The post subject is my deliberate and hostile parody of the hed at LifeNews (sorry, no link from here) which concluded "to do abortions." Personally I have zero problems with the notion that a hospital should be "force[d]" to take all medically responsible measures to save a woman's life... or take down its bloody shingle and get out of the medical business. Yeah, I know: YMMV...
Here is the ACLU's page on the lawsuit they lost, Tamesha Means v. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops... that is, if you're even looking for another possible interpretation. The guys in the reddish robes and beanies, the ones with huge chips on their shoulders, certainly aren't.
Some will doubtless say I am hostile to religion and to religious rights. F^<k that; I have even been an official member of a denomination that included several US presidents in history. No, what I am hostile to is hospitals that knowingly deprive women of treatment, of knowledge about their condition, of even the ethical minimum... referral to another hospital or clinic where they will be helped... hospitals that send women home to die without medical care. THAT is what I am hostile to, and proud of it.
(I may add other articles here as I find them. The report and these articles should keep us occupied for a few days.)
ASIDE: Please join one or more of the major civil liberties, constitutional rights or related org's... ACLU, EFF, CCR, etc. I'm an ACLU guy out of habit, more than three decades of habit, but we need all of them, and they need our help as they are inundated with actions by a government increasingly inclined to disregard the Constitution when it finds it inconvenient to comply. Please do your part!
At random intervals I read the ACLU Blog of Rights just to see what un-American absurdities the evil-doers are up to lately, and what the ACLU is doing about it. Frequently enough, I whip out my checkbook and send them a small token of my appreciation... never very much at a time, because I haven't got money to spend freely, but maybe as much as, say, two movie tickets at a downtown cinema in a real city (yes, Houston counts).
This time, I didn't reach for my checkbook because I've done that recently. But as always, I learned some things. Take a look at this post called Hamas, Twitter and the First Amendment: I learned something from that, something about how our draconian post-9/11 laws end up criminalizing speech for its content, and how that provides opportunities for an org like "Christians United for Israel" (sorry, no link from here) an opportunity to attempt to sue Twitter off the face of the Earth. Did you know Twitter is not considered a "common carrier" under law? And they are being accused of furnishing "communications equipment" (i.e., some unspecified servers and comm links half a planet away) to Hamas... along with much of the rest of the planet, too, mostly uncontroversially. The case is still underway. The post's author, ACLU's Gabe Rottman, sheds light on why this should make the hairs on the back of our necks stand on end. I admit it... I scratched the back of my neck. It's scary stuff. There's other scary stuff on the ACLU blog; there always is, and none of it is exaggerated; I'm always scared when I read it.
Molly Ivins in Good Times
But an old man's mind wanders, and mine wandered to the late great Molly Ivins. If Molly ever wrote a column or spoke a sentence I didn't like (and often enough laugh at), I never saw that column or heard that sentence. Molly was one of my genuine heroes. She still is, almost six years after her passing away.
One of her funniest moments was her appearance in a movie called The Dildo Diaries, from which someone has kindly excerpted the interview with Molly about an episode in the Texas Legislature... why am I wasting your time tapping this, when I can just show you the video (NSFW!)...
Aside: Rep. Danburg, in the video, was my State Representative at one time. I wish her well, whatever she's up to now!
Texans (or any other Americans), do you have youngsters in school? Are they (or are you) interested in their rights in the educational setting? Are you facing problems with a particular school administration, or a local or state school board, involving your child?
Youth Rights Texas has joined with the ACLU to publish a series of short e-books available to you free as .pdf downloads. Subjects range from their Youth Rights Manual (in English or Spanish), Stand Up for Children (two volumes on dealing with local and state boards of education), Free People Read Freely (from the ACLU Foundation of Texas's Banned Books Project), and others such as Use of Force in Texas Public Schools (the title speaks for itself), Distribution of Gideon Bibles in Texas Public Schools (I still have mine from my childhood when the Gideon folks did their unsubtle proselytizing unimpeded in public schools), and The Texas State Board of Education (surely the worst of the worst, and one of the most influential on textbooks all over America).
Note that I never "bleg" for myself. But I will suggest that if you have a steady job that pays decently, perhaps you could throw a little money toward the ACLU and/or your state ACLU. It's one of only three org's that I continue to support in these hard times. (The other two are Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood.) Without the ACLU, the anti‑rights agendas of presidents Bush and Obama and possibly (Dog forbid!) Rmoney, would roll over us without obstacle. With the ACLU, we have a fighting chance. Help if you can.
Guarantee: • Equal rights • Reproductive rights • Equal pay for equal work!
Cats
(Click Lily above; see many cat pics!)
Houston Weather
Thesis
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative." - John Stuart Mill, 1866
