Author Archives: JosetteSeely
The Leaking Wars Have Begun Over Hillary Clinton’s FBI File
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
From the New York Times on Thursday:
Pressed by the F.B.I. about her email practices at the State Department, Hillary Clinton told investigators that former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had advised her to use a personal email account. The account is included in the notes the Federal Bureau of Investigation handed over to Congress on Tuesday, relaying in detail the three-and-a-half-hour interview with Mrs. Clinton in early July that led to the decision by James B. Comey, the bureau’s director, not to pursue criminal charges against her.
Well, that didn’t take long. Should we assume that basically everything in the FBI file is going to be steadily leaked to the press? Magic 8-Ball says “Signs point to yes.”
And I don’t even know which side leaked this. Democrats who figured it justified Hillary’s behavior? Republicans trying to make it look like Hillary is passing the buck? Hard to say. At this point, though, Congress might as well just release the entire package. Whatever’s in it, we’re better off getting the whole thing instead of periodic leaks strategically taken out of context to make Hillary look either good or bad.
Link:
Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta
Tagged democrats, department, federal, hillary, hillary-clinton, interview, investigation, kevin drum, public, pur
Comments Off on The Leaking Wars Have Begun Over Hillary Clinton’s FBI File
Marijuana is legal in Colorado, but rain barrels still are not
Marijuana is legal in Colorado, but rain barrels still are not
By Katie Herzogon 25 Mar 2016commentsShare
While it’s perfectly legal for Colorado residents to sit around in their soft pants with one hand wrapped around a bong and the other in a Cheetos bag, there’s one surprising thing that could get them in trouble with the law: rain barrels.
Colorado is the only state in the nation that bans the use of rain barrels. According to the state constitution, all moisture that falls from the sky and into Colorado’s borders is owned by the “people” — which really means it’s owned by the state. Water is allocated according to a complicated web of water rights. All of the rain and snow that fall into residents’ yards must be allowed to flow unimpeded into waterways, for instance, where it then becomes the property of whoever owns the rights — generally ranchers, farmers, drinking water providers, and developers. This system goes back more than a century, and rights are granted based on claim date: The longer you’ve had a claim, the higher priority it gets.
As you may imagine, the rain barrel ban is unpopular among those without water rights — namely, people who would like to store snowmelt or rainwater and use it to water their gardens or even flush their toilets. And the issue has become increasingly contentious as drought in Western states has made water an even more precious — and limited — resource.
There have been many attempts to reform Colorado’s water laws in the statehouse, but none have passed. The latest attempt is proposed by Democratic state Rep. Jessie Danielson, who is sponsoring a bill that would permit Colorado residents to collect up to 110 gallons at a time, or two barrels’ worth. “If I can shovel snow off from my sidewalk and put it on my lawn, why can’t I use a rain barrel to take it from my sidewalk to put on my tomato plants?” Danielson asked during an interview with CBS Denver.
It’s a good question, but one that may not be resolved anytime soon. Although the bill passed in the state House by 61 to 3, it has stalled in the GOP-controlled Senate. One of the strongest opponents of the bill, as ThinkProgress reports, is Republican Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, whose district is home to farmers and ranchers concerned that rain barrels would reduce their own share of water. “It’s like growing flowers,” Sonnenberg said last year about rain barrels. “You can’t go over and pick your neighbors’ flowers just because you’re only picking a few. They’re not your flowers.”
The irony here is that research shows that rain barrels actually don’t affect the amount of water that will reach streams and rivers by any detectable level. Most rain is absorbed into the land before it reaches waterways anyway. Time to flush away some out-of-date thinking.
Please
to view the comments.
Find this article interesting?
Donate now to support our work.
Get Grist in your inbox
Original post:
Marijuana is legal in Colorado, but rain barrels still are not
Arkansas Will Force Doctors To Tell Women Abortions Can Be "Reversed"
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
As conservative lawmakers pass a record number of anti-abortion laws, it is staggering to consider how many require doctors to tell patients information that has no basis in science. Five states now require abortion providers to inform women about a bogus link between abortion and breast cancer. Several states mandate that doctors say ending a pregnancy can lead to mental health conditions like clinical depression—another falsehood, in the eyes of most mainstream medical groups.
Now there’s a new crop of legislation to add this list: laws forcing doctors to tell women planning to take abortion-inducing drugs that they may be able to change their minds mid-treatment.
On Monday, Arkansas became the second state to pass such a law, just over a week after Arizona’s Republican governor signed a similar measure. A spokeswoman for Americans United for Life, the legal arm of the anti-abortion movement, confirmed that both laws are based on the group’s model legislation.
Critics have slammed these bills as propagating a lie based on “junk science.” According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), “Claims of medication abortion reversal are not supported by the body of scientific evidence.”
Americans United for Life has not only backed the bills, but has enthusiastically endorsed a new procedure pioneered by George Delgado, a pro-life doctor who claims to have reversed abortions.
Most drug-induced abortions require two pills taken a few days apart. The initial dose, of mifepristone, blocks the progesterone hormones that help sustain the pregnancy. The second dose, of misopristol, causes contractions that flush out the pregnancy. Delgado says he’s stopped abortions by injecting supplemental progesterone between the two rounds of medicine. The evidence backing his discovery, however, is incredibly thin. As Olga Khazan writes for The Atlantic:
Women who only take the first pill already have a 30 to 50 percent chance of continuing their pregnancy normally, according to ACOG. The progesterone advice is based on a study by Delgado in which he analyzed six case studies of patients who regretted their abortions and were given progesterone. Four out of the six patients went on to deliver healthy infants. In other words, the limited evidence we have suggests that taking progesterone does not appear to improve the odds of fetal survival by much. The abortion pill binds more tightly to progesterone receptors than progesterone itself does, one reproductive researcher told Iowa Public Radio, and thus the hormone surge is unlikely to do much of anything.
As Cheryl Chastine, an abortion provider at South Wind Women’s Center in Kansas, put it recently, “Even if these doctors were to offer a large dose of purple Skittles, they’d appear to have ‘worked’ to ‘save’ the pregnancy about half the time.”
That’s why, on the small chance that a woman does regret her abortion midway through, ACOG-affiliated doctors say they would simply tell her not to take the second pill.
The injections might not only be useless—large doses of progesterone can actually be dangerous: “There can be cardiovascular side effects, glucose tolerance issues, it can cause problems with depression in people who already had it,” Ilana Addis, a gynecologist who opposed the Arizona measure, told The Atlantic. “And there are more annoying things, like bloating, fatigue, that kind of stuff. It’s an unpleasant drug to take.”
The new Arkansas law requires the state’s health department to write up information on abortion reversal for doctors to make available to patients, and it’s not yet clear if the health department will promote Delgado’s specific method. Meanwhile, Arkansas Right to Life is already promoting the services of doctors who are “trained to effectively reverse” abortions, and more than 200 physicians around the country have told pro-life groups that they are willing to conduct the procedure.
See original article:
Arkansas Will Force Doctors To Tell Women Abortions Can Be "Reversed"
Hobby Lobby’s Hypocrisy, Part 2: Its Retirement Plan STILL Invests in Contraception Manufacturers
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
When Obamacare compelled Hobby Lobby to buy employee health insurance plans that covered emergency contraception, the Green family, who own the national chain of craft stores, fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court. So what happened when Mother Jones reported that Hobby Lobby contributed millions of dollars to employee retirement plans with stock in companies that make emergency contraception?
According to Hobby Lobby president Steve Green, nothing.
That revelation came on Friday, when MSNBC reporter Irin Carmon published parts of an interview with Green, whose Supreme Court case resulted in the partial dismantling of Obamacare’s contraception mandate.
Carmon asked Green for his response to the Mother Jones report, which noted that Hobby Lobby’s employee retirement plans had stock holdings in companies manufacturing the very drugs and devices at the center of the Supreme Court case: PlanB, Ella, and two types of intrauterine devices. Green doesn’t often speak to the press, so it was the first time he had publicly responded to this information since I first reported it in early April.
In the interview with Carmon, Green dismissed the idea that it mattered where his employee’s 401(k) plans had indirect investments, telling her it was “several steps removed.”
Of course, the Greens were also several steps removed from any emergency contraception Hobby Lobby’s female employees may or may not have obtained through the company’s insurance plan. And as I pointed out in April, divestment from certain companies does matter to many Christian business owners, who have fueled a cottage industry of mutual funds that screen for morally objectionable stocks.
But Green indicates he wasn’t troubled enough by Mother Jones‘ report to investigate for himself or make any changes to Hobby Lobby’s employee retirement plan:
Whether they do or not invest in these drugs and devices, I couldn’t confirm or deny it. I don’t know if it’s even true. Of course, the other question I would ask is, do those companies also provide a lot of life-saving products that our employees are dependent on? I don’t know that either. But we’ve not made any changes.
Carmon also confronted Green with the overwhelming scientific evidence that using emergency contraception does not cause abortions. The Greens’ contention that emergency contraception was a form of abortion was key to their argument that Obamacare violated their free exercise of religion. Read Carmon’s whole story here.
Original source:
Hobby Lobby’s Hypocrisy, Part 2: Its Retirement Plan STILL Invests in Contraception Manufacturers
Watch Barack Obama & Joel McHale Make Jokes at the 2014 White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was tonight. President Obama told some jokes. Joel McHale told some jokes. None of these jokes were terribly funny, I thought. They weren’t awful, but they weren’t great. McHale sort of “went after” the Beltway types in the room (a la Colbert), which was neat, but I don’t think the jokes themselves were very funny. But who knows, really. Maybe they were? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not in the right mood.
Here are the videos. Decide for yourself.
Obama:
McHale:
I’m genuinely curious what other people thought. Yay/Nay? Let me know in the comments.
Also, if Obama and McHale didn’t do it for you, here’s the funniest standup ever, Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill:
Read original article:
Watch Barack Obama & Joel McHale Make Jokes at the 2014 White House Correspondents’ Dinner
