idontdanceiboogie

You would think an article on female voters would be an appropriate place not to infantilize women. Clearly, you'd be wrong:

Terry Tang/AP Here's a great idea : It's pink. It's fuzzy. It's a knitted cervix. A group of enthusiastic knitters who want to send a message about better access to birth control: "Hands off my uterus: Here - have a knitted one of your own." Arizona lawmakers received the unusual gifts at a crucial time -- lawmakers will vote on whether employers can choose not to cover their workers' birth control due to their religious or moral objections.

What does it say about the current state of woman's reproductive healthcare when Doonesbury isn't so much satire as it is a factual depiction?

From one of the alleged main objectives for the war in Afghanistan to a cumbersome pet rock weighing down our country's mighty rucksack: The Bush Administration "Three years ago, women were viciously oppressed and forbidden to work outside the home, and even denied what little medical treatment was available. Today, women are going to school, and their rights are protected in Afghanistan's constitution." President Bush's remarks in a press conference with President Karzai of Afghanistan The Rose Garden, Washington, D.C. June 15, 2004 "Under the Taliban, women were oppressed, their potential was ignored. Under President Karzai's leadership, that has changed dramatically. A number of innovative programs designed in collaboration with the Afghan government are increasing the role of women in the private sector." President Bush's remarks in a press conference with President Karzai of Afghanistan The Rose Garden, Washington, D.C. June 15, 2004 "I...

The Iranian justice system version: The punishment for being an accessory to murder: 10 years in prison. The punishment for adultery: Death by stoning...or maybe hanging.

The ultra-Orthodox version: JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up pledges to curb Jewish zealotry in Israel on Sunday after an 8-year-old girl complained of being menaced by ultra-Orthodox men who deemed her dress immodest. ... The statement appeared to have been prompted by an expose on Israel's top-rated weekend news about intra-Jewish friction in Beit Shemesh, a town of about 87,000 people near Jerusalem. Naama Margolese, 8, told Channel Two television she was terrified of walking to her moderate Orthodox school because of passersby who want her "to dress like a Haredi" - the Hebrew term for the ascetic, black-coated Jews who are in "awe" of God. "I'm afraid I might get hurt or something," the girl said. Margolese's mother Hadassa, an American immigrant who wore a headscarf and skirt in deference to religious Jewish tradition, said the sidewalk abuse could include spitting, curses like "whores" and ...

How incompetent are our politicians, you ask? Well, they managed to award a medal to an unregistered Pakistani ISI agent operating illegally in our country: The night should have been a coup for Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai . Once a poor villager from halfway around the world, Fai had become the go-to man in Washington, D.C., for his cause, Kashmir, the Himalayan region long caught in a tug of war between Pakistan and India. ... The FBI was monitoring almost every move Fai made, every email he sent, every call he received. Investigators believed Fai's main donors were not well-meaning idealists but members of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, the most powerful of Pakistan's spy agencies. Within weeks, the Justice Department would send Fai a letter of warning. Within months, he would be pulled over by New York police with $35,000 in cash in his car. And by the next year, Fai would be arrested, the unlikely central character in a scheme by a foreign government to pa...

When God tells people to warn airport workers that there's a bomb aboard an airplane , they are promptly taken to a mental health facility for evaluation. On the other hand, when God tells people to run for president , those people are considered legitimate contenders for the job. Why is that?

Did you know that if you are a Christian you are exempt from the taxes, penalties and regulations imposed by the recently enacted health insurance law ? All you have to do is to affirm a statement of Christian beliefs and pledge to follow a code that includes no tobacco or illegal drugs, no sex outside of marriage, and no abuse of alcohol or legal medications and pay a monthly fee to join a religious health care sharing ministry plan, a plan that specifically does not guarantee the payment of your medical bills in any fashion and holds members solely responsible for payment of said bills. And the reason for this exemption? According to the spokeswoman for the Senate committee responsible for writing much of the legislation, lawmakers granted the exemption out of respect for religious freedom . So, to recap, if you're a religious person the government trusts and respects you enough not to oversee or regulate your health insurance decisions, no matter how misguided they might be or...

Soon Arizona lawmakers will force every last person in the state to become an INS enforcement official, including the people who are in the country illegally.

Cut Family Planning by $317 and WIC (a program which provides nutritional support for women and children) by $747 million. And just so that foreigners don't feel left out, cut Global Health and Child Survival by $783 million. Phew, good thing there's no connection between having unprotected intercourse and pregnancy, between pregnancy and having children, and between children and having to, you know, feed them. Or how about cut Public Housing Capital by $1,072 million and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program - Contingency Fund by $390, Community Health Centers by $1,000 million, the CDC's Immunization and respiratory Diseases by $156 million, Public Health Preparedness and Response by $269, and flu funding by $288. Because when you spend all your money on rent and can't afford to pay the heat bill or pay for a flu shot or an inhaler and you become sick, you don't need no stinkin' Community Health Center to catch the illness early on and treat it. Best ...