You don’t see this too often. An “expert,” in this case a journalist that covers the issue, presents a case, and Rachel Maddow looks at her like, “what, are you nuts or something?” then politely tells her so.
Starting after about 8:20.
I’m thinking they are both probably right.
This was one of the many great panels at FtBConscience, this panel hosted by Miri of Brute Reason and organized by Biodork.
A panel of reproductive rights activists come together to discuss access to abortion in current events , clinic escorting and some common religious and non-religious arguments against abortion. Our panel consists of clinic escorts – including one panelist who volunteered before FACE laws went into effect (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances), health care professionals, an author and several bloggers who write about reproductive rights. Our panelists hail from Minnesota, Kentucky, Virginia and Ireland.
Photo Credit: Morten Watkins via Compfight cc
This is the year of the woman in the US Congress and elsewhere, despite the best efforts of some to make sure that the opposite happened.
This is the year in which the Right Wing carried out the most anti-woman campaign ever since suffrage, or at least, so it would appear, along with a continued attack on non-hetero persons. A defining moment in this campaign occurred in February, when the Republican controlled House carried out a nearly comical hearing on women’s reproductive rights. Continue reading I, for one, welcome our new female overlords
A while back, in a land far away, something bad happened at a pair of clinics in Pennsylvania, and some people died there. It was pretty horrible. The clinics did not have qualified staff, charged for procedures that were illegal, made millions of dollars on abusing their patients and the system. Pretty much everything that happened at those clinics that shouldn’t have happened was illegal or against existing regulations. The owner of the clinic and others were arrested and charged with several crimes. The system failed in letting this happen, but succeeded in eventually noticing and doing something about it. The clinics ran in poor areas and for this reason may have been under the radar of the MWJS. Continue reading Why do Republicans always want to regulate things?
Constance Johnson is a member of the Oklahoma Senate, where there is currently debate over a personhood bill, and she is also a Wizard. You can imagine what the personhood bill is all about. The Senate bill 1433 would legally define a person as a single egg cell fertilized by a sperm, and of course, the two cells that divides into would also be a person. And the four cells that divides into as well, and so on and so forth. You can see the flaw, of course; What happens when the dividing cells become twins? Does that make the twins one person? Can they split their tax liability evenly down the middle? Can they marry separate individuals later in life or not? Have they even thought of these things?
Anyway, Constance Johnson understands this bill better than the people who introduced it, and applying the fierce logic of reductio ad absurdum (which is a spell learned in Wizard school) to add the amendment to the bill depicted in the photograph provided here.
It inserts the phrase “provided, however, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.”
Obviously this is a first draft of the amendment because it is impossible for a man to deposit one sperm at a time. The amendment must be rewritten to read: “provided, however, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against a whole bunch of unborn children.”
This is not the first time we’ve seen the Reductio Curse used against a Republican bill (something similar happened recently in Indiana with a Creationist bill). And I hope it is not the last.
Tom Hackbarth is from Cedar, Minnesota and is a veteran member of the Minnesota House of Representatives. The district he represents is just north of where I live (I’m near 113th and the southern border of Hackbarth’s district is 181st) and overlaps with Michele Bachmann’s congressional district. Hackbarth is a Republican and has been re-elected to represent this district a number of times. With the Republicans taking over the Minnesota house this year, he is the new chair of the Environment and Natural resources Committee. And, when asked by reporters from our local TV station what he was doing behind the planned parenthood building after hours with a map of the neighborhood, a pair of binoculars, and a loaded gun, his reply was: