"Audience at tea party debate cheers leaving uninsured to die."

( WTF?! )

Most of us are keenly aware of the shortcomings of justice system. People are freed after 5, 10, 15, 20 years and longer in prison after new evidence comes to light and exonerates them. Victims of crimes, particularly sexual assault victims, are blamed for the crimes. They are told they were asking for it — that they are responsible because of that. No amount of money can make up for the lost years. Nothing can make up for the emotional trauma of being told you are the one responsible, and not the person who actually committed those offenses.

( Rape and abuse triggers behind the cut )

Daily Kos has the rest of the story.

From an email sent by Change.org:

A.J. Nelson was just four years old when he was killed in a hit-and-run by an intoxicated driver in Atlanta. Now his own mother, Raquel Nelson -- who was also hit by the car while trying to save her son -- faces up to three years in prison for A.J.'s death.

Grist has the story in When design kills: The criminalization of walking.

Change.org has a petition: Cobb County GA: Release Grieving Mother of Hit-and-Run & Install a Crosswalk.

I have the text of the Change.org email along with my commentary at A petition against the criminalization of walking.

Here's a story I've been following on my blog since July 30th, when I posted Oak Park Woman plants vegetable garden; city objects. In it, I summarized the situation.

the Bass family of Oak Park lost their lawn when the sewer line running under their front yard was replaced. Instead of replacing it with a lawn, they replaced it with a vegetable garden. Their neighbors complained to the city and the city has cited them with a criminal violation of city ordinances. The Basses and the city have a court date on July 26th.
...
Mrs. Bass posted a more complete summary after I wrote (and she read) the above. Please read it.

( As someone familiar with the area, I'm not surprised this is happening in Oak Park. )

Beginning Friday, July 8th, the number of hits on that post began climbing dramatically. When I investigated how that happened, I found out that Drudge happened.

A couple of days ago, Matt Drudge placed a link to The Agitator's post on his front page with the headline "Woman faces 93 days in jail for planting garden in front yard..." Since then, the story has spread like wildfire. Here is a list of the media sources I've found covering this story with links to their articles (Hat/tip to April Alexander at Urban Homestead Diaries for compiling most of these).

Grist: Michigan woman could face jail time for growing a garden

Treehugger: Michigan Woman Faces 93 Days in Jail for Planting a Vegetable Garden

Huffington Post: Woman Could Be Jailed For Vegetable Garden

Washington Post: Julie Bass may face jail time for planting vegetables

Look at that progression. Not only are the environmental publications and the avowedly liberal Huffington Post on board, one of the two national papers of record, The Washington Post, is now covering this story. The issue has even attracted attention from overseas.

The Daily Mail (UK): Woman faces jail for growing vegetables in her front yard

A check of Google News shows 66 results for "Julie Bass", all of which are about this story and are all from July 8th or later.

As for how Drudge was indirectly responsible, he drove traffic to The Agitator, which drove traffic Julie Bass's blog OakParkHateVeggies, where she has a link to my post. Even from three steps away, Drudge increased my readership. Behold the power of Drudge.

In case you're wondering what you can do about it, there is a petition. 4,400 people signed it by Friday, less than a week after it was put up.

UPDATE: The charge against Julie Bass for her garden has been dropped. That's the good news. The bad news is that it has been dropped without prejudice, which means that it could be reinstated at any time. The worse news is that the city is now after her for her dogs. To read more, check out MyFoxDETROIT.com, the Detroit News, and the Detroit Free Press. Julie Bass herself has comments on her blog here and here. Finally my tl;dr comments along with a larger version of the Fox 2 Detroit video are at Good, bad, and ugly news in Oak Park's "War on Veggies".

As you might have heard, the Wisconsin Senate has voted to eliminate collective bargaining. D:< Check out this link for live coverage of the occupation of the state capital. There are growing concerns about demonstrators being arrested.

http://theuptake.org/2011/03/09/wisconsin-senate-votes-to-eliminate-collective-bargaining/

EDIT: There is a delay on the feed it seems but it's still more than you're going to see on network television. Right now the protesters are floating ideas of a general strike and/or a recall election. They are staying in the capital tonight for fear that the building will be locked down again and they will be unable to resume protesting today if they leave.

EDIT 2: I'm going to update more when I get home (thanks for the links - keep'em coming). Also, if anyone has news of protests in other states I'd love it if you could comment and let us know. Thanks!

EDIT 3: Contact info for the 'Governor' of Wisconsin -

Office of the Governor
Email
govgeneral@wisconsin.gov

Mail
Office of Governor Scott Walker
115 East Capitol
Madison WI 53702
USA

Phone
(608) 266-1212

For those who live in Wisconsin

Unless my reading skills are complete shit this is illegal

Does anyone know of protests in other states? I've been trying to find info on upcoming protests in Michigan to no avail.

Representative Barca makes a desperate plea to the Republicans as they 'passed' the bill (Rage-inducing - I would also avoid the comments to the video)

You are forewarned.

Murderer of Dr. George Tiller has supporters planning an online auction to raise money for his defense.

Supporters of Roeder, the man accused of murdering abortion provider George Tiller, say they're planning an online auction to raise money for his defense, Judy Thomas reports. (It's not clear if it'll actually happen -- eBay has a policy that should bar this sort of thing from happening.) Among the items to be auctioned: an Army of God manual for disrupting abortion clinics, drawings from Roeder himself and a prison cookbook compiled by the woman who shot and wounded Tiller back in 1993.

Leaving my opinion out of this, but hopefully no one here actually believes that killing doctors is somehow justifiable.

Also, Law & Order episode to be based on the death of Dr. Tiller.

Apparently unsatisfied with everything ELSE the Catholic Church has to deal with, Pope Benedict XVI decides to stick his crucifix where it doesn't belong and meddle in the affairs of Anglicans -- by inviting those displeased with Episcopalian acceptance of homosexuals to COME OVER TO THE DARK SIDE join with Rome.

( Text for the link-phobic )

A rather good article, I feel, though its appeal may be to a relatively fairly narrow audience (consisting entirely of people who A. know jack about either CoE or Catholicism, and B. actually care) followed by surprisingly insightful comments:

Is it just me, or does the picture suggest a vampire rising from its coffin? asks riggbeck.

speaking as an excatholic he is welcome to them! although they'll probably find that there are more gay priests in the catholic church rather than in the one they are leaving! observes jamijery.

This is all very interesting and informative, but I'm sorry to say that for 90% of the population, this will have no bearing on their lives. So sayeth NapoleonKaramazov in what I think is a fairly accurate estimation, begging the question "Why, then, is Duende bothering to post this?" Because I am extremely bad at math.

...Snarking aside, some of the comments actually ARE good ones:

This is very similar to Stephen Bates' article yesterday. Again, I fail to see the problem with the Vatican's proposal. A way has been found to allow a number of people who are currently Anglicans - call them Anglo-Catholics, High Church, or whatever - to move to the Catholic Church in a fashion which will make them happier than they currently are. In their absence, people in the Church of England who wish to make more changes in terms of women bishops, gay cleargy, etc, will find it easier to make those changes. Where is the problem in this? Only if you see RC / Anglican relations as some sort of zero-sum game, where the Anglo-Catholics have to be kept locked into the Anglican communion in order to keep the numbers up. --Suleyman

The Catholic Church is seen to be modern. In one breath the Pope has spoken superstision about homosexuality, and in the next, condemned Israel for bulldozing Palistenian homes. Tell them that no-one MAKES homosexuals do what they do. Do you? The idea of fearing anything let alone God seems dubious to most of the previous commenters. Fear isn't the issue regarding the accused. The only criticism about this compromise has come from rash hackers like Lucy Mangan who have distracted from whose own questionable practices, based on personal nuerosis and egocentricities, which bare no relavance to the INCREASINGLY neccessary role of a high profile, NON VIOLENT body in today's society. --GraemeFord

The usual parade of rage-inducing ignorance and thought-inducing conspiracy theories follow. ("There is no such thing as an Anglican church there are only a bunch of jumped up hypocrites who cow-towed to the divorce demands of a fat king. If you are a Christian you either follow true Protestantism or you admit you are a catholic and follow the pope, there can be no half-way house." ...What?)

As for myself, a former member of both churches, I think that is Rome wishes to corral all the bigoted homophobes into the same pen regardless of (basically irrelevant, in this case) differences in doctrine, they have my blessing -- it only makes them that much easier to avoid.

So much RAGE. This creature can't even be considered a human being for what he did.

( LJ Cut for potential triggers )

WTF IS THIS?


Dubya had people locked up for wearing the wrong fucking T-shirts.

The topic here involves rape so I'll put behind a cut to avoid triggers. Short version is that a hotel blames the victim for her own rape. And not even in a subtle way.

( Newspaper article quoted here because it will get taken down by the site )

So I got this off the Malaysian news service:

Avoiding masturbation and homosexual activities are among preventive measures one could take against Influenza A (H1N1), according to an eminent practitioner of complimentary therapy.

…

I honestly don’t know what to say. I honestly do not know what to say.

…

He has a blog post explaining it all. Hell, his entire blog looks like that.

…

I bow to stronger minds to parse this further, because I think my mind just broke.

Woah, y'all, someone bombed the OutGames.

more here, and here, here, and here.

I'm shocked, simply shocked, to find that the bombing of a major sporting event that had several Canadian athletes, including some from my home city, has not been mentioned in either my local paper or the Globe & Mail.

ETA: BBC ran it.

Reason #842 why "Strike Witches" is creepy fanboy lolicon moe pandering: The second issue of Kadokawa Shoten's Nyantype magazine will offer a limited Strike Witches Pants Ja Nai Kubi Makura (Strike Witches They're-Not-Underpants Neck Pillow) to its readers on Thursday.

Yes. It is a young girl's crotch, which you wear around your neck.

Damn.

( Cut for triggering content )

Those who live outside this armpit of a state have likely not heard the following story, which broke this week.

Due to limited exposure, I fear it might not generate the degree of hate-vibes and general frothing at the mouth appropriate to its WTFery.

Therefore:

Aberdeen (NJ) man sentenced for torturing and killing 19 cats

Rage with me.