June 29, 2015

Supreme Court Allows Texas Abortion Clinics to Remain Open (Stay)

Source: New York Times

Supreme Court Allows Texas Abortion Clinics to Remain Open

By ADAM LIPTAK
JUNE 29, 2015
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday allowed nine Texas abortion clinics to remain open while the justices consider whether to hear an appeal from a decision effectively ordering them to close.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. voting to deny the stay.

The case concerns two parts of a state law that imposes strict requirements on abortion providers. One requires all abortion clinics in the state to meet the standards for “ambulatory surgical centers,” including regulations concerning buildings, equipment and staffing. The other requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

Other parts of the law took effect in 2013, causing about half of the state’s 41 abortion clinics to close. If the contested provisions take effect, abortion rights advocates said, the number of clinics will again be halved.

“This would amount to a more than 75 percent reduction in Texas abortion facilities in just a two-year period, creating a severe shortage of safe and legal abortion services in a state that is home to more than five million reproductive–age women,” lawyers for abortion providers told the justices in an emergency application for a stay.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/us/supreme-court-allows-texas-abortion-clinics-to-remain-open.html

June 29, 2015

'TOM THE DANCING BUG' TOON: The True History of the Confederate Flag

http://boingboing.net/2015/06/29/tom-the-dancing-bug-the-true.html

June 29, 2015

TOM TOMORROW: Jeb!

DAILY KOS LINK: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/29/1396437/-Cartoon-JEB

June 29, 2015

MICHAEL MOORE: "Are You Ready For Week Two?"

From Facebook:

http://www.michaelmoore.com

It was one of those weeks, this past week. A week in which we witnessed profound history being made. A week when a large chunk was taken out of the wall of hate that criss-crosses this country, a nation founded on genocide and built on the backs of slaves. A people who pride themselves on being ignorant, and thus are easily manipulated with fear by those in power. We know the routine, we've tallied up the score.

But now... There is massive change in the air. While angry white men stew and wonder what happened to their roost, the young, the women, the working poor, the people of color have forged an intense political bond. Having raised their voices higher, having suddenly been filled more with a sense of hope than one of despair, this alliance is now poised to catapult further. Even in a month of unspeakable tragedy in the birthplace of the Civil War, the race war that one young man who was inspired by the politics of hate had hoped to ignite saw his sick dream backfire into a (nonviolent) war against racists. Blacks and whites have held hands in Charleston. Wal-mart and NASCAR have eliminated the Confederate flag. Two republicans on the Supreme Court have voted to support the vision of the black man who lives in a white house down the street. That wall of hate, devoid of any healthy foundation, has begun to crumble. It's a new America that is fighting its way out of the cocoon.

On Thursday the Census Bureau announced that, for the first time ever, there are more millennials than baby boomers in the Untied States -- and, for the first time, there are now more children under 5 who are of color than those who are white. The paradigm has shifted; all we had to do was stay active, stay engaged, refrain from hate and then watch the decrepit right-wing ideology wither and fall off its mysoginist, homophobic, white-privileged vine. It is a New America, but it is not a free America - yet.

Free of corporate control, free of Citizens United, free of income inequality, free of an ongoing environmental catastrophe, free of Jeb Bush, free of profit-making health insurance companies, free of a privatized prison system, free of a failed war on drugs, free of the scourge of capitalism.

No, we're not free yet. But it's the closest we've ever been. I'm ready for Week Two. How 'bout you? What else can we make happen before America's 239th birthday this coming Saturday?

http://t.co/JE3NUNamGx

June 28, 2015

This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind (Interesting Chart)

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-pace-of-social-change/

This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind
By Alex Tribou and Keith Collins
Updated: June 26, 2015

Eleven years after Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex couples to marry, the Supreme Court has now extended that right nationwide. The decision came after a wave of gay marriage legalization: 28 states from 2013 to 2015, with 36 overall prior to the Court's ruling. Such widespread acceptance in a short amount of time isn't a phenomenon unique to gay marriage. Social change in the U.S. appears to follow a pattern: A few pioneer states get out front before the others, and then a key event—often a court decision or a grassroots campaign reaching maturity—triggers a rush of state activity that ultimately leads to a change in federal law.

We looked at six big issues—interracial marriage, prohibition, women’s suffrage, abortion, same-sex marriage, and recreational marijuana — to show how this has happened in the past, and may again in the very near future.



MUCH MORE AT LINK

June 27, 2015

Activist Pulls Down Confederate Flag in Front of South Carolina Statehouse

Source: The Guardian

Activist pulls down Confederate flag in front of South Carolina statehouse

Police arrest unidentified woman after she climbed up the 30ft steel flagpole and removed the flag before returning to the ground

Alan Yuhas in New York
@alanyuhas
Saturday 27 June 2015 08.17 EDT Last modified on Saturday 27 June 2015 09.55 EDT

An activist in South Carolina climbed a flagpole in Columbia early on Saturday morning and removed the Confederate flag flying in front of the capitol building. The woman’s action came a day after President Barack Obama gave the eulogy for a black pastor who was murdered by an apparent white supremacist along with eight other people in a Charleston church last week.

A woman identified by a protest organizer as Bree Newsome, a 30-year-old youth organizer from Charlotte, North Carolina, climbed the flagpole before 6am and took down the controversial emblem of the antebellum, slaveholding south, with the assistance of another activist. Newsome was halfway up the 30ft pole when police demanded that she climb back down, but she continued upward and removed the flag.

Activist Mervyn Marcano told the Guardian that when Newsome returned to the ground she and James Ian Dyson were arrested by capitol police and taken to a detention center.

Police did not immediately respond to inquires about whether Newsome and Dyson had been charged, but CNN reported that the pair faced charges of defacing a monument.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/27/woman-removes-confederate-flag-south-carolina-statehouse

June 27, 2015

Andy Borowitz:"..An Excellent Week."

"Any week when we trade the Confederate Flag for health care and marriage equality is an excellent Week."

Posted to Facebook.

June 23, 2015

WikiLeaks: NSA Spied on Last Three French Presidents

Source: Business Insider / Associated Press

WikiLeaks: The NSA spied on the last three French presidents

AMANDA MACIAS AND REUTERS JUN. 23, 2015, 5:01 PM 31

The United States National Security Agency spied on French presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, WikiLeaks said in a news release published on Tuesday, citing top secret intelligence reports and technical documents.

The revelations were first reported in French daily Les Echos and news website Mediapart, which said the NSA spied on the presidents during a period of at least 2006 until May 2012, the month when Hollande took over from Sarkozy.

(Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Mark John)

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-the-nsa-spied-on-the-last-three-french-presidents-2015-6

June 19, 2015

Sources: Roof told police he almost didn't shoot church-goers 'because everyone was so nice to him'

@NBCNews http://t.co/XsDdvoIvn2/s/eQtI

June 19, 2015

Rude Pundit: 'The Confederate flag, in all its forms, represents a defeated nation of racist'

'traitors. Sorry, Assholes.'

He posted that on his Facebook page in response to this National Review Piece:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420003/blood-stained-banner-charleston-ian-tuttle