Assassination-Enabling Legislation

Now, if Scott Roeder had only waited a bit and lured Dr. George Tiller to South Dakota, that 'justfiable homicide' defense would have worked jim-dandy-great.

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

Jensen did not return calls to his home or his office requesting comment on the bill, which is cosponsored by 22 other state representatives and four state senators.

"The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers," says Vicki Saporta, the president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers. Since 1993, eight doctors have been assassinated at the hands of anti-abortion extremists, and another 17 have been the victims of murder attempts. Some of the perpetrators of those crimes have tried to use the justifiable homicide defense at their trials. "This is not an abstract bill," Saporta says. The measure could have major implications if a "misguided extremist invokes this 'self-defense' statute to justify the murder of a doctor, nurse or volunteer," the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families warned in a message to supporters last week.

The Excited States is becoming unrecognizably insane.

ADDED: PZ Myers's take.

Shrieeek!!! LieSite is being sued.

$500,000! Send money! Now!

"At LSN we are completely dependent upon Divine Providence; we usually have just enough in our bank account to get by until our next quarterly fundraiser (if even!). We simply have no money to spend on potentially crippling legal fees to fight this lawsuit."

Raymond Gravel, pro-choice priest and former BQ MP is an individual that we greatly admire, here at DAMMIT JANET! LieSite has been attacking and defaming him for a long time. He served his constituency well during the time he spent in the House of Commons. From here:

[...] Gravel was ordered by the Vatican to either give up the priesthood or leave politics, and he finally announced he would not run in the 40th Canadian federal election, saying that the priesthood was his life. He cited as his biggest regret his inability to pass his private member's bill C-490, which aimed to improve seniors' access to guaranteed income supplements

Thanks to @UnionSt and @AntoniaZ for alerting us to this CatholicCon job.

Although I don't know the details of the civil suit, I would make an educated guess that, as with similar cases, Gravel's lawyer asked LieSite to retract its defamatory remarks and to publish an apology. Upon its refusal to take action, the next step was to sue LieSite for damages and legal costs.

Imagine LieSite's dilemma: Admit the stuff it publishes is lying bullshit or hit up its readers up for half a million dollars?

ADDED by fern hill: GUESS WHO is SHRIEEEEKING?????11!!! (That's a link through Twitter -- two clicks but should be immune to fetal pr0n redirect.)

Nice parents you have, there.

It would sure be a shame if they died before your so-called family got a chance to re-unite, right?


It's not a stretch to imagine Jason "Like A Virgin" Kenney chuckling with his HarperCon cronies over this situation.

The government has banked tens of millions of dollars in immigrant application fees while taking little action to process the applications — a problem that will only be worsened when government reduces the overall number of visas issued in 2011 from 2010 levels, recently released government documents show.

The documents were made public by a University of Ottawa law professor who is currently at loggerheads with the federal government over his own parents' immigration application and who has been critical of the government on other issues.

Some of the most significant reductions, the documents show, will be seen in visas issued to parents and grandparents. The number of visas awarded to those would-be immigrants will decrease to 11,200 in 2011 from 16,800 in 2010, intensifying the congested backlog of more than 147,000 files waiting to be processed, according to the documents. Immigrants who applied to sponsor parents and grandparents have paid approximately $45 million for "nothing," said professor Amir Attaran, a Canadian who is also an immigrant. [...]

Attaran filed an application in the summer of 2009 to sponsor his own parents, who currently live in California. To date, Citizenship and Immigration Canada hasn't completed the first of the two-stage process, he said Monday. He said his frustration with the system led him to launch a lawsuit last summer against Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

More here.

Just in case you thought Attaran's situation was unusual, MP Navdeep Bains had harsh words for the arbitrary policy change, without any public discussion.

[...] Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s decision to cut family reunification visas by over 30%. “This decision means keeping families apart for up to 13 years,” said Mr. Bains. “We should be looking at ways to bring families together the Conservatives are out of touch with what New Canadian families need”.

Mr. Kenney’s announcement comes as the Harper Government looks to cut immigration by 5% overall. To meet this target the Harper Government has decided to cut family reunification visas by 5,000, from 16,000 a year to 11,000. This 30% reduction will compound existing wait times.

“These cuts will affect Canadian families across the country and will reverse decades of immigration policies from governments of different parties.” said Mr. Bains. “We have a moral obligation to give our new citizens a fair start and I don`t see how keeping a family apart for 13 years helps anyone”.“The Conservative Party would rather build new prisons than reunite families,” said Mr. Bains referring to the Government`s record spending prison building program. "I think it`s fair to say that their out of touch with the needs of everyday Canadians".

From here.

So, if your family doesn't look like Stevie Spiteful's nuclear family - Daddy, Mommy and 2 children - and it happens to be an extended one with uncles, aunts, grand-parents all pitching in to raise the next generation, and helping out with chores and financial support, don't bother to complete an immigration sponsorship form unless you want to lose more of your hard-earned savings to the HarperCons schemes.

Grand merci to Dr Dawg who spotted the Con jobs' hypocrisy.

Nerd Alert!

Coooool.

IBM supercomputer Watson is set to square off tonight in a historic Valentine’s Day encounter against Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a landmark test of artificial intelligence.

Competing on a televised game show may seem like a trivial challenge for a multi-million-dollar machine, but for IBM scientists the competition represents the next evolution in the quest to design computers that can beat humans at their own game. The competition lasts three nights and concludes on Wednesday.

Happy Valentine's Day to you and your 'puter.

Polluter Harmony (with YouTube)

I detest, loathe, hate E-Harmony, its Xian foundation and its sappy TV ads.

Thus it was delightful to discover this, via Far and Wide.

It's a spoof testimonial of the perfect match between an oil executive and a Con politician. Tar-crossed lovers!!! Genuine duplicity!!!

Brilliantly produced by Greenpeace.

Enjoy.

"You're so cute when you're fake." Truly delectable, the actors and the writers must have had a jolly good time creating this inspired lampoon.

Egypt, as seen by Free Dominion

In another episode of 'DJ! Visits the Freaks So You Don't Have to Get Out Your Wellies', here's how they monitored events in Egypt.

The thread was initially titled 'Egyptian Riots', later changed to 'Egypt - A Web 2.0 Revolution'. It was started by a poster named 'fourhorses' on January 28 and it's still going strong, up to 174 pages (a FD page holds only 15 posts, but still, that's a lotta posts).

'fourhorses' offered mostly straight reporting, links and complete stories (they have no use for copyright over there) from legit (as opposed to their more usual wingnut) sources, including Al Jazeera English.

Some Freaks weighed in with comments like this one from Red Dog:

muslims rioting against other muslims and burning up a muslim country is a problem because.....?

Others voiced fears for Israel and of Islamic radicals, while displaying MASSIVE ignorance of any actual facts.

Another, named Kate Shaw who has an Israeli flag in her sig, actually said this:

Its the End Times -- and more and more of this is going to be happening everywhere; and especially here in Canada where we have allowed Enclaves to balkanize our country to the point that we have plenty of dry tinder awaiting a match.

Say your prayers and watch for the USA to close the major bridges when the fire starts.

A few very -- two, maybe -- demonstrated optimism, and, funnily, they seemed to be in command of a few of the issues.

My Facebook friend Connie snarked about what happens when you shut off the Internet.

But mostly it was 'fourhorses'. He or she was obsessed. (Ahem.) When things really heated up, she/he started posting tweets from knowledgeable people in the streets there, many of them the same people I was following. (Hmm.)

The others mostly left off with the stupid remarks and let him or her go to it.

It is a rare and commendable example of the Freaks being interested in foreign events. I hope a lot of them followed along and learned something.

Ça grouille

Alison of the blogs Creekside, The Galloping Beaver and Dawg's Blawg observed how perfectly apt and appropriate were the US president's and Canada's PM respective response to events in Egypt. "It's perfect, really. Obama quoted MLK; Harper quoted HR Haldeman." She elaborates:

"Haldeman used the same 'not going to get the toothpaste back in the tube' analogy at the Watergate hearings to explain why they didn't get away with the Watergate break in. I just thought it fitting that while Obama quoted MLK, Steve chose a phrase made famous by a Watergate felon."

If you search grouiller, "Ça grouille" on French google you'll discover many meanings, including one connected to Isabella Rossellini's Green P0rn short performance pieces. I'm posting this one as an amusing foreplay to Valentine's Day.



Can you hear The Fetus©™ fetishists, *The Pill Kills* anti-contraception RightWingNutJobs, assorted religious fundamentalist zealots and John "Sperm Holocaust" Pacheco shrieeeking?

Good.

Blob Blogging Wingnut cites lies as *news* - what a surprise! (with update)

Blob Blogging Wingnut says:

"I wonder if our "reproductive choice" advocates will have anything to say about this. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting."

in response to a *news item* SHE attributes to the BBC and Rwandan media about that country allegedly forcing 700,000 men to be circumcised and sterilised. There is text cited but no link, of course.

As a woman who supports reproductive responsibility AND choice, this is what I have to say about religious rightwing obfuscators like ALLCAPS who post unsubstianted alarmist propaganda in the guise of *news*: Revolting.

A Google search reveals that HER undisclosed source for the fabrication could be one of these - lifesite news, christiansunitenews but likely canadafreepress (because without America there is no free world) - whereas one legitimate news media - the BBC - provides this:

Rwanda has strongly denied reports that its parliament is considering a draft law which would forcibly sterilise people who are mentally disabled.

Damascene Ntawukuriryayo, deputy speaker of parliament, was responding to a call by US-based activists Human Rights Watch to scrap the proposed law.

He also told the BBC that plans for HIV testing before couples get married are strictly voluntary, not compulsory.

Mr Ntawukuriryayo said the lobby group should check before releasing reports. He said he had never seen a bill or provision which proposed forcible sterilisation.

More information about the voluntary circumcision campaign in Rwanda, here.

Baby Jay-Zeus cries when you spread your lies, SAINTE-NITOUCHE.

Update: Good grief, now SHE's playing her persecution violin. Wah, wah, wah. The evul forces that control academia wouldn't let HER *think* and express whatever SHE wanted and wouldn't award HER the credentials SHE wanted.

Say BBW - if you kept all your research as well as the reams of writing you did to counter those elements of English Lit you found so offensive, you should consider presenting your candidacy to Charles McVety's Christian College. I suspect the faculty there will be receptive to your notions and who knows, you might be able to buy earn a *dokterate.*

Faytene Kryskow and her MASSIVE lobby.

Radio-Canada went where the anglo media feared to tread openly.


Tonight on the television show Enquête will be broadcast an in-depth investigative report about the extent of Kryskow's access on Parliament Hill. "À la droite de Harper" - to the right of Harper. His good buddy *Dokter* McVety will no doubt get a passing nod, as will other fundamentalist religious lobbyists.

From here (Google translation doesn't appear to work, it must be choking on the 200+ comments): Members of Parlement under the influence of Evangelicals? It sounds, from the promo piece, that Kryskow brags of having had hundreds of privileged, sit-down meetings with members of Harper's government: elected MPs, senators and other officials.


Past post about Kryskow's involvement with the HarperCons, here.



Behold Serena Joy from "The Handmaid's Tale" - could that role be in *celebrity evangelical* Faytene's future - no science, no fiction?