So, for those of you who missed this, a City Councilman in Asheville, NC may lose his seat because he is an athiest and, apparently, that makes him a second class citizen.  Not just socially, but legally.
Foes say atheism disqualifies pol – BostonHerald.com

That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina’s Constitution that disqualifies officeholders “who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

I can’t begin to tell you how much this bit terrifies me:

“The judge also realizes that jail time will not reform us, because he has witnessed our faith runs very deep,” the statement reads.

Translation: we did nothing wrong.
Extrapolation: therefor, we’ll do it again if similar situations arise.
Further: Yes, we are OK with killing children in the name of god.

Honestly, I don’t know what to say about this.

6 months plus probation.

At what point do we simply say that child neglect is A-OK?

I mean, seriously, I’m not sure what the details are on this but they did remove the kids and none of them had died.

So, crazy nazi parents are NOT ok, but crazy religious parents with a body count are just fine.

So, it is looking very much like the public option is now going to be put out to pasture unless the insurance companies don’t comply with various rules.
I can’t imagine this will ever ever trigger.
1. If insurance companies don’t comply, we will simply have the same fight all over again with people punching each other in the face.
2. if the public option does need to come into play, it then has to get built and that will take no small amount of time.  And, of course, we’ll be completely unprepared.
3. I have no doubt that there will be a ‘good faith’ clause somewhere in there.  Basically, if the insurance companies TRY and comply, then the public option trigger isn’t invoked.  And, of course, you can’t actually measure ‘good faith’.  The same people who defend insurance companies now will, surely, defend them later.  “Oh, look, they are TRYING to do what we asked but they are only poor defenseless corporations”.  And, if the insurance companies know the problem is coming, it gives them plenty of time to move money around to encourage their congressional champions.

Look, I can’t believe what hypocrites these people are, given that Ms. Neumann seemed to require medical attention during the first day, and didn’t demand that they leave her alone and just pray for her, but…

I continue to hope these people never see their children ever again since they are more than happy to murder them.

Further, I hope the exact same thing happens to these people who are trying to murder their son, Daniel Hauser.   These people are actually wore because they know EXACTLY what is wrong with him (the Neumann’s appear to have purposefully kept themselves unaware) and EXACTLY what the standard treatment will accomplish (something like 90% recovery rate) and they don’t care.  They care more about some religious/philosophical issue than saving their son.

Thats what it comes down to, and THAT is why people like this are dangerous.  They believe that magic and mystic spirits and souls are more important than real life.  And THAT is why they can’t be allowed near children.  There are no threats, no punishments, that can exceed the power these supernatural entities hold over them.

They are the sickness of awareness, of consciousness.  They are the disease.

(btw, I’m also fucking sick of the whole ‘parents rights’ issue that the media keep bringing into the situation, any more than beating your child with a bat is a ‘parents rights’ issue, or raping your daughter is a parents rights issue, or any of the other methods of abuse we don’t allow in this country)

If my arguments against Card’s position seem less-than-rational, less-than-reasonable, its because the arguments he uses, and all those like him use, are completely irrational.  Every example is flawed and the very core idea, that marriage has always been exactly as it is now, is simply incorrect.  Oh, and the desire to overthrow any government that says otherwise is nuts.

So make no mistake, these people don’t care about rational thought.  They care about following text in a book written by men long ago (though, more recently in the case of Mormons…) attributed to a being whose existence can neither be verified nor disproven.  Further, in the case of Mormons, their views on marriage can’t be taken seriously in the first place given the incredibly strong current of misogyny present in their ‘culture’.

The very best you can hope for is to convince them that government shouldn’t be defining marriage.  But anything else and you might as well be talking to my laptop.  Both are nicely programmed.

There’s tons wrong with this article…
Commentary: Plan B risky for 17-year-old girls – CNN.com

Now keep in mind birth control pills require a doctor’s prescription, but a drug that is more powerful doesn’t?

Well, actually, the reason birth control requires a prescription is that it is something you take continually. Thats very different than a one-time event.

I question that, when we are cutting a doctor out of the decision to administer a powerful drug. Timing is essential to the drug’s effectiveness, Plan B supporters say, so getting parents and doctors involved would unnecessarily delay the teen’s ability to pop the pill the “morning after.” Does it really take that long to get a prescription?

Does it really take 72 hours to get a prescription? It can take that long just to get to talk to a doctor. And with the insanity surrounding these issues, it might take significantly longer.

Some argue that a girl can get an abortion without parental notification in some states, so why not Plan B? But just because those states got it wrong by leaving parents out of the loop doesn’t mean others should follow suit.

This might be a valid comparison IF Plan B actually induced abortion. As a rule, it simply prevents implantation.

Here’s some perspective for you: In most states, minors can’t get a tattoo, body piercings or go to a tanning salon without a parent’s permission, but we are going to leave them alone to take Plan B.

Yet we SOMEHOW allow 17 year olds to buy Tylenol. Oh, also, tattoos and piercings aren’t, y’know, medicine.

But let’s get back to the first point: We are making it available to high school girls. We’re enabling teenagers to act carelessly with an easy way out. During a recent discussion on my show, Jackie Morgan MacDougall, supervising producer of the Web site Momlogic.com, said it best. “Teenagers are known for thinking they’re untouchable and here we are saying that they can continue to do that and that there aren’t any consequences.” With Plan B, they can do it now and deal with it later.

Yes, obviously, if your daughter is a whore and gets pregnant, then thats the punishment she deserves. Thats basically the, dare I call it, subtext here. Yes, MAKE THOSE KIDS PAY!!! The best thing is that this kind of tough love doesn’t just hurt the daughter in question. It really dicks over the eventual child. NICE!

Korman didn’t stop there. He asked the FDA to consider making Plan B available to girls of any age. That’s a slippery slope and what’s worse, the ones who will fall are our daughters.

All I can say to this, and most of the article, is if your children behave in a way that you consider wrong or immoral, or whatever, exactly who’s fault is it? Is it the medical community for releasing a drug that helps girls not wreck their lives, or…
Oh, and if you honestly don’t see the difference between an abortion and preventing a pregnancy (btw, the process that Plan B induces happens naturally all the time), well, you should probably move back to 1820.

Don’t get me wrong, this kid was being an asshoe for sending around a naked picture of his 16 year old girlfriend, but having him register as a sex offender is just NOT the point of these laws and simply destroys his life. 
‘Sexting’ lands teen on sex offender list – CNN.com

“You will find me on the registered sex offender list next to people who have raped children, molested kids, things like that, because I sent child pornography,” says Alpert in disbelief, explaining, “You think child pornography, you think 6-year-old, 3-year-old little kids who can’t think for themselves, who are taken advantage of. That really wasn’t the case.”

So they’ve been trying to pass a bunch of laws that do things like make it illegal to coerce a woman into having an abortion, which is great, except that if a woman goes to a doctor and it seems like she may have been coerced into getting the abortion, he has to not act.  So, say, a woman’s boyfriend has been aggressively in favor of her getting an abortion, the doctor can’t act.  Now, I understand that there is a line between ‘in favor’ and ‘do it or else’, but this really is something between a doctor and patient (there are actually some good points to the bill, but…).  Also, they want to pass a bill that allows pharmacies to not give the morning after pill.  That, to me, sounds like coercion to get an abortion instead of preventing the pregnancy, but what know we?
But this one is the best.  “Stop being an addict before your child is born!  Or else you go to jail!”
Which, of course, doesn’t work to stop addiction, and sounds an awful lot like coercion to me, again.

Missouri Legislature: Coerced Pregnancy, Fine; Voluntary Abortion, No Way | RHRealityCheck.org

It gets better: anti-choice Senators would also like to pass SB459 and SB 529, which would criminalize a pregnant woman who goes to term with a pregnancy before she is able to overcome her drug or alcohol problem.

Well, Ms. Atkins, if you didn’t want to die in prison, perhaps you should have been a monster.
Aging Manson ‘Family’ members long for freedom – CNN.com

By her own admission, Atkins held Tate down as she pleaded for mercy, and stabbed the eight-months-pregnant woman 16 times. In a 1993 parole board hearing, Atkins said Tate “asked me to let her baby live … I told her I didn’t have any mercy on her.”