Fifteen American states have not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.  These states are:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida , Georgia, Illinois , Louisiana
Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina
Utah, Virginia

It is an embarrassment of total hypocrisy that a country which proclaims itself to be the world leader and a promoter of democracy is reluctant to extend equal rights to more than half of its citizenry.

That sword cuts both ways; not ensuring equal rights unabridged by one’s sex means that men are not protected from discrimination either.  There may be protections for men’s rights in most respects, but none based on their gender.

Sure, one could point to the 19th Amendment ensuring women's right to vote.  That's all it is, though -- protection of voter's rights in much the same way that African-Americans also needed their right to vote protected.  Title VII of the Civil Rights Act also ensures protection from discrimination in employment based on gender -- but it fails to protect us once we leave the workplace.  More than half our lives are spent without the guarantee of equal access to democracy in spite of our status as American citizens.

If you are a resident registered voter of one of these fifteen states, I urge you to contact your state representatives and senators to find out both the status of the ERA in your state, along with expressing your support for its ratification.  95% or more of all Americans support equal rights regardless of sex; your support far from a minority position.

In particular, I urge residents of the state of Illinois to encourage your state senators to support the ERA; HRCA01 has been passed by the State House and is in front of the State Senate at this time.  It could be voted on any time between now and May.  You know what to do – go, do it, now.  (You can identify your senator at this site: http://www.elections.state.il.us/DLS/Pages/DLSAddressCrit.asp)

Want to learn more about the origins of the ERA?  Watch Iron Jawed Angels on HBO at 9:30 ET or visit the Alice Paul Institute.

We’ve been through an awful lot to get here, yet this cannot truly be a Greater Democracy for all unless we finish this work.  Let's finish the last mile of this road together.

3:47:47 PM    comment []

What’s the chances that these two bits of news are somehow related?

First, a grand jury subpoenas information on activists protesting the Iraq War – and there’s no real background on WHO, HOW, WHY:

"In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered Drake University to turn over records about a gathering of antiwar activists.

 

In addition to the subpoena of Drake, subpoenas were served last week on four of the activists who attended a Nov. 15 forum at the school, ordering them to appear before a grand jury Tuesday, the protesters said.

 

Federal prosecutors refused to comment on the subpoenas." [Miami Herald]

This is incredibly scary sh*t.  Who convened this grand jury?  What the hell are they looking for?

Secondly, a highly placed official of the White House has previously worked to squelch anti-war protest:

"Around this time, in 1968, Dick Cheney arrived in Washington. He was a political-science graduate student who had won a congressional fellowship with Bill Steiger, a Republican from his home state of Wyoming. One of Cheney’s first assignments was to visit college campuses where antiwar protests were disrupting classes, and quietly assess the scene. Steiger was part of a group of congressmen who were considering ways to cut off federal funding to campuses where violent protests had broken out. It was an early lesson in the strategic use of government cutbacks." [The New Yorker]

What's the chances that the budget gets balanced through "the strategic use of government cutbacks"? 

And are either of these bits of news related to the Army’s investigation of protesters at another college campus?

"Conference organizers said two Army agents visited the UT Law School on Monday and knocked on various doors in pursuit of a list of participants and a video of the conference, which took place last week.

 

The agents said they were following up on reports from Army lawyers who attended the conference and said they were approached by "suspicious" Middle Eastern men, according to Aziz. “ [Salon]

Sweet Jebus, the conference was on "Islam and the Law: The Question of Sexism."; why wouldn't there be Middle Eastern people there?  What made them suspicious?  More pointedly, what the f*ck is the Army doing at a conference of this nature -- shouldn't they be conducting one of their own for their own purposes?  Why is the Army conducting this investigation instead of the FBI or CIA?  and is it possible that perfectly innocent American citizens are now under investigation simply because they were at the same conference? 

Wonder when the dark-colored sedan will pull up in front of my door for even asking these questions?

Damn.  I need to take a break from this.  No wonder so many Americans mentally check out and fail to vote or participate in politics.  Who'd want to be chronically worried about opening their mouth?

2:31:21 PM    comment []

Wow, color me surprised!

I've been granted a Perpetual Indulgence by the right holy Dr. Omed!

That's one of the nicest things any spiritual authority has ever done for me, and only for the deminimus offering of a sunset.  Not one lick of deviant behavior required.

Beg with an offering of your own; maybe you, too, can receive an indulgence (offer void where applicable, of course....).

12:46:55 PM    comment []

The CIA has been under a lot of fire -- some deserved, some entirely not.  There certainly is a need to look at the intelligence process in this country, but the really opportunity lies in assessing the means by which pure intelligence data is used, not in its gathering.

Given that there are inherent flaws in almost any system comprised of humans, we can expect to find problems within the CIA and the Administration outside it.  We can look to other intelligence as benchmarks by which we can measure the fallibility of CIA intel, in order to fix these flaws.  Which intelligence benchmarks should we use?

Which brings me to my question: what did the Mossad know about Iraq?  what did they know about 9/11? 

And is there a conflict in using the Mossad as a benchmark?

11:40:27 AM    comment []