Dooce tells Republicans to live up to those compassionate principles:
Because Leta was diagnosed with plagiocephaly when she was two months old, she cannot qualify for private insurance until she is thirteen years old. So the only insurance we can get her is high-risk insurance that costs us upwards of $300 a month. Just for her alone. And even then that insurance won’t cover anything until she has reached a $3000 deductible. I am fortunate enough to have grown up in a white, middle class family who could afford to send me to college, as did my husband, and we have enough work experience to run a business that makes it so that we can afford this insurance for our daughter. We don’t have to make the choice between buying food or insuring our daughter. We are really fucking lucky.
The US government conducted a huge raid for illegal immigrants in Postville, Iowa. They haven’t explained why some are being deported and others are being jailed. Wives of the arrested men have been fitted with leg monitoring bracelets and basically been told “You can’t work, you can’t leave and can’t stay.” The local Roman Catholic church is now caring for the women. A priest responds to the situation:
He said he understands that the people arrested were illegal, but he said they were also desperate.
“This was their last option. They would not have chosen this as their first option. They wanted to feed their families. Scripture tells us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, give shelter to the shelterless. If you and your family were starving, what would you do?” [via holographicme]
When their high school refused to let them organize, the Okeechobee, FL Gay-Straight Alliance asked the ACLU for help. They’ve won the case. Notably, the decision requires the school board to “take into account the well-being of its non-heterosexual students.”
Sara Robinson writes about John McCain’s betrayal of the troops and how he’s paving the way for an army no one wants to see at Campaign for America’s Future.
Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men.
Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.
Archeopteris:
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I wish I’d said that
In science, as in politics or love, one can have all the good arguments and still be in the wrong. When it comes down to it, what matters is not whose story is more logical or beautiful, but which leads to the greatest effect. — Lee Smolin
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