If this bill passes into law, a wife beater whose wife is trying to abort for the entirely sensible reason that you don’t want babies with a batterer could walk into a clinic, shoot the doctor to prevent the abortion, and plead justifiable homicide, with the blessing of the South Dakota legislature and presumably the anti-choice movement that lobbied them.
—
Amanda Marcotte, “South Dakota legislators move to legalize some terrorism and domestic violence” (via pandagon.net)
This is scary.
With the passing of the Bush administration, and its frequent willingness to distort science to suit political needs, Washington has a renewed interest in evidence-based everything. Our policies on sex education need to be evidence based — let’s do what works to avoid teen pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease, instead of what makes us feel righteous. We need an evidence-based response to climate change instead of wishful thinking sponsored by ExxonMobil and the National Association of Manufacturers. This shouldn’t really be a controversial idea — do what is effective, instead of what is merely politically safe. With subjects as radioactive as how to treat former prisoners, evidence-based policies are toughest to implement and most needed. But first, you’ve got to have evidence.
Today, you’re in charge of the nation’s finances. Some of your options have more short-term savings and some have more long-term savings. When you have closed the budget gaps for both 2015 and 2030, you are done. Make your own plan, then share it online.
Not surprisingly, my solution to the deficit is mostly to tax the corporations and the wealthy. I also cut military spending, reduced troop levels, and cut farm subsidies. I didn’t even have to fight with myself over anything on this list to get to the required amount. If only it were that easy to do in real life…
Teaching Obama Politics (via TheYoungTurks)
Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) explains why president Barack Obama needs to learn some basic lessons about politics in light of his most recent cave-in to Republicans on tax cuts for the rich.
I’ve seen some people today saying that, while they hate the idea of the tax cuts for the rich, they don’t see how Obama could have done anything differently. This speaks to that.
Deploying this statute to combat online copyright infringement seems almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile
—
Ron Wyden about COICA
Oregon Senator Wyden effectively kills Internet censorship bill | Raw Story
(via fred-wilson)
My senator!
You, who could not survive the thought of minimal health care reform, or financial regulation, or a marginal tax rate equal to that which you paid just 10 years earlier, perhaps are under the illusion that everyone is as weak as you, as soft as you, as akin to petulant children as you are, as unable to cope with the smallest setback, the slightest challenge to the way you think your country should look and feel, and operate.
But they are not.
And they know how to regroup, and plot, and plan, and they are planning even now — we are — your destruction.
And I do not mean by that your physical destruction. We don’t play those games. We’re not into the whole “Second Amendment remedies, militia, armed resistance” bullshit that your side fetishizes, cuz, see, we don’t have to be. We don’t need guns.
We just have to be patient.
And wait for you to pass into that good night, first politically, and then, well…
Do you hear it?
The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?
Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.
So know this.
If you thought this election was payback for 2008, remember…
Payback, thy name is…
Temporary.
Read the whole thing—it’s amazing!
![Chart Of The Day: Analysis Shows Dramatic Social Security Cuts Under GOP Plan | TPMDC
This week, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities issued a report […] The analysis, by entitlement expert Paul Van de Water, calculates the combined effects of the two Social Security benefit cuts undergirding the Roadmap for America’s Future — a fiscal plan authored by the GOP’s top budget guy Paul Ryan.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_laphwbIu9r1qz4uwlo1_400.jpg)
Chart Of The Day: Analysis Shows Dramatic Social Security Cuts Under GOP Plan | TPMDC
This week, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities issued a report […] The analysis, by entitlement expert Paul Van de Water, calculates the combined effects of the two Social Security benefit cuts undergirding the Roadmap for America’s Future — a fiscal plan authored by the GOP’s top budget guy Paul Ryan.
I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States. They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
—Justice Frank Murphy in his dissent of Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court decision that said it was constitutional for the government to send citizens of Japanese ancestry to internment camps during WWII.
Prop 8 On Trial: David Boies Attacks Proponents’ Arguments (via ForaTv)
“It showed the extant to which certain views are beyond reason and I think that it says why you need to have constitutional protection for minority rights.”
