creating jobs should be a higher priority than spending cuts.

Sixty-three percent of those polled said that they supported raising taxes on households that earn more than $250,000 a year, as Mr. Obama has sought to do — including majorities of Democrats (80 percent), independents (61 percent) and Republicans (52 percent).

A oouple of informative polls. Especially if you feel surrounded by idiots from the Kool Aid Party who rant day-and-night about constitutional imperatives. Crap they all decide inside their dementia.

The last thing they’re about to do is look around and listen to what the rest of the country thinks. They’ve already decided what you are required to think and believe.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed an appeal by gang rape victim Mukhtar Mai against the acquittal of five men she accused of attacking her…

Mai, now 40, was gang raped in June 2002 on the orders of a village council in Meerwala town of Punjab province as punishment after her younger brother was wrongly accused of having illicit relations with a woman from a rival clan.

The boy was 12-years-old at the time.

A local anti-terrorism court (ATC) had sentenced the six accused men to death, but the Lahore High Court acquitted five of the men in March 2005, and commuted the sentence for the main accused, Abdul Khaliq, to life imprisonment.

A four-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday “dismissed” all appeals and ordered the release of those arrested, according to a copy of the court order received by AFP. It however upheld the life sentence for Khaliq…

Mai, whose case garnered much attention in the West as an example of oppression suffered by Pakistan’s women, expressed her disappointment over the Supreme Court verdict while human rights groups also voiced discontent…

Mai, who now helps protect women facing threats at the hands of influential men, said she would not file any appeal against Thursday’s judgement…

“This is a setback for Mukhtar Mai,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement urging the government to “ensure her safety.”

Pakistan’s government refuses to ensure honesty. Why should you expect safety?

Almost a thousand women were raped in Pakistan during 2010 while more than 2,000 were abducted and almost 1,500 murdered, according to the Aurat Foundation, an organisation working for the protection of women in the country.

A further 500 were the victims of “honour killings”, a custom under which relatives and other fellow tribesmen kill a woman if they believe she had an affair.

There are many nations devoting every opportunity afforded to bring the lives of their families, their neighbors, their nation to a healthier, better life. I’d be hard pressed to qualify Pakistan as one of those progressive nations.

Thanks to USA TODAY

He also says gold is the only legal tender

A Georgia state lawmaker with a history of operating on the political fringe has filed a bill stripping the term “victim” from rape, stalking and domestic violence cases…It would eliminate the word “victim” from statutes dealing with stalking, rape, obscene telephone contact with a child and family violence…

The proposed change angered some who felt that Bobby Franklin meant the legislation as an attack on rape victims and on women, who comprise the overwhelming majority of victims of sexual assault…

Carolyn Fiddler, the communications director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, wrote on the organization’s website that the legislation diminishes rape victims by questioning whether what happened to them is even a crime.

“Burglary victims are still victims. Assault victims are still victims. Fraud victims are still victims,” she wrote. “But if you have the misfortune to suffer a rape, or if you are beaten by a domestic partner, or if you are stalked, Rep. Franklin doesn’t think you have been victimized…”

This is the second controversy this month over Republican legislation mentioning rape. Last week, U.S. House Republicans changed the language in a bill limiting taxpayer funding for abortions after Democrats and others argued it narrowed a longstanding allowance for government funding of abortion in the case of rape by using the term “forcible rape.”

Critics said that the language would exclude abortion funding for the rape of unconscious or mentally incapacitated women, for instance.

Franklin, who also has filed legislation that would outlaw abortion in Georgia…recently attracted attention for filing legislation that would eliminate the need for Georgia residents to get driver’s licenses, saying the government cannot abridge an individual’s right to travel.

He has also filed a bill that would abolish all zoning laws in the state.

Unlike most of his KoolAid Party contemporaries who would take American law and justice back to the 19th Century – and the Confederacy, Franklin apparently is aiming for the 18th Century or earlier.

No doubt he’d love the Inquisition.

Heroes of the American Military
Daylife/AP PHoto used by permission

With 63 votes, today in the Senate, another disgusting symptom of the mutual diseases of bigotry and elitism fall aside. Cured by more than democracy – for the vote in the Senate required more than a democratic majority to close down another archaic filibuster.

Those who voted against cloture should be voted out of office in 2012 and forced to work for a living. They wouldn’t, of course. They would join the ranks of lobbyists for corporate greed, the predictable job path for ex-members of Congress.

Today’s important moment is passage of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Tomorrow we can return to Throw the Bums Out!

UPDATE: Final vote was 65:31, better than 2 to 1. A further example of the hypocrisy, the anti-democratic backwardness of the reactionaries who tried every foot-dragging stunt in the book to delay the good will of the American people.

Overdue.

Secretary Gates answering questions on the flight back from Afghanistan
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Failing to repeal the law prohibiting openly gay and lesbian people from serving in the military leaves the services vulnerable to the possibility the courts will order an immediate and likely chaotic end to the policy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Friday.

Gates, speaking aboard an aircraft as he traveled in the Middle East, said that “my greatest worry will be that we are at the mercy of the courts and all of the lack of predictability that that entails.”

The Senate on Thursday rejected a Democratic bid to open debate on a defense authorization bill that includes a repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The House has already passed the repeal measure, but with time running out in the current lame-duck session of Congress, Democrats were uncertain they could overcome Republican opposition and approve the proposal.

Democrats were pushing for action now because the new Congress in January brings a Republican-controlled House and a diminished Democratic majority in the Senate, which will make repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” more difficult.

On Friday, about 100 people gathered near the U.S. Capitol to urge legislators to pass the repeal. One of them, retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich, said Republican opponents of the repeal measure were “absent without leave” in their legislative responsibility, while the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network called for the Senate to put off its holiday recess until “the task is finished.”

Gay rights advocacy groups, including those comprising military personnel, immediately condemned the Senate vote.

“Today leaders of both parties let down the U.S. military and the American people,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign.

And it’s only going to get worse, folks.

Civil rights, education, support for small business, healthcare, regulatory reform of Wall Street? Republicans and Blue Dog Dems will have lobbyists, nutballs and bigots sitting on their laps every day in the next Congress.