These are the most recents posts. To start at the beginning, click here.
Babies as Tissue Donors
Britain’s highest appeal court ruled that Raj and Shahana Hashmi could use in vitro fertilization to create a baby whose tissue matched their six-year-old son, Zain. Zain suffers from a rare blood disease and needs a close genetic match as a donor.
Contraceptive Battles
Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich (D) issued an emergency rule requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions for contraceptives without delay. Meanwhile, four other states have laws allowing pharmacists to decide whether to dispense the medicines that a doctor has prescribed for a woman.
Same-Sex Unions
Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell (R) signed civil unions for same-sex couples into law. New England Republicans have traditionally been liberal. There was a time when the Republicans represented urban New England and the Democrats represented the rural South. With this new law in Connecticut, I’m looking forward to Tom DeLay railing against activist legislators who take the law into their own hands.
Gay Foster Parents in Texas
The Texas House passed an amendment barring gays from being foster parents. Representative Robert Talton (R), defending his support fo the bill, said that children shouldn’t be allowed to choose to be gay until they’re 18. If the bill were signed into law, it would make Texas the only state to bar gays from being foster parents.
Gay Rights
The Washington State Senate voted down a bill to protect gays from discrimination by one vote, thanks to two Democrats, Tim Sheldon and Jim Hargrove. The Washington House had passed the bill in February. Hargrove said that he couldn’t vote for the bill because he thinks homosexuality is wrong. What he didn’t add is that he thinks it’s right to use the law to enforce one’s own religious beliefs.
Energy Bill
Is there an energy crisis? Nothing that cutting an $8 billion check to Big Oil can’t solve. The House approved an $8 billion dollar tax break for the energy industry. Not renewable energy, either. Oh, and ANWR gets drilled.
House Ethics Rules
Shamed by having changed the ethics rules to protect House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), House Republicans changed them back.
Christians Arrested in Saudi Arabia
Our ally arrested 40 Pakistani Christians for worshiping privately. Generally, the government doesn’t go after non-Muslims who worship secretly, but there’s no law or constitution guaranteeing non-Muslims the right to do so.
April
John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence
This is the Iran-Contra figure who, as ambassador to Honduras, didn’t notice the death squads. With a track record like that, Bush is putting him in charge of national intelligence?
Terry Schiavo and the Republicans
Now that the Republicans have yanked the Schiavo case out of state jurisdiction and into the federal courts, can we finally do away with the quaint notion that they favor states’ rights? They favor states rights when the federal government is more liberal than the states, and they favor federal control when the federal government is more conservative than the states.
Mercury Pollution
The Environmental “Protection” Agency released a report estimating the health benefits of mercury regulation as 100 times smaller than benefits estimated in the report that the agency had funded itself. This selective appreciation for facts and willful ignorance of alternative views is endemic in the Bush administration.
Libya Got Nuke Technology from Pakistan
Bush, trying to reinforce its depiction of North Korea as a member of the axis of evil. told allies that North Korea has supplied nuclear technology to Libya. The administration knew then what we know now—that North Korea's technology had gone to Pakistan, which in turn supplied it to Libya. Lying is endemic in the Bush administration.
German Held Indefinitely on Nonexistent Evidence
A US military tribunal ruled that German Murat Kurnaz was an enemy noncombatant linked to Al Qaeda and had him held indefinitely. The evidence against him was secret, but prosecutors said it was there, trust us. Now the so-called evidence has been released, and it shows that US and German intelligence had concluded that Kurnaz had no connection to Al Qaeda after all. It’s that lying thing again.
UN Sex Scandal in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Here’s a case of a bunch of men stationed far from home who’d have benefited from a legal and regulated sex trade, and a bunch of young women who’d have benefited from the sex trade being legal and regulated.
Israel Continues Pullout
Israel is being grudging enough about turning cities over the the Palestinian Authority that they can maintain their image of strength, among both Palestinians and Israelis. But the progress is impressive enough to raise cautious hopes. Too bad Arafat couldn’t have lived to see this progress.
Congress Questions Baseball Players
If Congress is questioning baseball players about steroid use, it can only mean that all the weapons-grade plutonium in the former Soviet Union’s arsenal has been secured. Our representatives wouldn’t spend their time and our money on baseball steroids if there were a real threat to our national security undealt with, would they?
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