Right-wingers are attacking Democrats for scuttling “the Ryan White Early Diagnosis Grant Program,” or as they often call it, the “baby AIDS” bill. Why are liberals against helping babies with AIDS, they cry? Isn’t helping AIDS babies something we can all agree on? (See these links, for example: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8). This outpouring of “baby AIDS” related anger is being led by the Family Research Council’s Joe Carter, who sent a mass email-mail that virtually all the above-linked bloggers are cribbing from.

Of course, none of this is as simple as conservatives claim.

In fact, the bill Carter is so angry about is almost entirely irrelevant to HIV prevention; the mandatory newborn testing Carter favors is useless for telling us if newborns are HIV positive, is overly controlling of mothers, and will do almost nothing for preventing HIV transmission; and virtually all the effective policies for reducing mother-to-child HIV transmission involve improving the effectiveness and availability of prenatal care.

1) The omnibus bill Carter is angry about has almost nothing to do with HIV prevention.

The specific legislation that set Joe Carter and the FRC off is an omnibus legislation intended to eliminate dozens of so-called “earmark” programs. In order to prevent the anti-earmark bill from having dozens of anti-anti-earmarks hanging off of it, the Democrats decided to accept no amendments at all, on any subject, to the anti-earmark bill. The no-amendments provision doesn’t seem like an unreasonable approach to an anti-earmark bill, and it certainly has nothing to do with the Democrats being against AIDS prevention funding.

(For further discussion of this aspect, read Kevin Keith’s arguments in the comments of Evangelical Outpost.¹ )

2) Mandatory newborn testing can’t tell us if newborns have HIV. It can only tell us if mothers have HIV.

It’s important to understand that HIV-testing a newborn doesn’t tell us if the newborn is HIV positive. For the first 18 months of life, infants who aren’t infected with HIV will nonetheless test as HIV-positive if their mother was HIV positive while she was pregnant. (This happens because anti-HIV antibodies, which is what the standard test looks for, are transmitted from mother to child in the womb. Source.). 75% to 85% of infants who “test positive” for HIV do not have HIV.

There is a newer test which tests for HIV virus in the baby, rather than just testing for antibodies. However, this test is only 33% accurate on a newborn; it’s not until a baby is two months old that this test becomes 90% accurate, and not until six months that it’s 95% accurate. (Source).

So there’s no effective way of finding out if a newborn baby has HIV. What testing the babies actually provides is a way of finding out if the mother has HIV. “Newborn” testing avoids the sometimes uncomfortable and slow work of getting a mother’s informed consent for HIV testing — by testing for the mother’s HIV status indirectly. It’s about avoiding the need for the mother’s consent. As Senator Tom Coburn, the leading proponent of mandatory newborn testing, say: “If they didn’t want to be tested, their baby was tested.”

Labor, childbirth and the hours immediately after birth is the time when a mother has the least choice about being in the hospital, and about submitting herself and her baby to medical tests; it is therefore the time that conservatives have been most eager to test women for drugs and for HIV. With a mandatory newborn testing law, there’s no need to muck about with counseling and informed consent and all that; you just do the test, wam bam no need for thanking you ma’am.

3) Mandatory newborn testing is mostly worthless for preventing HIV transmission.

The FRC’s Joe Carter asks “what could possibly be more important than preventing babies form contracting HIV/AIDS?” But the only controversial part of the Ryan White Early Diagnosis Grant Program is mandatory newborn testing — and mandatory newborn testing is mostly worthless for preventing mother to child transmission.

Consider this real-life story from The Body, an advocacy group for people with HIV and AIDS. Rosa, a 27-year-old mother, lives in New York. (New York’s mandatory newborn testing program is often cited by advocates as a success story). When Rosa found out she was pregnant with her second child, she went for prenatal care and counseling, and was counseled about the importance of breastfeeding. But at no point was she counseled about HIV or advised to get tested. Six weeks after giving birth to her daughter, the hospital called Rosa.

A phone call summoned her to the mental health division of the hospital. There, during a meeting that lasted less than fifteen minutes, she learned that her daughter had been tested under New York State’s mandatory newborn HIV testing program and that her results were positive.

No one had informed Rosa ahead of time that her daughter would be tested. No one informed Rosa now what the results of the test meant. It was only later, through her own research efforts, that Rosa learned that the temporary presence of the mother’s viral antibodies in a newborn’s blood means that all infants of HIV-positive women will test HIV-positive at birth. It was only later that she learned that only 15 to 25 percent of these newborns will themselves be infected by the virus. It was only later that she learned that screening newborns for HIV antibodies reveals the HIV status of the mother, not that of the infant.

Rosa immediately told her boyfriend about the test results. A few weeks later, however, a visiting nurse who came to the apartment when Rosa was not at home implied to the boyfriend that Rosa had known her status before her daughter’s birth but hadn’t told him. When Rosa got home, her boyfriend beat her up, forcing her and her children to leave her apartment and stay in a shelter for several days.

“I definitely would have tested prenatally if anyone had asked,” says Rosa. “If I had known earlier, I would have planned. I probably would have taken AZT because I would have wanted to increase the chances that my child would not have the virus. I would never have breastfed.”

Does anyone believe that New York’s mandatory testing program did a good job of reducing Rosa’s odds of transmitting HIV to her daughter?

By definition, testing newborns happens too late to prevent most mother to child transmissions. Serious efforts to prevent mother to child HIV transmission have to be prenatal, before the virus is transmitted. And that requires working with mothers, not bulldozing over them. The good news is, prenatal testing and treatment have already been successful at vastly reducing mother to child HIV transmission nationwide. So why do we want to take $30 million dollars away from existing programs (which are already critically underfunded) and give it instead to programs that include mandatory newborn testing — a “prevention” effort that’s guaranteed not to be very effective?

Supporters of mandatory newborn testing often claim that such programs have worked miracles preventing HIV transmission, usually citing New York as an example. But there have been enormous improvements nationwide, not just in New York and other states with mandatory newborn testing. According to a CDC factsheet on mother-to-child HIV transmission, “Over the course of the epidemic, the number of perinatally transmitted AIDS cases has decreased dramatically. The number of infants infected with HIV through mother-to-child transmission decreased from an estimated peak of 1,750 HIV-infected infants born each year during the early to mid-1990s to 280–370 infants in 2000 (CDC, unpublished data, 2000). This decrease is largely due to the use of antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy and labor.” (Emphasis added).

4) What we should be fighting for.

• Prenatal care for all pregnant women.
• Information and counseling on prenatal HIV testing for all pregnant women, and on pregnancy, childrearing and HIV for HIV positive pregnant women. These should be available in a variety of languages and designed for a variety of cultural backgrounds.
• Free anti-HIV drugs for all HIV positive pregnant women (and all HIV positive people, but that’s a topic for a different post, I suppose). Being treated for HIV drastically reduces the chances of a mother transmitting HIV to a child in the womb or during childbirth - from around 20% to less than 2%. (For those who are interested, here (pdf link) is a detailed discussion of the medical issues.)
• Attention to the economic and other issues that often prevents women, especially non-white, immigrant, or low-income women, from getting adequate prenatal care. This is too large a topic for this post, but issues to be considered include low-cost transportation, language and cultural barriers, how difficult it is to get prenatal care outside of regular working hours, childcare for mothers expecting new children, and the impact of abuse. This may sound like a grab-bag of irrelevant issues, but in fact it’s a central issue: Readily available prenatal care is the number one way we can prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission.
• A model of medical care that assumes that all women — including women with HIV — need to give informed consent for all medical treatment and tests.

Sources/ Further reading:

HIV Infection in Infants and Children
Whose Virus Is It Anyway?, from The Body
Routine Testing Must Include Informed Consent
Mother-To-Child (Perinatal) HIV Transmission And Prevention (CDC factsheet)
Striking A Balance: HIV Testing For Pregnant Women And Newborns

1. From one of Kevin’s comments:

   HJRes20 is the omnibus “anti-earmark” bill. As many people have noted, getting rid of “earmarks” is harder than it looks, because there is no legal distinction between an “earmark” for “pork-barrel spending” and an ordinary appropriation for an ordinary program. But both parties have declared they are going to do something about “earmarks”.

   The approach they have taken is to submit a huge bill that comprehensively strikes out hundreds - possibly thousands, there were too many for me to count - of targeted allocations for named programs. The same bill stipulates specific levels of funding for different departments, and in some cases specifies that that funding should be used in certain ways.

   …The bill is an attempt to clear the decks of the thousands of small allocations for individual projects, in order to start a systematic attempt to decide what should or should not be funded. Along the way, a huge number of specific funding initiatives - most of them probably reasonable - have been undone. (Note that this does not mean that these programs will not get funded, or that the money will “just sit there”. It means that all those funding decisions will have to be revisited, hopefully with greater oversight. Every single one of the rescinded “earmarks” could be funded if Congress chooses to do so, even after passing this bill.)

   So what’s up with the Baby AIDS program? It is one of the hundreds of line items that is being taken out of the budget.

   Why are the Democrats holding it up? They’re not. A Republican member attempted to re-insert a specific earmark for that program in the bill designed to eliminate earmarks. Reid has said he will not allow specific programs to be exempted. I don’t think Reid has said anything about the Baby AIDS program - just that he wants the entire earmark bill dealt with at once, and not a bunch of earmarks on the earmark bill.

   (back)

Editor’s Note: Apparently, this is an urban legend.  I thought it was funny, but on a serious note I don’t think you could measure IQ purely based on writings and speaking.  Moreover, as much as I think GWB is not the best president, I don’t think IQ is necessarily related to job performance.  I wanted to have a debate about that in the comments section, but it’s pointless to debate a hoax.

From the Lovenstein Institute:

According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents over the past 60 years, from F. D. Roosevelt to G. W. Bush who were all rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking. The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points:

147	Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132	Harry Truman (D)
122	Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
174	John F. Kennedy (D)
126	Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
155	Richard M. Nixon (R)
121	Gerald R. Ford (R)
176	James E. Carter (D)
105	Ronald W. Reagan (R)
98	George H. W. Bush (R)
182	William J. Clinton (D)
91	George W. Bush (R)

The six Republican presidents of the past 60 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155. President G. W. Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91.

The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126.

No president other than Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176. Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President GW Bush, his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis.

The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis. “All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers.

Not so with President Bush,” Dr. Lovenstein said. “He has no published works or writings, so in many ways that made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We had to rely more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking.”

From Reverand Debra at Sexuality And Religion:

Yesterday, I blogged about the Catholic Bishops telling their married congregants not to use birth control.

Seems like the nation’s family planning program could be headed in that direction as well. The Bush administration yesterday announced its appointment of Dr. Erik Keroack as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs, the nation’s official in charge of the national family planning program.
Here’s part of the press release we put out:

“It is a cruel joke on low-income women in America who turn to the government for assistance with family planning services to place Dr. Erik Keroack in charge of the national Title X program.

Dr. Keroack is an anti-contraception advocate who has been serving as medical director of “A Women’s Concern,” an organization with an official policy that states “birth control…is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality, and averse to human health and happiness.”

This appointment doesn’t require an approval from Congress.

In the Washington Post, Cecile Richards (the president of Planned Parenthood) was quoted saying “The appointment of anti-birth control, anti-sex education advocate Dr. Eric Keroack to oversee the nation’s family planning program is striking proof that the Bush administration remains dramatically out of step with the nation’s priorities.”

Okay, anytime Ann Coulter is having a bad day I’m happy. But I’m a bit bugged by this:

WEST PALM BEACH - Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has refused to cooperate in an investigation about whether she voted in the wrong precinct, so the case will likely be turned over to state prosecutors, Palm Beach County’s elections chief said Wednesday.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the State Attorney’s Office by Friday. […]

Knowingly voting in a wrong precinct is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, said Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the State Attorney’s Office in West Palm Beach.

Doesn’t five years seem pretty extreme for the crime in this case? A single year in prison and a hefty fine seems like more than adequate punishment for the harm done, and for deterrence purposes. Even for Coulter.

(Thanks to Lucia for pointing this story out to me.)

A new addition to the list of the stupidest arguments against marriage equality. From the New York Times article on the House of Reps debate over same-sex marriage:

Another Georgia Republican, Representative Phil Gingrey, said support for traditional marriage “is perhaps the best message we can give to the Middle East and all the trouble they’re having over there right now.”

I’m trying to imagine what would have to be going through someone’s mind to make “we should ban same-sex marriage to send a message to the Middle East” seem like an even remotely rational argument.

Was he thinking that if there’s anything wrong with the middle east, it’s that the culture there is too accommodating of homosexuals, and so we must set a good example by not accommodating our local queers? Was he thinking that the reason people kidnap Israeli soldiers is because lesbians and gays in Massachusetts are getting married, and so we should therefore attempt to placate them by assuring them we hate gays, too? Was he too high on crack to be thinking anything at all? It’s a mystery.

UPDATE: By the way, this is far from being the most repulsive, bigoted, anti-queer statement to come out of an elected Republican this week.

[Cross-posted on Creative Destruction, where the moderation is lighter.]

(Normally I try to avoid blatantly partisan blogging, but I was in a mood when I wrote this, I guess.)

So What Does Ann Coulter Stand For? Does it stand for:

Another Noisy Neo-Con Offers Underhanded Lies & Tedious, Erroneous Rants.

Or perhaps:

Ann’s Neverending Nastiness, Cruelty, Offensive Utterances, & Lying Titillates Every Rightwinger.

Post your suggestions in this thread, but remember, no references to Ann’s body, supposed lack of femininity, etc. - let’s keep this a sexist-joke-free zone. (It’s her ideology we want to be making fun of!) Winner gets a color print of my sketch of Ann (that’s it to the right), with their own Anncronym used as the drawing’s caption. (Of course, if there aren’t any submissions I like better than my two suggestions, then I’m the winner.)

Oh, and a curtsy to Piny for the word Anncronym.

(Cross posted on Creative Destruction).

It’s hard to say whether or not the use of ‘hug the tar baby’ in Press Secretary Tony Snow’s first conference had any hidden racial significance or if he genuinely felt that the racist historical significance of the word was unimportant (well maybe not, but I’m trying to be generous here people). What isn’t hard is to see that Mr. Snow’s use of such language is the epitome of what people are talking about when they say ‘privilege’.

Having said that, I don’t want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program… the alleged program, the existence of which I can neither confirm or deny.

First lets look at the etymology of ‘tar baby’. I decided to do a bit of informal ‘research’, which means not extensive, but did consist of about 3 or 4 hours of looking up every possible twist on the phrase and words to get all references I possibly could from the Internet. It seems that many feel it was initially a reference to dark skinned first generation slaves, most recognize it most easily by the late 1800’s story by Joel Chandler Harris of Uncle Remus and the Br’er rabbit series. In one particularly good academic critique of the stories, I found a really interesting interpretation which surfaced regularly in my search, but none so eloquently as by Julie Zbeda:

This story suggests that Br’er Rabbit has dual sides as both the victim and the aggressor. He also has a prideful nature as is shown when he refers to himself as “respectable” in comparison towards the tar baby. As racial and moral characterization is a big part of the Br’er Rabbit stories, the relationship between Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby may represent the subtleties of race relations, in which the tar baby is like a Sambo - an uneducated slave who is mentally bound to slavery as well as physically bound - the ideal creation of Br’er Fox, who represents the slave owner. This also poses the question of who is the dominant and who is the subordinate. Although Br’er Rabbit thought himself higher in the social order than the tar baby, when he gets stuck in the tar, he is at the mercy of the tar baby and its creator, Br’er Fox. This represents a warning for what happens when a position of authority is assumed by a slave in a society where it is not permitted. This tale functions as a commentary of plantation culture in regards to the conflicts between the slave and the master, and between the slaves themselves.

The fact is, most people understand that words can have many meanings (despite tar baby having questionable racist connotations to its very etymology) and can change significantly in different contexts. The question then becomes, is the need to use a word or phrase so crucial to making your point that no other word or phrase will do. In a great thread on the Democratic Underground, Fishwax summed it up pretty well by first addressing that Joel Chandler Harris had actually admitted in his introduction that the stories were done in partial defense of slavery, and that ultimately context does matter:

I think one of the chief flaws of the “outrage at the outrage” in this case is that it relies on a belief that context obliterates connotation. People have appealed to Tony’s context of use as if it were 100 percent conclusive, the final word. But context is most useful for determining denotative meaning. Connotative associations extend beyond the specific topical context of the conversation.

I read that and it really hit home for me. Why would the press secretary for the President of the United States be incapable of seeing if nothing else, that particular reference might cause discomfort. The answer for me was pretty clear - white privilege is about being shielded from discomfort and racism that isn’t experienced by them. I guess it’s hard for a middle-aged white man who lives a comfortable and cushy life to relate to why references that have had racially negative origins might bother some people. It’s also a pretty glaring example of cognitive dissonance. And really, it’s a pretty big stretch to call it necessary or defensible.

Here’s a few other questionable points about Mr. Snow’s history when it comes to the issue of racism and the need for sensitivity to other races and cultures:

The O’Reilly Factor on June 30th, 2005: Snow said that calling racism and poverty systemic is “making excuses” for cultural problems in the U.S. rather than trying to understand the situation of the poor. “When you say systemic, it sounds like you’re trying to make excuses…in other words, it sounds like you’re giving people a copout.”

Fox News, Sunday, October 30th, 1998: Snow said, “I love Thanksgiving. It is the least politically correct of all our holidays. It celebrates the old-fashioned bourgeois family. It praises God, who’s creator non grata in most of our public schools, and it bespeaks our national faith in higher truths and greater goods, as well as in our neighbors and ourselves.”

Chicago Tribune, November 20th, 1991: As a White House speechwriter Tony Snow defended former KKK leader David Duke, saying, “Duke is talking about things people really care about: high taxes, crummy schools, crime-ridden streets, welfare dependency, equal opportunity. A lot of politicians aren’t talking about these things.”

Fox News, Sunday, October 5th, 2003: Snow spoke about Rush Limbaugh’s controversial comments that Donovan McNabb was overrated and that reporters are disposed towards black quarterbacks. “The comment wasn’t racist,” Snow said, “but that did not stop political opportunists from accusing Rush of bias.” Snow added, “Racism isn’t that big a deal anymore.”

Stormfront Article, December 31, 1999: An article written by Tony Snow with a debunking theory of Kwanzaa for Stormfront that is archived on Martinlutherking.org. The site itself is worth looking at to get a better understanding of who Mr. Snow has worked for and with in the past - it’s a Martin Luther King hate site and that is littered with examples like this (please keep in mind this quote is not from Snow):

The political affiliations of Martin Luther King that Sen. Jesse Helms so courageously exposed are thus only pointers to the real danger that the King holiday represents. The logical meaning of the holiday is the ultimate destruction of the American Republic as it has been conceived and defined throughout our history, and until the charter for revolution that it represents is repealed, we can expect only further installations of the destruction and dispossession it promises.

And to finish this rather winding ramble of mine off, I found this quote from the Stormfront.org forums in defense of Tony Snow:

Anyone in the newsmedia who attempts to give a fair balanced presentation on the White Nationalist movement can expect to be slammed by the powers-that-be. We all know who those powers are and no elaboration is needed.

So while Tony Snow and the hill might feel comfortable in blithely brushing off the elephant in the room, I’m just sayin’….

The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page splinters even further from reality:

…In one of the most absurd legal decisions in modern times, the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the voucher program violated the “uniformity clause” of the state constitution guaranteeing a high-quality system of public schools. Because the performance of the voucher kids was superior to those in public schools, the court ruled that education was not uniform — or in this case not uniformly miserable. As they used to say in the Soviet Union, everyone gets to share their poverty equally.

(I found this through Protein Wisdom, where the above passage is quoted approvingly).

Whenever a conservative says something unbelievable has occurred, it’s a good idea to do some fact-checking before you say “holy shit!” About a minute of googling turned up the Florida Supreme Court decision in question (pdf file). The Florida Constitution mandates that a uniform system of public schools be provided by the government. Until that passage in the Florida Constitution is amended, the legislature doesn’t have any authority to take money from public schools and give it to private schools, especially when those private schools are free of the constitutionally-required uniform regulations public schools are subject to.

People can disagree with the Court’s decision. But no honest person can agree with The Wall Street Journal’s claim that the Florida Court’s ruled that educational outcomes must be “uniformly miserable.” Not a word of the Court’s decision referred to different outcomes; the Journal op-ed writer made up that ridiculous claim.

The trouble is, a lie travels around the world twice before the truth even gets its pants on. (Who did I swipe that from?) The right-wing attack on the judiciary doesn’t need to be truthful to be effective.

Crossposted on Creative Destruction. Comments on “Alas” are moderated, so if you’re having trouble getting your post to appear here, use the Creative Destruction link instead.

I saw this posting from pandagon today regarding Jasmyne Cannick’s article against immigration reform. I had to write something in response to it because I am deeply offended by her words as a black women and as a lesbian.

Jasmyne writes:

It’s a slap in the face to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people to take up the debate on whether to give people who are in this country illegally additional rights when we haven’t even given the people who are here legally all of their rights.

This reminds me of how some black “leaders” said it was a slap in the face to the civil rights movement to be equated with the gay rights movement. I am sorry Jasmyne, but the oppression olympics are played out and get us nowhere in our goals of civil rights for all oppressed people. I agree that we haven’t given all of the people in this country the same rights, but what makes the struggles of gays and lesbians more important than the struggles of immigrants? Nothing does.

While I know no one wants to be viewed as a racist when it comes to immigration reform, as a lesbian I don’t want to move to the back of the bus to accommodate those who broke the law to be here. After all, immigrants aren’t the only ones who want a shot at the American dream.

While I agree that immigration reform is an important issue and perhaps it could become the next leading civil rights movement we haven’t even finished with our current civil rights movement. Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts got it right when he said, “There is no moving to the front of the line.” Immigration reform needs to get in line behind the LGBT civil rights movement, which has not yet realized all of its goals.

Excuse me? Did it ever occur to her that just because it is a law doesn’t make it right? Slavery was legal for over 200 years–did that make it right? Of course not. In fact, it was only up until recently (2003) that a number of anti-homosexual laws were repealed that de-criminalized the personal sexual relationships of homosexuals–which were the anti-sodomy laws. When she was having sex with other women, it was illegal. And if she has sex with a member of the military, it is still seen as illegal and could place her in prison for up to 15 years.

Immigration and immigrant rights are a part of the civil rights movement. Does she not know of any bi-national couples? Does she not know of any queer immigrants? She lives in Los Angeles, a diverse metropolis, therefore I find this highly impossible–unless she only interacts with queer U.S. citizens. And, since she uses racialized rhetoric (back of the bus) she implies that the civil rights movement that grew out of the desires of both blacks and whites to provide equal rights for blacks has successfully finished. She says this at the same time the majority of people in prison are black, where a large number of us are living in abject poverty, where the majority of blacks are living with HIV/AIDS–but i guess, since we got to move out from the back of the bus, everything is a-ok. Hearing this from a black lesbian is appalling.

Which is not to say that I don’t recognize the plight of illegal immigrants. I do. But I didn’t break the law to come into this country.

As a black American born lesbian, you are descendants of slaves. Of course you didn’t have to “break the law” to come here, your ancestors were already brought here against their will. But what about those of us queers or even non-queers who do not have the privilege of being born here in the United States?

Both Senator Kennedy and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas backed away from insisting that guest workers would have to leave the United States after their initial two-year visa expired, basically guaranteeing that immigrant families wouldn’t be separated.

Who actually believes that this country holds the best interests of immigrant families at the center of the guest worker legislature. The guest workers would have to leave because the United States government does not want them to stay here. If they stayed, the government would be responsible for them financially and politically, where a number of laws would have to change to accommodate these new citizens, extended stay nationals, or whatever else they would be deemed as. Our country would be responsible for treating them like human beings and not the underpaid, disposable and worthless contractors the government wants them to be portrayed as.

Cannick’s words are xenophobic and reek of right wing conservatism that deploys the rhetoric of “illegal” and “broke the law” to imply that immigrants are complicit with crime and therefore pose a threat to our rights. I find this highly problematic coming from a person of color who so-called advocates for the civil rights of oppressed people. It doesn’t surprise me that a magazine like the Advocate (a very white and very conservative magazine) published her article.

Jasmyne, what is a crime is the fact that other black women like you and me, are surviving and struggling, just as much as immigants–documented or not. What is not a crime is having immigrants demonstrate their desire for civil rights, just as it is not a crime for gays/lesbians/sgl’s to demonstrate our desires for civil rights.

For obvious reasons, this new ban that will be going into effect in July in South Dakota has caught my eye - that isn’t to say it won’t be splashed all over the news by tomorrow (or it should be, in a sane world!). While of course most of us knew that this ban and others like it would become common place in the near future, it never really prepares us for the reality. Or it doesn’t prepare me, at the very least. So here it is, the first fairly comprehensive ban signed into law by Governor Mike Rounds, signed Monday aimed at challenging the 1973 Supreme court decision.

In defense of his position, CNN quoted Governor Rounds as saying:

“In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society,” said a statement released by Rounds, a Republican.
“The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society. I agree with them.”

The ban itself can only be described as extremist, going so far as to ban abortions in all cases except for medical necessities. Cases of incest and rape are not included in the exceptions:

The bill signed by Rounds allows doctors to perform abortions only to save the lives of pregnant women, but even then encourages them to exercise “reasonable medical efforts” to both save mothers and continue pregnancies.

Anyone who performs an abortion under any other circumstance — even in a case of rape or incest — can be charged with a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The mother cannot be charged.

As can be expected, both Naral and Planned Parenthood have spoken out quick and harsh against this new law, and are rallying for support to keep this from happening in other states. Nancy Keenan, president of Naral had this to say earlier:

“Governor Rounds’ signing of this bill should spur all Americans to let their governors know that they oppose egregious actions that threaten a woman’s reproductive freedom. This law is a monumental setback for women in South Dakota and across the country. This ban contains no exceptions for women who are rape or incest victims, or whose health is threatened, and has an inadequate exception to protect a woman’s life.”

“Since the South Dakota Legislature first passed this abortion ban, pro-choice Americans have reacted with a renewed commitment to protect a woman’s right to choose. They are right to be concerned because this is not an isolated case. Anti-choice politicians in 11 other states are pushing similar bans. President Bush has created a climate with his judicial appointments in which anti-choice lawmakers feel emboldened to attack Roe v. Wade. Americans don’t want to see this landmark decision overturned, and President Bush and his anti-choice allies will pay a political price for advancing such an out-of-the mainstream agenda.”

If you’re ugly, it’s because you’re a bad, bad person.

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From a fundraising letter sent me last month by the “College Republican National Committee”:

These [anti-war] protests are being led by liberal professors leftover from the 1960’s… the same professors who fail students for simply expressing their support of President Bush and our troops!

Not that I think that Republicans leaders are liars, but does anyone know if there is any credible evidence to support the claim that there is a pattern of many leftist professors acting in this manner?

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