what's most disturbing about Lindsey Graham's dismal defense of his inclinations to censorship is the lack of even the slightest attempt to underpin his position with any kind of principle.

It would, indeed, be a hopeless task to make any attempt to get at the number of persons who occasionally or otherwise pick up cigar-ends with the view of selling them again. For this purpose almost all who ransack the streets of London for a living may be computed as belonging to the class; and to these should be added the children of the thousands of destitute Irish who have inundated the metropolis within the last few years, and who are to be found huddled together in all the low neighbourhoods in every suburb of the City. What quantity is collected, or the amount of money obtained for the ends, there are no means of ascertaining.

I've said it before - the worst thing that could happen to the safety of the American worker is Rand Paul, and others who share his vision of deregulation.

COH, please

Indiana Republicans are about to force through one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the country; the law would make all abortions illegal after 20 weeks.

When state Rep. Gail Riecken (D) introduced an amendment that would create exceptions for victims of rape or incest, the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Eric Turner (R), took the podium and said Riecken was trying to create a "giant loophole" — because women "could simply say they've been raped."

In many ways, the hearing led by Senate Democrats on Tuesday was the dramatic antithesis of one House Republicans held earlier this month on homegrown Islamic radicalism.

Youtube is one of those websites that has never really appealed to me, for the same reason I never found America's Funniest Home Videos to be entertaining.

As their Saturday shift came to a close on March 25th, 1911, 500 young New York City immigrant women, many of them teenagers or in their early twenties, worked feverishly, many of them probably looking forward to getting out of work in twenty minutes or so.

"The FBI has told agents they can question terrorism suspects for a longer amount of time before reading them their Miranda rights. The move follows criticism from Republican lawmakers about the Justice Department's handling of recent national security cases."

John Hawkins over at Townhall has a fairly popular article up right now entitled "7 Questions for Liberals About Obama's Libyan War."  The article is nothing terribly special but it is getting a lot of link-love in the conservative blogosphere right now and thus its arguments merit response.  While Hawkins raises seven distinct points, the article basically boils down to a rehash of many of the Left's criticisms of George W. Bush's adventures in Iraq and asks why these criticisms don't apply to Obama's intervention in Libya.

Others can and will respond to the fallacy of this argument better than this author ever could and thus this article will waste no time detailing the difference between a no-fly zone and an actual war nor will it discuss the difference between unilateral action and a UN backed multi-national operation.  These facts and distinctions, while important, are not really of any concern to those on the right who simply wish to scream "hypocrisy" now that President Obama has undertaken the first true foreign action that can be called his own.  

No, for people like Hawkins, it is best to address their points head on.  Hawkins asks, "Where are the massive protests" and he deserves an answer.

Another report from police chiefs denigrating the ACCESS programs' inevitable results of destroying all the trust which they have spent years building with the immigrant community & driving that population underground into a world of fourth-class citizenship!

Kansas State Rep. Virgil Peck (R) suggested Monday that the best way to deal with the illegal immigration problem may be the same way the state might deal with the problem of "feral hogs" -- by shooting them from a helicopter.

Since 2001, Americans have been living with a nightmare Arab, a Muslim monster threatening us to the core, chilling our souls with the cry, "God is great!" Yet after two months of world-historic protest and rebellion in streets and squares across the Arab world, we are finall …

Why, all of a sudden, do you have politicians like Rep.

The complaint -- which was also posted earlier by Greg Sargent -- alleges that several violations of the law occurred on the call: That Walker attempted to coordinate third-party campaign spending, when he told "Koch" that there would need to be messaging in support of Republican …

Maryland will be able to begin debate as soon as Tuesday on the status of same sex marriage. It promises to be a long and heated discussion.

I've always avoided the subject of the Westboro Baptist Church, for a few reasons. For one, I didn't want to write something in anger, which has proven difficult to manage at times.

What is evident is that the police had a deliberate and blatant disregard for citizens civil rights, their conduct toward protesters and detainees was brutally violent and merciless.

Justice Alito offered the single dissenting opinion in the SCOTUS Westboro Baptist Church Decision.  Here are a couple of things he said…

Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.

In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like petitioner.

I agree whole heartedly with the spirit of Justice Alito’s opinion… which is not usually the case for me with his opinions.  However, even though I agree with the spirit of his opinion, I must also say I agree with the ruling of the court, which is contrary to his opinion.  This case is a microcosm of a great dilemma we face in America.

When the House voted to defund Planned Parenthood and cut all funding to clinics that provide women's health services, the stirring speeches of two women, Rep. Gwen Moore and Rep. Jackie Speier, went viral. This afternoon, it was the Senate's turn.

Yesterday, the Ohio Senate passed by a single vote a radical bill that would strip most of the state's public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights. [...]

Rarely has a day gone by in the past few years where I haven't been told by someone that the Constitution of the United States of America is absolute, or that true freedom is defined in some fashion as the government not regulating our lives or our choices in any way, shape, or  …

State officials are investigating whether religious agencies that receive public funds to license foster care parents are breaking anti-discrimination laws if they turn away openly gay parents.

Last week, legislators in Tennessee introduced a radical bill that would make "material support" for Islamic law punishable by 15 years in prison. The proposal marks a dramatic new step in the conservative campaign against Muslim-Americans.

Fabulous photos from yesterday's massive protest, march, and rally in Madison, Wisconsin.

SORRY, COMMENTS CLOSED. We are running ragged here with all the activities and news. It's been an amazing, frenetic, awesome week. Please use whatever links you want for seeding and writing articles, commenting elsewhere, and sending emails. Help us spread the word.

SORRY, COMMENTS CLOSED. This is posted for information sharing. Please take any info you want to seed, write an article about, comment on elsewhere, and email. Spread the word. We're off to the massive rally here in Madison, WI today, with events starting at noon.

A billboard in New York City that showed a picture of a black girl with the message, "The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb," has been taken down.

here's Boehner's absurd criticism of Obama: "A spokesman for Boehner's office criticized the administration change of position.

In March, the House of Representatives will begin hearings on preventing domestic terrorist attacks. Rep.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has determined that a federal law that barred gay marriages was unconstitutional and told government lawyers to stop defending it in court, the U.S.

There can be no clearer sign that the GOP/TP wish to kill poor people to save a buck than SB1519 in Arizona.

Radio Report and News Article: Obama Declares Defense of Marriage Act Unconstitutional - NPR All Things Considered:

The billionaire brothers whose political action committee gave Gov.

At Live Action we have investigated Planned Parenthood's failure to  report child sexual abuse to law enforcement and have caught them on camera failing to properly report over 14 times (see Mona Lisa and Traffick project).

There was widespread support among scores of human rights groups and many others for recent efforts to have Switzerland open a preliminary investigation for torture against former President George W. Bush during his planned (and now canceled) visit to Geneva.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is examining whether "gay-only" guesthouses breach new laws designed to prevent people being treated unfairly in the provision of goods or services.

Workers are under siege all over the world. But they are taking a stand in Egypt and right here in Madison, Wisconsin--Ground Zero for the American labor movement.

Anti-choice lawmakers' attacks today are just plain irresponsible. Cutting funding for Planned Parenthood and other health centers would leave at least five million women and men without access to basic health care. Where will these people go for critical services?

It's comforting to know that at least some Republicans are standing up to the newly-established orthodoxy, as Daniels here shows by calling for a "truce" in the culture wars so that government can deal with the financial crises we are all facing....

We found that Millennial women desire independence and self-direction above all else, and that they seek a variety of perspectives to help them make personal and professional decisions. They are concerned about the current economy, but they are not paralyzed by it.

As the world watched the live images being broadcast out of Egypt yesterday, most of us felt a sense of accomplishment, not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of a genuine grassroots revolution that uprooted tyranny and knocked it onto its backside.

After getting a daylong earful of hateful speech against gays and lesbians during a hearing on the bill, one Maryland lawmaker—Democratic Sen.

...if Republican elected officials* in Iowa get their way:

Postulate: Over time, democracy always degenerates into authoritarianism.

Apparently, Tony Leys of the Des Moines Register has finally discovered this incredible documentary by Luis Argueta of the ICE raids at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa & the impact which it had on that midwestern town & the families involved.

"This divisive legislation is appalling and shameful," said Jennifer Allen, executive director of Border Action Network's in a press release.

A genius piece of journalism on "the other Arizona" explores the state that time forgot, the liberal intelligentsia oft overlooked by the MSM: it starts with a story of how a (most likely Muslim) African scout led the first (Spanish) settlers to the gates of the Salt River & ends …

In the week of President Obama's State of the Union Address, the WMC looks at his record on a series of essential issues. Overall grade? Pass, but with ample room for improvement.

The judge, Patricia Cosgrove, says that prosecutors refused to consider the lesser, misdemeanor charges & forced her to rule on the felonies:

I hope you weren't thinking that the people in the government who were putting you in harm's way were actually going to make sure that you received the treatment you deserved for your services.... If you were, perhaps you should look at Joe Rogan's youtube page!

The Center for American Progress' latest study outlines the local measures, the legal battles, & the costs of the growing backlash against Hispanic immigrants, one "driven by fear, economic uncertainty, and cultural differences" in certain small towns of New Jersey, Nebraska, Pen …

A rundown on the follow-ups to the Mississippi move this week....

Although more women are joining the military than ever before and some are seeing combat, women's primary role, as far as the military is concerned, is patriotic.

Last week I raised the question of whether misogyny was involved in Jared Loughner's targeting of Cong. Giffords. An excerpt from a lengthy New York Times profile of Loughner suggests that he definitely had some deeply misogynist beliefs,

Here come the states!

There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit," Bentley said.

For all his accomplishments — Peace Corps director, ambassador, leader of the war on poverty — R. Sargent Shriver ultimately became known first as an in-law.

What would it be like if we really remembered Martin Luther King and honored his memory? Would we think about the advances he and his supporters made in civil and human rights? Would we work to preserve and expand them?

From her Facebook page

Did Loughner see Palin's own most notorious contribution to the rancorous tone — her March 2010 Web graphic targeting Congressional districts? We have no idea — nor does it matter. But Giffords did.

No self-respecting boomer should let the propagandists get away with implying that older people want it all now, the future be damned.

What could possibly motivate a man standing before a crowd of hundreds of thousands, with television cameras beaming his every move and a cluster of microphones tracing his every word, to abandon the prepared text of his speech and begin riffing on a theme that he had used previo …

A nasty battle between factions of Legislative District 20 Republicans and fears that it could turn violent in the wake of what happened in Tucson on Saturday prompted District Chairman Anthony Miller and several others to resign. Miller, a 43-year-old Ahwatukee Foothills reside …

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.--the Nobel Peace Prize-winning campaigner for economic and social justice whose legacy we celebrate with a holiday that falls on Jan.

Another brilliant piece on the rising anti-immigrant states-rights extremists being accepted into the mainstream discourse of American politics just as they are being elected into the mainstream offices of American jurisprudence (however unprudently) leaves me wondering if the Ut …

Not only does the South Carolina Farm Bureau acknowledge that we lack an adequate supply of laborers, but they are promoting the idea of actually solving the problem instead of further inflaming the passions around it for political gain!

The understatement of the year went completely unnoticed: Obama set a new record for deportation, even bending the rules & breaking the law to do so!

Let's hope that noone protests at the funerals!

It takes a pretty sick mind to come up with the many things that Limbaugh has been spewing over the years, but this one could be his "David" moment....

This is terrible news!

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called on the international community Thursday to forgive Sudan's $39 billion debt burden so that dividing it between the north and south won't become another issue to resolve after Southern Sudan likely votes to become its own nation.

Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church... said its members will picket the funerals of the 9-year-old girl and five others killed in Saturday's attack. In a video, Fred Phelps says God sent the shooter to avenge the nation's sins.

Discourage Hate Speech: There have been a number of articles and posts in the aftermath of Congresswoman Giffords being shot. Many wonder if it may have been the result of hate speech by some of our public figures and media entertainers.

It's amazing to look back to the 2009 DHS report that right wing extremists were planning acts of violence.

Across Arizona, conservative and tea party activists expressed shock and dismay at the shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others in the grocery store parking lot in Tucson on Saturday morning.

You didn't shoot Rep. Giffords, or ask anyone to do it. But you, sir, have some responsibility here.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed Tuesday to step up his site's release of secret documents while he fights extradition to Sweden, as his lawyers argued that sending him to Stockholm could land him in Guantanamo Bay or even on U.S. death row.

I think it is that last quote about being the greatest feminist supporting guy on tv that really is the most disheartening because the idea that he is such a great supporter is bunk and that he thinks he is amounts to pretty standard liberal male delusion.

The widespread cultural belief that every woman who reports a rape must be taken seriously should be a common part of my day-to-day experience.

War invigorates violent masculinity. No matter how many new laws to establish equality are put in place by the occupation forces in Afghanistan, men's assertion of themselves as protectors of women is their justification of extreme control over them.

Deadly poisons at Fort Detrick in Frederick tied to Agent Orange and the Vietnam War period, have prompted public health officials in Maryland to warn that certain cancers are appearing to occur among younger people who live near the Army Base than in people statewide.

Government programs to pay the poor have lifted millions of people out of poverty in countries around the globe.

"At the start of the new year, the Governor of Punjab was murdered because he had opposed the call by Pakistan's Islamists to execute a Christian woman on false blasphemy charges arising out of her harassment by her Muslim neighbors.

In a newly-published interview with the legal magazine California Lawyer [...] In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly  …

A woman who was 16 when she ambushed and killed her former pimp in a Southern California motel room has been granted clemency by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"Per the Washington Post: Civil liberties groups argue that the government's new criteria, which went into effect over the summer, have made it even more likely that individuals who pose no threat will be swept up in the nation's security apparatus, leading to potential violatio …

i am embarrassed to say that i have never considered the "connection" between state-run welfare and legalized prostitution, but there would be one if prostitution were legalized, wouldnt there?

And the result of that is not only that these women are receiving death threats, they are in hiding—one of them has gone to Palestine, because she couldn't feel safe in Sweden anymore—but the even more important result of that, when we perpetuate rape myths in the media—a …

As much as it pains my feminist heart to say this, I do not believe that women rule the world. Let me say that, as a feminist, I do not want women to rule the world- that's not what feminism is about. Feminism, most basically, is about equality between the sexes.

Today, the Family Research Council Senior Fellow for National Security Bob Maginnis is warning that it's repeal means that America is now no better than Sodom and Gomorrah:     [...]

It's happening all over the country. Union workers in both the public and private sectors have a target on their backs. Politicians are taking aim, determined to destroy the last remaining force dedicated to working people: the labor movement.

Click here for video. Click here for a full transcript of remarks by the President and Vice President at Signing of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  (Laughter.)  

yesterday, in a last minute effort to derail the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to subvert today's great civil rights achievement.

President Obama has just signed the law allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the U.S. military. "This morning I am proud to sign a law bringing an end to 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell," he said. No one should have to "sacrifice their integrity" to wear the uniform of the U.S.

Two articles: Senate Passes DADT Repeal, Sending Bill To Obama For His Signature