The disregard of women’s rights by Texans without uteruses

Sen. Davis' shoes.

Writing at the NY Times, Gail Collins pays appropriate tribute to the filibustering of Texas State Senator Wendy Davis:

There is an old saying that Texas is “heaven for men and dogs, but hell for women and oxen.” But the state’s history is chock-full of stories of female role models. Barbara Jordan. Ann Richards. In downtown Austin, there’s a statue of Angelina Eberly, heroine of the Texas Archives War of 1842, firing a cannon and looking about 7 feet tall.

I do not have nearly enough time to explain to you about the Archives War, although it’s an extremely interesting story. Right now we need to move on to State Senator Wendy Davis, whose 11-hour filibuster this week turned her into a national name brand.

“It was like a made-for-TV movie. I’ve been around the block, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood and the daughter of the former governor. 

Texas is a state with one of the nation’s highest teenage motherhood rates, where a majority of women who give birth are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. So, naturally, its political leaders have declared war against the right of women to choose whether or not they want to be pregnant. Funding for family planning has been slashed. This month, Gov. Rick Perry tried to pass a new law that would have shut down almost all the abortion clinics in the state, under the guise of expanded health and safety requirements.

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Rick Warren’s Disagreeable Positions on Same Sex Marriage, Judaism, and the Reproductive Rights of Women

I thought I’d never see the day when Huffington Post writer Bob Cesca would actually criticize the One, but get a load of this:

“This is about fighting back in the age of Obama.

‘“The maxim that's been most often tossed around this week to explain the Warren invitation has been: ‘We can disagree without being disagreeable.’ Some supporters of the president-elect's choice of invocation speaker have grappled onto this idea in the spirit of the Obama change message and used it as a blanket explanation for why we should embrace Rick Warren -- even though his more controversial remarks, by the way, are nothing if not ‘disagreeable.’

‘“It's important to underscore that this maxim, while repeated in the spirit of unity, also contains the word ‘disagree.’

““And it goes without saying that many of us vigorously disagree with Rick Warren's comments on same-sex marriage and abortion, not to mention his vocal condemnation to hell anyone who doesn't abandon their Judaism. But for whatever reason, we're expected to just go along with this one as if Warren were just another random pastor. We're expected to just suck it up and take it even though some of his public statements have denigrated millions of Americans. We're told by very serious people to grow up. You know, in the spirit of not being ‘disagreeable.’”

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Anti-Choice Group Attacks Newly Appointed Secretary of State Clinton

Cristina Page’s article, The Pro-Lie Movement Targets Hillary, is a must read on how extreme pro-lifers are already trying to undermine the leadership role newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is likely to take on human rights issues around the world.