Oppose Universal Healthcare? Catholic? Guess what - you need to pay more attention to the Pope! He has publicly stated his support for universal healthcare as a basic human right and believes supporting universal healthcare stems from years of tradition of christian social justice.

Now, this is not an endorsement of Obamacare, which is a specific means to go about achieving universal healthcare. It is just an acknowledgement that the goal is necessary.

This project does make you think, which was its goal. I’m not a big fan of an artist putting up signs that pretend to be sponsored by the government (it gets confusing and can distract people from the issue at hand) but it does evoke powerful emotions to do so.

I wonder what people 200 years from now will think of our society.

Well, that is certainly worrisome. He is on the Intelligence Committee, too, which means he really knows what he is talking about. We should be concerned.

This sort of thing is absolutely disgusting. It is terrible when anyone, anywhere is forced to have sex by another person, but for there to be a widespread and possibly growing community of pimps and enslavers in my own country makes me sick. This article from Vanity Fair looks at a recent investigation into sex trafficking which reveals much about the culture, the abuse, the close ties with drugs and domestic abuse, and the cynical “code of honor” among pimps.

I am a firm believer that you must understand a problem in order to fix it. I encourage all of you to take a look, learn what you can, and help find a way to stop these terrible crimes.

Our right to privacy is simultaneously one of the most important and tenuous rights we have. The government, ostensibly the steward of our rights, has incentive to encroach on several of the liberties we are granted in the Constitution, but this one in particular is an object they covet. They will say it is in the interest of security, that if we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to fear, but this is not true.

It doesn’t matter if you have anything shameful to hide or not. The right to disclose information about yourself, unless there is a clear, demonstrable reason this information must be disclosed to protect others, is yours alone. “Terrorism” as a nebulous concept is not a justification to invade the lives of millions of Americans. And what too many of us don’t realize is that the ones who suffer most aren’t the ones who have “something to hide” but the ones who don’t - they are the ones with everything to lose, whose good names could be tarnished by details which others had no business knowing because they’re not dangerous, only personal.

Your financial records. Your past relationships. Your sex life. Your political leanings. Your hopes and dreams. For most of us, there is something in one of these categories which we wouldn’t want broadcast to the world, yet none of them really fall under the “something to hide” umbrella - we might simply want to share them only with a limited number of people we trust and are close to. No outside power should feel they have the right to take this information from us, especially without our knowledge. We may give it if we so choose, but it should not be taken.

The right to privacy is profoundly American, and distinctly patriotic. We have a rich history of preserving individual freedoms, of resisting the police state mentality. We have not always prevailed immediately, but in the end we return to the sentiments of our founding fathers, who understood that when it comes to a choice between liberty and security, there is no “choice” at all. We must stand for our rights, because to pursue security at the expense of liberty is to give up everything worth protecting in the first place.

Acquitted, but the circumstances they were on trial for are extremely suspect. From Boing Boing:

Two NYC police officers illegally entered the apartment of a drunk woman, and one of them admitted getting into bed with her and wearing a condom. Today they were acquitted of rape, but convicted on minor charges related to police misconduct. One of the two said it was just a “cuddle.” If you’d like to not have on-duty police officers “cuddle” you when drunk, remember to get so plastered as to be unconscious by the time the cuddle condom comes out: the NYT reports that “Defense lawyers pointed to surveillance footage of the woman walking on her own” as evidence she could not have been drunk enough to be unable to consent to sex.

It really bothers me when agenda-driven individuals manipulate or outright falsify data in order to create “evidence” for a contrived point they are trying to make - especially when they point they are making relates to a real problem. Juvenile prostitution is a real, terrible thing, but when a non-scientific study which reaches an astronomically and unrealistically high number on the rate of increase in it is trumpeted about in order to get funding and publicity, it hurts the cause in the long run.

What happens when people realize how stupidly high these numbers are? They realize “Oh, this isn’t as big a problem as I thought it was” and they stop caring. Or, if they gave money and support because of how big the problem was said to be, they think “These people are liars! They deceived me to take my money, and their cause is clearly not strong enough to do anything about or else they would have gotten my support legitimately”.

These problems are real, and they are big enough to be worth solving on their own. You don’t have to lie to make people care - you just need to help them be aware of the truth. This is the same reason Fox news hurts women’s rights by claiming that video games, movies and other forms of media are behind the massive increase in rape over the past 20 years - even though rape has been decreasing rapidly during that time. By misleading kindhearted and giving people, you’re hurting not only your cause, but prosocial behavior in general. Further, you’re misrepresenting the actual victims of these problems, taking away the truth of their situation and replacing it with a dramatization because, to you, their problems aren’t bad enough to be worth solving.

I think it is terrible.

The first married woman to be declared her own legal entity was fighting for her right… to not pay a million dollars in customs duties on her return from France. Go figure.