A House Without Decency

In a scuffle over HR 1227, Gene Taylor had his remarks stricken from the record, and his right to speak for the day rescinded after complaints from Tom Price.  The problem? Apparently, you aren’t allowed to question a fellow Congressman’s “decency” on the floor of the House. How could we ever abide such harsh rhetoric! [...]

ERA: What the Right is Willing to Sacrifice Women’s Rights For

The Equal Rights Amendment may finally see the light of day.  Shakes has it down to a science: I’m crying. I’m honestly sitting here crying, reading that line and thinking that it may finally make its way into the Constitution in my lifetime. That sentence would subject legal claims of gender discrimination to the same [...]

Pesky Post Humans: Convert or Die!

Dave takes a nother look at some choice eliminationist crazy talk from the right (quoting Mark Steyn): It’s getting harder not to conclude that parts of Europe are evolving into a kind of post-human society. “Post-human”? The clear implication of this coinage is that these people are also sub-human, or in any event non-human — [...]

German Politician Called a Whore for Wearing Gloves

I must be missing something very central to German politics.  In this country there is this awful tendency in the press to focus on a woman’s fashion sense as a direct correlate of her political sense.  However in Germany the underlying misogyny is right out in the open: A German politician who helped to topple [...]

Oddly Enough, Reuters and Women

An article on France tackling the issue of grossly underweight models is up on Reuters. It falls under the Oddly Enough section.  Right next to articles on April first pranks and “stolen mummy hairs”.  Is this an editorial prank, or does Reuters really believe women’s health belongs in this section?  The article itself has a [...]

Candidates: Stand Tall and Roar on Health Care!

Why won’t any of the front runners endorse single payer health care? CCR on CounterPunch via Commie Curmudgeon (II): Polls indicate that the majority of the American people want single payer. But who will deliver? On Saturday, the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) sponsored a forum in Las [...]

Corporate Checks and Balances

When we discuss corporations, we need to recognize them as governments.  When you look at the start of the Labor movement and the tragedies that spurred it forward, the argument for organized labor and government regulations crystalizes. Take Ilyka’s post over at Pandagon: Sheila O’Malley reminds me that today marks the 96th anniversary of the [...]

Why Teaching Religion is a Good Idea

Time has a piece up on the Case for Teaching the Bible.  In it, one of the students observes: Why take a Bible class? I asked her. “Some of my friends are Christian,” she said, shrugging, “and they would argue about, like, whether you can be a Christian and believe in evolution, and I’m like, [...]

RIAA: Appearing Successful vs Bullying

Slashdot has the digs on the RIAA touting the number of students who have settled rather than face them in court: As we’ve been reporting, the RIAA has been offering settlements to college students suspected of sharing music online. Reader Weather Storm notes that more than a quarter of the alleged music pirates have accepted [...]

Fox News: Is Louder Better?

Commenting on my criticism of Fox News, Sally Jane Beaufort hits the nail on the head: Let’s be honest here, Fox works because it’s loud and shiny. How loud and shiny is Fox?  Let’s take a look: Just looking at the headlines on the left, wow.  Nukes lead the pack, with a murdered coed’s body [...]

Republicans are Weird About Sex

In a political juxtaposition that can only be described as brilliant, Tennessee Republicans have delayed a bill to make bestiality a felony, and also stopped a measure honoring Justin Timberlake on account of “sexy words”: Seems that Senator Finney and other state Republicans don’t like references in the resolution to the name of Timberlake’s (“FutureSex/LoveSounds”) [...]

Wikipedia: Experts Without Expertise

Wikipedia is usually quite awesome.  But the deletion spree some of the editors are embarking on is sheer madness. Overcompensating is an awesome webcomic by Jeffrey Rowland, and he has a sharp take on the problem (emphasis mine): Wikipedia editors are going sort of crazy with their fake power. They deleted the entry for Overcompensating [...]

What Is Bush Hiding?

Shakes has a very interesting line of thought starting with the US Attorney scandal (emphasis mine): Taking everything we now know into account, some important questions arise. Why the obvious concern from the president about what could happen were he to use e-mail? To use the classic refrain employed by countless pro-warrantless wiretapping Republicans: Why [...]

Arguing in the Face of Evidence

Sometimes people ignore the truth that is literally right in front of their nose: This passage from this diary by ryeland is hilarious, describing a scene during a Chris Matthews’ interview of Tom DeLay today: Matthews grilled DeLay about passages in his book where he apparently ripped into fellow corrupt Texan Dick Armey, eventually asking [...]

Powerline vs The Young Turks on Gore: Bad Argument

Over at aol’s news bloggers, Powerline and The Young Turks are having a bit of back and forth over Gore. Powerline slips up: Finally, Gore was concerned about the Bush administration’s use of the doctrine of preemption as a basis for attacking Iraq. Gore postulated that the use of this doctrine in Iraq logically would [...]