One Utah

The anti-abortion crowd has been, for a very long time, very quietly anti-contraception. Arguments against contraception range from the ludicrous (use of contraception leads to abortion) to the medically inaccurate (chemical contraception is actually a form of chemical abortion). Since 98% of American women will use contraception during their lives, arguing against it [...]

PZ Myers reports receiving:
somewhere well above 12,000 hate mail messages from religious people, mostly Catholic; two reasonable messages from Catholics who said that while they are unshaken in their faith, they approve of my opposition to cracker idolatry; and zero comments of any kind from admitted Muslims.

Sam Harris, in The End of Faith [...]

For a long time now, the ridiculous right has been ginning up pointless controversies over claims that religious people have the right to refuse to do their jobs on the basis of their faith.
From Rob Boston, at Talk to Action:
Stories abound in the media of “pro-life pharmacists” who refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions and Muslim [...]

Easter this year is the earliest easter since 1913.  Easter won’t be this early again for something like two centuries.  What that means is that we are nearing the end of Holy Week.  Holy Week is not an easy journey; it is a journey from Palm Sunday into the Passion; a journey from celebration to brutality [...]

Rebecca Walsh is rapidly becoming my favorite local newsperson.  Her article in today’s Trib is yet another perfect example of her ability to accurately record the seriously messed up politics of Utah.
Walsh writes:
As is so often the case, Salt Lake City is acting out, testing the bounds of this big conservative family we like to [...]

Someone in the State Senate should make sure he’s on his medication. I mean seriously, he’s an embarrassment - that someone this monumentally stupid keeps getting elected should give pause to the voters in his district.
From today’s Trib:
“I’m for the concept of the bill, but we don’t want outside organizations coming into schools [...]

I am so pleased with my response to Ken on McCain, I thought I would top post it if only to shake things up around here.
What you are seeing Ken is Republican Buyer’s Remorse for Bush. You see, Bush — being the worst fuckup in the history of America — has virtually ended any chance [...]

Via Feministing, I see a great article  by Sara Robinson about the changing dynamics of abortion. 
The gist of the article concerns the way in which medical termination of unwanted pregnancies (i.e. RU-486) is changing the way in which women receive and experience abortions, and is changing the locus of control over reproductive freedom - namely moving [...]

The conversation taking place over at the D-news is so illustrative of everything that’s wrong with Utah’s public and political culture I can’t let it go.  There’s a sense of entitlement among the Mormons that their morals are clearly correct and should unquestionably be reinforced by the laws and everyone who differs is a miscreant.  [...]

A group of coworkers and I were mocking George W. Bush.  Another coworker tried to defend him saying “Things are better than under Clinton!  He’s doing better than Clinton.”  Let’s just say that there was a level of jeering I haven’t heard for a long time. 
People started shouting out a list of things that were worse under [...]

No. This has been another edition of easy answers to simple questions.

From this week’s schadenfreude files comes the long suppressed news of Idaho Senator Larry Craig’s (Republican, of course) arrest for lewd behavior in an airport bathroom in Minnesota. He entered a guilty plea.
The residents of the blogistan are, unsurprisingly, all over this story. Craig (R - His Own Private Idaho) is yet [...]