Its beach time. Hail the noble dolphins. Dolphins signal all is well. There are some amazing stories about dolphins rescuing people at sea.
Dolphin-human interactions are also interesting to read. Male dolphins have been known to get too aggressive with females who come in close contact.
Two days after Texas lawmaker Wendy Davis vaulted into the political spotlight for helping defeat a bill restricting abortion rights by staging an 11-hour-long filibuster, Gov. Rick Perry said it was unfortunate she had not learned that “every life matters,” given that she was the child of a single mother who went on to earn a Harvard law degree.
In a speech to nearly 1,000 delegates at the conference near Dallas, Mr. Perry struck hard at Ms. Davis, 50, asking the crowd, “Who are we to say that the children born in the worst of circumstances can’t grow to live successful lives?”
Then he cited Ms. Davis, as an example, saying she was the daughter of a “single mother. She was
a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas Senate.“It is just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters.”
Ms. Davis released a statement that said Mr. Perry’s statement was “without dignity and tarnishes the high office he holds. They are small words that reflect a dark and negative point of view. Our governor should reflect our Texas values. Sadly, Gov. Perry fails that test.”
How totally patronizing and inappropriate. I have rarely heard any remarks that judgemental. I can’t believe that any person in that room who personally witnessed Perry’s words wasn’t just mortified for him.
The contentious bipartisan effort to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws achieved a decisive victory Thursday when the Senate approved legislation that would allow millions of illegal immigrants the chance to live legally in the United States and to eventually become U.S. citizens.
The 1,200-page bill, which now faces a stern test in the Republican-controlled House, carries a $50 billion price tag. It would double the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents along the southern border and require the construction of 700 miles of fencing there. It also would place new burdens on employers, who would be required to check the legal status of all job applicants using the government’s E-Verify system.
Senators approved the plan 68 to 32, capping more than six months ofnegotiations that began behind closed doors and concluded with almost a month of debate on the Senate floor. Fourteen Republicans voted with every member of the Senate Democratic caucus to approve the bill — an impressive bipartisan margin in a chamber that has become sharply partisan.
It’s time for all this to stop. Women have a Constitutional right to abortion, as outlined in Roe v. Wade. Women have a Constitutional right to contraception as codified by Griswold v. Connecticut.
The people trumpeting the loudest are tea party enthusiasts. Perhaps they should pay a little more attention to cases that have been decided and codified using that very Constitution that they hold so near and dear. They can’t have it both ways.
Rick Perry and his gang of merry misogynists all need a good old fashioned Texas Ass-Whupping. When finished with them, the Ass-Whuppers can move north and take care of those miscreants who voted for HB 1797 which is also unConstitutional.
Stop the war on women. Make no mistake–it very much is a war on women. Saying it isn’t doesn’t make it so.
FYI–The notes in the Gynotician’s pocket read:
Let’s add one to his list since we live in Virginia. See above.
Wendy came close having her efforts twarted because of a “three strikes” rule. The Texas filabuster rules don’t allow more than one person, no substitutes, no stopping, even to go to the bathroom, no leaning and no going off topic, just to name a few of the requirements. The problems emerged when the republican lt. governor called strikes. According to the Washington Post:
Lieutenant Gov. David Dewhurst ruled that Davis has three times violated the Texas Senate’s procedural rules for a filibuster, which requires a senator to stand continually without assistance and remain on topic.
“There’s a three strikes, you’re out precedent in the Senate that allows senators two warnings about staying germane to the bill topic,” Texas Tribune reporter Becca Aaronson explains. “On the third strike, a simple majority of the Senate can vote to end debate and the senator must yield the floor.”
Same sex marriages can also resume in California.
The cases weren’t decided on gay rights but rather on equal justice under the law. There are only 1000 different benefits that go hand and hand with marriage.
The Supreme Court also decided that no one is harmed from same sex marriage.
Clarifications are on the way.
It is an historic day, for sure. Lawrence v. Texas was only decided ten years ago. Amazing.
TheHILL.com:
President Obama angrily blasted climate change skeptics during his energy policy speech Tuesday at Georgetown University, saying he lacked “patience for anyone who denies that this problem is real.”
“We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat-Earth society,” Obama said. “Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.”
Earlier in his remarks, Obama said the “overwhelming judgement of science, of chemistry, of physics, and millions of measurements” put “to rest” questions about pollution affecting the environment.
“The planet is warming. Human activity is contributing to it,” Obama said.“We know that the costs of these events can be measured in lost lives and lost livelihoods.”
The president noted that the 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come within the last 15 years, and said that rising temperatures were increasing the severity and impact of storms.
He noted that rising tide levels in New York increased the impact of Hurricane Sandy, while record temperatures killed crops and increased food prices in the Midwest.
“In a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by the warming planet,” Obama said.
“Those who are feeling the effects of climate change don’t have time to deny it — they’re busy dealing with it.”
RICHMOND — Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II filed an appeal Tuesday to the U.S. Supreme Court aimed at preserving Virginia’s anti-sodomy law.
Cuccinelli, a Republican running for governor, asked the court to overturn a March decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down the law, which had been used in 2005 to convict a 47-year-old man of soliciting oral sex from a 17-year-old girl.
The appeals court ruled that prosecutors could not use Virginia’s “Crimes Against Nature” statute to convict William Scott MacDonald because the Supreme Court had, in a landmark 2003 ruling, invalidated sodomy statutes that criminalize sexual activity between consenting adults. Virginia’s statute outlaws all acts of oral and anal sex.
Cuccinelli acknowledged that since the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision, the law cannot be used against consenting adults engaged in private sex acts. But he said the law remains a useful tool for prosecutors seeking to obtain felony convictions against sexual predators.
Help me understand something. Forcible intercourse is illegal. Why isn’t forcible sodomy? This is a stretch. Perhaps the criminal laws against forcible sex acts needs to be strengthened in addition to laws about sex with under-age individuals. If this case is about solicitation, then it’s about solicitation, not forcible sex acts. Details are mercifully sketchy.
Once again, Ken needs to get out of everyone’s bedroom. He doesn’t want to become known as the Sodomy Attorney General.
Washingtonpost.com: (Dana Milbank)
The associate justice, a George W. Bush appointee, read two opinions, both 5-4 decisions that split the court along its usual right-left divide. But Alito didn’t stop there. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, Alito visibly mocked his colleague.
Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, was making her argument about how the majority opinion made it easier for sexual harassment to occur in the workplace when Alito, seated immediately to Ginsburg’s left, shook his head from side to side in disagreement, rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling.
His treatment of the 80-year-old Ginsburg, 17 years his elder and with 13 years more seniority, was a curious display of judicial temperament or, more accurately, judicial intemperance. Typically, justices state their differences in words — and Alito, as it happens, had just spoken several hundred of his own from the bench. But he frequently supplements words with middle-school gestures.
Since some of the local blogs have decided to beat the idea of the County Logo to death, I have decided to beat the county seal to death. Why? Just look at it. When was the seal adopted?
Beating the logo to death
At first glance, it appears we have a white hand holding a scale over a marijuana plant. Now there’s a good model for all the kiddies. NOT! Are those scales for weighting out justice or are they for weighing out how much substance?
Actually, it is supposed to be a tobacco plant. I guess that makes it all better. When was tobacco last grown as a crop in Prince William County? Probably a lot longer ago than pot was last grown. How about a nice new county seal if we want something to fight over. County art students could compete and we could all vote on the final selections by mail. One house, one vote. Maybe we could even put it on the ballet for the state elections if we hurried along.
Meanwhile, the pot/tobacco plant needs to go. How about a logo that includes the battlefield? That is surely our biggest tourist attraction. putting the Bobbitts on the seal would just not be appropriate!
Does this seal seem inappropriate to you all or is it just me? Any ideas on another seal? Is the logo being beaten to death? Why is Pete Candland leading the charge of tilting at this windmill rather than John Jenkins who is the person who really voiced his opposition to the blue logo in the first place? Perhaps their efforts would be better spent replacing our pot plant county seal.
As a contemporary of Hillary, I can agree with her that The 60s were about much more than drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. Many of us made it through without going to Woodstock. There was a great deal of change as the Civil Rights Movement redefined society. Music changed us as a society and women took on new roles.
The status of women is still evolving. We still haven’t had a woman president. Women are still kept out of key decision-making situation. The past several years politically have highlighted how far we have come but also how far we really have to go. Often I found myself sucking air over some of the discussions that were being held in public. I couldn’t believe that in 2013 some of the issues were still amongst us.
What astounds you the most as far as how far women have not progressed? Think back to the past few years. What event just took your breath away?
Aerialist Nik Wallenda completed a tightrope walk that took him a quarter mile over the Little Colorado River Gorge in northeastern Arizona on Sunday.
Wallenda performed the stunt on a 2-inch-thick steel cable, 1,500 feet above the river on the Navajo Nation near the Grand Canyon. He took just more than 22 minutes, pausing and crouching twice as winds whipped around him and the rope swayed.
The 34-year-old Sarasota, Fla., resident is a seventh-generation high-wire artist and is part of the famous “Flying Wallendas” circus
family– a clan that is no stranger to death-defying feats.
Totally offensive. Since when do you have to belong to a church to be an American? Thomas Jefferson would roll over in his grave. There should be no test of religion to apply for US citizenship.
Whatever ignorant bureaucrat told this woman, Margaret Doughty, to join a church needs to be fired on the spot. How long before this group starts telling folks what church they have to belong to.
I very much believe that we also have freedom from religion. Somehow the word “unconstitutional” keeps rattling around in my brain.
Read more: Huffingtonpost.com
SAVANNAH, Ga. — The Food Network said Friday it’s dumping Paula Deen, barely an hour after the celebrity cook posted the first of two videotaped apologies online begging forgiveness from fans and critics troubled by her admission to having used racial slurs in the past.
The 66-year-old Savannah kitchen celebrity has been swamped in controversy since court documents filed this week revealed Deen told an attorney questioning her under oath last month that she has used the N-word. “Yes, of course,” Deen said, though she added, “It’s been a very long time.”
The Food Network, which made Deen a star with “Paula’s Home Cooking” in 2002 and later “Paula’s Home Cooking” in 2008, weighed in with a terse statement Friday afternoon.
Why celebrate the solstice? Cultures universally have had markers, holidays, and alignments – all related to the solstice.
It has been universal among humans to treasure this time of warmth and light.
For us in the modern world, the solstice is a time to recall the reverence and understanding that early people had for the sky. Some 5,000 years ago, people placed huge stones in a circle on a broad plain in what’s now England and aligned them with the June solstice sunrise.
We may never comprehend the full significance of Stonehenge. But we do know that knowledge of this sort wasn’t isolated to just one part of the world. Around the same time Stonehenge was being constructed in England, two great pyramids and then the Sphinx were built on Egyptian sands. If you stood at the Sphinx on the summer solstice and gazed toward the two pyramids, you’d see the sun set exactly between them.
Did you do anything special? Did today seem longer than any other day? Mine started off way too early. I am fortunate I can make up for lost sleep.
Time to get ready for the super moon this weekend.
