a handkerchief sandwich

mohandasgandhi:washingtonpoststyle:

The United States has fallen 27 places in the Press Freedom Index. The reason? The many arrests of journalists covering Occupy protests.

El Salvador, which is tragically plagued with horrific violence, and Japan, guilty of censoring the press over Fukushima, placed well above the United States. Incredible.

(via pnasty)

(Source: into-the-universe, via kiki-miserychic)

celticthistle:thedailywhat:

This Seems Kind Of Wrong of the Day: According to a formal complaint filed by Destin resident Jean Weber, TSA agents working security at Northwest Florida Regional Airport detained her 95-year-old wheelchair-bound, terminally ill mother, and forced her to remove her adult diaper which they said was impeding their pat-down search “because it was soiled.”

Weber said her mother, who is in “the final stages of her battle with leukemia,” was in the process of boarding a plane to Michigan to spend her remaining time with family members. “It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber told the Northwest Florida Daily News. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”

TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz told the Daily News she couldn’t comment on the specific case, but that wheelchairs “trigger certain protocols,” and that “[d]uring any part of the process, if there is an alarm, then we have to resolve that alarm.” “TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability,” Koshetz added.

A representative of Northwest Florida Regional responded to Weber’s complaint by telling her that the TSA agents followed search procedures. “[I]f you’re just following rules and regulations,” Weber said, “then the rules and regulations need to be changed.”

[nwfdailynews / image: weaselzippers.]

how many old white women terrorists in wheelchairs have you caught thus far tsa

Please see #7 on my list of reasons on How America is Turning to Fascism. 

(via kaksipsalmia)

Women’s Abortion Rights -Planned Parenthood (via fuckyeahfeminists)

(via taylamp)

landlockedmermaid:

“There are people who have said that I’m being brave for being openly supportive of gay marriage, gay adoption, basically of gay rights but with all due respect I humbly dissent, I’m not being brave, I’m being a decent human being. And I don’t think I should receive an award for that or for merely stating what I believe to be true, that love is a human experience not a political statement. However, I acknowledge that sadly we live in a world where not everybody feels the same. My family and I will help the good fight continue until that long awaited moment arrives, when our rights are equal and when the political limits on love have been smashed.”

(via vanishingevocations)

If you haven’t watched it, watch it. Zach Wahls, a University of Iowa engineering student who scored in the 99th percentile on the ACTs, tells the Iowa House of Representatives that his family is the same as theirs.*

*I personally feel his family is in no question better than any of the republicans’ in that room, as he was raised in a home that taught him non-conditional love, progressive values and, most importantly, that people are equal.

pantslessprogressive:

Rep. Wasserman Schultz: Bill Redefining Rape To Prevent Abortions Is ‘A Violent Act Against Women’

A day after repealing health care, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, a bill that would not only permanently prohibit some federally funded health-care programs from covering abortions, but would change the language exempting rape and incest from rape to “forcible rape.”

By narrowing the Hyde Amendment language, Republicans would exclude the following situations from coverage: women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults. As the National Women’s Law Center’s Steph Sterling puts it, this new standard of force “takes us back to a time where just saying no was not enough.”

And yet, 172 Republicans — including sixteen women — and lone Democrat Rep. Daniel Lipinski (IL), chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus — readily support the new standard. Appalled at such a cavalier attack on women’s rights, one House member is not taking the change lightly. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) “fiercely denounced” her conservative colleagues for this “absolutely outrageous” dilution of victims’ rights. Enraged at the suggestion that “there is some kind of rape that would be okay,” Wasserman Schultz told The Raw Story that she considers the bill itself to be “a violent act against women”

“It is absolutely outrageous,” Wasserman Schultz said in an exclusive interview late Monday afternoon. “I consider the proposal of this bill a violent act against women.” […]

“It really is — to suggest that there is some kind of rape that would be okay to force a woman to carry the resulting pregnancy to term, and abandon the principle that has been long held, an exception that has been settled for 30 years, is to me a violent act against women in and of itself,” Wasserman Schultz said. [read more, photo via]

Find out more about H.R.3 here. Read the bill here.

(via taylamp)

I’m disgusted, but not surprised.

littlefrofro:civillyunioned:President Obama: It Gets Better | The White House

I am happy he finally released a video, but even more effective than words would be supporting LGBT Americans in “creating their own version of happiness”.  As long as the society and its laws continue to place LGBT Americans as a second class status and restrict them from the same rights that all other people have, kids will come of age thinking there is something wrong with them; that they are some how less.  Let’s start with the few items below…

1. overturn DOMA so we can marry the one we love

2. get rid of DADT so people can serve their county openly and honestly

3. pass the Uniting American Families Act so same-sex couples don’t have to chose between living in the US or living with their partner

4. pass ENDA so we are protected in the work place

I love Obama for the video and I agree with all above.