Mexican 'ape woman' buried after 150 years

I know that people will think I am reporting this story out of some sort of sick humor, but I'm not.  Read on:

"An indigenous Mexican woman put on display in Victorian-era Europe because of a rare genetic condition that covered her face in thick hair was buried in her home state on Tuesday in a ceremony that ends one of the best-known episodes from an era when human bodies were treated as collectible specimens.
 

With her hairy face and body, jutting jaw and other deformities, Julia Pastrana became known as the "ape woman" after she left the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa in 1854, when she was 20, and was taken around the United States by showman Theodore Lent, according to a Norwegian commission that studied her case.

She sang and danced for paying audiences, becoming a sensation who also toured Europe and Russia"

Here is a picture of Juia Pastrana:

Now, why am I interested in her?  It's because I remember very clearly the first time I ever saw this photo.  It was in the late 1960's, and it appeared on the front page of an issue of the Thunderbolt, the newspaper of the National States Rights party, where it was represented as a photo of a crossbreed between a black person and a gorilla, proving that blacks were not really human beings, but apes.

Years later, looking through a book on the history of carnivals, I came across the picture again, this time of course correctly describing what it was.  As you can imagine, I was quite surprised, but at least I was set straight (not that I ever believed that it was really a black person-ape hybrid.  Please give me that much credit.)  But how many ignorant, gullible, hate filled people swallowed this story, fully convinced that it proved that blacks and whites were not the same species?

Whoever wrote this story must have know that it was a lie, but it accomplished its purpose- spreading racist hatred- so I am sure that like right wingers everywhere, they didn't give a damn that they were engaging in one of the lowest forms of human behavior possible.  Well, that's the legacy that we still bear, so that a miniscule percentage of rich people in the South could claim to own other human beings.  And no, sad to say, we have not paid off their debt, a hundred and fifty years later, and their descendants are working as hard as ever to see that the debt hangs around our necks forever.

As the lady said, "What a world."

Who Voted Against VAWA?

The Violence Against Women Act easily passed a Senate vote today by a margin of 78 to 22.  Here are the 22 Republicans who voted NO:

 John Barrasso (Wyo.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), John Boozman (Ark.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Cornyn (Texas), Ted Cruz (Texas), Mike Enzi (Wyo.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Orrin Hatch (Utah), James Inhofe (Okla.), Mike Johanns (Neb.), Ron Johnson (Wisc.), Mike Lee (Utah), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Jim Risch (Idaho), Pat Roberts (Kansas), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.).

I Love Code Pink

But let's face it, Code Pink isn't protesting the sadistic policies of Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld.  They're not reminiscing about Abu Ghraib or Bagram.  Fallujah or Baghdad.  The kangaroo trial of Saddam Hussein.  The murder of his two sons.  They're going after our guy and his C.I.A.  His Joint Chiefs.  His Pentagon.  It has been long enough.  The policy of American exceptionalism has to end now.  It is not moral to hold the world to one standard of justice and fair play and wholly exempt ourselves from any responsibility to international laws and treaties.

My friend, Che Pasa, has offered an affectionate criticism of Obama and the policies of his administration entitled, "Documenting the Atrocities."  It's a good starting point.  He always has something important to say.  He doesn't say it in a way calculated to hurt other people.

I'm not really gifted in the same way.  I need your help.  I don't fucking get it.  Obviously we have all been tolerating these assassinations with their uncontrolled collateral damage as somehow necessary or possibly even justified; the dark underbelly of the insensate beast that is the C.I.A./Pentagon.  Maybe you haven't been so passive in your acceptance.  I don't think I ever anticipated that we would still be talking about this in a second term for Obama.  I understand that one man, not even the president, can really change the trajectory of U.S. national security; the forces that are at play with powerful government and military agencies.  No more than the captain of a large vessel can throw himself in the path of the rudder or challenge the monarch that has commissioned him.  But it is time for the American people to weigh in.  Make our voices heard.  And it is time for the United States of America to take part in international treaties that insure justice and humane treatment for all peoples of the world.

It's not right.  It's not acceptable.  It's probably not legal.  If it happened to us, we would massively retaliate.

Under Bush, the U.S. refused to ratify Kyoto and claimed exception to the International Court.  That's because they were the bad guys, right?  The fucking war criminals.  Obviously there would have been dozens, if not hundreds of cases brought before the Hague.  It's time for a new Geneva Convention or some equivalent meeting of the United Nations.    If drone warfare is not something to be condoned, this needs to be agreed upon by the nations of the world.  Is it right to conduct assassinations in countries that are not engaged in warfare, declared or undeclared?  If the rights of innocent civilians are already protected in Geneva Convention Protocols, should not the U.S. be prosecuted for indiscriminately violating these protections?

I hate this monster John Brennan.  I hope he goes down like a Viet Cong company engulfed by a flame-thrower.  Like the little girl hit by napalm.  Like the innocent Iraqi young men rounded up and shoved into prisons that practiced torture like it was all in good fun.  I hope the son-of-a-bitch never works again as long as he lives.  Carl Levin asked him quite simply if he believed that waterboarding was torture.  His response was a torture of slowness.  He said something like the word "torture" is politically inflammatory.  What a dumb, fucking monster.

In a related moment of American shame, whatever select Senate committee that is privileged to the deepest, darkest secrets of the American exceptionalism model was just subjected to some kind of horrifying legalistic logic that somehow justified drone strikes.  Irregardless of all that has happened in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.  I recall the tortured legalistic logic that John Sununu and Alberto Gonzalez used to justify torture, extraordinary rendition and illegal detention.

We can do better.  America doesn't have to be the dragon.  Killing muslims and their families only creates more terrorists that hate the United States and their allies.   I thought that we learned that painful lesson ten years ago.

Jindal and Tonic

Bobby Jindal got some traction last week by telling the GOP that it was time to "stop being the stupid party." And, you know, it would be awesome if they could do that. But let's consider the source, shall we?

This is Bobby Jindal, after all. The man who claims to have exorcised a demon from his girlfriend in college. An act which apparently made him believe in an even stronger-than-average "War on Christianity," since he decided, a few years ago, that churches should be allowed to set up their own armed security forces. Because that's worked so well throughout history, like with the Inquisition, or the Crusades.

Of course, Bobby is also a big supporter of handing tax money to churches. Like giving them education funds. Even if they use biology textbooks that teach that the Loch Ness monster is real:

"Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur."

Which goes to explain, in part, why Louisiana's education system ranks third worst in the nation.

Jindal also thinks it's a good idea to drastically cut Medicaid, which doesn't make much sense when there's only one state with more people below the poverty line (per capita) than yours.

(Mississipi, if you were wondering.)

But maybe it just makes sense. When your hellhole of a state also sports the highest infant mortality rate, the fifth-highest maternal mortality rate, the fourth-worst life expectancy rate, and the fifth-highest obesity rate in the country, all that medical care is just being wasted, isn't it?

It does lead you to wonder, though: how low do you have to go before Bobby Jindal can see that the GOP is being the stupid party?

Teach the Controversy

I'm sure most of you have heard the above phrase.  It has arisen, in the last few years, as a battle cry among evangelical Christians and their enablers, after it became clear that they were never going to be able to convince sane people to replace the established scientific facts of evolution with a pack of infantile myths crammed down the throats of school children.  So, they fell back on their "compromise" position, which involves battering us into treating their patent nonsense on an equal footing with scientific fact.  This would be the "centrist" thing to do, and therefore, it would be fair to everyone, right?

Well, I am sure most of you are familiar with this idiocy, but what I have been noticing lately is that it is a paradigm of the entire Republican approach to reality- the fabrication of a wholly specious (and in the end utterly ridiculous) alternate reality, and then immense pressure being applied to force people to grant this mythology equal validity with real evidence about the world in which we live.  The result of this behavior, normally abetted in every way by our miserable excuse for a mainstream press, has been the watering down and eventual neutralization of every attempt to respond meaningfully to the problems that we face.

We are seeing a classic example of this at work today in the gun debate provoked by the recent school shooting in Connecticut.  Even the most rational, harmless proposals from the left, like eliminating the gun show loophole or requiring guns to be kept securely, are obscured and neutralized by endless, moronic right wing bleating about video games and violent movies- in fact nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to blame the left (and the Jews in particular, as is always the case when someone on the right attacks Hollywood) for the damage wrought by uncontrolled gun possession in this country.  The real evidence that violent murder is directly related to the number of available guns, and that people with guns are far more likely to be victims of gun violence than people without them, is washed away by the endless crackpot theories from the right, which continue to receive respectful treatment from the press.  The result this time, as in all previous occasions, is inevitably going to be a slow draining away of any momentum for dealing with the problem, until nothing but the most superficial action is taken; where the issue will rest until the next appalling gun murder, at which time the process will repeat itself.

Of course, there is no more blatant example of this phenomenon than the supposed controversy about global warming.  Although scientists who study this subject agree 100% (okay, okay, in reality only 99.83%) that man made global warming is a threat to the continued existence of the human race, pseudo-scientific lies paid for by the energy industry are routinely treated as equally trustworthy as scientific research; the result being that the real issues (which are beyond doubt to anyone who cares about the truth) are obscured, momentum for dealing with this very real problem is dissipated, and nothing is done.

And let us not forget the most damaging and destructive of all Conservative pseudo-theories: supply side economics.  Despite this notion being patent nonsense from the very beginning, and despite the fact that every effort to implement it has resulted in nothing but disaster, its proponents- rich people who stand to benefit from it regardless of its effects on everyone else- continue to pour money into spreading this looking-glass lunacy, and the mainstream press continues to collaborate with them in treating their claims as equally valid as conclusions derived from actual real world evidence.  And thus, no amount of being right time after time can result in the likes of Paul Krugman being treated as anything but a crazy ideologue, while conversely, the many people who have pushed this disastrous nonsense in the face of failure after failure are still treated as if they were serious participants in some sort of actual dialogue, rather than hired intellectual thugs employed to prevent the truth from interfering with the schemes of their masters.

Though I could go on here, let me finish with right wing, neoconservative foreign policy, whose total reliance on belligerent bullying and massive acquisition of military hardware has, as far as I can tell, produced nothing but one disaster after another, but which is still promoted far and wide as the answer to every foreign policy problem the country ever faces.

And thus, government in the United States today:  reality versus deliberate lies concocted to achieve a desired outcome for a small fraction of the people, on every single issue; and a playing field in which the rules- that both sides must be given equally respectful treatment- insure that those who want to deal with our country's problems are simply worn out fighting against idiotic but highly financed nonsense from their opponents.   Thus, despite occasional victories, we seem to be able make little real headway in our fight to right our country, which continues to founder in seas of dissembling and self-serving nonsense.

Given this situation, it is amazing that Obama and the Democrats were able to muster enough support to enable them to avoid a total depression.  Of course, the forces of ignorance keep doing everything they can to push us back off the economic cliff, so sad to say, the results aren't really in on that one.  It is enough to make most any rational person just give up and move to Costa Rica or something; of course that is exactly what it is intended to do, so that the forces of destruction can continue eating away at the flesh of the country until its corpse collapses on top of them.  So far, their strategy, no matter how implausible and ridiculous it may seem from the outside, seems to be making slow but continued progress as it slouches toward inevitable apocalyptic destruction.  Of course, to the religious lunatics on the right, that would be a wonderful thing too.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Richard Feynman: It didn't cross the road to the other side. It actually came back to where it started but was momentarily moving backward in time. .emit ni drawkcab gnivom yliratnemom saw tub detrats ti erehw to kcab emac yllautca tI .edis rehot eht to daor eht ssorc t'ndid tI :namnyeF drahciR

Nicolaus Copernicus: Despite the evidence of your senses, I can show that it is mathematically simpler to describe it as a road passing under the chicken.

Archimedes: Eureka!

Andre Ampere: To keep current on events.

Alexander Graham Bell: To get to the nearest phone.

Werner Heisenberg: If the chicken is moving very fast, you can either observe the chicken or you can measure the chicken, but you cannot do both.

Robert Boyle: The chicken was under pressure to cross the road.

Marie Curie: The chicken was radiant as it crossed the road.

Albert Camus: It doesn't matter; crossing the road has no meaning except to the chicken.

C. J. Doppler: For its effect on passers-by.

Thomas Edison: The chicken found it illuminating.

Stephen Hawking: There exist numerous parallel universes in which the same chicken is in differing stages of crossing the road.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your point of view.

Gustav Hertz: Lately, the chicken has been crossing the road with greater frequency.

Galileo: To get a better look at the other side.

Johannes Kepler: The chicken crossed in an arc, not a straight line.

Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross the road.

Ohm: Because there was less resistance on the other side of the road.

James Watt: To let off steam.

Immanuel Kant: The chicken, being an autonomous being, crossed the road to exercise free will.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes back at you.

(O)CT(O)PUS: A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

Why I support gun control

And what kind.

I do after all, even if it's not what you support or any of the loudest activists urge.  No I don't share the urge to tilt at the "Weapons of War" windmills provided us by the media and the more gullible gun control advocates who generally use any sad story to go after what they insist is the root of the problem but rarely is.  I do support, at least provisionally, some of what the President is supporting.

• increasing access to mental health services

• lifting restrictions on federally funded research on gun violence

• extending background checks before the purchase of a gun

Yes -- research for one thing, and here's where it's quite appropriate to be angry at the NRA who has opposed all taxpayer funded study of violence with firearms -- because of course any mention of such things; any attempt to find a way to reduce violence is an obvious precursor  to the Liberal plot to grab our guns. President Obama has ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies to  begin research on gun violence and its effects. The actualization of course depends on Congress which controls the funds and therein lurks the cold, dead, but still active hand of the NRA.

No, I'm not in the NRA camp. I don't think anyone who likes hunting or shooting or owns a gun for legitimate reasons is the 'sick bastard' or deranged potential murderer I've been called any more than I think that anyone who owns a penis is a rapist and child molester and neither does the vast majority of Americans.  I'm not going to waste time arguing with such people. I'm just going to look for solutions that work -- like the vast majority of Americans, like the President.

I used to watch Glades, a TV series about Florida Law Enforcement, and was occasionally amused by talk of finding criminals with "unregistered" guns -- amused because of course Florida doesn't register them and forbids keeping lists of who owns them. I've been amused as well by their showing us how the police could enter a serial number into the computer and find an owner. They can't.  Why is it that people who cry for more gun control sometimes think we have more than we do? The same reason that many think we have less, I imagine. At any rate there's an instance of ignorance being less than blissful.

If 72% of gun-related homicides for which we know the kind of gun used are committed with handguns, and only 4% with rifles of all kinds, why are we obsessing about "assault rifles?"  Perhaps it's another instance of a solution in search of a problem as I hinted at above.  Why are we all in a dither about "high capacity" magazines when more concealable, more portable, low capacity magazines can be changed in less than two seconds? Why are we not concentrating on the most frequently used tools? A revolver, usually with five or six shots remains a favorite choice for professional murderers for reasons I won't go into.  See above and note well that those least informed often seek solutions that are bound to fail and are as intransigent in promoting them as they are in ignoring a larger view. 

At first glance I'm not against some system of  being able to trace guns, a paper trail if you will, as we can do with any property that requires a title, with prescription medicine for that matter.  It seems compatible with a constitutional right, but we find strong objections in a country with such a long Libertarian history of  self re-invention and the ability to shed one's past and most of all the desire for independence and self-reliance.  We remember the New Orleans public being disarmed when they most needed a means of self defense. We remember Jim Crow. We remember lots of things and we worry.

I don't necessarily like the idea of  my possessions and movements being on record and more than my e-mails or purchases or telephone calls. Most people don't like it, but we don't seem to care as much about being spied on as having our shotgun under surveillance. Let's say that  a record of who owns what, might help well enough to keep guns from those with no right to own them that I could support some form of  registration if it could be made to work better than any system has  been so far. But neither hit-men nor drug dealers are not going to comply, nor tell the truth. People who want to die taking as many innocents with them as possible? They don't care about punishment or registration or anything else the law can do. Like the Sibyl, they want to die.

Can we, should we disarm 325 million to prevent 5 or 6 people from running amok with a gun legally or illegally obtained?  Good luck selling it and good luck accomplishing it. The only choice is to screen them out, not to simply register their guns or threaten them with fines or punishment. Better look to better background checks. If we can accept that some people should not, do not have the right to keep and bear arms, how can we not accept that we need to find out who they are?

So how can we manage to get significant compliance with registration?  We can't without screening out the loose canons with effective, mandatory background checks and the observation that States which do require it tend to have gun-related homicides in excess of States that do not, shows that our current efforts aren't always  enough, that off-the-books transfers are far too easy and quite legal in most cases. Making registration work would require that all transfers be done through licensed dealers who must keep records and report to authorities. That's where those background checks come in. Many are surprised that we have them at all, and waiting periods too. Some are surprised that people with no fear of breaking the law by killing aren't afraid to break the law by lying. Make the checks real.

Yes, I advocate background checks and making them more meaningful. As it is, we simply ask people if they're unstable, mentally impaired and under psychiatric care and not surprisingly people who should answer yes, answer no. As intrusive and objectionable as it may sound to make checks more comprehensive, it's necessary if we want to have registration and want it to actually do anything.

It may be hard to prove that such things as we have done so far have indeed made our country safer from gun related violence, but then it's hard to prove to some people that gun-related homicides have declined substantially for 30 years now. Why? Once again, see that solution seeking a problem because when the solution most dearly envisioned is to make all danger disappear at all cost, that cost gets high and people still get killed.
 I do keep in mind however, that while any reduction in the death rate we can accomplish under any circumstances  may not be dramatic and will not be quick to become observable, that reduction is worthwhile.  I also keep in mind that it will not satisfy a great many people. The slow decline of automobile fatalities seems to have pacified us where the slow decline of gun fatalities has not.  Any observation of human tendencies has to include the illogical, irrational nature of humans. We will continue to fear the lone madman more than we fear the drug gangs and robbers and other "traditional" killers even though the latter are predominant when it comes to slaughter and the former far less likely to be deterred by anything short of a straight jacket.

That's why I support research, scientific inquiry and honest, continuing, informed discussion even though the NRA deems it useless and dangerous and even though their organized opposition will see it as an excuse to do nothing.  I support it because there's ill-understood pathology behind the violence we most fear. I fear it won't happen because both sides are afraid of being argued out of their urges to act now or not to act at all. Any effective effort must come from a middle no one is listening to, from a public that doesn't share the pantheon of bogeymen of either extreme and it must recognize an eternal struggle that can't be legislated away. By all means listen to Law Enforcement people. Many of their opinions may surprise you. Listen to mental health people, look at statistics and listen to firearms experts and lets get down to business.

Carry his rape-baby or go to jail.

One of the reasons that the Republicans couldn't win the election in 2012 was that they were continuing to appeal only to the white male demographic.

They didn't bother worrying about hispanic vote: look at their reaction to the Dream Act. Or their "walls, razor wire and armed guards" view of immigration policy. Or the continued push toward "English-only" legislation.

They didn't give a tanned damn about the black vote: check out their full-throated support of George Zimmerman, who apparently felt threatened by the existence of skinny teenagers armed with Skittles. For that matter, note the dog-whistles (and occasional open racism) distributed through their attacks on our first black president.

And going into the home stretch of the election, the GOP seemed to double down on their "War on Women," with lawmakers talking about "legitimate rape" and trying to make it harder for a woman to get a legal medical procedure, than it is for a convicted felon to buy military-grade hardware.

Full disclosure: I am not a big fan of the term "War on Women," but I'm at a loss what else to call it. The opposite of "Women's Lib" would be "Women's Enslavement," but that's a bit hyperbolic, so I'm not going to even touch it. In fact, "War on Anything" is pretty well over-used, because they can be such a convenient shorthand. Will some linguistics major please look into this for me?

In regards to the GOP policy toward women, they have a radical portion of their party who keeps trying to turn back the clock to a mythical Fifties, where the blacks and hispanics were all happy in their low-paying jobs, and the few women in the work force (the ones who weren't staying at home baking) were available to be chased around the desk playing hard-but-not-impossible-to-get.

See, in their views, a Woman's Purpose (subtitle: "Assigned To Her By God") is to be forever in a subservient role, helping Her Man, cleaning, cooking, and procreating. If she gets a job, she's still expected to get home in time to get the kids from daycare and cook dinner. And this is pretty obvious by how they try to legislate.

Hell, at least blacks were considered three-fifths of a person. In some quarters, women are lucky to get that much appreciation today, especially in in the paycheck.

(And I'm not saying that the melanin-enhanced peoples have it much better; I'm just trying to make a rhetorical point here...)

And one of the things they want to avoid is even the possibility that a woman will have control of her own genitals.

Simple logic and actual scientific studies have shown that adequate sex education and access to contraception both decrease abortions (and we even have the actual examples of places like Denmark, where abortion is available, but almost unheard of), but we still have the insane cognitive dissonance of opposition to abortion, and contraception, matched up with support for abstinence-only education.

Which brings us to my own (adopted) state of New Mexico.

Now, I'll admit that I have little or no use for Huffington Post. There are a number of reasons for this, but I'm going to give them credit for one thing: they were the first news outlet to break this one.

A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial.

House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for "tampering with evidence."

Now, since Huffpo broke the story, it's been picked up by other news groups, and the public outcry against this brain-meltingly obvious idiocy has made Representative Brown very sad. She's now trying to explain to everybody how she was being "misrepresented."

Rep. Cathrynn Brown, a Republican from Carlsbad, said Thursday she will revise the bill, which she said was intended to target perpetrators of rape or incest who try to cover their tracks by forcing their victims to have abortions...

Although the clause regarding intent would seem to preclude rape victims from being charged, several critics read the bill as possibly including them. Brown said she will clarify the language to remove any ambiguity.

Yeah, but while that may be the way she tried to sell it (and I'll give a tip of my hat to Ted for pointing it out to me)... well, in her defense, she's an idiot. Just how often, exactly, does a rapist drag a woman to a doctor to abort his rape-baby?

Because, yeah, the way she was selling this to her friends and supporters probably sounded just like that. The version on her own website has been undergoing daily changes since it went up, but has been warm and friendly to the poor beleaguered victim since day one. But the one that was introduced to the state legislature had some... well, let's just call them "inconsistencies" from the story Ms Brown has been trying to sell.

See, here's how it was presented:

AN ACT

RELATING TO CRIMINAL LAW; SPECIFYING PROCURING OF AN ABORTION AS TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE IN CASES OF CRIMINAL SEXUAL PENETRATION OR INCEST.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO:

SECTION 1. Section 30-22-5 NMSA 1978 (being Laws 1963, Chapter 303, Section 22-5, as amended) is amended to read:

"30-22-5. TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE.--

A. Tampering with evidence consists of destroying, changing, hiding, placing or fabricating any physical evidence with intent to prevent the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any person or to throw suspicion of the commission of a crime upon another.

B. Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.

C. Whoever commits tampering with evidence shall be punished as follows:

It then goes on to explain, if you're curious, what crimes will be added (or applied) to everybody involved, with no question about who it is (the rapist, the victim, or the doctor). And that's it. Short, sweet and stupid.

So, if you get raped, and then you get an abortion, you go to jail. It's a simple equation.

"Ah," but the calm, rational side of you explains, "it's right there in the bill! You have to have 'the intent to prevent the apprehension' of the rapist! Obviously, a victim isn't going to do that, right?"

Well, aside from the fact that "calm" and "rational" can rarely be applied to the anti-abortion lobby, let's consider for a minute. There's a term that needs to be applied here: "Thought crime." It's illegal to get an abortion that might tamper with evidence. Unless you can prove that you hadn't intended to tamper with evidence. You have to prove what you'd been thinking about.

"But... but... but..." your calm, rational side sputters, not yet willing to give up. "That isn't true! The state has to prove that you were planning to tamper with evidence!"

No, afraid not. The state has to prove that you did tamper with evidence, and then show that you might have still harbored feelings for the rapist. (Not hard to do, if it's, say, your dad, or some guy you haven't actively attacked with a knife...) After all, you got the abortion. They can prove that happened.

A woman still gets blamed for getting raped if she dresses "too provocatively" or goes to the wrong part of town. We tell women how to avoid getting raped; we don't tell men "don't rape."

We just assume that the natural state of man is "rapist." Since he's going to try to have sex regardless of any other factors, it's her job to avoid getting in that position.

If you then factor in the concept of "Stockholm Syndrome," please try to explain where this won't go wrong. Women already get accused of fabricating rape charges because they had sex, but then had "second thoughts" the next day.

Our society has some seriously messed-up priorities when it comes to rape.

_____________

Update (1/28/2013): So, I just corrected the formatting in the text of the bill. I tried to show it the way it was presented on the legislative website (with paragraph B underlined and the rest of it) and just managed to make it invisible. So now it's just shown as text, because some people shouldn't be allowed to use HTML.

Swear Words

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

-  Article VI, paragraph 3 -

Florida has had its problems forcing school children to publicly swear allegiance to a 'Nation
Under God' every day of the school year, but that abomination isn't enough for the State of Arizona, or at least for their State Legislature. A bill has been introduced requiring that before high school students can be given a diploma,  they must  swear to God.

"I, _________, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge these duties; So help me God."  

Does this bypass the religious test prohibition?  Well of course this is a requirement to graduate, or would be if it's passed and not a requirement for office, but is the granting of a diploma the granting of public trust?  As it is a requirement for employment in many cases, I would argue that it is and the oath is therefore unconstitutional, but we're talking about Arizona, a place where many Republican citizens are unhappy with that constitution and the Nation it defines, except of course for the guarantees it may make which further their attempts to persecute the freedoms of others and back up their threats with God and Guns.

It makes no provision for non believing people such as I am or for anti-believing people or for Quakers or  Mennonites and others whose creeds forbid oaths, to "solemnly affirm" rather than swear, but even if it were amended to that purpose, is an oath taken under duress valid and can one force someone to swear "without any mental reservation?"  But we're talking about Arizona where there is a test for looking American and penalties for failing it.

Actually I'm tired as hell of talking about Arizona and its cynical attempts to exclude and persecute all in the name of a Constitution they delight in selectively ignoring.  The hell with their nonsense about secession, their legislators have all sworn to uphold the constitution and if they can't do that, revoke their citizenship and deport them.

Both Sides, Now

No, this isn't about Joni Mitchell and I'm not going to talk about bows and flows of angel hair,  just about stunning hypocrisy.  How many ice cream castles have been built upon the idea that a fertilized human egg cell is a human being possessed of  human rights?  It would be hypocritical enow that those rights are allowed by Church doctrine to foetuses when they have been so often denied to adults by religious authorities, but that's not what this is about. It's about, as I said, hypocrisy; about arguing both sides when needed to avoid guilt, or at least to avoid prosecution and penalty.

Catholic Health Initiatives, with assets estimated at around 15 billion dollars, operates a chain of hospitals and as a response to a wrongful death suit involving twin foetuses who died before birth, their attorneys argued that in cases of wrongful death, the term “person” only applies to individuals born alive, and not to those who die in utero, says Raw Story today.

Perhaps that will be a precedent that plagues them in future when they try to argue otherwise according to Roman Catholic doctrine regarding abortion and birth control, but looking at this cloudy argument from both sides now is pretty entertaining, don't you think?  And of course we remember all the adages telling us that when they argue principle, what they mean is money.

Feather canyons everywhere, indeed.