The irony of President Bush’s "National Character Counts Week" has not gone unnoticed amidst the flurry of scandal in our nation’s capitol... But another – and more substantive – scandal is that the GAO (Government Accountability Office) found that that the federal health agency under the President’s authority is knowingly trying to skirt the law and is putting the health of American citizens at risk.
The non-partisan GAO found that the Department of Health and Human Services is failing to enforce the law requiring that organizations receiving federal grants to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases to provide medically accurate information about the effectiveness of condoms. Somehow HHS doesn’t think that organizations receiving our tax dollars to provide abstinence-only-until-marriage programs need to provide this medically-accurate information.The GAO disagrees.
A study from Oxford researchers was released this week that once again concluded that there is no data to support the claim from radical anti-choice activists that abortion (induced or spontaneous) causes breast cancer.This research only further bolsters the arguments from the American Cancer Institute (a federally-funded branch of NIH), the Mayo Clinic, a US Congressional report and others that say there is conclusive evidence that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer.But for some reason, the far-right Canadian website, LifeSite, was quick to write that this new research is flawed, and to reaffirm their claim that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer.What on earth is going on here?How can they keep making these claims?Some people are inclined to think that it’s just because they’re so ideologically constrained that they can’t see the science sitting right in front of them.But if you read their article, you get an even more comical picture: they have absolutely no ability to logically evaluate the science, and (why is this typical of the far-right?) they will continue on message regardless of the research and regardless of how ridiculous they look.
Supporters of anti-choice legislation have sunk to new lows this week. The anti-choice campaign in South Dakota used to rely on distorting the facts, but now they are getting desperate and resorting to bald-faced lies.
We're excited to report that Rewire has been cross-posting featured content from our editorial staff on two other prominent blogs: Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com) and Political Cortex (www.politicalcortex.com). We took a couple days to alert our readers because we wanted to see how things would work out... They've worked out great!
We have created "diaries" at both sites that feature content from our site and that make that content available to the hundreds of thousands of readers going to those two sites each day. This effort is part of our Campaign 2006 project: on this site, we're bringing political news related to reproductive health advocates, and on those sites, we're bringing relevant reproductive health news to political buffs. This way, we're reaching far more readers than we would on our site alone with important news about how reproductive health & rights stand to be influenced this election season.
While debating changes to the laws overseeing bankruptcy filings in March 2005, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) offered an amendment that would have made it illegal for violent protesters, whether at abortion clinics or any other lawful business or service, from using bankruptcy law to avoid court-ordered financial consequences of their actions. The Senate defeated the amendment by a vote of 53 to 46, allowing anti-abortion protesters to file for bankruptcy instead of paying fines incurred from performing or threatening violent actions against reproductive health clinics, clinic workers, or patients. Opponents argued that it was unnecessary and organizations would not use the system to get out of their obligations.
But low and behold, the "organizations" using this kind of loophole are Roman Catholic Dioceses - filing for bankruptcy to avoid their obligations to individuals who were sexually abused by priests.
Just my opinion, but I'd rather have a conversation about what our society is really willing to do to support women and their children, rather than whether you have to get raped to deserve a safe abortion.
Remember that post about David Kuo's new book Tempting Faith? People have been wondering out loud after its release this week if the Religious Right would freak out and live up to the titles given them by some in the Bush Administration ("whackos," "nuts," etc.) Well, whether they've read the book or not, check this out...
Referring to Mark Dybul, the Bush Administration's appointee to direct the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council (FRC) had this to say:
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the United States population reached 300 million this morning. (Check their population clock to see the current projection for this very minute; stay on the page for a bit and you can watch the numbers continue to increase.) You've probably been hearing about how this relates to immigration, the environment and the economy - but how does this affect reproductive health?
Product (RED), an initiative conceived by Bono to get international brands to market and support the Global Fund for AIDS, TB, & Malaria, officially hit American shores Friday.I have a feeling that many readers are wondering what on earth it is and that most readers cock their heads when they hear “Bono” and “Global Fund” in the same sentence (albeit for dramatically different reasons, depending on what you think of Bono).Regardless, you won’t be wondering for much longer.But the question I have to ask is, “Why didn’t you know in the first place?”
1976 was the “Year of the Evangelical,” with the election of President Jimmy Carter and the emergence of this “new” (at least to the American public) Christian movement onto the political scene.1980 heralded the year of the New Right, which essentially gutted Jimmy Carter of his presidency, elected Ronald Reagan, and solidified the entrance of conservative evangelicals into American public life.(There are some liberal and moderate evangelicals by the way, Carter being only one of them.)They played a big part in the new Congress of 1994, and they have risen to a place of power, perhaps hubris, that led them to claim that they essentially single-handedly re-elected George W. Bush to the presidency in 2004.The past 25 years have in many ways belonged to that group, but there are signs of a change coming – 2006 could very well be remembered as the year that group lost its dominance in American politics.
Moderate Democrats are rising to the top in Congressional races across the nation over their radically conservative peers.As if that alone weren’t a sign of this change, a book that is hitting the shelves today could very well help to seal the coffin for the Religious Right.David Kuo, the former “#2” staffer in the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, has published Tempting Faith, a scathing indictment of the religious compromise and political manipulations that have characterized this movement and, according to him, the Bush White House.
