CNN has a video on their main page right now with a headline that says ‘Live: Bachmann addresses supporters’. Except its a video of Sarah Palin. CNN Fail. Hehehe.
South Dakota Moves To Legalize Killing Abortion Providers
From Mother Jones
A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state’s GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.
“The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers.”The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state’s legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person “while resisting an attempt to harm” that person’s unborn child or the unborn child of that person’s spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman’s father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.
Jensen did not return calls to his home or his office requesting comment on the bill, which is cosponsored by 22 other state representatives and four state senators.
“The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers,” says Vicki Saporta, the president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers. Since 1993, eight doctors have been assassinated at the hands of anti-abortion extremists, and another 17 have been the victims of murder attempts. Some of the perpetrators of those crimes have tried to use the justifiable homicide defense at their trials. “This is not an abstract bill,” Saporta says. The measure could have major implications if a “misguided extremist invokes this ‘self-defense’ statute to justify the murder of a doctor, nurse or volunteer,” the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families warned in a message to supporters last week.
The original version of the bill did not include the language regarding the “unborn child”; it was pitched as a simple clarification of South Dakota’s justifiable homicide law. Last week, however, the bill was “hoghoused”—a term used in South Dakota for heavily amending legislation in committee—in a little-noticed hearing. A parade of right-wing groups—the Family Heritage Alliance, Concerned Women for America, the South Dakota branch of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, and a political action committee called Family Matters in South Dakota—all testified in favor of the amended version of the law.
Jensen, the bill’s sponsor, has said that he simply intends to bring “consistency” to South Dakota’s criminal code, which already allows prosecutors to charge people with manslaughter or murder for crimes that result in the death of fetuses. But there’s a difference between counting the murder of a pregnant woman as two crimes—which is permissible under law in many states—and making the protection of a fetus an affirmative defense against a murder charge.
“They always intended this to be a fetal personhood bill, they just tried to cloak it as a self-defense bill,” says Kristin Aschenbrenner, a lobbyist for South Dakota Advocacy Network for Women. “They’re still trying to cloak it, but they amended it right away, making their intent clear.” The major change to the legislation also caught abortion rights advocates off guard. “None of us really felt like we were prepared,” she says.
Sara Rosenbaum, a law professor at George Washington University who frequently testifies before Congress about abortion legislation, says the bill is legally dubious. “It takes my breath away,” she says in an email to Mother Jones. “Constitutionally, a state cannot make it a crime to perform a constitutionally lawful act.”
South Dakota already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, and one of the lowest abortion rates. Since 1994, there have been no providers in the state. Planned Parenthood flies a doctor in from out-of-state once a week to see patients at a Sioux Falls clinic. Women from the more remote parts of the large, rural state drive up to six hours to reach this lone clinic. And under state law women are then required to receive counseling and wait 24 hours before undergoing the procedure.
Before performing an abortion, a South Dakota doctor must offer the woman the opportunity to view a sonogram. And under a law passed in 2005, doctors are required to read a script meant to discourage women from proceeding with the abortion: ”The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” Until recently, doctors also had to tell a woman seeking an abortion that she had “an existing relationship with that unborn human being” that was protected under the Constitution and state law and that abortion poses a “known medical risk” and “increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide.” In August 2009, a US District Court Judge threw out those portions of the script, finding them “untruthful and misleading.” The state has appealed the decision.
The South Dakota legislature has twice tried to ban abortion outright, but voters rejected the ban at the polls in 2006 and 2008, by a 12-point margin both times. Conservative lawmakers have since been looking to limit access any other way possible. “They seem to be taking an end run around that,” says state Sen. Angie Buhl, a Democrat. “They recognize that people don’t want a ban, so they are trying to seek a de facto ban by making it essentially impossible to access abortion services.”
South Dakota’s legislature is strongly tilted against abortion rights, which makes passing restrictions fairly easy. Just 19 of 70 House members and 5 of the 35 state senators are Democrats—and many of the Democrats also oppose abortion rights.
The law that would legalize killing abortion providers is just one of several measures under consideration in the state that would create more obstacles for a woman seeking an abortion. Another proposed law, House Bill 1217, would force women to undergo counseling at a Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) before they can obtain an abortion. CPCs are not regulated and are generally run by anti-abortion Christian groups and staffed by volunteers—not doctors or nurses—with the goal of discouraging women from having abortions.
A congressional investigation into CPCs in 2006 found that the centers often provide “false or misleading information about the health risks of an abortion”—alleging ties between abortion and breast cancer, negative impacts on fertility, and mental-health concerns. “This may advance the mission of the pregnancy resource centers, which are typically pro-life organizations dedicated to preventing abortion,” the report concluded, “but it is an inappropriate public health practice.” In a recent interview, state Rep. Roger Hunt, one of the bill’s sponsors, acknowledged that its intent is to “drastically reduce” the number of abortions in South Dakota.
House Bill 1217 would also require women to wait 72 hours after counseling before they can go forward with the abortion, and would require the doctor to develop an analysis of “risk factors associated with abortion” for each woman—a provision that critics contend is intentionally vague and could expose providers to lawsuits. A similar measure passed in Nebraska last spring, but a federal judge threw it out it last July, arguing that it would “require medical providers to give untruthful, misleading and irrelevant information to patients” and would create “substantial, likely insurmountable, obstacles” to women who want abortions. Extending the wait time and requiring a woman to consult first with the doctor, then with the CPC, and then meet with the doctor again before she can undergo the procedure would add additional burdens for women—especially for women who work or who already have children.
The South Dakota bills reflect a broader national strategy on the part of abortion-rights opponents, says Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate with the Guttmacher Institute, a federal reproductive health advocacy and research group. “They erect a legal barrier, another, and another,” says Nash. “At what point do women say, ‘I can’t climb that mountain’? This is where we’re getting to.”
Proof That Anthem Blue Cross Just Doesn’t Give A Fvck
This is the message I heard today when Anthem Blue Cross to ask why my monthly health care premium just hit $434.00
‘We are experiencing unusually long hold times today due to the volume of calls we are receiving. Mondays and Tuesday are the busiest days of our week. Please call back again later.’
Ummm…its Wednesday.
Update at 10:32 AM PST
After waiting on hold for 58 minutes I finally was transferred to a customer service representative who asked me if I could be placed on hold.
Update at 10:38 AM PST
The best part about being on hold for the past 6 minutes has been the Muzak version of Hootie and the Blowfish’s ‘I Only Want To Be With You’.
Update 10:49 AM PST
I’d called back in November of 2010 after receiving a notice that my premium was going up from $360 a month to $469 a month. I was told then on the phone that that notice was inaccurate and that as of January 1st my premium would go up to $379 a month. So the notice I received yesterday stating that my rate was increasing to $431 a month made no sense. I was told it would be $379. Now the customer service agent has said that I was told the wrong amount back in November. I said, ‘Well, that’s not my fault your employee said the wrong thing.’
Update 10:52 AM PST
I’ve filed a grievance and within 30 days it will be determined by Anthem’s grievance department if I will be offered the rate of $379 as I’d been told I would instead of $430.
McCain Proposes Indefinite Detention Without Trial for Citizens
John McCain has proposed a bill that would allow the President to imprison an unlimited number of American citizens (as well as foreigners) indefinitely without trial. So much for 1) breaking the 5th and 6th Amendments to the Constitution and 2) making the Federal Govt interfere even more with the private lives of its citizens.
I thought Republicans/Conservatives were for LIMITED GOVERNMENT?
READ ABOUT IT HERE or below
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) has introduced a bill that would allow the President to imprison an unlimited number of American citizens (as well as foreigners) indefinitely without trial. Known as The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, or S. 3081, the bill authorizes the President to deny a detainee a trial by jury simply by designating that person an “enemy belligerent.”
The bill, which has eight cosponsors, explicitly names U.S. citizens as among those who can be detained indefinitely without trial:
An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent … may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities. [Emphasis added.]
Note that the Bush administration once said that the so-called “war on terror” would last a generation or more, and the U.S. military has officially classified many former Guantanamo detainees, such as England’s Tipton Three, as having “returned to the battlefield” for merely granting an interview for the movie The Road to Guantanamo. Another five innocent Uighur (Ethnic Turkish Muslims from China) detainees had been listed as having “returned to the battlefield” after their release because their lawyer had written an op-ed protesting their prolonged detention without trial after they had been mistakenly picked up by a greedy bounty hunter. Writing an opinion or speaking an opinion against the party in power in Washington can — and already has — made some people “enemy belligerents.”
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and the Sixth Amendment stipulates the due process of law that all are required to receive:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
The requirement for a jury trial has no exceptions for military reasons, and doesn’t even exempt foreigners. It simply employs the phrase “all criminal prosecutions,” words that unequivocally apply to the military and civilian justice systems, as well as to both citizens and foreigners. The Founding Fathers truly applied Christ’s command to “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you,” but John McCain’s new bill wouldn’t even do to American citizens what we would assume were basic rights. There is no greater tyranny than indefinite imprisonment at the whim of an executive without legal recourse, and that is precisely what McCain and eight other senators would impose upon America.
McCain defended his bill in a speech on the Senate floor March 4, stating:
The legislation would authorize detention of enemy belligerents without criminal charges for the duration of the hostilities consistent with standards under the law of war which have been recognized by the Supreme Court. Importantly, if a decision is made to hold a criminal trial after the necessary intelligence information is obtained, the bill mandates trial by military commission where we are best able to protect U.S. national security interests, including sensitive classified sources and methods, as well as the place and the people involved in the trial itself.
In other words, the right to trial by jury guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution would no longer be a right. The bill would mandate “military commissions” rather than a jury trial, if and when the President deems to hold a “trial.” Under McCain’s legislation, trial by jury wouldn’t just be a privilege that the President could withdraw at a whim, the President would be required to deny jury trials. The right to trial by jury would be denied entirely! Of course, any American could be held for decades without trial or even being charged with a crime under McCain’s bill.
Cosponsors of the bill include Democrat/independent Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Republicans Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, David Vitter of Louisiana, George LeMieux of Florida, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi. Those cosponsoring this outright attack on the Bill of Rights are those same Republican neo-conservatives who have dominated the GOP for the last decade or more. Conservative constitutionalists need to reassert control of the Republican Party and purge this cancer from the party and the U.S. Senate, if they wish to retain their freedoms.
Unbiased Supreme Court Justices
Why weren’t more Americans concerned that Supreme Court Justices were at a billionaire Conservative think tank planning session last week? And you’re telling me that those justices are unbiased? Guess its okay to not complain about litmus tests when you can easily see that they already pass your litmus test.
