VA Senate GOPers Save Their Vaginal Rape Bill For Jesus

VA Senate GOPers Save Their Vaginal Rape Bill For Jesus
"I suppose this is that "new" moderate Republican party I keep reading about. They say it's all the rage, but apparently hasn't made its way into the heart of old Virginny. Instead, we get small government -- small enough to fit into a pregnant woman's vagina!"

America's Big Political Fight: Will We Grapple with Reality or Fully Detach and Live in Fantasyland? | Alternet

America's Big Political Fight: Will We Grapple with Reality or Fully Detach and Live in Fantasyland? | Alternet
"The real struggle confronting the United States is not between the Right and the Left in any traditional sense, but between those who believe in reality and those who are entranced by unreality. It is a battle that is testing whether fact-based people have the same determination to fight for their real-world view as those who operate in a fact-free space do in defending their illusions."

University Of North Carolina Allegedly Pressured Dean To Underreport Incidents Of Sexual Assault On Campus

University Of North Carolina Allegedly Pressured Dean To Underreport Incidents Of Sexual Assault On Campus: The University of North Carolina’s administration may have pressured Melinda Manning, the former assistant dean of students, to underreport cases of sexual assault on UNC’s campus in 2011. Manning, three current students, and one former student filed a compliant this week alleging the university has violated federal law by mishandling sexual assault incidents — and [...]/p

Criminalizing Pregnancy: As Roe v. Wade Turns 40, Study Finds Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women

Criminalizing Pregnancy: As Roe v. Wade Turns 40, Study Finds Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women
"The new study comes on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision on the right to abortion — a right that has been under siege ever since."

U.S. Soccer Star Stands Up For Collective Bargaining

U.S. Soccer Star Stands Up For Collective Bargaining: A new U.S. women’s soccer league will be launching this year, hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the game following the U.S. women’s national team’s 2012 Olympic gold medal. And one of the stars of that medal run — striker Alex Morgan — wants to make sure that the players in the new league [...]/p

Rush’s latest abortion idiocy

Rush’s latest abortion idiocy
"After a rousing bit of back and forth with a caller on gun control (“If you have gun control laws, the law-abiding will be the only people that don’t have guns!“), Limbaugh launched into a new theory about how to ban abortion in the United States.

By suggesting doctors perform them with guns."

64 Percent Of Republicans Are Birthers, Poll Finds

64 Percent Of Republicans Are Birthers, Poll Finds: For the last five years, a small pocket of professional conspiracy theorists have carved out a corner of the internet for the express purpose of advancing the theory that President Obama was not born in the United States, his birth certificate is a forgery, and that therefore he is not eligible to serve as president [...]/p

What Happened to the Violence Against Women Act? | Common Dreams

What Happened to the Violence Against Women Act? | Common Dreams
"Thanks to the extremism of House Republicans, the Violence Against Women Act expired this month after 18 years of saving women’s lives."

Most Religious Groups Don’t Want To Overturn Roe v. Wade

Most Religious Groups Don’t Want To Overturn Roe v. Wade: As the 40th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision approaches, new polling finds that — despite the GOP’s best efforts to use religion as a wedge in the abortion rights debate — most religious groups don’t actually support overturning the court decision. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life finds that a [...]/p

Most Of The Americans Born After The Roe v. Wade Decision Don’t Know It’s About Abortion

Most Of The Americans Born After The Roe v. Wade Decision Don’t Know It’s About Abortion: Next week marks the 40 year anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which guarantees women the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion services. However, as the nation moves further away from past decades when women weren’t assured that reproductive freedom, fewer numbers of Americans can identify what Roe means — particularly the [...]/p

Why The U.S. Is Falling Behind When It Comes To Women In The Workforce

Why The U.S. Is Falling Behind When It Comes To Women In The Workforce: At Forbes, Bryce Covert highlights a new report showing that women’s participation in the U.S. workforce has essentially stagnated since 1990, allowing many developed countries to pass America by: In 1990, women’s participation rate in the labor force was 74 percent, ranking us at number six among 22 developed countries. But in the two intervening [...]/p

GOP Seeks To Rig Presidential Race On Model Of Congressional Gerrymandering

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The GOP's Boldest Election-Rigging Move Yet

The GOP's Boldest Election-Rigging Move Yet
"But most shocking of all, the latest endorser of this election-rigging scheme is none other than the top Republican Party official himself, RNC Chair Reince Preibus. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Priebus said, “I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red out to be looking at.” 

What all this adds up to is this: Republicans are really going to try to do this. Over the next few years, they really are going to try to rig the next election."

Pennsylvania House Republicans Introduce Bill To Rig The 2016 Presidential Election

Pennsylvania House Republicans Introduce Bill To Rig The 2016 Presidential Election: Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus endorsed a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election to make it nearly impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the White House, no matter who the American people vote for. The election-rigging plan, which would allocate electoral votes by congressional district rather than by [...]/p

Anti-Choice Group Hosts Training Program To Teach Republicans How To Talk About Rape

Anti-Choice Group Hosts Training Program To Teach Republicans How To Talk About Rape: Last year, Republicans likely lost two U.S. Senate seats because their candidates claimed “legitimate rape” is a form of contraception and that pregnancies resulting from rape are a “gift from God.” Last week, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) again demonstrated the GOP’s frequent willingness to belittle rape by claiming that former Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) legitimate [...]/p

A déjà vu Congress targets reproductive rights, again

A déjà vu Congress targets reproductive rights, again
"Last year, Republicans spouted off on women lying about rape and our bodies shutting down pregnancy. Republican state legislators contemplated draconian abortion restrictions, and the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives kicked off the legislative session by trying to defund Planned Parenthood.

This year, only a few days into 2013, a Republican has spouted off about women lying about rape and our bodies shutting down pregnancy. States are at it again, and the House has kicked off the legislative session by trying to defund Planned Parenthood.

Happy new year, everyone: The  GOP soul-searching is over, and Republicans are back to square one on reproductive rights."

Republican Congressman Backs Akin’s ‘Legitimate Rape’ Comments: ‘He’s Partly Right’

Republican Congressman Backs Akin’s ‘Legitimate Rape’ Comments: ‘He’s Partly Right’: Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) defended former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO)’s claim that women who are victims of a “legitimate rape” can’t get pregnant. Speaking to the Marrietta Daily Journal, Gingrey, a doctor who is co-chair of the GOP’s Doctor Caucus, stuck by Akin’s distinction between “legitimate” and “illegitimate rapes”: And in Missouri, Todd Akin … [...]/p

Hobby Lobby Manipulating Employees’ Health Care Plans To Deny Them Access To Birth Control

Hobby Lobby Manipulating Employees’ Health Care Plans To Deny Them Access To Birth Control: The craft store Hobby Lobby has been embroiled in a legal fight against Obamacare’s contraception mandate since September, when the chain’s conservative evangelical owners first sued for the right to deny their employees access to affordable contraceptives. Even though a federal judge ruled last month that Hobby Lobby must follow federal law and provide birth [...]/p

Mississippi Governor: ‘My Goal Of Course Is To Shut Down’ The State’s Last Abortion Clinic

Mississippi Governor: ‘My Goal Of Course Is To Shut Down’ The State’s Last Abortion Clinic: Today marks the deadline for Mississippi’s sole remaining abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, to comply with the restrictive, unnecessary restrictions that the state’s Republican legislators imposed last summer. The new regulations require the clinic’s doctors to secure hospital admitting privileges, but all seven hospitals in the surrounding area have so far denied them. [...]/p

Paul Ryan’s Still Carrying Todd Akin’s Mantle, Will Co-Sponsor New Fetal ‘Personhood’ Bill

Paul Ryan’s Still Carrying Todd Akin’s Mantle, Will Co-Sponsor New Fetal ‘Personhood’ Bill: Long before Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) convinced most of the House Republican caucus to vote to phase out Medicare, and long before former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) ended his political career by claiming “legitimate rape” is a form of contraception, the two men were partners in pushing anti-woman legislation. Ryan and Akin were original co-sponsors [...]/p

Rep. Paul Ryan Co-Sponsors Fetal Rights Bill -- Again!

Rep. Paul Ryan Co-Sponsors Fetal Rights Bill -- Again!
"This bill is so far out there that Oklahoma called it unconstitutional and a non-starter. You'd have to be a committed pro-life zealot to continue on this path and Paul Ryan really stepped up big in that area."

Pat Robertson Outrage: "Hard-Nosed," "Awful Looking" Women Are Ruining Marriages! | Alternet

Pat Robertson Outrage: "Hard-Nosed," "Awful Looking" Women Are Ruining Marriages! | Alternet
"Radical Christian televangelist Pat Robertson with one of his most offensive statements of all time."

Oklahoma Clinic Forced To Close After State Officials Stripped Funding From Planned Parenthood

Oklahoma Clinic Forced To Close After State Officials Stripped Funding From Planned Parenthood: A Tulsa-area Planned Parenthood clinic will be forced to close its doors at the end of this month because it can no longer afford to maintain operations after state officials slashed its budget. In October, the Oklahoma State Department of Health decided to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood by ending its contract with [...]/p

Why We Can't Shop Our Way to a Better Economy: Stacy Mitchell

Stacy Mitchell is a researcher and writer at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), a national nonprofit organization that challenges corporate consolidation of the economy and champions policies to nurture community-scaled enterprise. Stacy directs two ILSR initiatives on independent business and community banking. Her analysis has helped inspire many grassroots campaigns and provided empirical support for changes to local and state policy. Stacy's articles have appeared in Business Week, The Nation, Grist, Utne Reader, Sojourners, and many daily newspapers. Her book, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses, was named one of the top ten business books of 2007 by Booklist. In 2006, she helped launch the Portland Independent Business & Community Alliance, which has a membership today of over 400 local businesses and runs Portland's popular "buy local" campaign.

Abortion in America: Here Are the Facts, 40 Years After Roe | Alternet

Abortion in America: Here Are the Facts, 40 Years After Roe | Alternet
"Numbers and realities don't always reflect the rhetoric."

Chris Hedges on the Fiscal Cliff ‘Ruse’ - Truthdig

Chris Hedges on the Fiscal Cliff ‘Ruse’ - Truthdig
"And what exactly is taking place is not a pretty picture, according to Hedges. The Truthdig columnist says the fiscal cliff is really “a massive debt peonage by the 1 percent” that is meant to enslave everyone and everything from citizens and states all the way up to the federal government." 

After Forcing Women To Drop Their Doctors, Texas Gives Them A Faulty List Of Replacements

After Forcing Women To Drop Their Doctors, Texas Gives Them A Faulty List Of Replacements: When Texas intentionally dismantled its women’s health program by refusing to fund Planned Parenthood — the largest women’s health group in the country — the state was essentially telling poor women they would need to find new doctors. Thousands of Texan women are now searching for a new provider, but the state is doing a [...]/p

37 Congressional Republicans Opposed Sandy Relief After Supporting Disaster Aid For Home States

37 Congressional Republicans Opposed Sandy Relief After Supporting Disaster Aid For Home States: While the first vote provided just $9 billion in funds — compared to the $60 billion total requested — 67 Republicans still voted against even this bare-bones package. The majority of those Representatives had, however, supported emergency aid efforts following disasters in their own states.

Republican Lawmakers To Kick Off New Year By Limiting Women’s Reproductive Health

Republican Lawmakers To Kick Off New Year By Limiting Women’s Reproductive Health: State lawmakers will reconvene to kick off their new sessions this week, and Republican legislators are already gearing up for the new abortion restrictions they hope to introduce this year. 2012 was a banner year for attacks on reproductive freedom — according to the Guttmacher Institute, 19 states passed 42 different abortion restrictions last year, [...]/p

Blocking VAWA, The GOP Keeps Up the War on Women | The Nation

Blocking VAWA, The GOP Keeps Up the War on Women | The Nation
"Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Democratic co-sponsor of the Senate bill, said Congress’s failure to act simply means more people suffering. “I still have nightmares from the domestic violence crime scenes I saw as a prosecutor in Vermont,” he said in a statement in December. “The thought that our inaction could lead to more such scenes is tragic"."

112th Congress: Worst Congress Ever

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2012: The Second-Worst Year for Abortion Rights Since Roe | Alternet

2012: The Second-Worst Year for Abortion Rights Since Roe | Alternet
"Think the so-called "War on Women" (really a war on everyone, since family planning, abortion, birth control, and cancer screenings are good for everyone, regardless of gender) is over? Think again, sadly. The reality is that in the state capitols, the steady drive to make it nearly impossible for women to obtain abortions is continuing."

New Year, New Abortion Restrictions

New Year, New Abortion Restrictions
"In Virginia, Governor Bob McDonnell's is trying to avoid a repeat of the transvaginal ultrasound fiasco by certifying the state's latest anti-abortion regulations under the radar."

California Appeals Court Tosses Rape Conviction Because The Woman Was Unmarried

California Appeals Court Tosses Rape Conviction Because The Woman Was Unmarried: A California appeals court, relying on an outdated statute that prohibits someone from pretending to be someone’s husband but not their boyfriend in order to obtain sex, overturned a man’s conviction for rape because the woman he had sex with was unmarried. Under California law, rape occurs when a woman consents to sex “under the [...]/p

Anti-Choice Agenda Resumes Absent National Attention

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The Final Failure of a Failed Congress

The Final Failure of a Failed Congress
"The sun will rise on Thursday morning to shine down upon the end of the 112th Congress, the single most useless do-nothing  assembly of fools and failures in modern American political history. Boehner and his crew of cretins in the House majority are almost singlehandedly responsible for the anemic economic recovery to date, entirely because they decided to sit on their hands rather than do anything - anything! - that might come within a country mile of helping President Obama win re-election.

They sat on a variety of jobs bills. They killed a minimum wage increase. They killed the Buffett Rule, which would have set an infinitesimal tax on millionaires, a bill supported by a huge majority of Americans. Along the way, they killed a bill to provide more transparency in campaign financing. They killed a bill to protect the rights of the disabled because, somehow, they decided it would lead to a takeover of America by the United Nations...and, in one last vile act, they failed to vote on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act that was approved in the Senate by a 2-1 margin back in April."

House GOP Fails to Act on Violence Against Women | Common Dreams

House GOP Fails to Act on Violence Against Women | Common Dreams
"Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Democratic point person on VAWA, condemned the House leadership in astatement calling the failure to take up and pass the Senate's "bipartisan and inclusive" VAWA bill "inexcusable"."

2012 Saw The Second Highest Number Of New Abortion Restrictions

2012 Saw The Second Highest Number Of New Abortion Restrictions: According to the Guttmacher Institute’s annual report on state-level abortion legislation, anti-choice lawmakers enacted the second highest number of new abortion restrictions in 2012 since the organization began tracking the annual data in 1985. This past year, 19 states passed 42 different provisions intended to restrict women’s access to abortion services — second only to [...]/p

2012 was a banner year for anti abortion laws

2012 was a banner year for antiabortion laws
"According to a policy review released by the Guttmacher Institute, 2012 saw the second-highest number of abortion restrictions ever enacted. The ranking comes as little surprise in a year when politicians like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock became household names, and one of the House’s staunchest antiabortion members got second billing on the Republican presidential ticket.

During the year, 19 states enacted 43 provisions to restrict access to abortion services, whether mandating invasive ultrasounds, blocking health insurance coverage, shuttering women’s health clinics or limiting access to the morning-after pill and contraception. The record for most restrictions was set in 2011 with 92.

The worst offenders? Arizona ranked No. 1, enacting seven antiabortion restrictions, and Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin followed close behind with at least three restrictions each."

Unlike The U.S., Most Countries Offer Birth Control Pills Over The Counter

Unlike The U.S., Most Countries Offer Birth Control Pills Over The Counter: A new study from reproductive health researchers in Oakland, CA finds that the majority of countries ease women’s access to reproductive health services by making birth control pills available over the counter. The United States is one of 45 countries that still require women to obtain a prescription for oral contraceptives. The lead researcher of [...]/p

Virginia Governor Quietly Certifies Restrictive Abortion Clinic Regulations

Virginia Governor Quietly Certifies Restrictive Abortion Clinic Regulations: On the Friday between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) quietly approved new, stringent regulations intended to target abortion clinics. Virginia’s Board of Health adopted the new anti-abortion rules in September, and the governor’s certification is the next step toward making the regulations permanent — and potentially forcing many of the [...]/p

12 Unbelievably Awful Things Fox News Did This Year | Alternet

12 Unbelievably Awful Things Fox News Did This Year | Alternet
"2012 was a dismal year for Fox News. The PR arm of the GOP failed to fulfill its prime directive: advancing the interests of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. It spent much of the year constructing an alternative reality that left millions of its flock in shock when President Obama won an overwhelming reelection. It refused to accept the facts on the ground and denigrated polls (even its own) when the results conflicted with the fictional narrative it was peddling. And perhaps most painful of all, Fox surrendered its ratings lead to MSNBC. Two-thirds of its primetime lineup (Hannity and Van Susteren) dropped to second place behind the competition on MSNBC (Maddow and O’Donnell). However, Fox’s travails did not occur for lack of effort. It was clearly operating at the top of its capacity to distort and deceive. In the process it unleashed some of the most feverishly biased reporting, even for Fox News. "

PERRspectives: The National Debt? Republicans Built That

PERRspectives: The National Debt? Republicans Built That
"President Bush added $5.1 trillion in red ink to the national ledger. But while the debt has grown by over $5 trillion during Obama's first term, less than $1 trillion can be attributed to new programs he put in place. The rest is the result of the tax revenue loss from the deep recession which began in December 2007 and the continuation of policies inherited from George W. Bush."

Texas Will End Funding For Planned Parenthood Clinics Tomorrow

Texas Will End Funding For Planned Parenthood Clinics Tomorrow: For most of 2012, Texas officials have been working hard to strip funding from the Planned Parenthood clinics in their state. Those officials advanced their anti-choice agenda on Monday, when a visiting judge ruled that Texas may deny funding from Planned Parenthood affiliates in the new year simply because the organization advocates for abortion rights. [...]/p

Michigan Governor Signs Extreme Anti-Abortion Bill Into Law

Michigan Governor Signs Extreme Anti-Abortion Bill Into Law: Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has approved a controversial package of abortion restrictions that will limit abortion access for women who live in rural areas, require doctors to prove that mentally competent women haven’t been “coerced” into their decision to have the procedure, and enact unnecessary, complicated rules for abortion clinics and providers. The governor [...]/p

Citing Citizens United, Federal Appeals Court Blocks Access To Birth Control

Citing Citizens United, Federal Appeals Court Blocks Access To Birth Control: On Friday, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an order joined by two conservative Republican appointees, temporarily immunized a company from the Obama Administration’s rules guaranteeing that employer-provided health plans cover birth control. Judge Ilana Rovner, a George H.W. Bush appointee, dissented. The order is brief, [...]/p

The War Against Teachers | Alternet

The War Against Teachers | Alternet
"Right-wing fundamentalists and corporate ideologues are not just waging a war against the rights of unions, workers, students, women, the disabled, low-income groups and poor minorities, but also against those public spheres that provide a vocabulary for connecting values, desires, identities, social relations and institutions to the discourse of social responsibility, ethics, and democracy, if not thinking itself.  Neoliberalism, or unbridled free-market fundamentalism, employs modes of governance, discipline and regulation that are totalizing in their insistence that all aspects of social life be determined, shaped and weighted through market-driven measures. [2] Neoliberalism is not merely an economic doctrine that prioritizes buying and selling, makes the supermarket and mall the temples of public life and defines the obligations of citizenship in strictly consumerist terms. It is also a mode of pedagogy and set of social arrangements that uses education to win consent, produce consumer-based notions of agency and militarize reason in the service of war, profits, power and violence while simultaneously instrumentalizing all forms of knowledge."

5 Ways GOP Tried to Subvert Democracy in 2012 -- And They'll Try Again | Alternet

5 Ways GOP Tried to Subvert Democracy in 2012 -- And They'll Try Again | Alternet
"Creating barriers to voting, demonizing communities of color, attacking voting rights laws and their defenders, unleashing billionaires who financed candidates like an extreme sport, and hiding corporate donors behind opaque front groups—these were the chapters in the Republican Party’s electoral playbook in the 2012 election cycle."

What Could Have Been: The Most Important Bills Blocked by Republicans in 2012 | Alternet

What Could Have Been: The Most Important Bills Blocked by Republicans in 2012 | Alternet
"The bills we could have passed if it wasn't for GOP obstructionism -- from a minimum wage increase to the Buffett Rule."

Hobby Lobby To Deny Contraception To Employees, Ignoring Court Order

Hobby Lobby To Deny Contraception To Employees, Ignoring Court Order: Craft store chain Hobby Lobby announced on Friday that it will ignore the ruling of U.S. courts and refuse to provide copay-free birth control access to its employees. It will do so despite whatever costs it may incur, even if they are higher than the cost of birth control itself. Upon learning that Obamacare required [...]/p

Stephanie, the Mooks and John Fugelsang put the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre under fire

Iowa Court: Bosses Can Fire 'Irresistible' Workers - ABC News

Iowa Court: Bosses Can Fire 'Irresistible' Workers - ABC News
"A dentist acted legally when he fired an assistant that he found attractive simply because he and his wife viewed the woman as a threat to their marriage, the all-male Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday."

Jennifer Granholm’s progressive wish list for 2013

Connecticut School Officials Blast NRA’s Reaction To Newtown

Connecticut School Officials Blast NRA’s Reaction To Newtown: Teachers, school superintends, mayors and police chiefs in Connecticut are rejecting the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) response to the shooting in Newtown, describing the gun lobby’s proposal to equip schools with armed guards and more guns as too simplistic, shameful, and opportunistic. One Connecticut school superintendent dismissed the NRA’s suggestion as “an ill-conceived reaction from [...]/p

Conservative Columnist Doubles Down On Women Are To Blame For Newtown Argument

Conservative Columnist Doubles Down On Women Are To Blame For Newtown Argument: According to anti-feminist Charlotte Allen, a male janitor or “even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys” would have made all the difference in the Newtown massacre, simply because they are male. National Review published Allen’s controversial piece on Wednesday, where she attributed the massacre to Sandy Hook’s female staff and its “feminized setting.” On Friday, [...]/p