Headlines - Thursday September 13

 

 

###

 

I wish there was something written down in our founding documents which prohibited religious law. Ugh... if only. Oh wait...

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...."

 

###

 

Ann Romney Says Mitt's Been "Demonized," Barack Obama Laughs His Balls Off

 

###

 

AP paints a devastating portrait of a man, Mitt Romney, who jumped the gun, didn't care that he was wrong, and whose staff was giddy that Americans were under attack abroad - while Americans saw death, Team Romney smelled "opportunity."

 

####

 

So the guy that produced the anti-Muslim film is a Coptic Christian convicted of bank fraud and the guy distributing/promoting the film is Quran-burning Pastor Terry Jones. I'm tired of religion and the hell on earth it creates.

 

###

 

I'm depressed.

I mean it. I'm just fucking depressed. Not about life in general, as my life and my family and my dogs and my friends are all fine, but I'm just depressed at how fucking stupid everything is these days. This is the dumbest, most venal, most ridiculous campaign season I remember living through. It's dumber than even the PUMA's or the Halperinesque 2008 tendency to tell us that everything wwas good news for McCain. It really says something that this campaign season is dumber WITHOUT Sarah Palin. It's just hideous, and literally every time I check the headlines of any news outlet I want to swallow the barrel of a shotgun while hanging myself in the basement with a belly full of oxycodone and vodka. Keep reading here.

###

Jurassicpork: In the ultimate scumbag move, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney waited until just after midnight on September 11th to take the podium to blast the Obama administration, unfairly and untruthfully, for supporting the very same people who attacked us. It was yet another bloody, quivering chunk of red meat thrown to the birther/Bircher faction engineered to more than suggest that Obama is a Muslim, after all, and that this is proof of his alleged pro-Muslim sentiments.

However, the only thing that was proven was that Mitt Romney is a racist, opportunistic right wing scumbag who was so proud of his timely political grandstanding that he'd actually smirked with satisfaction the second he turned his back on the podium.

In reality, Romney pretty much sealed the fate of his long-doomed campaign and thereby guaranteed he'll never get to be president of the United States after that stupendously sleazy move.

Because about the only person who's blameless in this affair is our president, who responded swiftly, decisively and in a very presidential manner, dispatching 50 additional Marines to Benghazi to better protect our remaining embassy staff.

This ought to be viewed as an object lesson as to the danger of pursuing agendas that are counter to world peace. This ought to be viewed as a cautionary tale as to the danger of the MSM literally phoning it in and not vetting stories told to them over the phone by right wing operatives and endangering (and costing) the lives of Americans and Israelis and Jews all over the world. This ought to be viewed as a morality tale as to the folly of exploiting a national tragedy on the anniversary of another national tragedy to score cheap political points and to do so with unforgivable disingenuousness.

But if humans had the capacity to learn from its worst mistakes, it wouldn't keep making the same ones over and over again.

###

The Missouri legislature has overridden Gov. Jan Nixon's (D) veto of a bill that would allow employers or health insurance providers to stop offering coverage for contraception, abortion, or sterilization if doing so violated their religious or moral convictions. Nixon had vetoed the legislation in July after it passed in May. The Missouri House voted 109-45 — the exact number of votes needed — to overturn Nixon's decision, and the Senate approved the override 26-6. The contraception measure was designed to push back against an Obamacare regulation requiring contraception coverage to be included in insurance plans at no additional cost. According to the Associated Press, Missouri has had a law since 2001 requiring contraception to be covered under pharmaceutical benefits.

###

Photos of the Day

###

Worst person in the world

Matt Drudge. Now and forever Matt Drudge.

Don't go to his site because his above-the-logo headline features a graphic photo of the dead body of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Drudge is an unforgivably horrid little man.

###

Although the Obamacare provision that requires employers to provide contraceptive services free of charge contains an exemption for religious organizations that believe birth control is against their beliefs, conservative Christian institutions continue to fight against it as a perceived affront to their religious liberty. Two prominent lawsuits brought against Obamacare's birth control mandate have already been dismissed, but that hasn't stopped an Oklahoma-based crafts supply chain from adding their own legal challenge to the law.

Hobby Lobby, a large chain of craft stores owned by conservative evangelical Christians, filed a federal lawsuit against the contraception mandate today, claiming they should have the right to deny coverage for emergency contraception to over 13,000 employees across 40 states. Hobby Lobby's owners, the Green family, claim the Obamacare requirement to provide employer-based coverage for that contraceptive service violates their freedom of religion and speech:

The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction prohibiting the enforcement of the mandate against the Green family and its businesses. [...]

"The Green family's religious beliefs forbid them from participating in, providing access to, paying for, training others to engage in, or otherwise supporting abortion-causing drugs and devices," the lawsuit said. "The administrative rule at issue in this case runs roughshod over the Green family's religious beliefs, and the beliefs of millions of other Americans, by forcing them to provide health insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and devices, as well as related education and counseling."

The Greens are using their own religious decision to avoid contraception to deny thousands of employees access to affordable birth control. They're also misleading in referring to emergency contraception as an "abortion-causing drug." The morning after pill does not terminate a pregnancy, but rather acts exactly as daily birth control pills do to prevent fertilization from occurring.

As President Obama put it in his own defense of the health law's birth control provision, "it is not fair" for religious employers to deny access to contraceptive services to their non-religious employees. But challenges to broaden Obamacare's existing exemption for religiously-based organizations — such as the anti-choice legislators in Missouri who are currently attempting to force a bill through the state legislature that would allow any employer, like the Green family, to deny contraception coverage for religious reasons — are moving the goalposts into dangerous territory.

###

Too bad Republicans demanded that DHS remove their report that warned of this very thing...

Four former Army soldiers and a civilian have been charged in new indictments for connections to an anti-government militia that authorities say was led by Fort Stewart troops who stockpiled weapons and talked of overthrowing the U.S. government and assassinating President Obama. The new indictments Monday bring to 10 the total number of people charged in connection with the militia group.