Girl: I need EC! Clinic: Here you go. Girl: You violated my rights!

Court: NOPE.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on Friday ruled unanimously that a city health clinic did not violate a 16-year-old girl's rights or those of her parents when it gave her emergency contraception without notifying her parents, the AP/Pennlive.com reports.

Yeah, no shit. What in the hell is wrong with these folks? Are they under the impression that there's some kind of parental consent law for birth control? Shouldn't their lawyer know that there isn't? I hope they saved the receipt.

"The parents are being removed from the equation, which doesn't bode well," lawyer Joseph Stanton, who represents the Anspachs, said, adding, "It's only one case, but the message is not a good one for the family."

This has been the law since at least 1977. Where has this guy been for the past 30 years??

Melissa could have made her parents a part of the equation at any time: before she had sex, after she had sex, before she went to the clinic, or before she took the pills. Nobody stopped her from calling her parents or forced her to go against her alleged beliefs.

And nobody stopped her parents from getting more involved in their daughter's life. It's not the whole world's job to force your kids to abide by your personal beliefs; that's your job as a parent. That's what parenting is.

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Wives4Murderers.com

Eeeww.

Want a textbook example how the Left manufactures a crisis, passes a law that rolls back Constitutional protections, snookers card-carrying conservatives, and bilks American taxpayers? Look no farther than IMBRA, the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act.

Reading creepy dudes' rants against IMBRA always leaves me feeling like I need a shower.

IMBRA is law that protects foreign brides connected with American suitors by international marriage brokers (also known as "mail-order bride" companies). Its key provisions:

• Prohibits an IMB from profiling girls under the age of 18;

• Requires IMBs, before they release the contact information of any foreign woman to any U.S. client to (1) conduct a search of federal and state public sex offender registries for information on that client; (2) provide her with a copy of the results of that search as well as further criminal and marital background information the IMB has collected directly from the U.S. client; (3) advise her of the rights and resources available to domestic violence victims in the U.S.; and (4) obtain her written consent to the release of her contact information to that specific U.S. client;

• Requires that the criminal background check information that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) already collects on Americans petitioning for a foreign fiancée or spouse visa be shared with that foreign fiancée or spouse;

• Requires foreign fiancées and spouses coming to the U.S. to be given an information pamphlet reviewing the rights and resources available to domestic violence victims in the U.S; and

• Halts the practice of Americans simultaneously seeking visas for multiple fiancées and provides a lifetime cap of two fiancée visas per U.S. petitioner (subject to DHS waiver).

Seems reasonable, right? I mean, if a man intends on marrying a woman, shouldn't she have the right to know his criminal history, sex offender status, previous marriage history, and her own legal rights in the US before she goes through with it? A little honesty between potential life partners shouldn't be too much to ask.

Oh, but for "men's rights" nuts, it's WAY too much to ask!

But feminists are rankled by any hint that their nostrum for female liberation may be curtailing American women's marriage prospects. Worse, some of these foreign women actually aspire to be mothers and homemakers. Imagine that!

OH NOES!!1 Evil feminists don't want men to have housewives!! So they conspired to give foreign brides information about their potential husbands' backgrounds!! Which is a TERRIBLE burden to all the poor, mistreated sex offenders and criminals! Why shouldn't thugs and perverts have access to naive foreign women to deceive and manipulate in to marriage?? MEN R SO OPPRESSED BY FEMINAZIS!!!!1

During her testimony, Cantwell made the startling claim that match-making services serve as a nefarious front for international human trafficking. She concluded, "there is a growing epidemic of domestic abuse among couples who meet via international marriage brokers." As proof of that "epidemic," she highlighted the cases of three abused women.

One of those abused women he so casually dismisses was Anastasia Solovieva King, a 20-year-old woman from Kyrgyzstan who was strangled to death and dumped in a wooded lot by her American husband. He had already been divorced by one abused foreign bride, and was searching for a third even before he killed the second.

Susana Remerata Blackwell was another. She was shot to death by her husband at point-blank range, right in the courthouse lobby after a divorce hearing.

Now, any man who wishes to go through an international dating company must submit to an extensive background check. That's right, guys, get ready to tell them about your arrests, criminal history, restraining orders, how many times you've been married, and even how many children you have. For good measure, don't forget the sex offender registry check.

Oh no! Not that! What ever shall the poor, little abusers and rapists do?? What a shame! I feel ever so sorry for them, really I do!

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Miss America depriving contestants of their scholarships

Wow, that's fucked up.

“You are talking about an organization that is promoting itself as the largest scholarship provider for women in the world,” Ms. Wood, 26, said of the Miss America Organization. “When contestants try to collect their funds, they encounter one obstacle after another.”

Ms. Wood said she was told that she would not get the $20,000 for winning the Miss South Carolina pageant in part because her two local pageants had not paid her $950 that she had won from them (Ms. Wood said that after she enrolled in classes, one group reneged on payment and the other dodged her when she tried to collect). In turn, because she did not receive the state money, the national pageant sent her a letter in June saying she was ineligible for the $5,000 from it, even though the deadline to use her national scholarship had not passed. “It’s like a game of gotcha,” she said. “What is very clear to me is that the goal is to not give out the scholarships if at all possible.”

Ms. Wood’s is among the most prominent disputes in recent years involving the pageant system, which endures — albeit diminished — since network television dropped the Miss America Pageant in 2004. But there have long been complaints that the 1,200 local and 52 state pageants run under the aegis of the national pageant often do not distribute scholarships to winners. The contestants say their difficulties collecting their money surprise them, given that the Miss America system promotes itself as a scholarship pageant rather than a beauty pageant, unlike its main rival, the Miss USA contest.

Interviews with contestants across the country describe a Miss America system in which local pageant directors do not return telephone calls and e-mail messages for months, local competitions close down before scholarships are distributed, and the fine print in contracts creates hurdles. Local winners across the country have threatened legal action, and some have taken it.

Pageant organizers at each level of the Miss America system say that such problems are the exception and that they occur because contestants miss deadlines or do not dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s to get paid.

Are you kidding me? Why in the world should contestants have to jump through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops just to claim their prizes?

They participated. It's easy to prove. (Don't they keep records of these pageants?) They should get their scholarships. It's that simple.

How scummy, luring in young women with the promise of a scholarship, then screwing them out of it once the pageant's over.

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We MUST expand SCHIP!

Photo © danny.hammontree

God damn, I can't wait until that piece of shit George Bush is out of office! Look at this!

A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced a proposal Friday that would add $35 billion over five years to the [SCHIP] program, adding 4 million people to the 6.6 million already participating. It would be financed by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.

The idea is overwhelmingly supported by Congress's majority Democrats, who scheduled it for a vote Tuesday in the House. It has substantial Republican support, as well.

But Bush has promised a veto, saying the measure is too costly, unacceptably raises taxes, extends government-covered insurance to children in families who can afford private coverage, and smacks of a move toward completely federalized health care. He has asked Congress to pass a simple extension of the current program while debate continues, saying it is children who will suffer if they do not.

"Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage -- not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage," Bush said.

BUT YOUR PLAN DOES NOT HELP ANYONE MOVE FROM NO INSURANCE TO PRIVATE INSURANCE! In fact, it does JUST THE OPPOSITE!

Five billion per year is not even enough for all the kids presently covered by SCHIP! The only thing five billion per year will do is move more kids from subsidized private insurance (which is what SCHIP is) to NO INSURANCE.

Health care costs continue to rise. Health insurance costs continue to rise. The number of uninsured people continues to rise. Without an expansion of SCHIP, many more of those uninsured people will be children!

EXPAND SCHIP NOW!

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it r caturday!

Time to poke fun at one of my kitties whilst learning basic Photoshop skills. This time, I learned how to make an arrow and rotate it.





Awww, he's got the cutest pink belly, even if it does strangely resemble a cow's udder.

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Just Say No... to Sexual Pleasure?

"They are no different than drug dealers that push drugs in our schools. They push sexual pleasure," Aurora resident Jeff Budill said of Planned Parenthood centers.

Oh noes! I'm hooked on good sex! Somebody stop me before I stop myself!

Can you believe this shit? I came across this quote in a story about the ongoing fight over the soon-to-be-opened Aurora Planned Parenthood clinic. It's a good example of something I wish everyone could understand: the abortion debate is not just about abortion. It's not even mostly about abortion. It's mostly about sex.

Pro-choice people don't care if you have sex or don't have sex, have babies or don't have babies, get married or don't get married... pro-choice people just want to make sure you have access to whatever you need to control your own reproduction as you see fit. This is the modern, secular, progressive view of sex: that it's just a natural, normal, healthy part of adult life.

But pro-life people DO care if you have sex. They want you to believe as they do: that sex is for married couples only, and once you're married, you should accept unlimited reproduction, because contraception is just as bad as abortion:

The practice of contraception means children are unwanted and provides the rationalization for abortion. It is a violation of human dignity to promote or accept the use of contraception.

They believe that only God should decide how many kids you will have, not you. If you don't want (more and more) children, then there's something wrong with you, you violator of human dignity, you. If you don't want any more kids, but you do still want to have sex with your husband, you're "disrespecting your body" and "disrespecting the conjugal union" and "cheapening human life" by "turning children in to commodities." You know, crazy talk.

It's amazing to me, that in a country where 95% of people have premarital sex, where 98% of women have used contraception, and where independence and liberty are such deeply cherished cultural values, that the pro-life movement could hoodwink so many people in to thinking that all they care about is protecting poor, defenseless little babies from stupid sluts and evil doctors, even as they've been denying birth control to poor Medicaid recipients, censoring contraceptive education from public schools, encouraging pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, refusing to provide emergency contraception to rape victims, and so on.

This is not a debate between people who hate abortion and people who love it. Nobody loves abortion. The is about the struggle between the modern, pragmatic view of sex, versus the traditional, idealistic view of sex.

Planned Parenthood doesn't push sexual pleasure, but they definitely enable sexual pleasure. Thanks to their low-cost birth control, I'm able to have all the sexual pleasure I like with my husband, without having to worry about pregnancies we don't want and can't afford. Is that a bad thing? I certainly don't think so. Is it unhealthy? Not at all. Harmful? No way!

Has it turned me in to an immoral, baby-killing monster? Only if you believe menstruation is murder.

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Kathy Griffin's Emmy speech = WIN

Oh my gosh, one more reason to love Kathy Griffin!

Before Kathy Griffin won a creative arts Emmy last weekend for her reality show, "My Life on the D-List," she joked that an award would move her to the C-list.

She was right: "C" as in censored. (...)

"Kathy Griffin's offensive remarks will not be part of the E! telecast on Saturday night," the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences said in a statement Monday.

In her speech, Griffin said that "a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus."

She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, "This award is my god now!"

The comedian's remarks were condemned Monday by Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who called them a "vulgar, in-your-face brand of hate speech."

WAY TO GO KATHY! Good thing Bill Donohue is too stupid to realize that she only did it for the publicity that he's so graciously giving her.

Edit: Ha! The off-color remark was "Suck it, Jesus." Classic Kathy Griffin.

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Caturday

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