Jon Zerolnick: Reportedly, some of the negative effects of marijuana use are paranoia, magical thinking and faulty decision-making. Who, today, is exhibiting those symptoms? Just sayin’.
Purpose Driven Lies and Gender Equality
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Tina Dupuy: Both Arizona and Kansas are considering bills giving your doctor the legal authority to withhold potentially crucial information about your health and, in this case, your child’s.
An Open Letter to the GOP: Transvaginally Speaking
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Carl Matthes: I would suggest Mr. Trudeau take us even further down the path of lunacy by composing strips showing similar compulsory exams for men! After all, men are half of the pregnancy equation.
Joint Etiquette Beyond “Don’t You Bogart That Joint My Friend . . .”
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Scott Prosterman: Why not legal marijuana California? Because this state is rife with reactionary forces, and the focus of the Justice Department’s get tough policy.
10 Most This Week Led by Julie Driscoll’s Take on the Komen Trainwreck
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ulie Driscoll’s look at the long-term effects of the Komen Foundation’s ill-advised decision to strip its funding for Planned Parenthood for what were rather obviously political reasons, led this week’s LA Progressive 10 Most Read articles list.
God’s Body, God’s Plan: The Komen Foundation Furor and Abortion as Black/Latino “Genocide”
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Religious Right charlatans who preach an anti-government mantra are vociferously opposed to progressive health care, birth control, foster care and school discipline policies, as well as to repealing racist sentencing laws and prisoner reentry policies.
On Komen, Progressives Were Looking the Other Way
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Julie Driscoll: We trusted Komen to have the best interests of women at heart, until the “best interests of women” Komen had previously played up turned out to be denying poor women much-needed breast cancer screenings.
Jackie Speier Drops Breast Cancer Foundation Support
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Tanya Somanader: Wednesday, America’s most well-known breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen succumbed to right-wing pressure and ended its partnership with Planned Parenthood, causing Rep. Jackie Speier to drop her support.
Republicans Ramp Up War on Women
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Tanya Somanader: Republicans in Congress and across the country are introducing a variety pack of extreme anti-abortion bills — including personhood initiatives, heartbeat bills, and fetal pain bills — that saw some success last year.
Ohio’s “Heartbeat” Bill: A Flagrant Violation of Roe v. Wade
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Julie Driscoll: It’s mind-blowing in the extreme that states – such as Ohio, Mississippi before it, Kansas, Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma and others – believe they can just do the big blow-off of Roe v. Wade and strip women of rights that are guaranteed under federal law.
Ohio’s “Heartbeat” Bill: A Flagrant Violation of Roe v. Wade
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Julie Driscoll: It’s mind-blowing in the extreme that states – such as Ohio, Mississippi before it, Kansas, Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma and others – believe they can just do the big blow-off of Roe v. Wade and strip women of rights that are guaranteed under federal law.
Friday Feedback: Medical Marijuana a Mistake?
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Friday Feedback: This week Jack and Dusty comment on Kevin Sabet’s “The Case Against Medical Marijuana.” Maybe marijuana doesn’t lead to other drug use, but permissive attitudes in society DO lead to more drug use, and legalizing pot is absolutely a step along that path.
The Case Against Medical Marijuana
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Kevin Sabet: But smoked marijuana is not medicine, and it is not based on science. Anyone living with smoked medical marijuana in their state knows that it has turned into a sad joke.
Death Penalty: R.I.P. Paul Rhoades
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Andy Love: In a sworn statement in support of clemency, a psychiatrist noted that “Rhoades’ genetic and social history created a perfect storm of risk factors for drug addiction.”
It’s Still “Magic” 20 Years Later
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Anthony Samad: Few have followed his lead on inner city investment, but many have followed his lead in living two decades with HIV.
The Christian Fascists’ Personhood Campaign
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Ever immune to morality, reason, church-state separation precedents and an understanding of the basic laws of biology, the most flat earth reactionary segment of the pro-death anti-choice movement wants to circumvent constitutional protections for abortion by conferring personhood on fertilized eggs.
UN Ducks Blame for Haiti’s Dying Cholera Victims
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Ezili Danto: Are we Haitians simply not supposed to notice the stark reality that it’s not the white population, the tourists nor the UN folks who are suffering a mass loss of life due to the imported cholera germ to Haiti? But the poorest Black woman’s children, that is, the masses in Haiti?
The Great Health Care Takeaway
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Shamus Cooke: Most workers now understand that there is a difference between apparently having health care and actually having health care: if you are technically “insured” but cannot afford doctor visits due to high deductibles and co-pays, you really aren’t insured.
Toxic Lead to Cover Iowa Killing Fields
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Brasch: If hunters are conservationists as they say they are, they should be the first to stand up and say they won’t poison wildlife or the ecosystem.
California’s Dangerous Docs Undisciplined
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Marian Wang: More than 700 doctors in California sanctioned for wrongdoing by hospitals and other health care organizations haven’t faced any disciplinary action from the California medical board.
Did Beer End Minnesota’s State Shutdown?
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Christine Sismondo: It was not the 22,000 furloughed state employees, the shuttered state parks, or the closed motor vehicle bureaus that finally brought the reality of the shutdown home to many state residents—it was the specter of unavailable beer, wine, and spirits.
Vaccinations and the Ice Cream Scare
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Tina Dupuy: Not getting immunizations is treated like a religious rite. We’re afraid to offend those who have faith in not inoculating their kids to allegedly save them from autism. Which means vintage viruses are in again.
Bad “Bitches”, True Women
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Sikivu Hutchinson: As Middle America shuffles out of its hangover from the Casey Anthony trial and into the debt ceiling morass, the war on women has been fueled by an insidious 21st century cult of true womanhood.
Dangerous Distortions: Anti-Abortion Fascists and Third World Allies
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Sikivu Hutchinson and Diane Arellano: As with the abortion-as-black-genocide billboards unleashed by the far right Radiance Foundation, the Latino billboards evoke reductive hyper-religious narratives of sinning promiscuous bad women and “breeder” good women.
Doctors and Science
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Steve Hochstadt: When it comes to global warming, thus far the public is like a teenager who hears that tanning booths will produce skin cancer much later in life: I’ll worry about that later.
New Food Safety Threat Emerges
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Marian Wang: Also unclear is whether the federal agencies in charge of changing the food safety system will be adequately funded. Republican proposals to cut the FDA’s budget and the USDA’s inspection budget could cut into efforts to update the system.
A ‘To Do’ List for US Troops Now Arriving in Haiti
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Georgianne Nienaber: If indeed the US troops are in the country for “humanitarian reasons” as Ambassador Merten insists, there is plenty for them to do before the hurricane season begins.
Defending ‘Our Mother’s Gardens’
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Whenever a rape case becomes high profile, the inevitable questions about the victim’s reputation, race, whereabouts, and alleged complicity in the assault are trotted out.
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Friday Feedback: “What Occupy Wall Street Can Learn from the Tea Party”
This week, Ray Bishop comments on John Peeler’s article, “What Occupy Wall Street Can Learn from the Tea Party.” Ray says, “If the power structure attempts to. . .