What's the word of the day? Iniquitous

How many times can you use the word "iniquitous" in a sentence? Bet you can't beat Cardinal Alfonso Lopes Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council on the Family. I don't know why this is striking me as so funny.

"We cannot impose the iniquitous on people. "On the contrary, precisely because they are iniquitous the Church makes an urgent call for freedom of conscience and the duty to oppose. A law as profoundly iniquitous as this one is not an obligation, it cannot be an obligation."

Here's ... stuff in your eye

Ann Coulter had a pie pelted at her (hopefully you all know the story, but here's her latest article on it.)

Jane Fonda got tobacco spat at her.

If you condemn one, you have to condemn the other.

If you laugh at one, you have to laugh at the other.

I laugh at both.

Of course, I think Jane Fonda handled it a little more gracefully by electing not to press charges:

"It was a minor incident at a really wonderful evening, and I think the authorities have better things to do than press charges against this man."

And that is not an endorsement of what she did during the Vietnam War. That was wrong. I completely understand why this man felt so strongly as to spit in her eye.

It's nice when someone can admit they were wrong. It doesn't take away what they did, but it's better than never changing, never realizing that you made mistakes.

Texas may ban gay foster parents

Texas could become the only state to bar gays from becoming foster parents under legislation passed Wednesday by the House.

Huh?

What's next, take away the children naturally born of lesbians? Seriously, what's the difference?

Vile I tell you, vile!

Beautiful DC day

Every time my sister comes to Seattle, she brings amazing weather with her. I was happy to return the favor today with DC's amazingly sunny day.

Picked up 4 new photos from the brother-in-sin (yay!). Had dinner with the spook on Wednesday night. Can't talk about it, it's classified ;-).

I love DC. Of course I probably won't love it so much on Monday when I start house hunting and see the prices!

The Judiciary: They brought in on themselves?

What more evidence do you need that the right has gone off the deep end?

And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence.

Um, need I remind people, it is the exact purpose of the judiciary to make decisions on what is constitutional, the interpretation of law, and that by its very makeup, that is not going to always be "popular"?

If you want popular, go see the musical Wicked. I promise you a rousing and funny song on the subject. If you want popular, elect the idiot in Oklahoma who sterilized a young girl against her wishes. You want popular? Travel back in time to when slavery or misogyny was "popular." We rely on the judiciary, and their lifetime appointments, to make decisions that are not always popular. The Dred Scott case was "popular!"

My gods and goddesses, what the hell? This is what you want out of our country? And you wonder why the left questions what is going on in this day and age? Because the right wing crackpots are ruining this GD country! (Sorry, I'm really angry over this.)

We have a Senator, one Senator John Cornyn of Texas (of course he's from Texas, and here's another link) saying that judges are bringing it on themselves?

Just like rape victims bring it on themselves. Right?

Lighter (than usual) blogging next week

I know I'm not the most prolific blogger as it is (casualty of work). But next week will be even lighter than normal. I'm on vacation, in DC. Which will likely bring on many topics, but whether I get time to blog about them will be another thing. Family shindig and all that, you know.

Sin City: Brilliant, dark, disturbing, funny

I saw Sin City yesterday. This would not normally be my cup of tea (not because of the violence but because of the whole graphic novel, film noir style). Well, I was dead wrong and I'm so glad I went to see it. Brilliant visually and the vignettes were incredibly engaging, splitting my attention between being absorbed in the individual stories and trying to figure out how they all connected.

If you don't like violence, steer far clear of this film. But having it in the style it was, rather than live action, definitely dulled the edges of the most extreme scenes.

The color of blood tells you a lot about the characters in the movie.

Regardless of the hate crime charge ...

For visciously attacking a lone man on the street, for slashing his back and face with a broken bottle. And on top of that, doing it because the victim was gay. But even without that last part, this is the sentence for viscious assault?

3 found guilty of hate crime for assaulting gay man

Samusenko faces 31 to 35 months in prison, and Kravchenko and Savchak each face nine to 15 months ...

Seattle's local alternative paper The Stranger has a great article describing the victim, Micah Painter, and his attackers. And the Evangelical influences on all four of them.

There is no “Culture of Life”

Neither the right or the left actually believes in life, as an overriding goal above all else. Both sides believe in some lives and not others.

In this post, I’m making many broad and extreme statements to illustrate my point, which is that there is no such thing as a culture of life or a love of death in the ideological spectrum of left and right. I know that these statements can be picked apart and debated, and feel free to do so. But I’m making them because I am so tired of hearing this culture of life b.s. when it is simply not true.

The right cares about some lives. They don’t care about the lives lost when they make cuts to Medicaid. They don’t care about lives lost due to exposure or illness when they reduce homeless programs. They don’t care about lives lost due to war. They see them as necessary evils, losses to be expected, broken eggs in the making of an omelet.

There may be very good reasons the right does some of things they do. I too would like to see communities rather than governments deal with their homeless problems. And I am a person who understands that lives get damaged or lost in making great changes. I’m no peacenik who thinks military action is always wrong. There are decisions that have to be made for the greatest good and some will suffer along the way. I don’t often agree that the approaches they are taking are the right ones, but I don’t slap them with a culture of death label, either.

There are good reasons the left supports the causes we do. The left understands that lives get lost in some situations. The Terri Schiavo case: It was more important to uphold the rule of law, the separation of powers, and a person’s right to choose than it was to save one life, especially a life of that quality. We on the left understand that there will be women who are irresponsible about their reproductive choices and use abortion as some form of birth control. We are willing to allow a minority of people to do that to serve the greater cause of preserving women’s rights over their (our) bodies.

Neither side is—or can be—supporting a “culture of life.” That’s too broad, and no one truly practices it. So can we please drop that stupid statement? No one is “right-to-life.” We are in favor of the rights of some lives (hopefully most) in some situations depending on what we need to do right now to get to the next stage in our development.

A Sane Governor

Illinois Pharmacies Ordered to Fill Birth Control Prescriptions Without Delays

"Gov. Rod Blagojevich approved an emergency rule Friday requiring pharmacies to fill birth control prescriptions quickly after a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill an order because of moral opposition to the drug.

The emergency rule takes effect immediately for 150 days while the administration seeks a permanent rule."

A pharmacist can make whatever decisions they like about their own life, own medical treatment, whatever. But they should not be able to interfere with the legal medical choices between a patient and a doctor.

A pharmacist's role is to dispense medication. Beyond that, they are valuable in helping a patient determine effects of multiple medications (especially if the patient has multiple doctors and one pharmacist).

But the minute we allow someone to interfere in the medical decisions between a patient and a doctor for any reason not based on facts, but on their personal beliefs, we have a huge problem.

If a pharmacist wants to open his or her own shop loudly proclaiming that they are a "christian" pharmacy and will only dispense those drugs approved by the churches, they are free to do so. But when I walk into a pharmacy—like a Walgreen's or Bartell's—I'd better not get any flak from them about their religious beliefs. Go to church and gimmee my drugs.