Report: Ohio Is Illegally Throwing Poor People In Jail For Owing Money

Report: Ohio Is Illegally Throwing Poor People In Jail For Owing Money: The Americans Civil Liberties Union on Friday revealed that courts in Ohio are illegally throwing poor people in jail for being unable to pay off a debt. In a report titled, “The Outskirts of Hope,” (PDF) the ACLU shines a light on a harrowing “debtors’ prison” system in Ohio — one that violates both the [...]/p

Tennessee Clergy Speak Out Against Bill To Cut Welfare For Children Who Get Poor Grades

Tennessee Clergy Speak Out Against Bill To Cut Welfare For Children Who Get Poor Grades: As Tennessee prepares to consider two bills to reduce welfare assistance for needy families whose children are not doing well in school, a Change.org petition has popped up to fight the measure. The petition was started by Clergy for Justice, a Tennesse-based organization of clergy that has previously advocated for causes including immigration reform, health [...]/p

Nevada Lawmaker Gets Death Threats After Revealing Her Abortion at Sex Ed Talk

Nevada Lawmaker Gets Death Threats After Revealing Her Abortion at Sex Ed Talk
"The life of a Latina assemblywoman in Nevada has been threatened after she used a story about her own personal abortion experience at age 16 to make a point about the importance of sex education."

Defying Extremist Threats, Clinic Reopens With Community Support

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In Kansas, Legalizing Switchblades Is Less Controversial Than Protecting Women’s Health

In Kansas, Legalizing Switchblades Is Less Controversial Than Protecting Women’s Health: The Wichita Eagle reports that a bill to legalize switchblade and stiletto knives passed the Kansas Senate on Wednesday “[w]ith little discussion and no dissent.” If passed by the state House and signed into law, it would remove the knives from the state’s banned weapons list — although under a 1958 federal law, the manufacture, [...]/p

Judge Rules Emergency Contraception Should Be Available To All Women Over The Counter

Judge Rules Emergency Contraception Should Be Available To All Women Over The Counter: In a victory for birth control access, a U.S. federal judge has ordered the Food and Drug Administration to remove the current restrictions on the morning after pill, commonly known as “Plan B.” Even though the FDA initially recommended that Plan B should be available without a prescription for women of all ages, the Obama [...]/p

How The Right Wing Manufactured A Fake Controversy Over Planned Parenthood’s ‘Infanticide’

How The Right Wing Manufactured A Fake Controversy Over Planned Parenthood’s ‘Infanticide’: On Wednesday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus published an editorial lambasting the mainstream media for “covering up” Planned Parenthood’s “support for infanticide.” According to Priebus, the national women’s health organization — in addition to providing contraceptive services, STD testing, cancer screenings, and reproductive care for millions of women across the country — is also in the [...]/p

War On Women Advances Despite Legal Protections

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Nevada Lawmaker Receives Death Threats After Talking About Her Abortion

Nevada Lawmaker Receives Death Threats After Talking About Her Abortion: Nevada, which has one of the highest rates of unintended teen pregnancy in the nation, is considering updating its abstinence-only education policy to require more comprehensive sexual health instruction in public schools. This week, in a debate over that proposed legislation, Nevada Assemblywomen Lucy Flores (D) testified in favor of the bill, sharing her own [...]/p

Georgia Students Want To Hold The First Integrated Prom In Their High School’s History

Georgia Students Want To Hold The First Integrated Prom In Their High School’s History: Four students at Wilcox County High School in Georgia want to attend prom together — but under the current setup, they won’t be allowed to unless they throw their own. Wilcox County High School’s proms are still segregated by race, meaning Stephanie Sinnot, Mareshia Rucker, Quanesha Wallace, and Keela Bloodworth — half of whom are [...]/p

VIDEO: The Pain From Sequestration As Told By Local News

VIDEO: The Pain From Sequestration As Told By Local News: The automatic spending cuts that went into effect at the start of March are spread out over a host of domestic programs and are having a real impact on communities across the country. Sequestration is cutting jobs, shutting down essential services, and hurting state economies. And while the consequences of the reductions are not leading [...]/p

Arkansas GOP Prioritizes Targeting Planned Parenthood Over Funding Rape Crisis Centers

Arkansas GOP Prioritizes Targeting Planned Parenthood Over Funding Rape Crisis Centers: So far this session, Arkansas Republicans have already pushed through some of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country. But state lawmakers aren’t finished with their attacks on reproductive rights. Now, the Arkansas legislature is attempting to strip funding from Planned Parenthood — and, intent on attacking the women’s health organization, Republicans are advancing [...]/p

How South Carolina Republicans Belittle Elizabeth Colbert Busch

How South Carolina Republicans Belittle Elizabeth Colbert Busch: Former South Carolina Governor and current Republican nominee for Congress Mark Sanford has his work cut out for him if he wants to win the special election on May 7th, his first attempt at staging a political comeback after being forced to resign his governorship following a very public affair. But that didn’t stop one [...]/p

GOP Pitches ‘Family-Friendly’ Policy That Would Weaken Overtime Pay

GOP Pitches ‘Family-Friendly’ Policy That Would Weaken Overtime Pay: House Republicans are planning to consider legislation that would weaken rules requiring businesses to pay workers when they work more than 40 hours in a week. Instead of allowing workers to make increased wages for working overtime, the legislation would give employers the option of providing workers with “comp time,” or more time off of [...]/p

Family Planning Clinics Are Essential Health Care Providers, But They’re Under Attack

Family Planning Clinics Are Essential Health Care Providers, But They’re Under Attack: In states across the country, women rely on publicly-funded family planning clinics — such as their local Planned Parenthood affiliates — for their primary care needs. In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute, women choose to go to family planning clinics even when other health care providers are available in their community, largely because some [...]/p

President Obama Announces Bipartisan Brain Initiative

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Mike Huckabee: Obama May Be Planning To Grab Guns And Launch A Nazi-Like Dictatorship

Mike Huckabee: Obama May Be Planning To Grab Guns And Launch A Nazi-Like Dictatorship: Since calls for stricter gun regulation have increased after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the gun lobby has deployed the Nazi comparison frequently. However, under Nazi rule, gun laws were actually relaxed. While Jews were banned from owning any weapons, the legal age to own a gun was lowered, while rifle and shotgun possession was deregulated. Experts say gun policy had little effect on Nazi power either way.

Even with no evidence to back up the confiscation conspiracy, gun advocates and Republican lawmakers have embraced rhetoric comparing President Obama to Hitler and Stalin. Meanwhile, 92 percent of the public supports mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, including overwhelming majorities of gun owners and NRA members.

Zina's Story

Ken Cuccinelli’s Legal Appeal And How He Helped Undermine Virginia’s Protections Against Adult Sex With Minors

Ken Cuccinelli’s Legal Appeal And How He Helped Undermine Virginia’s Protections Against Adult Sex With Minors: Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) filed an appeal last week after a federal appeals court struck down Virginia’s sodomy law as unconstitutional. Virginia prosecutors had charged a 47-year-old man with soliciting oral sex from a 17-year-old girl — a felony under the disputed law. But whether or not Cuccinelli’s appeal succeeds, his vote [...]/p

If Election Were Held Today, Democrats Would Win House In A Landslide — And Only Win A 5 Seat Majority

If Election Were Held Today, Democrats Would Win House In A Landslide — And Only Win A 5 Seat Majority: According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, if the election were held today 43 percent of the electorate would support a Democratic U.S. House candidate, as opposed to just 35 percent who would back a Republican. That 8 point lead for Democrats is significantly more than the GOP’s margin of victory during the 2010 Republican [...]/p

Seven States Working Hard To Shut Down Abortion Clinics

Seven States Working Hard To Shut Down Abortion Clinics: Abortion opponents are chipping away at reproductive rights from all angles — and one particularly insidious attack on women’s health is currently advancing in states across the country. Under the guise of “protecting women’s safety,” Republican lawmakers are successfully pushing unnecessary, complicated restrictions on abortion clinics that will ultimately force them to close their doors. [...]/p

How 'Pro-Life' Legislation Is Putting Women in Jail | Common Dreams

How 'Pro-Life' Legislation Is Putting Women in Jail | Common Dreams
"The cases documented in our study, as well as recent cases, make clear that, 40 years after Roe v. Wade was decided, far more is at stake than abortion or women's reproductive rights."

University of North Carolina Faces Backlash For Its Mistreatment Of Sexual Assault Victims

University of North Carolina Faces Backlash For Its Mistreatment Of Sexual Assault Victims: To mark the start of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill student paper has a message for their university over its disciplinary system, which handles sexual assault with the seriousness of a minor infraction. Since the school received national attention for threatening to expel a college sophomore who spoke publicly about [...]/p

PERRspectives: GOP Fights to Keep Texas Health Care Among Nation's Worst

PERRspectives: GOP Fights to Keep Texas Health Care Among Nation's Worst
"As it turns out, Texas is a role model only in the sense of being a horrible example to be avoided at all costs. As the numbers show, by almost every objective measure the Texas health care system ranks among the very worst in the nation."

Which States Are Best For Women's Health

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Kansas Republicans Mock Rape Exceptions For Abortion Restrictions As ‘Little Gotcha Amendments’

Kansas Republicans Mock Rape Exceptions For Abortion Restrictions As ‘Little Gotcha Amendments’: The Kansas legislature is advancing an omnibus abortion bill that would, among other things, define life as beginning at conception in the state constitution and place unnecessary restrictions on abortion providers in the state. HB 2253 has already passed the House, and looks poised to gain enough support to sail through the Senate — but [...]/p

As GOP Seeks Cuts To Child Nutrition Programs, Democratic Rep. Pushes To Expand School Lunches

As GOP Seeks Cuts To Child Nutrition Programs, Democratic Rep. Pushes To Expand School Lunches: Republican budget proposals have included deep cuts to social safety net programs, including those that are aimed at ensuring that needy children have access to nutritional food at school. Last year’s House Republican budget, for instance, would have kicked 280,000 children out of the program, and spending cuts that have been enacted have targeted it [...]/p

Thousands Speak Out Against Virginia’s New Abortion Clinic Restrictions

Thousands Speak Out Against Virginia’s New Abortion Clinic Restrictions: Virginia is set to implement controversial new abortion clinic restrictions that could force many of the facilities in the state to shut down — a popular anti-choice tactic that indirectly undermines women’s access to reproductive care by targeting abortion providers. After Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) quietly approved the new regulations on the Friday between the [...]/p

North Dakota leads race to the bottom for women's health

North Dakota leads race to the bottom for women's health
"In a race for bragging rights to be the first state in the nation to end abortion services, North Dakota's Governor Jack Dalrymple signed three extreme abortion restrictions this week, less than 24 hours after they landed on his desk. One of them is likely to close the state's only abortion provider, the Red River Women's Clinic."

In Challenge to Roe v. Wade, North Dakota Enacts Law Banning Nearly All Abortions

Conservative Morality: Free Pass for Criminal Bankers, Restrictions for Women and Gay Citizens | Alternet

Conservative Morality: Free Pass for Criminal Bankers, Restrictions for Women and Gay Citizens | Alternet
"We're still legislating and regulating private morality, while at the same time ignoring the much larger crisis of public morality in America."

Dear Right-Wingers, Here's How to NOT Seem Racist | Alternet

Dear Right-Wingers, Here's How to NOT Seem Racist | Alternet
"A tip for right-wingers angry about charges of racial bias: Try treating the Obama daughters with decency."

Breitbart News Compromises First Daughters' Security - Again

Breitbart News Compromises First Daughters' Security - Again
"there is a generally understood rule that journalists do not disclose the location of the children of presidents when they're not with their parents, because their security should not be placed at risk."

North Dakota Governor Approves The Most Radical Anti-Choice Laws In The Nation

North Dakota Governor Approves The Most Radical Anti-Choice Laws In The Nation: On Tuesday, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple (R) officially signed into law three of the most radical anti-abortion bills in the nation. It will now be illegal for women in North Dakota to get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, while the only abortion provider in the state will likely be forced to shut [...]/p

The Oligarchs are Sucking Dry America's Working Class

Ex-Congressmen turning lobbyists: Should America be concerned?

Limited-Government Idaho Conservatives Don't Want You To See Pre-Marital Sex on TV

Limited-Government Idaho Conservatives Don't Want You To See Pre-Marital Sex on TV
"It's amazing how little their stated beliefs actually align with their actual actions. Conservatives purport to be against big government; they sneer at the nanny state they claim liberals want. But when all is said and done, it seems like conservatives have no problem expanding government when it comes to your bedroom"

Outside Extremists Push North Dakota On Expensive Anti-Abortion Agenda

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PHOTOS: Hundreds Rally For Women’s Health In North Dakota, Urge Governor To Veto Extreme Abortion Bans

PHOTOS: Hundreds Rally For Women’s Health In North Dakota, Urge Governor To Veto Extreme Abortion Bans: A package of stringent abortion restrictions is expected to hit North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s (R) desk early this week — including a “heartbeat” measure that would outlaw abortion at just six weeks of pregnancy, legislation that would force the state’s last remaining abortion clinic to close its doors, and a first-of-its kind ban on [...]/p

CNN Reporters 'Shocked' at Backlash on Steubenville Reporting

CNN Reporters 'Shocked' at Backlash on Steubenville Reporting
"Candy Crowley, and especially Poppy Harlow are shocked -- SHOCKED -- that anyone would call them rape apologists because of the tone of their reporting. That tells me they're tone-deaf."

Another Rape, Another City--Steubenville, Redux

Another Rape, Another City--Steubenville, Redux
"It's more than a little alarming that this needs to be expressed. But clearly, it does. For just days after the Steubenville rape verdict came in, another eerily reminiscent headline appeared, this time in Torrington, Connecticut."

Listen: Rush Limbaugh's Sexism Prevents Him From Understanding Beyoncé Lyrics | Alternet

Listen: Rush Limbaugh's Sexism Prevents Him From Understanding Beyoncé Lyrics | Alternet
"The conservative radio host says Beyoncé 'now understands it's worth it to bow down' to her husband."

Starbucks CEO Comes Out In Favor Of A Minimum Wage Increase

Starbucks CEO Comes Out In Favor Of A Minimum Wage Increase: Howard Schultz, the Chief Executive Officer of Starbucks, has added another pro-worker notch to his belt: support for increasing the minimum wage. Schultz already has a relatively good reputation on workers’ issues; his company offers health care to all of its employees, and doesn’t mind spending more on health care than on coffee. Starbucks also [...]/p

Elizabeth Warren Asks: Why Isn't The Minimum Wage $22/Hour?

Elizabeth Warren Asks: Why Isn't The Minimum Wage $22/Hour?
"What would the US Senate be without Elizabeth Warren? She's a national treasure."

Another Football Player Accused Of Rape, Another Community Blaming The Victim

Another Football Player Accused Of Rape, Another Community Blaming The Victim: Two football player high school students in Connecticut are charged with the second-degree sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl. The allegations come amid other complaints of hazing at the school, but Torrington High School officials insist that these are individual instances and not a part of a larger cultural problem. But whether or not the [...]/p

Abortion Opponents In North Dakota Keep Trying To Block Comprehensive Sex Ed For At-Risk Youth

Abortion Opponents In North Dakota Keep Trying To Block Comprehensive Sex Ed For At-Risk Youth: The North Dakota legislature recently passed the harshest abortion ban in the nation, and is also considering two “personhood” measures that would outlaw abortion altogether. But state lawmakers also want to target abortion by going after Planned Parenthood, and are now attempting to block a comprehensive sex ed program that North Dakota State University (NDSU) [...]/p

College Campuses, Like Steubenville, Are Grappling With Addressing Rape Culture

College Campuses, Like Steubenville, Are Grappling With Addressing Rape Culture: The guilty verdict in the Steubenville rape case has managed to spark a broader national conversation about sexual assault, and the way that a community handles allegations of such behavior. The case in Steubenville raised valid questions about how communities treat victims of rape, who should be responsible for handling sexual assault reports, the culture [...]/p

Republican War On Women Intensifies At State Level

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Fox News Airs Name of 16-Year-Old Steubenville Rape Victim | Alternet

Fox News Airs Name of 16-Year-Old Steubenville Rape Victim | Alternet
"Fox News’ America’s Newsroom aired the name of the underage victim in the Steubenville rape case."

Stop Freaking Out About the Debt! 5 Reasons There Is No Debt Crisis | Alternet

Stop Freaking Out About the Debt! 5 Reasons There Is No Debt Crisis | Alternet
"In conclusion: the “debt crisis” is a mere phantom — only one of many possible futures, and far from a certainty. The interest America is paying on its debt  is currently lowerthan it was in the 1990s, despite a lower debt-to-GDP ratio then. When inflation is factored in, current real interest rates on our debt  are negative. Financial markets are willing to pay us to borrow from them.

Meanwhile, every dollar we cut — nay, every dollar we fail to borrow — is a dollar that isn’t going to shore up the safety net, to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, or to support struggling Americans while their livelihoods remain on the line. That we’re passing on this opportunity to repair our country, much less even considering the monstrosity that is the Ryan budget, really is absurd."

It’s The Policy, Stupid: 4 Policies That Undermine The GOP’s New Voter Outreach Strategy

It’s The Policy, Stupid: 4 Policies That Undermine The GOP’s New Voter Outreach Strategy: On Monday, following its loss in the 2012 presidential election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) released an autopsy report that aims to “grow the Party and improve Republican campaigns.” The so-called “Growth and Opportunity Project” spoke with “more than 2,600 people, both outside Washington and inside the Beltway” about how the party can appeal to [...]/p

Why Does Anyone Still Take Paul Ryan Seriously? | Alternet

Why Does Anyone Still Take Paul Ryan Seriously? | Alternet
"His failed V.P. bid may have made him a national figure, but his budget plan is hopelessly out of touch."

House Republicans Vote Down Increase In Minimum Wage

House Republicans Vote Down Increase In Minimum Wage: House Republicans on Friday unanimously voted down a bill that would have raised the minimum wage. Six Democrats joined them in defeating the effort. The vote came after a surprise move by Democrats, who tacked onto a jobs training program bill an amendment that would have brought the national $7.25 minimum wage to $10.10 by [...]/p

"LOL, She Couldn't Even Move" Awful Texts Revealed at Steubenville Rape Trial | Alternet

"LOL, She Couldn't Even Move" Awful Texts Revealed at Steubenville Rape Trial | Alternet
"On the second day of the Steubenville, Ohio rape trial,thousands of messages from seventeen confiscated phones helped to piece together the disturbing evening when a sixteen-year-old Jane Doe was allegedly raped by local football stars Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’Lik Richmond, 16. Now, the court will begin to piece together the events of the night the same way the victim learned what happened to her: From the gossip and pictures sent around town via text messages and social media."

Teachers Prepare 'Civil Disobedience' Tactics to Fight School Closings | Common Dreams

Teachers Prepare 'Civil Disobedience' Tactics to Fight School Closings | Common Dreams
"An announcement from Chicago this week reveals that teachers are preparing to ramp up their fight to save the shuttering of as many as 129 schools across the city, putting their bodies on the line in order to fight back on behalf of their students and the communities where they teach."