Edward _

Thatcher to Celebrate May Day in Havana

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OK, not really, but is that any more ludicrous than this real news story? President Bush Marks Earth Day "One of the greatest responsibilities in a free society is responsible stewardship of our natural environment," Bush said at the White House ceremony. "All of you have taken that duty seriously. You have set a clear … Read more

The Cowards at Microsoft

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–Edward

via bloggy
~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE: I note this mainly because KipEsquire took me (and other blogs) to task for taking seriously what he called a "local not-quite-newspaper…"  who ran a story that was a "collection of rants by low-level, and in many instances anonymous, Microsoft employees who can neither speak for the company nor produce any memos, emails, or any other hard proof of, well, anything." Now that The New York Times has confirmed the story, are ya a little less skeptical Kip?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ken Hutcherson may very well cut an imposing figure. He was, after all, a football player with the Cowboys, the Chargers and the Seahawks. But to think this one man would walk into Microsoft’s Redmond, WA, corporate headquarters and blackmail this international behemoth into withdrawing its support for a state-wide gay civil rights bill is impressive indeed.

House Bill 1515 would protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in employment, housing, banking, insurance, and other matters by adding sexual orientation to a state law which already bars discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, marital status, and mental or physical handicap. More than a dozen states currently have similar laws on the books, but the effort to pass the legislation in Washington State has been a struggle. Some form of the legislation has been introduced in the state legislature for 29 consecutive years; for the last 10 years, [State Rep. Ed ] Murray, an influential legislator who chairs the House Transportation Committee, has sponsored the bill.

The list of high-profile companies that endorsed the bill this year reads like a who’s who of the Pacific Northwest corporate world. It includes the Boeing Company, Nike, Coors Brewing, Qwest Communications, Washington Mutual, Hewlett-Packard, Corbis, Battelle Memorial Institute, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc., and others. And as late as February 1, Microsoft, which issued a letter in support of the bill last year, appeared poised to do so again.

On that date, two gay Microsoft employees, Jean McCarthy, a business development manager, and Gregory S. McCurdy, a senior attorney, testified in the house State Government Operations and Accountability committee in favor of the bill. Asked if they were making their statements as official representatives of the company, McCurdy informed the committee that they were appearing in a personal capacity, but added that "the company has taken a position in support of the bill." He further stated that DeLee Shoemaker, an aide to former Governor Gary Locke who now handles state-level government relations for Microsoft, had issued a letter in support of the bill. "We are going to be providing copies of that letter to the committee," he said.

Enter Hutcherson, who heads a local mega-church. He met with Microsoft officials and threatened a national boycott of its products if they didn’t change their stance on the legislation. Apparently he was very convincing. At an April 4 meeting that Microsoft officials warned was supposed to be confidential (but one attendee later reported to the stranger.com) Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary, told gay staffers the corporation had caved, and because of the threat would declare itself neutral on the legislation.

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Why I Think the “Culture of Life” Is a Sham

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–Edward Forget all the usual arguments against the consistency of "Culture of Life" positions, such as, those who monomaniacally vote "pro-life" are also most likely the same people who support the death penalty and pre-emptive wars…are generally the same people who eschew efforts at universal health care and other measures aimed at actually preserving and/or … Read more

New Hope for DeLay

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Congressman Tom DeLay is to have his say before the House Ethics Committee: Retreating under pressure, Republicans on the House ethics committee said Wednesday they were ready to open an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing against Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Four of the five Republicans on the committee were ready to move ahead, said Rep. … Read more

Eating My Way to the Top

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My local news anchors mocked it mercilessly last night. The Chicago Sun-Times notes that critics are comparing it to abstract art.  And Wonkette suggests it’s just the latest clandestine effort to spread the "gay agenda." For me it’s just too plain hideous to bother trying to work out what it means.

I’m talking, of course, of the Department of Agriculture’s new "food pyramid" (there are 12 actually, but do I really have to not care 12 times? that’s too much work). Here’s what they’re offering

And apparently you’re meant to find the pyramid that’s right for you. OK, to be fair, there is a handy online "My Pyramid" selector tool. Enter your age, sex, and physical activity level and you’ll get a personalized chart (eventually…apparently that website is receiving high volumes of traffic, because it took 15 minutes for my info to show up). You won’t be able to make any better sense of it than any of the others, but it feels nice to know you’re special.

The figure walking up the side of the Pyramid (the one with no torso, taking the steps two at a time, and apparently unaffected by gravity or the slant of the incline) is there to remind you to get your exercise. (Note to Department of Agriculture: You want to motivate me? Appeal to my vanity. Replace that stick cartoon with a good-looking, shirtless 20-something with abs of steel. [just kidding honey 😉 ].)

Here’s what I’m supposed to be eating:

Dark Green Vegetables = 3 cups weekly
Orange Vegetables = 2 cups weekly
Dry Beans & Peas = 3 cups weekly
Starchy Vegetables = 6 cups weekly
Other Vegetables = 7 cups weekly

Here’s what I’ll actually be eating:

Coffee with three spoons of sugar and milk = 7-9 cups weekly
Beer, whiskey, wine = countless cups weekly
Nachos and quesadillas = countless cups weekly
Plov, Laghman, other delicious, but fattening Kyrgyz dishes = 7 cups weekly (that is, so long as my partner doesn’t see my suggestion for the pyramid climber)
Assorted junk food = 6 cups weekly

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Nuclear Hypocrisy

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Via Kos The tactics Republicans used during the Clinton years to block judicial nominees are coming back to haunt them. The Republicans used committees and a host of since-discarded rules (like one requiring both home state senators to sign off on any judicial nominees) to hold up a large slate of Clinton judicial nominees. It … Read more

Hello Gorgeous!

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Via Rightwingstuff Yes, it’s real. And the Bristol Zoo will let you adopt it too, if you like. Because, let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to wake in the morning to find this little cutie sitting on your chest… Meet Kintana’ ("star" in Malagasy): the first aye-aye [Daubentonia madagascariensis] born in the UK. Its kin … Read more

Globalism and Multiculturalism: Which Is the Cart? Which the Horse?

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—Edward

A while ago a commenter on another blog argued to me that Globalism needs to precede Multiculturalism—that it’s better to bring people of other cultures "up to" our cultural standards (i.e., buy our products and want our lifestyle) before we mix among them, open our borders to them, let them benefit fully from globalism, etc. Implicit in this opinion is the notion that people of other cultures are fine as laborers for our corporations (and totally desirable as loyal consumers of our products), but until they’re Westernized to a (conveniently undefined) degree, it’s rational to consider them undesirable next-door neighbors.

Now culture clashes will happen. In multi-culti NYC you see it in different forms everyday. Hip-hop-loving teens swearing up a storm and happy to be out of school run through the subway bumping into suited Wall Street warriors making their way home. Ultra-ambivalent hipsters wear next to nothing at the outdoor cafe on the corner of an ultra-serious Hasidim neighborhood where women and men are well-covered at all times. Sometimes these clashes lead to serious confrontations.

And often all these people were born here. They are Americans. Despite that, though, they’re culturally different enough that clashes will continue to happen. One cannot rationally/legally argue that they should be quarantined or sent somewhere else. They simply must co-exist. And they do co-exist via a combination of ignoring each other, compromise, and genuine tolerance. That tolerance comes, in part, from exposure. Very few New Yorkers haven’t experienced the embarrassment of judging another person because of the way they are dressed just to have their rash opinion proved wrong by an unexpected act of kindness or overheard anecdote.

In other words, multiculturalism works just fine where there’s simply no other choice, and in fact, when enhanced, helps build the tolerance needed to make it work. Therefore, resistance to it seems based on desire (read: laziness, xenophobia, etc.) not need. The essence of valuing multiculturalism is recognizing the worth/equality of people of other cultures. By insisting they must first become more like you, one dismisses that equality. Within the context of Globalism, however, the consequences of such dismissals leads to all kinds of seemingly rational justifications for robbing people of other cultures blind.

Let me elaborate….

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Frist Fancies Himself Faust

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I am beyond disgusted at today’s news that Senator Bill Frist is joining a chorus of right-wing extremists next Sunday to attack liberal Christians:

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush’s nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

[…]

Dr. Frist’s spokesman said the senator’s speech in the telecast would reflect his previous remarks on judicial appointments. In the past he has consistently balanced a determination "not to yield" on the president’s nominees with appeals to the Democrats for compromise. He has distanced himself from the statements of others like the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, who have attacked the courts, saying they are too liberal, "run amok" or are hostile to Christianity.

The telecast, however, will put Dr. Frist in a very different context. Asked about Dr. Frist’s participation in an event describing the filibuster "as against people of faith," his spokesman, Bob Stevenson, did not answer the question directly.

The organizers of this hate-a-thon who slanderously equate "Liberal" with "anti-Christian" are truly nauseating (and if you think I’m being harsh, you should see Joshua Marshall’s take on this):

Sick, dark and demented….I don’t know which is more amusing — the wingnut jihad against a federal judiciary that is already predominantly Republican or the fact that the intellectual and often literal descendents of the upholders of Jim Crow now seek to enlist the dark legacy of segregation as some sort of arrow in their rhetorical quiver.

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Bring Back the Abacus: Open Thread

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Constant reader smlook noted the following in another thread: [A] couple of months ago there was a thread touting how bad Bush’s SS reforms would be and many at this site used a calculator to project how awful the results would be… You will be relieved to know… maybe we can start another thread so … Read more

The End of Art History and the Last Contemporary Museum

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–Edward

Until relatively recently, there had been a dominant linear narrative in Western art. Up until its final decades, the 20th Century illustrated this as well as any previous one, with successive movements supplanting fading ones in a series of what I call "kill the father" manifestos. With the end of Modernism, however, and the shift in Western art’s central question from "What is the essence of art?" to the more deconstructably open "What is art?" any attempt at a manifesto was devoured by an increasingly sophisticated and vicious critique, often before the ink on its first-run pages was dry. This has left contemporary art historians with a migraine-inducing problem. As critic Donald Kuspit recently noted at a symposium in Mexico City:

There may be a history of modern art and a history of traditional art, but there can be no history of postmodern art, for the radically contemporary can never be delimited by any single historical reading. Even if one was a Gibbon one could not fit all the pieces of contemporary art together in a unified narrative. In postmodernity that is no longer any such thing as the judgment of history, only an incomplete record of the contemporary. If every piece of art is contemporary, no one piece can be valued more highly than any other, except from a certain psychosocial perspective. But every perspective turns out to be procrustean because it shuts out art that contradicts its premises.

Now this central concept is already old in art circles. Noted art critic Arthur Danto published a collection of now 10-year-old essays in his book "After the End of Art" declaring that "Art" ended in the 1960s, when, essentially, artists stopped believing/participating in a progressive narrative. What he seems to mean by this is that "Art" requires a dominant theory of art. Contemporary artists, each of whom must choose their own constraints and rules (in essence, write their personal manifesto) reject this notion, and so it goes in circles (because a narrative about the end of a narrative is still a narrative…but I digress).

But, Kuspit is right. It seems to have become a narrative no one can write as definitive:

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A Leaner, Meaner Military

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–Edward

No, I’m not talking about Rumsfeld’s dream. I’m talking about China’s growing reality. Via Instapundit comes this assessment on Defense Tech of China’s impressive advancements in posing a challenge to US superiority in East Asia.

An emerging consensus among long-time PLA observers, including within the US intelligence community, is that the Chinese military has successfully achieved a far-reaching qualitative advancement in its war-fighting capabilities since the beginning of this decade. The PLA is quickly becoming an increasingly credible threat against Taiwan and could even begin to pose a challenge to US military preponderance in East Asia in the next decade if the momentum is sustained.

The country’s leadership has given strong backing to the PLA’s transformation and force-regeneration efforts, which has translated into a hefty and sustained increase in military spending over the past few years. The officially published defence budget has risen on average by 15 per cent over the past five years from Â¥121 billion ($15 billion) in 2001 to Â¥220 billion last year…

The Pentagon and US intelligence community estimates that these published figures represent between one-third and one half of actual Chinese military expenditures.

What it all adds up to in the more or less near future is a Chinese military capable of taking Taiwan before the US can do anything about it, leaving us with the option of just letting it go or starting a much larger conflict with China. As The New York Times put it last week:

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We the Squeamish

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–Edward

Underlying the debate about a UN public service announcement (PSA) most U.S. networks have opted not to air (for a bevy of reasons, but the more honest ones are admitting because it’s too graphic) is an embarrassing assertion about our national character: we can’t handle the truth.

The PSA is designed to raise awareness about the dangers of landmines, and it is graphic. You can see it here.

Now, what happens in the PSA is not actually OUR truth, but it is parallel to the truth for folks living in Cambodia or Afghanistan or Angola or Bosnia. The PSA is designed to get us to empathize with the plight of people living in those countries because the US is the only NATO nation that didn’t sign the Ottawa Treaty outlawing landmines.

We had our reasons, apparently, including the "need" to keep using them in Korea and some very slick spin on why Ottawa is good for other nations, but not good enough for the US. My favorite part:

We share an important common cause with the parties to the Ottawa Convention — addressing the humanitarian crisis caused by dangerous landmines left in the ground, and helping the victims and their societies recover from conflict. We are convinced that much more could be done to protect civilians around the world not only from persistent anti-personnel mines, but also from persistent anti-vehicle mines and non-detectable mines. The United States looks forward to building on its own and others’ past contributions to mine action, and working with all nations to reach our common goal of a world where mines no longer pose a threat to civilians.

We’re just not willing to give them up.

But that’s all been debated to death. This post is about the PSA and what it says about us that we’re too squeamish to watch it. Here’s a good description:

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A Word From Our Mascot

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Yo, humans…yeah, I’m talkin’ to youse guys. Listen up!

I been hearin’ ’bout some of youse who wanna shoot up cats in Wisconsin. The, uh, whachamacallit? Oh, yeah, the "Kitty Kitty Bang Bang" proposal.

Well, me an my friends got sumpin we wanna tell ya. It ain’t gonna be all as one-sided as youse think it’s gonna be. That’s right. Youse guys shoot at us, an we’re gonna shoot back. An we’re gonna start with that low-life cat-hating loser Mike Smith:

Hunter Mark Smith welcomes wild birds on to his property, but if he sees a cat, he thinks the "invasive" animal should be considered fair game.

The 48-year-old firefighter from La Crosse has proposed that hunters in Wisconsin make free-roaming domestic cats an "unprotected species" that could be shot at will by anyone with a small-game license.

His proposal will be placed before hunters on April 11 at the Wisconsin Conservation Congress spring hearings in each of the state’s 72 counties.

"I get up in the morning and if there’s new snow, there’s cat tracks under my bird feeder … I look at them as an invasive species, plain and simple," Smith said.

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Volunteer Nation

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There was a delightful essay by Nichols Fox in the NYTimes on Saturday about how we Americans have permitted ourselves to be turned into unpaid employees of companies who charge us quite handsomely for the privilege:

It began in the 1970’s. Or at least that’s when I became conscious of it. People began cleaning up after themselves in fast-food restaurants. I had been living abroad and didn’t know about such things, but my children, faster to pick up on American cultural expectations, made sure I took back my tray and put my trash in the appropriate bin.

Cleverly, the restaurants made this choice not only easy but gratifying. Customers were given the sense of being good citizens or helping out the teenage minimum-wage workers who wiped off the tables.

I was never fooled. I knew what was going on. We were doing the restaurant’s work and if we didn’t we felt guilty. My children would shrink into their coats while people stared disapprovingly if I tried to abandon a cluttered table.

In fact, it was a manifestation of the Great Labor Transfer. Companies that had already applied every possible efficiency to their businesses were looking for other ways to cut costs and saw an entirely new pool of workers who didn’t have to be paid. Call them consumers.

Fox supports his thesis with a short history of other situations where we used to be served that we’ve willingly volunteered to do for ourselves, including

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Anatomy of a Broken Heart

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So I’m grabbing a coffee and muffin from the cafe near the gallery this morning. From the cover of the stack of New York Times on the counter stares back at me this young soldier who had her arm wounded so badly in Iraq she needed a prosthetic replacement. She looked stoic, proud, and not at all like she’d appreciate pity, but her photo broke my heart all the same. In a flash, I could see the explosion, the blood, the agony, the rush to treatment, and the way time stood still at the point the doctors told her they had to amputate. Note that I’m writing this before I read the entire article so this may not be exactly what happened. This particular soldier’s story is something I’ll read later; my inspiration for this post was her portrait.

I have a similar reaction each time I see reports of our soldiers who’ve lost a limb or their sight in combat. It’s a story I’ll see every two months or so: a news report from Walter Reed or wherever with someone learning to walk or eat with their new fake limbs. The soldiers usually put on a brave face and say their only regret is they can’t return to help their buddies, but sometimes you’ll see a kernel of certainly understandable fear or anger. It’s at that point my German-Irish temper flairs and I want the incompetent fools who couldn’t find some alternative to sending them over there dragged from their plush offices and stoned in the streets. But even this, I know, is but a misplaced response to an unbearable ache in my heart.

As coincidence would have it, while I was waiting in line at the cafe, Neil Young’s hauntingly lonely version of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" was playing over the stereo. I walked out wondering whether that was applicable here. If Young is right, what do I love about these strangers, these wounded soldiers? I only know well one soldier who was wounded in combat, my cousin, and he only needed surgery to restore his hand (he used to be quite the banjo player [no snickers please, I’m serious] so that’s a significant loss, but one he’s past now), and while I love my cousin, I’m not thinking of him when I watch these news stories. Maybe Young is wrong, maybe it’s not only love. It is something, though, because the pain is acute.

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Sure to Drive Creationists Nuts

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Going on display at the University of Wisconsin-Madison tomorrow is what’s being billed as the world’s oldest object, estimated to be, get this, 4.4 billion years old: A tiny speck of zircon crystal that is barely visible to the eye is believed to be the oldest known piece of Earth at about 4.4 billion years … Read more

Camilla and Charles Commemoration Contest

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–Edward hilzoy has led the charge in highlighting that it’s Poetry Month with great posts here, here, here, and here, but I couldn’t resist this gem in today’s New York Times: How do you solve a problem like "Camilla"? If you are Andrew Motion, Britain’s poet laureate and the man charged with producing a cheerful … Read more

Payback’s a B*tch

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Oh, there’s so much more worth starting a flame war over these days, but, when it’s this easy…why the hell not. It won’t surprise many people that I’m not the biggest baseball fan in the world, although I do still root with undying loyalty for my first team (despite not too much to cheer about … Read more

The Hatyevs and the McCoyakovs Raise Eyebrows in Beijing and DC

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By Edward

Vigils past and present are making the headlines around the world, but the most currently volatile democracy in the world is still worth watching. In fact, it may soon be very much the center of quite a bit of conflict.

Since we last left our players in the small Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan, exiled president Askar Akayev has been told not to rush home, unjailed northerner Felix Kulov has quit southerner Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s interim government (amid rumors he has his eye on the presidency); folks have begun to recognize that it was poverty, much more than any thirst for democracy (or anything our President said) that fueled the revolution; and the US has been assured by the new Kyrgyz government that we can keep our air base there. So, relatively speaking, all is well, no?

Actually, not even close. More pressing than who will succeed Akayev is the very real threat of a Kyrgyz civil war. The Agonist’s Sean-Paul Kelley offers an excellent analysis of the issues and players in his essay on Global Politician titled "Kyrgyzstan: Why Tulips Are Not Roses (Or Oranges)." As Kelley notes, the potential for war is due to a strong divide between those in the north and those in the south:

Most ethnic Kyrgyz who live in the north are drawn from a cultural milieu of clan-based nomadic horse shepherds loosely affiliated with Islam, whereas Southern Kyrgyzstan is full of Islamized Uzbeks dependent upon the rapidly deteriorating cotton monoculture of the Ferghana Valley. Here it is not uncommon to see women donning the veil, Wahhabist relief organizations and the occasional Saudi built Mosque. Indeed, the IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) derived most of its support from the Ferghana.

[…]

The problem of Kyrgyzstan cannot be reduced into prettified sound bites. It’s not enough to equate developments in Kyrgyzstan as a fight between ‘free peoples’ and ‘despots.’ It is a divided nation sandwiched between several larger, thirstier and hungrier powers, all of who are competing for its attention. While other nations in similar historical circumstances have turned such a geopolitical situation to their advantage, cohesion and shared goals were the rule internally. One resource Kyrgyzstan needs but doesn’t have is stability. It also needs time. It doesn’t have much of that either.

The thirstier and hungrier powers include, Russia, the US, Uzbekistan, and the very worrisome behemoth next door, China:

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Cue the Rhinoceroses

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Struck by the emptiness of everyday conversations and the idiocy of meaningless formalities, Theater of the Absurd playwright Eugene Ionesco made a name for himself satirizing society via its nonsense. In one of his most famous plays, Rhinoceros, he explores totalitarianism via the metaphor of a disease that turns people into huge ferocious beasts. It’s … Read more

Well, They Agree on One Thing

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By Edward

It’s a heartening photograph in these troubling times. At a table, come together Sheik Abed es- Salem Menasra, deputy mufti of Jerusalem; the Rev. Michel Sabbagh, the Latin patriarch; the Rev. Aris Shirvanian, the Armenian patriarch; Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi; and Rabbi Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi.

Or it would be heartening, if what brought them together was to offer some positive message of peace or hope. Instead, what brought them and other religious leaders together was a message of hate:

This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem.
—Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheik

They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable.
—Shlomo Amar, Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi

In case you haven’t guessed yet, they’re talking about gays. That’s right, these men of God, who can’t see past their own prejudices to come together to stop terrorism or poverty or war, can be united to speak out about a 10-day conference/festival (called WorldPride) to be held in Jerusalem that focuses on tolerance and diversity. Their comments get worse:

We can’t permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty.
—Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheik

This is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land.
—Rabbi Yehuda Levin

The leaders came together with via a concerted effort by American Evangelical pastor, Rev. Leo Giovinetti, from San Diego:

California Pastor Leo Giovinetti, representing a coalition of U.S. Christian leaders, appeared at a press briefing together with former Tourism Minister Benny Elon and other Knesset members from various political parties.

"Millions of people around the world pray for the peace of Jerusalem and are heart-broken by misguided attempts to divide, inflame and sow disunity," Pastor Giovinetti said.

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Medical Refusniks: Individual Rights or License to Discriminate?

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By Edward

Let me start with an explanation of why I stand where I do on this issue: Doctors and pharmacists in the US are given a license to practice their profession by the state. They do not have the right to practice without a state-issued license (in other words, their church cannot issue them a license). Our constitutionally mandated separation of church and state therefore extends to that license IMO. Few people would hesitate to call it wholly unacceptable discrimination if a doctor or pharmacist’s beliefs led them to refuse to treat a person because of their religion or race or gender, no matter how sincerely they felt their religion insisted that treating such people was repugnant. Some religions prohibit men from touching a woman when she’s menstruating, for example. Would anyone sane consider a licensed doctor in the US within his rights to refuse emergency treatment to a woman just because she was having her period?

And yet, there’s a growing trend among pharmacists who oppose abortion to turn away patients seeking birth control or morning-after medicine. Here’s one anecdote illustrating how insane this is getting (from yesterday’s Washington Post):

"There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she’s married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won’t even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."

That is what happened to Kathleen Pulz and her husband, who panicked when the condom they were using broke. Their fear really spiked when the Walgreens pharmacy down the street from their home in Milwaukee refused to fill an emergency prescription for the morning-after pill.

"I couldn’t believe it," said Pulz, 44, who with her husband had long ago decided they could not afford a fifth child. "How can they make that decision for us? I was outraged. At the same time, I was sad that we had to do this. But I was scared. I didn’t know what we were going to do."

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To Closet Cases Everywhere

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By Edward

Instapundit sneers that it represents "more crushing of dissent," but that’s just more of his trademark glib oversimplification. LGFers treat it as just another opportunity to mock the tolerance of those on the left and feel superior. Personally, I think it’s a heartless overreaction to a careless overreaction, and it highlights one of the more complicated issues in the struggle for gay rights. It’s a story of an objection to an outing campaign that’s had rather severe consequences for someone who was not even closeted.

GayPatriot is a blog with a writer named "GayPatriot" and co-writer named "GayPatriot West." They’re conservatives. I’ve skimmed this blog a few times, but honestly never got into it. I did appreciate that it represented the gay conservative point of view (and no, unlike other folks, I don’t consider that an oxymoron), but I like my conservative thought served well-considered and, well, GayPatriot seemed a bit rabid to me (it’s all relative, I know).

Recently though, GayPatriot overreacted to an ongoing outing campaign, and his target struck back hard. Outlet Raido Network explains:

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Gary Farber Blogathon

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Via Crooked Timber Unfogged is hosting a Gary Farber Fundraiser. Like Alamedia, I’ve also often thought I should support Amygdala (unquestionably one of the finest sites in the blogosphere, IMO…despite its author’s irrational ellipsisphobia), and well, now, there’s potential for pressies if you do. You know how, during those NPR drives, they promise you a … Read more

Tsunami Alert

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Not that there’s anything we can do about it from here, but the U.S. Geological Survey has issued a tusnami warning after an earthquake measuring 8.2 struck off Indonesia’s Sumatra Island in the Andaman Sea. The director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said scientists there feared another tsunami might hit the area. Charles McCreary … Read more

Mixing His Media

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By Edward

Instapundit points to this article about the "coming war on blogs" by James Miller, who makes a compelling case that the MSM may feel so threatened by blogs that they put their considerable political influence to work beating up on us. He outlines three ways they can do this:

  1. Campaign Finance Reform — Blog entries in support of a candidate could be considered political contributions to that candidate. The danger for most bloggers would lie not in contributing more than the legally permissible amount to a candidate, but rather in having to fill out the paperwork necessary to report their "political contributions".
         The MSM, of course, would never permit their editorials in favor of a candidate to be considered political contributions. So to use campaign finance reform against bloggers, courts would have to distinguish between bloggers and the "legitimate" media. Any definition of bloggers will be imprecise, but this won’t stop courts because most legal categories already have fuzzy boundaries. To define a blogger, courts could simply use the "I know it when I see it" approach famously employed by Justice Potter Stewart to determine whether something constituted hard-core pornography.
  2. Libel Law — The MSM used to fight aggressively against any expansion of libel law, but I predict this soon will change. The MSM can handle the burden of defending itself from libel suits much more easily than bloggers can. By increasing the scope of libel law the MSM would impose costs on all journalists which they, but not bloggers, could absorb.
  3. Copyright Law — Blogs often use information from other sources and, from what I have observed, sometimes flagrantly violate copyright laws. Imagine if Congress increased the complexity and penalties of copyright laws. Non-lawyer bloggers could never be sure what constituted legal fair use of MSM stories and information. Enhanced copyright laws could have a chilling effect on blogging.

Although I truly appreciate how bloggers on the left and right are coming together over this issue (see Von’s post here for what’s being done with an impressive degree of bipartisanship), clearly some folks just can’t let anything go by without getting a few digs in. After his well-considered analysis above, Miller jumps headfirst into the Kool-Aid:

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Shevardnadze, Kuchma, Akayev, Putin?

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By Edward

First, an update from Bishkek. A friend of my partner who lives in central Bishkek said the large store on the ground floor of her apartment building was very noisily looted last night, making it very difficult to sleep, but otherwise she’s fine. So are my partner’s parents and siblings (they’re not in the center of the town). Interestingly, among the protestors who stormed the "White House" were reportedly well-known athletes who were plied with vodka and then encouraged by the opposition leaders to beat up on the president’s police. The looters are reportedly the poorer folks from the countryside, not the residents of Bishkek, which bodes well for order once things calm down and they return to their homes. As my partner noted, without a hint of irony, "I mean, who rides a horse in the capital?"

Today, Akayev is calling the uprising an "unconstitutional coup." Well, duh!!! He does seem to be suggesting he’ll return to take power, but at the moment that seems unlikely as even Putin is saying he’s willing to work with the new leadership.

Speaking of Putin, a story in the NYTimes today suggests he has cause to be concerned about all this, personally, I mean:

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Baby Teeth and Butterflies

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By Edward So I’m on the subway yesterday, heading uptown, and there’s this advertisement for health care or something with a mother and two young girls whose front teeth were missing. They looked kind of like vampires, the smiling girls, but otherwise they were cute. OK, who am I kidding? By all standards of aesthetics … Read more

Kyrgyz Update: Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

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By Edward

UPDATE: Protestors storm presidential palace. Akayev is in hiding (OK, so he’s reportedly in Russia now). Opposition takes over TV station. Jailed opposition leader freed. It’s a full-fledged revolution.

The ray of hope in all this is that the opposition leader set free, Felix Kulov, might just be the person to unite the protesters. Kulov, who had been arrested on what his supporters called politically motivated embezellment charges after he announced his intentions to run against Akayev for the presidency, has the personal story most frustrated Kyrgyz folks can probably relate to. At the moment, though, it’s a waiting game.

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As I predicted a few days ago, the protests in Kyrgyzstan have reached the capital city, Bishkek, and President Akayev is threatening to use force:

Riot police have broken up a protest in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek, the first since anti-government demonstrations swept the country’s south. Up to 200 people gathered in Bishkek’s main square, but police broke up the rally before it could get going.

Police reportedly hit some of the crowd with sticks and arrested 10 organisers.

It is not clear how closly the event was linked to protests in the south, where the cities of Osh and Jalal-Abad are under effective opposition control.

The new Kyrgyz Interior Minister, Keneshbek Dushebayev, warned protesters in the south that the authorities could use force to restore order.

"The law gives us every right to take action, including by using physical force, special means and firearms," he was quoted as saying.

Despite the success of similar protests in Georgia and Ukraine, however, there are reasons to be worried about the current state of things in Kyrgyzstan. As I noted before, the opposition is not unified:

In most of Central Asia, however, the absence of a cohesive opposition group is encouraging regionalism and chaos, said political activist Alymkulov Berdi, who protested when his candidate was disqualified from Kyrgyzstan’s February elections.

"Today all we have are regional leaders and that is a dangerous situation because people are frustrated and furious but they don’t have one leader to guide them," Berdi said.

And the threat I didn’t want to tempt fate by naming before is now looking more real as well: this leadership vacuum has not gone unnoticed by Islamists. Back in 2000, Kyrgyzstan stood strong against an attempt to turn them into the next Taliban haven:

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“I’m Not Touching You”

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By Edward Israel just doesn’t get it. Again and again, despite constant objections from world leaders who they must by now understand are on their side, they expand their contentious settlements just when there seems to be real hope for peace with the Palestinians. And they’re at it again: On Monday, Israel publicly confirmed plans … Read more

Hubris.

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By Katherine (posted by Edward)

I’ve been struggling unsuccessfully to explain why I am so furious about and disturbed by Congress’ actions in the Schiavo case. So I decided to follow the first rule of writing: show, don’t tell.

The following excerpts are taken from last night’s House debate, as recorded in the Congressional Record.

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“Ayatollah DeLay”

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By Edward

UPDATE[2]: I’ve been convinced that Cole is calling DeLay an "Ayatollah" with the intent to be offensive in a way that violates the spirit, if not the letter, of our posting rules against such things. I remain convinced that Professor Cole’s overarching point is one folks should note (and that what DeLay is orchestrating is dangerous), however, but I do now agree he’s gone further in his rhetoric than is helpful or accurate. (Thanks to Jes for the editing.)
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Juan Cole draws an eye-opening parallel between what President Bush and Congress are trying to do in the Schiavo case and the Islamic law provision known as "hisba" or "bringing to account." This provision allows third-party persons to bring matters involving another’s private matters to the courts and legislature.

As Al-Ahram weekly notes, "Hisba signifies a case filed by an individual on behalf of society when the plaintiff feels that great harm has been done to religion." Hisba is a medieval idea that had all [but] lapsed when the fundamentalists brought it back in the 1970s and 1980s. (emphasis mine)

The political value of this provision as used by Muslim fundamentalists is it provides the sort of circus atmosphere they can manipulate to divert attention away from their own corruption. The political danger of it here in the US is that it provides a detour around the Constitution by which fundamentalists (and their lapdogs) can enact laws based on their religious beliefs:

But the most frightening thing about the entire affair is that public figures like congressmen inserted themselves into the case in order to uphold religious strictures. The lawyer arguing against the husband let the cat out of the bag, as reported by the NYT: ‘ The lawyer, David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo’s religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water. "We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul," Mr. Gibbs said. ‘

In other words, the United States Congress acted in part on behalf of the Roman Catholic church. Both of these public bodies interfered in the private affairs of the Schiavos….

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Democracy Hiccing Up* in Kyrgyzstan

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By Edward

Well the color has yet to be decided for definite, but the revolution in the former Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan is in full swing:

Thousands of protesters, some armed with clubs and Molotov cocktails, seized control of key government buildings and the airport in Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest city Monday, prompting security officers and local officials to flee and loosening the government’s grip over a swath of this former Soviet republic.

The opposition also took control of government buildings in four other cities and towns across Kyrgyzstan’s impoverished south, Interior Ministry spokesman Nurdin Jangarayev said. Protesters burned and stomped on portraits of President Askar Akayev and seized protective shields from police. Others were seen running through the streets carrying bottles of flammable liquid.

Driving even the more moderate among the protesters (who are now burning down government buildings and taking over entire towns) are fears that Akayev, who currently has a significant majority in the newly elected (although highly controversially so) parliament, will use this advantage to change Kyrgyz law to allow him to run for another term this fall, or at the very least orchestrate the elections so that a member of his family gets the presidency.

The protests have not yet reached the capital (where my partner’s family lives), but it’s growing daily and unless Akayev’s offer to meet the protesters’ request for a probe into allegations of widespread vote-rigging  quells them, or Akayev strikes out against the protesters, that seems only a matter of time (both, reaching Bishkek and Akayev striking out). The opposition leaders are not leaving Akayev much wiggle room either, calling for his resignation, and some are being right down confrontational:

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