All right! Let’s do this thing.
There’s a hearing in Washington next week:
S.1696, The Women’s Health Protection Act: Removing Barriers to Constitutionally Protected Reproductive Rights
Full CommitteeDate: Tuesday, July 15, 2014 Add to my Calendar
Time: 10:00 AM
Location: Dirksen 226
Presiding: Senator Blumenthal
There’s a petition. Sign and share. Tell your Representative and Senators (if you’re in the US).
Yet more reason to loathe Penn Jillette.
Penn Jillette says that people are “burying the lede” in the alleged incident that led to SiriusXM’s decision to fire “Opie and Anthony” host Anthony Cumia. He also argued that he’s never seen any evidence that suggests Cumia is racist as many of his critics have alleged.
“We are burying the lede of this story, which is that Anthony, who has a reputation for being a bit of a hot head, is carrying, comes up gets hit in the face and does not hurt the person back,” Jillette said during his “Penn’s Sunday School” podcast this weekend.
“That is incredible. If I am in the position where I cross somebody who is carrying a gun and who can defend themselves and hurt me, and their choice is to write angry stuff on Twitter instead of fighting me back — wonderful. Gandhi! That’s Gandhi! … That is Martin Luther King,” he continued.
Missouri governor Jay Nixon has vetoed a stupid malevolent control-the-women anti-abortion bill.
Setting up an election-year showdown with the Legislature, Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed on Wednesday a bill that would have required a 72-hour waiting period for abortions in Missouri.
Nixon said the bill’s lack of an exception for victims of rape and incest was a “glaring omission” that was “wholly insensitive to women who find themselves in horrific circumstances.”
But even if the bill had contained such an exception, he would have vetoed it, Nixon said in unusually sharp criticism of an abortion bill.
Saudi Arabia is also (surprise surprise) harsh and bossy about Ramadan even for people who have the bad taste to be not Muslim.
The Interior Ministry has warned that it would deport non-Muslim expatriates found eating and drinking in public during Ramadan.
“Non-Muslim expatriates should respect the feelings of Muslims by not eating, drinking or smoking in public places such as streets and workplaces. They should not think that they are exempted from this because they are followers of other faiths,” the ministry said in a statement. [Read more…]
Travel tip – never visit Pakistan during Ramadan. Sahar Majid explains why.
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In 1981, Zia issued an ordinance officially prohibiting public eating and drinking during Ramadan’s fasting hours. The dictate also forced public restaurants and eateries to close. Anyone breaking this rule could face three months in jail and a fine of about $5. (Luckily, the ordinance exempts food service in hospitals, schools, airports, and train and bus stations.)
Eating and drinking – so if you’re visiting Pakistan during Ramadan you can’t even walk around with a bottle of water and drink from it when you get thirsty. [Read more…]
Cross-posted from Facebook.
Memo to people who say things.
If you compare someone behaving badly to “a teenage girl” and you get a reaction to the sexism – the right answer is not to call that “PC”.
It’s not “political correctness” (in the pejorative sense) to try to get people to refrain from automatic mindless disparagement of girls&women.
It’s not trivia. It’s not fussiness or pedantry. It’s not a gotcha. It’s not “call-out culture.” It’s not language-policing. It’s not authoritarian.
It’s a long (long long long) term effort to shape a world where girls DON’T grow up constantly being told, directly and indirectly, that they are fundamentally stupider, weaker, more spoiled and whiny, and just overall more annoying and bad and inferior than that other sex.
Why would this not be an important and worthwhile goal? Why would we want to keep half of humanity in a permanent state of attributed inferiority?
Dalia Farouk at The Cairo Post reports a bad trend in Egypt:
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is increasing in rural areas in Egypt according to Women and Development Association (WDA) Alexandria governorate head Aida Nour al-Din, Youm7 reported Friday.
Din said that FGM is also common in urban areas due to some religious beliefs that it is a “religious obligation and must be done.”
She also said a 2008 study indicated 86 percent of divorce cases were due to FGM and its negative impact on marital intercourse.
Not a good way to recruit women? Act as if they all like pink frilly pink frills all over everything.
To start, there were the pitches from college engineering programs in curly purple typeface accented by flowery images. She started to notice that many websites for budding female engineers are pink. Then there was the flyer for an after-school program hanging in a hallway of her high school. Printed on purple polka-dot paper, it read, “Are you a tech girl? Are you a web diva?”
Lisa Bloom explains lucidly in the Washington Post what is so radical about the Hobby Lobby ruling.
The U.S. is the most religious and most conservative first-world nation, and believers have tried to opt out of our laws for centuries. For the most part, courts haven’t allowed it. May Christian Scientists forego lifesaving medical treatment for their children? No. May Native Americans ingest illegal peyote as part of their religious ceremonies? No. May the Amish refuse to pay Social Security taxes that violate their sincere religious beliefs? No.
The world cup is abomination, according to a Russian Orthodox priest, because the players wear gay shoes. Gay shoes I tell you!
It’s true, I’ve noticed it myself – bright green, bright orange, bright blue – they’re a treat to watch, plus they make it easier to keep track of the players’ feet. But of course it’s true that they’re also bright bright gay, no getting around that. [Read more…]