Wrapped in the flag and waving a cross

Once upon a time, not that long ago, in a land far, far away, birth control and abortion were made illegal. Bearing children was the name of the game, so childless women paid penalty fines while those with many children enjoyed lavish perks. The secret police were empowered to patrol hospital exam rooms looking for any sign of the newly decreed illegal activity. The age to marry was lowered to 15, and divorce became virtually impossible. But it didn’t stop there. Over the years it got worse, much worse. [Read more…]

What’s in this birth control debacle for Republicans?

A week or two ago I got an email from a conservative leaning lady friend who has argued politics with me for years. It had three words in it: You Were Right.

I’d like to think my finger is on the political pulse of the nation, or at least near a major artery some of the time. But I cannot for the life of me figure out the calculus driving the recent Republican obsession with birth control, and neither can any of my otherwise well-informed peers. Any ideas? I’ll post any halfway coherent idea below the fold. [Read more…]

Midnight treat: WISE releases a cosmic atlas in false color infrared

The NASA WISE telescope spent a year imaging sections of the sky in infrared and astronomers have been working for the last few months to knit it together in a 360 degree map, all doped up with false color. It is spectacular. The limitations of this website can’t do it justice: that bad boy above is scalable like you wouldn’t believe. (Speaking of which, don’t click on the last image or two if your PC bitches about large pics, one of them is width 54000, which auto scales to 5400 on some devices and still causes fits).  Let’s take a little piece of it on the far left and zoom in, so you can see what this means. [Read more…]

What we learned from James Inhofe on the Rachel Maddow show (Video/text update)

Update 3/16/12: Joe Romm weighs in at Climate Progress

James Inhofe has a book to sell, and God-eh might be on the side of Big Oil, but Inhofe’s book will have to sell itself with no help from the Divine. So the deluded senator from Oklahoma will be making the media rounds in search of a few more shekels to pad his quarter million a year salary and luxury health-care plan courtesy of the US taxpayer. Which explains how he ended up behind enemy lines Thursday on MSNBC’s the Rachel Maddow show. [Read more…]

Fluke’s boy-friend is very much the wrong religion

What continues to transpire on the Keyboard Komando side of the aisle is truly alarming. This week we’re breathlessly told the law student, the one throughly smeared for daring to mention women’s health as an issue of import for some voters, has a boyfriend. And he’s not just any old hell-bound non-Christian, he’s one of those successful, book learn’n intellectual types. You know the kind: [Read more…]

People are wondering why Gingrich doesn’t quit?

After Santorum’s frothy surge in last night’s primaries, the talk of tradmed town inevitably turned to Newt. He’s losing right and left, both metaphorically and literally, he’s being dragged through the mud viciously by Romney’s Borg, he can’t even win the neoconfederate regions that spawned him. Santorum, yes Rick Santorum, has beaten Gingrich in 20 of the last 24 states, and by staying in Gingrich virtually assures Romney, a man he clearly despises, the nomination. “Why stay in” they’re all asking? To answer that you simply need to understand what it is Newt Gingrich does for a living. [Read more…]

Let’s all go to the lobby: Santorum sweeps Alabama & Mississippi!

Big upset and the GOP clown car is back on nationwide tour: Rick Santorum soundly beat Mitt Romney in the Alabama and Mississippi GOP primaries, worse, Romney may come in third in both states hitting the presumed front-runner where it hurts. He’s still the odds on favorite and this is why, the aproximate delegate totals before tonight via Daily Kos: [Read more…]