Was Martha Stewart targeted?

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No charges have yet been brought against former Enron chairman Ken Lay who was a close friend of President Bush and a major Republican campaign contributor, while Martha Stewart, who is a major Democratic contributor, faces up to 20 years in prison for lying to a federal investigator. [includes transcript]

The Bush presidency has been marked by war. The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and now the apparent overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. But these three years have also been marked by rampant corporate crime. Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom have all become household names. The Bush administration has said that it is a priority of the president to crack down on corporate crime. But most of the CEOs and corporate officials responsible for the collapse of huge companies and the loss of thousands of jobs walk the streets with no criminal charges and no jail sentences hanging over their heads.

No charges, for instance, have been brought against Ken Lay, who was chairman of Enron when its $9 billion collapse in 2001 ended the jobs of more than 5,000 workers and decimated the retirement savings of millions of investors. Lay is a close friend of Bush and a major Republican campaign contributor. In fact, Lay was one of his closest advisers, one of his "pioneers," raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Bush's campaign. After Enron collapsed, Kenny Boy--as Bush referred to his friend--became Mr. Lay.

Instead, the poster-child for this new crack-down on corporate crime is Martha Stewart. She is facing up to 20 years in prison after a jury found her guilty on all charges last week for covering up her sale of ImClone stock just before the price plummeted. Quite the opposite of Lay, who is deeply tied to the Republicans, especially the Bushes, Martha Stewart is a major contributor to the Democrats. She has given more than $150,000 in political contributions--all of it to the Democrats. This according to United Press International.

The Stewart decision was frontpage news across the country. Headlines screamed "Martha Stewart convicted on all counts in stock-trading trial." But what many people don't know is that the government did not charge Stewart with insider trading. In addition, the judge threw out the most serious charge in the case - securities fraud. So what was Martha Stewart guilty of? - Basically, of lying to a federal investigator. The law, which lawyers usually call 1001, for the section of the federal code that contains it, prohibits lying to any federal agent, even by a person who is not under oath and even by a person who has committed no other crime.

Harvey Silverglate, a criminal defense and civil liberties attorney based in Cambridge, Mass.
Elaine Lafferty, Editor-in-Chief of Ms. Magazine.

Bethany McLean, co-author of "Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron." She is also a staff writer for Fortune magazine.


here

Working Moms in Bind

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Working Moms in a Bind
Heather Boushey, Center for American Progress
March 8, 2004

This month, Congress must reauthorize the welfare reform law passed in 1996. As Congress considers welfare reform's track record, let's look at what really helped low-income families find jobs and care for their families.

The list is short: good jobs, child care, and health insurance. Without these, welfare reform is a sham.

A look at the facts shows that the punitive measures embodied in the welfare reform law were not the primary cause of its success.

Welfare reform was successful because the economy was good and because work supports -- child care and health insurance -- helped make work pay.

During the late 1990s when the states implemented welfare reform, jobs were plentiful and wages were rising, especially for low-wage workers. The tight labor market led to historically high levels of employment among Americans and more mothers were at work than at any previous time.

The strong economy meant that finding employment was easier than it would have been if welfare reform passed in the middle of a recession or in a period of falling inflation-adjusted wages.

Finding a job, however, is not enough to ensure that former welfare recipients are successful off welfare. What made the difference for many welfare mothers was the increased availability of child care and health care that were a part of welfare reform.

Since most former welfare recipients found jobs that did not offer health insurance and since child care is critical for working mothers, these work supports often made the difference between keeping a job and not.

Welfare reform recognized that a low-wage job might be insufficient to sustain a family through the notion of "making work pay." As a part of this, welfare reform gave states the flexibility and the funds to provide assistance to welfare mothers who began working.

Fortuitously, states had more money per welfare recipient in the late 1990s than they had previously because welfare rolls fell faster than funding levels.

Many states did use this extra cash to make work pay. Over the four years between 1997 and 2001, states gave an extra $7.7 billion to help pay for child care for low-income families. They gave an extra $24 billion to cover low-income children under the new Children's Health Insurance Program. They also gave more money for transportation and job training.

These extra funds helped mothers transition into the world of work. Access to child care was critical.

Finding child care in most American communities is tough for any parent. It is even harder for low-income families. On average, for low-income families -- those below 200 percent of poverty -- child care eats up about 14 percent of their family budget, compared to only about 7 percent for other families.

Money spent on child care directly supports the employment of mothers.
Mothers who use child care centers are more likely to stay employed than are mothers who turn to informal kinds of care, such as their grandmother, sister, or neighbor. Informal care can be wonderful -- when it works.

However, informal care is frequently not reliable, which means that it is inadequate for workers who can get fired if they must take off work to care for children.

Money spent on increased access to health care was also critical since most low-wage employers do not provide their employees with affordable health insurance. Among low-wage workers, only about one-third receive health insurance from their employer. The Children's Health Insurance Program, implemented in 1997, sought to increase coverage for children of the working poor, many of whom were former welfare recipients.

This is not to say that funding levels for child care or health care were entirely sufficient in the late 1990s. The Department of Health and Human Services reported that only about one in eight children eligible for federal child care subsidies actually received any assistance in 1999. Further, even though health insurance coverage increased for low-income children, millions remained uninsured.

The picture has worsened through the recession and tepid recovery.

As states sought to balance their budgets over the last two years, child care and health care subsidies to working parents were often first on the chopping block.

Thirty-two states have made cuts to their low-income child care programs and the Children's Health Insurance Program has been cut back in 22 states.

The Bush administration had the opportunity to prevent these drastic cuts. They could have offered real budget assistance to the states to limit these cuts.

This would have both helped their fiscal bottom line, as well as helped provide valuable assistance to families struggling to make it in a job-loss recovery. Instead, the administration gave tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

The issue before Congress now is what worked and what didn't in welfare reform. The administration believes that what worked were the sticks, not the carrots. Their proposed changes would limit child care spending while increasing the hours of work required for welfare recipients. The administration wants welfare moms to work 40 hours per week -- more hours than the typical mom works -- with no additional money to help pay for child care.

This blindness to understanding what working families need to make work work will only hurt families doing their best to find and keep jobs in today's economy. It is most telling that even though the economy has more than 2 million fewer jobs today than it had when Bush took office, the administration expects the lowest-paid workers to put in more time at work.

Dr. Heather Boushey is a research economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=18061

Plant Estrogens May Fight Menopausal Bone Loss

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NEW YORK - Adding to evidence of the potential benefits of so-called plant estrogens, a new study suggests that isoflavone supplements may help reduce menopausal bone loss.

UK researchers found that, when taken for a year, the supplements appeared to curb spinal bone loss in women between the ages of 49 and 65.

Isoflavones are compounds found in soybeans, chickpeas and other legumes that are similar to the female hormone estrogen. Because of this, researchers have been studying whether soy protein or supplements containing isoflavones might act as a sort of "natural" hormone replacement therapy.

Studies have shown that Asian women, whose traditional diet is rich in soy, have a relatively low rate of hip fracture, as well as breast cancer and heart disease. In addition, animal research has suggested that isoflavones might lessen bone loss related to waning estrogen levels.

Some studies of women, however, have found no evidence of bone benefits, and much of the research on isoflavones has involved only small groups of women followed for a relatively short time.

The new study, which followed 177 women for a year, is one of the largest and longest investigations of an isoflavone supplement to date, according to the authors. They found that compared with women randomly assigned to take a placebo, those who took a daily isoflavone tablet showed less bone loss in the lower spine.

The findings are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Novogen Ltd., maker of the isoflavone supplement Promensil, provided the tablets and partial funding for the study.

Despite the study's positive results, it's too early to recommend isoflavone supplements for fighting bone loss, study author Dr. Sheila Bingham, of the Medical Research Council Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge, told Reuters Health.

For one thing, long-range studies are necessary to determine whether isoflavones can cut the risk of bone fractures, a major cause of disability among older adults.

Also unclear, Bingham noted, is whether a soy-rich diet might be more or less beneficial than isoflavones supplements when it comes to bone health. The supplement her team studied is derived from red clover.

The study involved women ages 49 to 65, most of whom were postmenopausal and all of whom had recently had a mammogram to screen for breast cancer. Women with a history of the disease were excluded.

At the end of the study, women in the supplement group had lost less bone density in the lumbar spine than those in the placebo group had. There was no clear difference between the groups as far as bone density in the hip, according to the report.

To help ward off the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, experts advise women to get enough calcium and vitamin D, avoid smoking and exercise regularly throughout their lives.

Story by Amy Norton
Story Date: 11/3/2004
Reuters News Service 2003
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Scalia addressed homophobic group while considering gay rights case

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by Richard A. Serrano
and David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
March 8, 2004

WASHINGTON -- As the Supreme Court was weighing a landmark gay rights case last year, Justice Antonin Scalia gave a keynote dinner speech in Philadelphia for an advocacy group waging a legal battle against gay rights.

Scalia addressed the $150-a-plate dinner hosted by the Urban Family Council two months after hearing oral arguments in a challenge to a Texas law that made gay sex a crime. A month after the dinner, he sharply dissented from the high court's decision overturning the Texas law.

Some experts on legal ethics said they saw no problem in Scalia's appearance before the group. But others say he should not have accepted the invitation because it calls into question his impartiality on an issue that looms increasingly large on the nation's legal agenda.

Scalia declined to comment on his appearance before the group.
Scalia's activities outside the court in two other instances -- both involving hunting trips -- have also drawn criticism for suggesting partiality on cases before his court. But the Philadelphia dinner May 20, unlike the other cases, shows him appearing to support partisan advocates on a hotly disputed issue.

The code of conduct for the federal courts broadly warns judges against conduct that "would create in reasonable minds � a perception that the judge's ability to carry out judicial responsibilities with integrity, impartiality and competence is impaired."

It says a judge may participate in civic and charitable activities that "do not reflect adversely upon the judge's impartiality."

Supreme Court justices are not bound by the judicial code, which applies to all other federal judges. The high court makes its own rules on outside judicial behavior, but cites the code as its main guideline.

The Urban Family Council, which hosted the dinner, was not a party to the Texas case. But it is backing a separate lawsuit that seeks to overturn a Philadelphia city ordinance allowing gay couples who work for the city to register as "life partners" to qualify for pension and health benefits, which is an increasingly common practice.

William Devlin, who founded the council, is lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, which is pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Both sides say the case of Devlin vs. City of Philadelphia has a good chance of reaching Scalia's court.

Devlin said he phoned the justice at home last year to invite him to speak at the group's dinner, which was being held to raise money to support the lawsuit and other council activities. The dinner also honored the retiring Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, who has said homosexuality is "an aberration, a moral evil" -- and is an outspoken opponent of the life-partners ordinance.

The judicial code bars judges from raising money for outside groups.

It also says a judge should not "permit the use of the prestige of the judicial office for that purpose."

After Scalia accepted the invitation, Supreme Court staff contacted Devlin to make the justice's appearance conditional on the understanding that the dinner could not make a profit.

To satisfy the court staff, Devlin said he assured them that any money from the dinner -- after expenses to rent the banquet room and pay for food and service -- would be refunded to guests. But, Devlin said, that turned out to be unnecessary.

According to Devlin, the event made no money. He said he didn't recall how much was collected. If all 125 attendees bought tickets, it would have brought in $18,750.

"It was a wash," he said, adding that the bill for the open bar was higher than expected.

Devlin said the council offered to pay all of Scalia's expenses and to give him an honorarium, but the justice declined. "He wouldn't even let us pay his parking," Devlin said.

The Urban Family Council is a Christian-based group dedicated to "preserving life, the family and marriage," Devlin said. Gay advocacy groups and Philadelphia city officials characterize the group as blatantly anti-gay.

"The Urban Family Council is very clearly not supportive of gay families," said Stacey Sobel, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights in Philadelphia. "It's very clear they have an anti-gay stance.

"And that should have been very obvious to anyone who was invited to speak to them. If it wasn't, then it should be incumbent on members of the judiciary to investigate organizations before they speak to them," Sobel said.

Supreme Court justices often speak to legal groups, such as bar associations and law school audiences. Some also have spoken in recent years to legal groups with an ideological bent, such as the conservative Federalist Society or the liberal American Constitution Society.

Over the years, some justices also have written strongly worded opinions on such contentious issues as abortion, gay rights and the death penalty.

But generally, they avoid any connection with or appearances before partisan or activist groups that fight for those issues in court.

Several experts on legal ethics said Scalia should have turned down the speaking invitation.

"This would raise a concern in the minds of a lot of people. And I would say it is not the right way to act as a judge," said University of Pennsylvania law professor Geoffrey C. Hazard. "He is talking to a group that has a strong view on the kind of issue that will come before the Supreme Court. I think it is preferable for justices to exercise restraint and to back away from groups that are overtly political."

Article continues here.

Lesbian love lit. Lynne Cheney

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/09/1518241

LAURA FLANDERS: The Lynne Cheney players are taking to the stage and I think they will be coming to the conventions. They did an extraordinary job, Maggie Moore, Lois Weaver.

People may remember, after 9-11, somebody was drawing up a list of who was patriotic and who wasn't; it was the American Association of Alumna, a group founded by Lynne Cheney, keeping with her history as a culture warrior, since the 1990's, when she headed up the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has been the moral arbiter of who receives government funding and who is accepted politically correct, politically incorrect and part of the campaign to belittle political correctness and complain that feminists were taking over campuses and that people of color were destroying the cannon. How did she get this standing of culture warrior and arbiter of morality in the United States? On the basis that she was a published author.

We went to look at what she had actually published; it turns out, at the time she was appointed to the N.E.H., she published two novels. One "Executive Privilege," a not very good suspense novel set in Washington. The second was this book "Sisters" that came out in 1981 in kind of Gothic paperback, Signet classic. I found a copy after much searching and it is a romance set in late 19th century Wyoming that looks at, you know, the close relationships between women and there are women in the book that articulate, you know, why are our relationships not taken seriously, that talk about the passion they have for one another.

The other more interesting character is really the Lynne Cheney character in the book. The protagonist has run away from the church school, run away from the convent to go and join the musical theater and she travels the country with a musical theater troupe led by a charismatic woman who is a big advocate of free love and who takes her aside and says you are very beautiful. You are going to have a lot of relationships with men, but don't be caught by men, don't be trapped by them. This is how you can avoid being trapped and she presents her with a laquered box filled with condoms, basically and other preventive devices. And there is a strong message in the book that women can enjoy sex without getting pregnant and having children if they can have the protection that comes with contraception.

That is the Lynne Cheney position in 1981. Now she is part of an administration that is denying condoms to people who need them for HIV prevention in countries all around the world. She is part of an administration that is making the argument -- the opposite argument for what her character Sophie made in 1981. She may want to come forward and say I've completely changed my views, but don't just drop this book off your official White House biography as you have done. Don't pretend you didn't once hold those views and explain how you've changed those views. If you were then an advocate of free love and of condoms and if you understood the importance -- and her novel is not beautifully written -- but the message is pretty clear that condoms can liberate women from this sort of war of the sexes as she describes it, it's --

AMY GOODMAN: It's also a steamy lesbian love novel.

LAURA FLANDERS: It is hysterical. It is hysterical, it is silly. She says no more than 50 people ever read it. It is worth reading to realize these people who now cough themselves up as having this strong moral compass right v left -- right v wrong and right v left, perhaps, have a far more checkered past.

AMY GOODMAN: It's not just that does she -- is she painted with the same brush as the administration.

She herself is one of the leading conservatives. When you have someone, she recommends the right wing of the Republican party.

LAURA FLANDERS: The two wives perform that function. Lynne Cheney represents the right. She is the culture warrior for the hawks.

Laura Bush represents the social moderates and they send her on the campaign trail to woo the social moderate voters in this election.

AMY GOODMAN: I was fascinated to read about George Bush Sr. in your book and Barbara and their view on abortion before they were against it.

LAURA FLANDERS: When he was a congressman, he was called rubbers.
He was in favor of government distribution of contraception. She was a big funder of planned parenthood. The point here is that these people are cynical, hypocrites after power. They will change their position for political reasons. And their policies are driven by interests in profit, in self-advancement, not necessarily the good of the country. In many cases they have completely switched their views, when it comes to what serves the public interest, and that is one good example. When he was up against Ronald Reagan in the presidential campaign of 1980, he needed to be as right wing as Reagan was, and he abandoned pro-choice Republican women who had brought him to that point in the campaign and they're still steaming over that.

Women superior deminers

You are reading http://viridianariverstone.blogspot.com/.Girl Power Finds Foothold in Cambodia's Minefields

TA KROUK, Cambodia - Ing Sokhey and her colleagues like to look good for work. After all, keeping up appearances is important when you spend five days a week face down in a Khmer Rouge minefield.

"I always wear a bit of eyeliner and mascara. I want to look nice," says the pretty 25-year-old Cambodian, otherwise decked out in overalls, blast vest and Perspex helmet - the distinctly unfeminine garb of a deminer.

Around her, in a maze of bright red string marking out cleared from mined scrubland, 10 other women work away diligently with metal detectors and knives, searching for the mines, bombs and booby-traps left behind by years of civil war.

It may not look like it, but the team, run by Britain's Mine Advisory Group (MAG), are making history as the war-torn country's first, and probably only the world's second, all-female demining team.

Taking a quick break in the middle of their minefield, the women of Mine Action Team 12, as they are officially known, are not letting this rare example of 'girl power' in the still highly traditional southeast Asian nation, go to their heads.

"It's a good job, and it helps me look after my family," said Liat Chumbury, 45, whose husband was killed by a land mine in 1988. "In the beginning I was afraid, but one quickly gets used to it. I've been well-trained and I work carefully."

COOL HEADS

After the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in 1979, Cambodia had to endure nearly 20 more years of war as remnants of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist guerrillas slugged it out with first Vietnamese then Cambodian government troops until 1998.

In the wake of a constantly shifting front line, millions of land mines, mostly of Soviet, Chinese or Vietnamese origin, and unexploded ordnance (UXO) are littered over much of the western stretches of the country.

"We laid so many mines during the war. The fighting was all over the place," said Khin Pha, a 50-year-old former Khmer Rouge soldier sitting under a tree near Ta Krouk. He, like many in the area, has only one leg.

In the huge clean-up, started in 1992, women have often shown themselves to be better than male counterparts because of a tendency to keep a cool head in a hot spot.

"Generally speaking, we feel the women have a slightly steadier approach, and this is the kind of work which demands a lot of patience and stability," said MAG's country director, David Hayter. The all-woman team, started up six months ago to give experienced female deminers a chance to climb the promotional ladder in a male-dominated military-style hierarchy, is proving such a success that MAG plans to create two more in the next year.

"It's still fairly early days but we are confident with the experience they have it's going to work fine. Their output is no different from an all-male team," Hayter said.

GOOD MONEY, HARD WORK

Earning nearly $200 per month, in this case paid by Christian aid organization World Vision and the Australian government, the women have highly sought-after jobs in a country where many only make that much in a year.

That is not to say working in Ta Krouk, a village of about 30 wooden huts surrounded by heavily mined scrub 40 miles southwest of the capital of Battambang province, is a picnic.

Clearing a 75-ft wide channel from the road to a stream used by the villagers, the team have already found 11 mines, eight pieces of UXO - most of them mortar bombs - and more than 49,000 pieces of metal in an area smaller than a soccer field.

With any scrap of metal, from bullet casings to coins to a chewing gum wrapper, all set to trigger detectors, progress is a painstaking and stressful 215 square ft per person per day.

But with poverty and landlessness forcing many villagers and internal refugees elsewhere in Cambodia to move back into mined areas, the need for clearance teams has seldom been stronger.

As long as funding continues, Mine Action Team 12 can be safe in the knowledge they have a lifelong career saving other people's lives as well as giving a much-needed boost to the reputation of the fairer sex.

"At first some men said 'Women can't clear mines', but now they realize we can, and they thank us," said team supervisor Seng Somala.

Story by Ed Cropley
Story Date: 5/3/2004
Reuters News Service 2003
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"Girl power?" These are adult women! This phrase is used to trivialize the women and the sexism and descrimination that holds us back!

These aren't silly fluffs; these are HEROS and deserve respect and equality.

"girl power" gimme a break!

talk about editorializing a news story!

folate reduces ovarian cancer risk?

You are reading http://viridianariverstone.blogspot.com/.Dietary Folate May Lower Ovarian Cancer Risk

NEW YORK - The results of a study conducted in Sweden indicate that high levels of folate obtained from food sources may protect against ovarian cancer. The benefits were found to be primarily among women who consumed at least two drinks of alcohol per week.

Previous reports have shown that dietary levels of folate, a B vitamin also known as folic acid, are inversely related to the risk of breast and colorectal cancer. In contrast, few studies have looked at the association between folate intake and ovarian cancer risk.

To investigate, Dr. Alicja Wolk, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and colleagues analyzed data from a population-based group of more than 60,000 women living in Sweden. The subjects ranged in age from 38 to 76 years and all were cancer-free at study enrollment, between 1987 and 1990.

By follow-up in mid-2003, a total of 266 women had developed ovarian cancer, the researchers report in the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Overall, women with the highest level of folate in their diet (at least 204 micrograms/day) were 33 percent less likely to develop ovarian cancer than those with the lowest levels (less than 155 micrograms/day).

Among women who consumed more than about two drinks per day, the risk reduction seen with high folate intake was much higher -74 percent.
In contrast, high folate intake provided no protection against ovarian cancer in women who consumed lesser amounts of alcohol, the investigators point out.

"Additional studies are needed to determine the generalizability of our results to other populations that have higher folate intakes and to evaluate the efficacy and safety of high doses of folate from supplements with respect to cancer," the authors conclude.

Story Date: 5/3/2004
� Reuters News Service 2003
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hormone therapy halted

You are reading http://viridianariverstone.blogspot.com/.Researchers Halt Hormone Therapy Trial

WASHINGTON - The National Institutes of Health said this week it had stopped a trial of women taking estrogen replacement therapy after finding the pills not only failed to improve their health but also may have slightly raised the risk of strokes.

It was the second broad trial of hormone replacement therapy to have been halted in two years. In July 2002, women taking estrogen and progestin were told to stop because of the risk of heart attack, stroke and some forms of cancer.

The trial stopped this week was a separate arm of the same trial, called the Women's Health Initiative. The 11,000 women in this part of the study were taking Wyeth Co's WYE.N Premarin, an estrogen-only pill made from the urine of pregnant mares.

"After careful consideration of the data, NIH has concluded that with an average of nearly seven years of follow-up completed, estrogen alone does not appear to affect (either increase or decrease) heart disease, a key question of the study," the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which organizes the Women's Health Initiative, said in a statement.

"At the same time, estrogen alone appears to increase the risk of stroke and decrease the risk of hip fracture. It has not increased the risk of breast cancer during the time period of the study."

ABOUT-FACE IN TREATMENTS

Menopausal women and their doctors were shocked when the Women's Health Initiative showed in 2002 that hormone replacement therapy did not, as had widely been believed, prevent heart disease.

Millions of women had been told taking hormone replacement therapy would ease the symptoms of menopause and help prevent heart disease, osteoporosis and memory loss.

Doctors hoped that somehow taking estrogen only would prove more benign, but Tuesday's announcement did little to support those hopes.

Usually estrogen alone is taken by younger women who have had hysterectomies, as opposed to hormone combinations given to menopausal women.

"The increased risk of stroke in the estrogen-alone study is similar to what was found in the (Women's Health Initiative) study of estrogen plus progestin when that trial was stopped in July 2002," the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute said.

"In that study, women taking estrogen plus progestin had eight more strokes per year for every 10,000 women than those taking the placebo. The NIH believes that an increased risk of stroke is not acceptable in healthy women in a research study."

Last May, researchers found that combined hormone replacement therapy also slightly raised the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

The Food and Drug Administration, which has been directing hormone replacement therapy makers to update their labeling with clear warnings, said it would act on the latest findings.

"FDA is advising women that post-menopausal hormone therapy has never received approval for prevention of heart disease, or cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease or memory loss," the agency said in a statement.

"This potential risk is reflected in the current product label for Wyeth's estrogen therapy products," Wyeth said in a statement.

"It should be noted that the 0.625 mg strength of Premarin was studied in the (Women's Health Initiative); today, Wyeth has a number of lower dose estrogen and estrogen plus progestin options widely available," the company added.

There are no statistics yet to show whether lower-dose hormones may be safer.

The FDA said women with severe menopause symptoms should still be able to consider taking hormone replacement therapy, but only for the shortest time possible.

Story by Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Story Date: 4/3/2004
� Reuters News Service 2003

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umm...why didn't animal trials reveal this info? perhaps because it wasn't studied long enough?

Dear Mr/Mrs. Heterosexual

You are reading http://viridianariverstone.blogspot.com/.Dear Mr/Mrs. Heterosexual
# by Underground Panther in the Sky March 5, 2004

Ok let me get down to it...

Dear Mr/Mrs. Heterosexual,

I must ask all of you as a general population, Has anyone MURDERED you for being attracted to the opposite sex quite against your will?

Has anyone denied you a job for being attracted to the opposite sex?

Has hetero CONSENSUAL sex been made illegal ? Straight sex is OK to society even though it heavily burdens society.. Sex with opposite genders produces unwed mothers, divorces, unwanted kids, abortion, and many other social ills fundamentalist Christians love to whine about.

Why are homophobic men so scared of what other people do that they are not involved with are doing? Why should hets have a right to be in denial? Be bullies and hurt gay/trans human beings? Are they phobic? or ashamed of being fascinated?

Why must het men intrude in communities to tell us how to disappear? Gays are not telling the straights to go away. The Gays are telling the straights STOP abusing us, stop scapegoating, stop bullying, beating, and killing us.

It has been found if a person knows a gay person they are less likely to abuse gay people. The person apparently has empathy, friendship, and honesty override the urges to act out self denial shame and hypocrisy. Because homophobes are attracted to homosexuality and cannot~~ no, will not admit the attraction even to themselves. This stress, shame, and insecurity makes homophobes very manipulatable by rigid "strong man" authoritarians who have selfish agendas the "followers" are not privy to. A lot of leaders seek servants, flatterers, money, or deployable agents -- "believers" -- to act out the leader's mental illnesses for them. When 80% of homophobic men get aroused at images of men, I see there is a significant trend there.

As for the slippery slope arguments... In West Virginia -- It is already legal for a male to have sex with an animal as long as it does not exceed 40 lbs. Do you realize bestiality is ALWAYS non consenting sex? An animal under 40 pounds being raped by a man would damage the animal's body. Yet this is legal in West Virginia. Nobody, especially no fundamentalist homophobe, has said ANYTHING about how wrong this legal rape law is.

Do a Google search, the Law exists.

And the Fundies tend to omit this bit of information about laws already passed because it ruins their "purity" arguments on TV when they rail against gays engaging in CONSENSUAL sex ... Yet ... Here go the hypocrites.

Can you say HYPOCRITES! Santorum is a true closet pervert, secretly wanting to engage in polygamy and animal sex. He doesn't seem to respect a partner's consent very much if he lusts for animals. If you follow the arousal rates of homophobes to images of men and the kind of talk fundamentalists do you will know what Santorum and his self righteous buddies lust over ~~ secretly.

Oh and a little piece ... just to offend the offensive: Go ahead, look at it, homophobe. I know you want to ... but you just won't admit you are fascinated ...

Underground Panther in the Sky

http://www.unknownnews.net/040305d-up.html

Toothpaste, Cough Drops, Aspirin, Contraception

You are reading http://viridianariverstone.blogspot.com/.Toothpaste, Cough Drops, Aspirin, Contraception
Katha Pollitt, The Nation
March 3, 2004

For a moment, it looked as if the FDA was going to do the right thing. It was going to go with medical science and make emergency contraception available over the counter, so that women who've had unprotected sex would have ready access to a postcoital method that prevents pregnancy 89 percent of the time. This was, after all, the overwhelming recommendation of its own advisory committee (of twenty-seven members, only three voted against OTC status, all professionally undistinguished Bush appointees from the Christian right: David Hager, the notorious promoter of prayer as the cure for PMS and denier of birth control to unmarried women; and Susan Crockett and Joseph Stanford, who won't prescribe it, period).

It makes sense: After all, emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill and marketed as Plan B and Preven, is only a quadruple helping of certain birth control pills. Women in the know have been dosing themselves this way for years; the FDA found it safe and effective in l999. EC is available over the counter or directly from a pharmacist in some seventeen countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Canada and Portugal. The current system in the United States, in which women have to find a doctor or clinic and a pharmacy that stocks EC ideally within twenty-four hours (EC works for seventy-two hours, but less effectively as time goes on), is clearly too cumbersome. In a few states -- California and Washington, for example -- pharmacists can dispense it directly, which is better, but still an unnecessary complication.

You would think that anti-choicers would leap to embrace emergency contraception, which, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, already prevents 51,000 abortions a year, making it a significant, if little-noted, factor in the decline in abortion. This is the Bush Administration, though, in which science and women's rights and the actual, factual lessening of the need for abortion are all less important than "values" -- i.e., the narrow ideology of the Christian right. In December, forty-four Congressional Republicans sent a letter to the FDA advisory committee urging its members to reject OTC status: EC "stacked casually on shelves next to toothpaste and cough drops" would allow "our schoolchildren" easy access to a drug that, according to Jesse Helms, is an "abortifacient." After the committee endorsed it, forty-nine Congressional Republicans sent another letter, this time expressing alarm at "the impact this decision will have on the sexual behavior of adolescents." On February 16, FDA head Mark McClellan (brother of Bush press secretary Scott McClellan) postponed the agency's decision; now he's leaving to take charge of Medicare, and EC risks being delayed again by future appointees.
Years ago, pundits scoffed when prochoicers argued that antis would target birth control too if they could. EC primarily works by preventing ovulation and fertilization, but like the birth control pill, it may also prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the womb. As Gloria Feldt, head of Planned Parenthood, pointed out when I spoke to her by phone, "antichoice people are trying to redefine pregnancy to begin at fertilization rather than implantation," which is the medical definition of pregnancy, and EC is the wedge. If EC is a "human pesticide," so are the Pill, the patch, injectables. If "schoolchildren" ought not purchase EC without parental supervision or knowledge, nor should they be able to obtain those forms of contraception without parental permission, as current law allows.

And if being able to purchase EC like "aspirin or hairspray" promotes promiscuity -- studies suggest, by the way, that it will not -- the same can be alleged of birth control in general. In fact, contraception has always been attacked as promoting loose morals among women (curiously, "schoolchildren" excepted, one hears less about the fact that condoms promote loose morals among men -- why not make them available only by prescription, too?).

Recently a pharmacist and two assistants at an Eckerts drugstore in Denton, Texas, refused to fill an EC prescription for a teenage rape victim (they were fired). In Virginia, state legislator Robert Marshall, who last year was able to prevent James Madison University from filling EC prescriptions, is noisily seeking to extend the ban to all the state's public colleges and universities. EC, he claims, turns young women into "chemical Love Canals for frat house playboys." Instead of the natural love canals God meant them to be?

This spurious concern for women's health is the cousin of the argument that abortion should be banned because it is "traumatic" for women -- a line that has persuaded the state legislature of South Dakota to pass a flagrantly unconstitutional ban on all abortions and that Norma McCorvey, Roe of Roe v. Wade, is pushing in her ridiculous attempt to get the decision overturned on the grounds that she has changed her mind -- about an abortion she never had.

Doctors and clinics are beginning to offer prescriptions for women in advance of need, which is great.

But women can be proactive too. At a recent demonstration in New York City, women symbolically handed EC pills to others, declaring their willingness to break the law to put the drug in the hands of any woman who needs it (it is illegal to give a prescription medication to someone for whom it has not been prescribed). Any woman with the right kind of birth control pills can package her own EC and share it; years ago, journalist Debbie Nathan would walk into Mexico from her home in El Paso, buy birth control pills for two dollars a cycle and make EC necklaces with foil, glitter and charms. Until women can pick up EC along with, yes, "aspirin or hairspray," that ingenuity and boldness is just what we need.

Katha Pollitt writes for the Nation.

2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.


http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=18033

"In God's Eyes"

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In God's Eyes
Mary Jo McConahay, Pacific News Service
March 3, 2004

The ongoing controversy over same-sex marriages, sparked by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, a Catholic, has forced many members of America's single largest denomination to wrestle with their beliefs. The Church, which has lost the battle on contraception, now is trying to hold firm on gay marriage.

For the country's 65 million Catholics, President Bush's call for a constitutional ban against gay marriage throws a troubling new public spotlight on personal beliefs. But here in San Francisco, the fire seems hotter.

This is the epicenter of the new national controversy, where open gay marriages with civic approval began in February, and where the Church is facing all the elements of a battle that is magnified as the issue spreads nationwide:
bishops -- debilitated by the sex-abuse scandal -- condemning gay marriage; a laity split between opposition and acceptance; pro-gay marriage political leaders who may also be Catholic.

After only 36 days in office, Newsom stoked national debate to the conflagration point by ordering City Hall clerks to issue licenses to same-sex couples. The first marriage in the stately municipal rotunda joined two lesbian women who had lived together since l953; thousands followed. Civic authorities in New Paltz, NY and Portland, OR are already following Newsom's lead.

Mayor Newsom went to a Catholic university in Santa Clara, about an hour from San Francisco, and he and his wife Kimberly were married in an elegant ceremony in a Catholic church overlooking the city. Locals point to the possibility of some degree of conflict between what the mayor may have imbibed from Catholicism, and his defiance of both church and state laws.

Certainly, the Church sees it that way.

San Francisco Archbishop William J. Levada reiterated that the Church demands "compassion and sensitivity toward homosexuals," and supports the kind of rights, benefits and protection of children that come with some legal civil unions. But he also reiterated that "marriage" must be between a man and a woman for procreation. Some fellow local Catholics, including some who had supported Newsom in elections, spoke of bewilderment and hurt.

"I never thought you would be so hostile to marriage as to promote a concept that has been repudiated for thousands of years, not just by the Catholic faith in which you were baptized, but historically by all other groups and civilizations," wrote one neighborhood pastor in an unanswered letter to the Newsom.

Yet, thousands of Catholics count themselves among the two-thirds of San Franciscans who polls show favor the marriages. Roman Catholicism remains the single largest U.S. religious denomination. Voting is encouraged from the pulpit. And despite the shame and vulnerability brought on bishops by the clerical sex abuse scandals, congregations do give weight to the bishops' word on matters of faith. Last summer Rome said Catholic legislators must not only vote against gay unions, but also "clearly and publicly" express opposition. Pope John Paul II underscored the obligation in a statement as same-sex couples received licenses here.

It is a dictum that may be causing some lawmakers to squirm in Massachusetts, home state of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. In November, the state's Supreme Court ordered the legislature to draft a bill to legalize gay marriage by May. A majority of the body's 200 members is Catholic; bishops have written letters to more than one million rank and file Catholics to pressure them.

Worry that Catholic politicians answer to the Vatican alone, or even to their own religion, of course, was put to rest in the John F. Kennedy years. As a city supervisor in pre-election months, the Catholic Newsom drew women's votes when he pushed pro-abortion stands, which the Church condemns.

Another Catholic supervisor, also under consideration as a mayoral candidate, declared he was Catholic and had a big family "by choice," opposed abortion and effectively scotched his own chances for a run against Newsom.

Some Catholics say they wish the Church would be as forceful in condemning capital punishment as gay marriage. Others point out that decades ago the Church also condemned artificial contraception because it ran contrary to the Church's understanding of the aim of sexual union, procreation; yet today contraception is practiced by huge numbers of Catholics, without causing a crisis in their faith lives or much hierarchical notice.

Other Catholics simply regard the controversy over purely civil "marriages" as irrelevant, because the Church does not recognize two persons as being truly joined unless they are married in religious ceremony. The Church is not about to do that even if the state recognizes its legality.

For some gay Catholics, however, this is precisely the most hurtful understanding.

Peter Novak is one of at least three faculty members at the Jesuit University of San Francisco who have gone with their partners, sometimes waiting all night in pouring rain, to get marriage licenses. Novak, who has a doctorate from Yale but grew up in Flint, Michigan, says his traditional large Catholic family has been largely welcoming about his untraditional relationship with his partner of nine years; Novak's father, an ordained deacon, on hearing about the "wedding" asked where the couple might have a gift registry. But the drama professor does not believe his relationship will ever be recognized in the eyes of the Church he loves, which is "painful" and makes him feel "inferior."

"I view the Church as compassionate and struggling with the issue," says Novak. "I get support from individual church members -- what we call the Body of Christ -- and I can still separate that from the institution of the Church.

"It doesn't take away the pain, but I can still call myself Catholic."
2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=18032

Scenes From a Marriage: Married Transsexual

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Scenes From a Marriage: Married Transsexual Couples Speak Out

Thursday, February 26th, 2004
here

Married transsexual couples are the focus of an NBC Dateline special premiering Friday night entitled "Scenes From a Marriage." We speak with Cindy and Miriam, a married couple who married as husband and wife. The husband, Roger, then became Cindy and Miriam chose to stay with her. [includes transcript]

It's become one of the most prominent acts of civil disobedience in recent times. San Francisco's mayor this month ordered city officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Thousands flocked to city hall to get married.

Most people view this as the first time in U.S. history that same-sex couples could enjoy the same legal rights as a married man and woman.

But for some time now, hundreds of same-sex couples across the country have been living as married couples under the law. They are couples who married as man and woman and later, one spouse underwent a gender change.

Transsexual or transgender couples are the focus of an NBC Dateline special that is premiering tomorrow night. Dateline followed several transgender couples for two years to get a closer look at the lives.

This is an excerpt of the Dateline special that is airing tomorrow.

Today we speak with one of those couples: Cindy and Miriam Huebscher-Scott. They are a married couple from the midwest. They married as husband and wife, then Roger became Cindy and Miriam chose to stay with him. They are the founders of an internet support group for the spouses and partners of transsexuals.

Scenes From a Marriage, excerpt of NBC Dateline special.

Cindy and Miriam Huebscher-Scott, a married couple from the Midwest.

They married as husband and wife, then Roger became Cindy and Miriam chose to stay with him. They are the founders of an Internet support group for the spouses and partners of transsexuals.

Dr. Virginia Erhardt, licensed psychologist and gender specialist based in Atlanta. She has treated dozens of transsexuals and their partners. She is a founding member of the American Gender Institute and a member of the Gender Education & Advocacy Advisory Board.

Dawn Fratangelo, New York-based correspondent for Dateline NBC.

TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

AMY GOODMAN: Transsexual or transgender couples are the focus of an NBC "Dateline" special that will air tomorrow night. "Dateline" followed a number of transgender couple for two years to get a closer look at their lives and the transformation they underwent. This is an excerpt of the special that will be airing tomorrow night.

GUEST: This is a true test of marriage.

GUEST: Yes it is.

REPORTER: Meet Melissa and Stephanie, Judy and Lee Ann, and Cindy and Miriam, all of them like Joyce and Victoria, married when the husbands were still men. This couple later renewed their vows as two women.

CINDY HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: I Cindy, take thee Miriam,

OFFICIAL: To be my wedded spouse.

CINDY HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: To be my wedded spouse.

REPORTER: While politicians in the public debate whether to legalize gay marriages in a few states, marriages like these are legal in all 50 states. That's why -- that's right, couples are still considered married under the law even after one spouse goes through a sex change.

REPORTER: Are you in love?

GUEST: Yes. Oh, yeah.

GUEST: Madly.

REPORTER: Love may conquer all, but each of these wives has shared some of the same strains Joyce talks about.

JOYCE: It was kind of like, oh, my god, where are we going from here.

REPORTER: Melissa's first reaction to the news her husband was becoming a woman -- dead silence.

MELISSA: It was a jaw-drop. I definitely was not ready for that.

GUEST: I have to admit it was selfish. What does this mean to me?
GUEST: Is that selfish?

GUEST: Isn't part of the relationship about you?

GUEST: Yes.

GUEST: Did any of you question whether you would stay in the relationship?

GUEST: Oh, yes.

GUEST: Yes. My second reaction after -- after she told me she wanted to transition was that's it, I'm gone.

GUEST: But she chose not to leave. Just like the others. Joyce tells the group about her uncertainty over the sex change. But gives it a positive spin.

JOYCE: We have a different adventure to go on. We don't know where we're going to yet.
REPORTER: And Joyce learns that she and Victoria are not the only ones having trouble defining their changed relationship.

GUEST: Lee Ann and Judy, are you a lesbian couple?

GUEST: No.

GUEST: no.

GUEST: No. We're spouses.

GUEST: I'm a lesbian.

GUEST: You're a lesbian.

GUEST: Yeah.

GUEST: I've always loved women.
Not the case for her.

GUEST: You're not a lesbian couple.

GUEST: We're married.

GUEST: There are people who are going to be confused.

GUEST: We're not too clear on it, either.

REPORTER: Two of the wives admit their husband's gender change had made them wonder if there might be something wrong with them. Did it make you feel less of a woman?

GUEST: I think it did at first. Because it's like -- how can he be this way? How could you not want your penis? I'm serious. Every man that I have ever been with or knew, that was the most important thing to them.

REPORTER: Joy, though, believes a husband's sex change shouldn't affect a wife's self-image.

GUEST: They feel compelled to change. Do you feel that you have been forced to change? In some ways as a result?

GUEST: No. It's a choice. You have a choice to stay, or not to stay. If you love that person, you make the choice that is right for you.

REPORTER: Still, when the conversation turns to sex, Joyce doesn't want to say much.

JOYCE: And what you do behind closed doors is your own private business. You're married.

REPORTER: It's clear she's not ready yet if she will ever be, for the sexual experimentation the other couples have tried.

GUEST: When you love someone, you know, you are going to be together. You're going to show each other that you love each other.

REPORTER: For all of those people who are wondering, are you having sex? Are you -- yes?

GUEST: Well, at this moment, no.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from the program airing tomorrow night on "Dateline" called, "Scenes from a marriage." Today we're going to speak with one of those couples, Cindy and Miriam Scott. They're a married couple from the Midwest, married as husband and wife and Roger became Cindy and Miriam chose to stay in the marriage. They're founders of an Internet support group for spouses of partners of transsexuals. The correspondent on the piece, Dawn Fratangelo, who is an NBC "Dateline" correspondent and psychologist and gender specialist based in Atlanta as well, also joins us. But let's begin with the couple, with Cindy and Miriam, how -- let me ask how you, Cindy, decided to make this transition?

CINDY HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: It was a life choice. There was just no other way around it. I was born with this. I realized from the age of four that something was wrong, even though I didn't have a vocabulary to express it, and I fought against it all my life. I tried to be Mr. Macho, do all kinds of manly things, and it just didn't work out. The fact that my brain was oriented towards being a female was always there and always interfering.

JUAN GONZALES: And when you decided to make the change, about how long has it been, and also, did you have children beforehand?

CINDY HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: Oh, yeah. I have two children. They're both technically adults right now. One is 19. The other one is going to be 21 in about a week. The first part of the question again? How long have I been transitioned?

JUAN GONZALES: Yes.

CINDY HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: About five years.

JUAN GONZALES: How did your children deal with it?

CINDY HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: We took a very unique step. We sat down -- we decided we were going to have kind of a family dinner conversation, try to keep it casual, and Miriam, actually, is the one that told them about it. We figured it would be better for them to hear it from her so that they would be reassured that the relationship, our relationship was safe, and we were correct. They took their acceptance cues from Miriam.

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined by Dawn Fratangelo. You have been following the story of not only Miriam and Cindy, but a number of these couples, over two years. Remarkable that you should be on a story for that long.

DAWN FRATANGELO: I want to commend these couples for letting us and our cameras into their homes to follow some of the most intimate and difficult issues in their life.
We actually spent a year and four months with another couple that you saw in the clip from the hour-long program, Joyce and Victoria. And Victoria transitioned from David.

We focus on the wives in the hour-long program and why and how they choose to stay. As Cindy was saying, she knew from the age of four that she felt like a woman, like a girl. She felt compelled to change her gender. Well, these wives when they choose to stay, for lack of a better word, are forced, if you will, to change their sexual identities if they want to remain intimate in this relationship.

That's not an easy thing to do.

Actually, that is at the very heart of the survival of the marriage of Joyce and Victoria now is intimacy.
We follow that from beginning to end. I mean, how can a wife become intimate with another woman who was once her husband? Although it's the same person, that person is changed dramatically.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let's put that question to Miriam.

MIRIAM HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: What was the question again?

AMY GOODMAN: How you made that transition, that your husband became your wife?

MIRIAM HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: Slowly. Cindy and I talked about this at great length before she even started the transition, and decided to take it in baby steps. And it wasn't like she was roger one day and then Cindy the next. It was a gradual process that took; I'd say maybe a year to two years to complete. So, I was introduced to Cindy in small doses.

AMY GOODMAN: And at this point, how do your children accept Cindy's children -- how do they accept the transition from their father to -- do they consider you their father or their mother, Cindy?

CINDY HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: I'm still -- I'm still dad. There have been occasions out in public where they have called me mom for convenience stake, at a doctor's office or something like that, but generally in public, they refer to me as Cindy and at home, I'm still dad.

MIRIAM HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: Oh, dad --

CINDY HUEBSCHER-SCOTT: Or dad! It was kind of hard for my daughter to lose the masculine -- strong masculine personality, but in my son -- He's just been nothing short of amazing. Amazing, it's really made it a tremendous difference in his life, in his temperament, his demeanor, his personal compassion, his ability to grow.

AMY GOODMAN: In this last minute, we want to bring in Dr. Virginia Erhardt the licensed psychologist and gender specialist in Atlanta.

You have worked with a number of transsexual couples. How trip cal is Cindy and Miriam's transition. What do you find are the greatest obstacles that couples have in transitioning and do most leave each other if one wants to change the gender?

DR. VIRGINIA ERHARDT: Oh, fortunately, it's still unusual for couples to stay together. In the past couple of years, I have seen an increase in couples trying to continue the marriage, and those who come into therapy are much more likely to continue. That is -- that shows a great dedication on the wife's part, just to be willing to come in and make that effort. There are many, many obstacles. As you can imagine, particularly the wife's initial reaction because the wife may initially be in shock. She may have discovered that her husband is transgendered rather than having it disclosed to her.

She may experience disbelief and a sense of betrayal at the deception perhaps revulsion, fear, shame and she may be very hurt and angry.

Scared and ashamed.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we're going to leave it there, but tomorrow on "dateline tomorrow night, very interesting hour following a number of transgender, transsexual couples through a two-year period. I want to thank you all for being with us.

www.democracynow.org

"I Am What I Am"

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Sung by Gloria Gaynor

Written by Jerry Herman

Album: Dance Disco vol 1 MCPS

It takes a lifetime to become the best
that we can be
We have not the time or the right
to judge each other
It's one life and there's no return and no deposit
One life
So make sure you like what's in your closet

I am what I am
I don't want praise
I don't want pity
I bang my own drums
some thinks it's noise
I think it's pretty
And so what if I love each sparkle and each bangle
Why not try to see things from a different angle
Your life is a sham till you can shout out
I am what I am

I am what I am
And what I am
Needs no excuses
I deal my own deck
Sometimes the ace sometimes the deuces
It's my life that I want to have a little pride in
My life and is not a place I have to hide in
Life's not worth a damn till you can shout out,
I am what I am

"unborn" rights?

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Be afraid. Be very afraid.

House Backs 'Unborn Victims' Bill

WASHINGTON - The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday easily approved for the third time legislation that would make killing or harming a "child in utero" a federal crime, hoping the strong 254-163 vote will give the issue momentum in the Senate.

Critics said the bill undermines abortion rights by treating the fetus or embryo as a person, although bill sponsors said they included language that explicitly excludes abortion. for now

The House has passed the bill three times since 1999 but the Senate has not acted. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, predicted the Senate would take up the bill this year, possibly quite quickly.

"It's certainly got strong bipartisan support and you can expect to see it on the Senate floor," he said.

The bill has been nicknamed "Laci and Conner's Law" after Laci Peterson, who was pregnant when she was murdered. Her unborn son was to have been named Conner. Her relatives have actively lobbied for it, adding to the emotion surrounding the legislation.

During the debate House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, invoked the image of slain mother and child watching Congress from a nursery in heaven.

Scott Peterson faces double murder charges in California for the deaths of his wife Laci and Conner.
California law allows a murder charge for Conner, but in some states the death or injury of a fetus would not constitute a separate crime.

The House bill would make killing or harming a fetus or embryo a federal crime at any stage of pregnancy.

"I think the American people want to see justice on behalf of both individuals, the mother and the child," said Rep. Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican.

Critics such as New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney said that having the bill apply to even the very first stages of pregnancy, when miscarriages are fairly common, could lead to such troubling situations as coffee shops having to monitor caffeine intake of pregnant woman, or someone with German measles facing possible criminal charges if he showed up at the office and infected a pregnant co-worker.

Mostly Democratic critics say that by treating an embryo or fetus as a person, the legislation undermines or at least complicates abortion rights, although sponsors of the bill disagreed.

Critics of the bill backed a substitute offered by California Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren that would treat a crime against a pregnant woman and her fetus as two crimes, not one, but would stop short of considering the embryo or fetus as a separate person with legal rights. It was defeated by a 228-186 vote.

New York Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler said the Lofgren alternative was "just as tough on criminals" without entering the "emotionally charged legal back alleys" of the abortion debate.

According to a National Right to Life Committee survey, 29 states have similar legislation on the books, although 13 of them cover only some portions of pregnancy.

Story by Joanne Kenen
Story Date: 27/2/2004
Reuters News Service 2003

Check out Planet Ark on the web at PlanetArk.com

emphasis mine

FAIR update

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http://www.fair.org/activism/marriage-amendment-update.html

ACTIVISM UPDATE:
ABC, NY Times Respond to FAIR Alert

February 27, 2004

On February 16, a FAIR action alert called on ABC World News Tonight and the New York Times to offer a more nuanced explanation of the possible effects of a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

While some proponents of the amendment claim it would allow states to offer same-sex civil union arrangements, some legal experts suggest that the vague language of the amendment could actually ban civil unions.

In response to emails from FAIR activists, New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent wrote on his web journal (2/19/04): "I urge The Times to report on it more fully -- not just on what the amendment really means, but also on the debate over what it really means."

On February 25, the Times did just that, offering a short piece on the legal debate over the amendment:

"Some conservative scholars who oppose gay unions and some gay
scholars who oppose the amendment are arguing that it might effectively block any marital benefits for same-sex couples, no matter what name is used."

The piece did tilt in favor of the amendment's proponents, offering two responses to a single comment from a critic of the amendment.

The Times story is also unfortunately framed to suggest that criticism of the amendment's language is relegated to just two small groups of legal scholars-- "a handful of conservatives" who oppose gay unions, and "a few
gay legal advocates" who oppose the amendment."

In their February 24 broadcast, ABC World News Tonight also changed the
way they reported on the amendment.
Correspondent Terry Moran ended his
report with this: "The president says he supports states deciding for themselves whether they want to establish so-called civil unions for same-sex couples, though gay rights advocates say the constitutional amendment he is backing might ban even those arrangements." �This explanation is an improvement over Moran's earlier description of the amendment, which he said "would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but allow states to establish civil unions for gay couples."

FAIR's criticism was taken seriously by ABC and the Times thanks to the efforts of activists who contacted the outlets in response to the alert.

KWRU

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You are reading http://livinginthehood.blogspot.com

Come support KWRU as we stand trial for demonstrating in defense of victims of domestic violence!

Monday, March 1st @ 8 AM
Criminal Justice Center
1301 Filbert St., Center City - Philadelphia
***********************************************
Dear �Friends,

I have been active in the fight for low-income women for years now.

KWRU and I personally were the first in the nation to testify before congress on the impact of welfare reform to poor women. �We have been instrumental in working with shelter providers around the country in addressing the economics of violence and the need for domestic violence work to include affordable housing as a priority on everyone's agendas.

We were the first to hold demonstrations in Philadelphia on the impact of welfare reform to victims of domestic violence at the center district welfare office. Our work helped to pave the way for a statewide body to monitor these issues. �Everyday for years now we have kept women alive when Women Against Abuse had reached capacity.
We are on a first name basis with Judges and police because we have secured so many protection orders and literally helped hundreds of women pack up and leave.

So today, I call upon you for your help. Once again, I face criminal charges for demonstrating without a permit at City Hall before the holidays for seven victims of domestic violence. The city offered no safety for these women so six of us were arrested and went to jail.

I now face a misdemeanor in the third degree, a point away from a felony and was issued a STAY AWAY ORDER FROM CITY HALL!

I have missed many important meetings with city council members as a result. �What is so terrible about all of this is that I just won a settlement against the Philadelphia Police Department after their last unlawful arrest.

Please join myself and KWRU at 8 am on March 1st at the Criminal Justice Center, the day we are expected to stand trial for demonstrating.

Signed,
Cheri Honkala
Founder, KWRU
National Organizer, Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign


http://www.kwru.org/

2ND NATIONAL DAY OF RALLIES CALLED IN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT'S ANTI-GAY AMENDMENT DRIVE

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2ND NATIONAL DAY OF RALLIES CALLED
IN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT'S ANTI-GAY AMENDMENT DRIVE

Rallies to coincide with historic 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education decision

WASHINGTON, DC - DontAmend.com announced today a second national day of rallies on May 17th in response to yesterday's call by President Bush for passage of a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. May 17th is the date the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has said that same-sex marriage licences must begin to be issued in that state, and it is also the 50th anniversary of the date that "judicial activists" on the Supreme Court issued their famous Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

"With the President openly endorsing second-class citizenship for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people, and the Democratic front-runner saying his position mimics the anti-gay stance of the Vice President, our community is left with no equal rights voice in national politics unless we become that voice ourselves," said Andy Thayer, National Rally Coordinator for DontAmend.com. "We all remember the tremendous response of our community and allies following the murder of Matthew Shepard. While many in our community had been brutally murdered before Shepard, it was the outpouring of people in the streets of America following Shepard's murder which prompted a national debate about right-wing fundamentalist hatred of gay people."

Working with other local and national organizations, on February 14th DontAmend.com organized equal rights rallies and pro-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered activities in over two dozen cities around the country.

"The President's endorsement of the anti-gay amendment is a crude attempt to divert attention from his falling poll numbers," said John Aravosis, co-chair of DontAmend.com and creator of the newly-launched DearMary.com that was profiled in yesterday's Washington Post. "Rather than address the real concerns of Americans such as the economy or the war, President Bush has opted for legislative gay bashing. It speaks volumes about the George Bush's low moral character and lack of family values that he would scapegoat an entire community in a desperate attempt to save his own political skin."

Aravosis also noted President's Bush's woeful ignorance of the basic functioning of our government. "The President derides so-called 'activist judges,'" Aravosis said. "It was 'activist judges' who had the courage to give us Brown v. Board of Education fifty years ago on May 17th. Is George Bush suggesting that he would have been blocking the schoolhouse door? After all, those activist judges were clearly not representing the will of the overtly racist, segregationist sentiment prevailing in America.

George Bush has a fundamental ignorance about the way our democracy operates if he think our court system is simply a rubber stamp for the whims of the majority. We call on all who support equal rights and fairness to rally with us on May 17th in order to give the president a civics lesson he desperately needs."

DontAmend.com, DearMary.com and The Equality Campaign, Inc. are a combined national grassroots campaign devoted to stopping any amendment to the US Constitution that would ban marriage equality for the LGBT community. The campaign was founded by the same veteran civil rights advocates who ran the successful StopDrLaura.com campaign targeting anti-gay radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

To get involved in organizing a rally in your town, please contact DontAmend.com by emailing ATDontAmend@aol.com, or visiting the DontAmend.com and DearMary.com web sites.

Progressive, not oppressive!

You are reading http://viridianariverstone.blogspot.com/.

Dear Editor,

Please explain to Mike that behaving like the reactionaries makes progressives no better than they.

As to Ann Coulter's marital and motherhood status, I'm an unmarried woman and my only daughter died. http://viridianariverstone.blogspot.com

Does Mike mean to imply that childless, unmarried women are mentally unstable?

Or does he imply Ms. Coulter is Lesbian? Because many Lesbians I know have children and either are, or wish to be, married.

Mike hurt ME in his attempts to attack Drudge. I've never hurt him one bit!

In fact, apparantly, I'm more progressive than he!

Rogi Riverstone
http://rriverstone.com

Niagara Falls Reporter
MATT DRUDGE IS SO GAY, WHY DOESN'T HE SAY SO?
By Mike Hudson

Being a cyber-gossip looks like such an easy job, I'm tempted to take it up myself.

The great thing about it is that you apparently don't have to talk to any of your sources.

I used to be in show business and I've lived and worked with a lot of great gay people. My best friend from childhood and old bandmate, Tim, is queer, and has been open about it for the past 30 years. My sister, Linda, is openly gay as well, and lives in one of the "red" states, where that can be a big problem.

So when cyber-gossip Matt Drudge published half a dozen demonstrably false stories last week about Sen. John Kerry having an affair with a grown woman, I asked the question with no malice.

Because it's been my observation that no one is more interested in the heterosexual doings of grown men and women than repressed homosexuals.

Drudge, who made his bones reporting heavily on the various real and imagined sexual dalliances of former president Bill Clinton, has vigorously denied his homosexuality, perhaps because his largely Republican, right-wing audience would look unfavorably upon it.

I wrote him an e-mail and asked if he was homosexual.

He didn't answer.

Like I said, I don't care what a man and a woman do in a bedroom.

And I don't care what a man and a man do in a bedroom. Keep the kids out of it and everything's fine by me.

But Drudge seems to take great delight in peeking under other people's covers, while at the same time failing to fess up to behavior his political bedfellows might deem "unnatural."

Drudge's pals in the media -- the drug-addled Rush Limbaugh or the serially-married and estranged-from-her-family Dr. Laura -- have similar problems. So does the family values harpy Ann Coulter, who remains childless and unmarried, and has demonstrably lied about everything from Vice President Dick Cheney's resume to her own age on drivers' licenses taken out in various states.

Bill Bennett, former education secretary, drug czar and another one of Drudge's favorites, has proven to be a degenerate gambler, as records of his million-dollar losses in Las Vegas and Atlantic City show.

The worst of all is probably is Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly, whose phony populist palaver seemingly has many convinced he's "looking out for you" when, in fact, he's a lying, racist coward. Sometimes, being in the media business is something you're almost ashamed to admit. Drudge's homosexuality doesn't disturb me.

Nor does Bennett's gambling degeneracy, Limbaugh's drug use, Coulter's obvious mental problems or O'Reilly's hypocrisy.

It's a free country and we're all pretty much allowed to go around saying whatever we want.

What bothers me is that these were the people who worked in tandem to get George W. Bush elected.

Somehow, Bush lost by a half-million votes and still got into the White House.

Somehow, when he did get in, he used every tool at his disposal to redistribute the wealth in this country from the poor and middle-class to the rich, throw three million people out of work and get about 550 brave young American men and women killed in a war we didn't have to fight.

Phonies and cowards like Drudge, O'Reilly, Dr. Laura, Limbaugh and Coulter facilitated this, and now have the nerve to call those who disagree with them traitors.

None of them served in the military.

Indeed, none of them were fit to serve in the military.

And yet, now, they presume to tell the rest of us who is and who is not patriotic.

The Federal Communications Commission, headed up by Colin Powell's kid, Michael, has launched an investigation into how Janet Jackson's breast -- its most interesting part covered by what looked like a sheriff's badge -- got onto television for a nanosecond during the annually abysmal half-time show at the Super Bowl.

The FCC would do better looking into shows like O'Reilly's -- which played the clip over and over again for a week straight in slow motion -- or Limbaugh's radio broadcast, which he's admittedly done high, a clear violation of the FCC Code.

In the meantime, I want to know whether the conservative slimemeister Matt Drudge is a closeted homosexual.

Since he won't respond, any of you ladies out there with any pertinent information may contact me either by phone or e-mail.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com
February 24 2004

Dear Mary

You are reading http://viridianariverstone.blogspot.com/.

Vice President Cheney, your father, recently said he would support adding anti-gay prejudice to the US Constitution, making you and millions of other Americans second-class citizens. As an open lesbian who has worked for years as a public advocate for gay civil rights, you are in a unique position to defend yourself and your community in this dire hour.

Won't you join us in publicly opposing this bigoted un-American proposal?

Sincerely, A concerned citizen
______________________________

WEB VISITORS: Please replace ALL the text in this box with your own public letter to Mary, preferably signed with your FIRST name, city and state, then click "Submit." We will post as many of your messages as possible on this site, and with your monetary help publish them in newspaper and magazine ads and beyond. All emails submitted to DearMary.com are the property of DearMary.com, DontAmend.com and The Equality Campaign Inc. and may be edited for length and clarity and reprinted in any format including but not limited to newspaper and magazine ads for the express purpose of this campaign as decided solely by DearMary.com.

Choice

Ok, everybody out of my pants!

That means you, Mr. Bush, Mr. Roberston, Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Schwartzenneger, Ms. Dunlap.

And you, too, Mr. Richardson, Ms. Madrid, Ms. Boxer, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Edwards.

I am a modest person and there's nothing down there that's any of your business.

I've been kidnapped! It's a coup! It's a coup! It's a coup!

I am bisexual. I'm comfortable understanding, and standing up for, every political and religious issue in this country, pertaining to reproductive organs.

There's nothing you've got that I haven't seen, or loved.

When my daughter was dying, I was handed a leaflet by the hospital.

It warned, "you are in danger of a miscarraige."

It went on to say what steps I needed to take to try to prevent losing my baby.

One of these emphatically stressed that I not allow anything to invade my body.

So, when the doctor started poking around, it was all I could do to keep from kicking him in the head to protect my child.

The maternal instinct, in my case, was a fierce and savage thing.

I'm feeling that way now.

Put down the speculum, camera, cross, patriot missle and walk away from the stirrups, before I kick your brains out!

For the first time in history, our so-called "representatives" have legislated against a necessary medical procedure.

This administration is calling for ammending the Constitution, contradicting their advocacy of states' rights.

Medical clinics get their funding jerked, if they advocate using protection!

Schools are forced, with federal funds, to preach "abstainance only," as though normal, human sexuality was the most depraved, perverse and twisted aspect of humanity.

A state governor, who assaults women, implies Gay and Lesbian marriages will cause civil "chaos," as if married Gays and Lesbians will behave like he has!

The current administration discovered feminism, for ten minutes, as a pretext for bombing Afghani women out of their burhkas, but have ignored women's plight there since.

And, rumor has it, the Senate may pass "Laci's and Connor's law," named for Laci Peterson and he fetus, which would make harming a pregnancy, even in the first trimester, a crime, potentially punishable by death.

Hello?

Look, I'm an ugly, old woman, with bad teeth.

I doubt reproductive or marriage issues will ever affect me directly again.

But that doesn't mean justice is none of my business.

I remember the sacred embraces.

I remember the healing of intimacy.

I remember patting my tummy and whispering to that flicker of life, whom I nicknamed, "tadpole."

I remember the hope and purpose I felt as I hung nursery curtains, researched parenting, tried to quit smoking.

If you think I don't know how to love, you don't know what love is.

I was, I suppose, lucky that my pregnancy ended before a much more traumatic, late-term procedure was required.

I barely survived the psychological trauma of what I did go through; I can't imagine the horror of anything worse.

I was lucky to have married twice.

My first wedding was to a Lesbian, on Venice Beach, California, at sunset, on my grandmother's quilts.

My second marriage, the only legal one, was to a man, in a Unitarian Universalist church basement, on the Vernal Equinox, during a rainstorm, wearing a thrift store wedding gown.

I know something about motherhood and I know something about love.

And regime change begins with my pants!

I have a dream that, one day, our children will be judged, not by the configurations of their genitalia, but by the content of their character.

I have a dream that, one day, little breeder boys and girls and others will be able to hold hands with little queer boys and girls and others and sing, in the words of the old, Drag Queen anthem,

"I am what I am.
I don't want praise;
I don't want pity.

"I bang my own drums.
Some thinks it's noise;
I think it's pretty. . . .

"It's my life that I want to have a little pride in,

"My life and is not a place I have to hide in!

"Life's not worth a damn till you can shout out,
'I am what I am!'"

Keep the U.S. out of my pants!

March for Women's Lives

You are reading http://viridianariverstone.blogspot.com/.

To demonstrate overwhelming majority support for a woman's right to choose safe, legal abortion and birth control, the largest pro-choice majority in history will march on Washington on Sunday April 25, 2004.

For the first time ever this pro-choice march is a collaborative effort - seven leading national women's rights groups have come together to organize this momentous event.

The AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, BLACK WOMEN'S HEALTH IMPERATIVE, FEMINIST MAJORITY, NARAL PRO-CHOICE AMERICA, NATIONAL LATINA INSTITUTE FOR REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN and PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA are the principal organizers of the March for Women's Lives and have pooled efforts and resources to lay the groundwork. Other progressive organizations have signed on as CO-SPONSORS - offering everything from member participation to help spreading the word and help defraying costs.

The march will begin at noon on the national mall, although participants may begin assembling on the mall, between the Smithsonian museums (between 3rd St. and 14th St.), as early as 10 a.m. After marching on Washington, a rally will be held from 1-4 p.m. on the National Mall. Special seating will be available for people with disabilities. The rally program will be signed for the hearing impaired. The route is wheelchair accessible and transportation will be provided for those who cannot negotiate the route.

SIGN UP NOW!

http://www.marchforwomen.org/

Sweet Bitter Love

Sweet
Sweet bitter love
Sweet
Sweet bitter love

The taste still lingers
Going through my helpless fingers
You slipped away
Sweet bitter love

Sweet
Sweet bitter love
Sweet
Sweet bitter love

What joy you brought me
What pain you've taught me
So sure is day
You slipped away
Sweet bitter love

Sweet
Sweet bitter love
Sweet
Sweet bitter love
Sweet
Sweet bitter love
Sweet
Sweet bitter love

My magic dreams
Have lost their spells
And that was lost
There's an empty shell
Sweet bitter love

Sweet bitter love
Hey
Sweet
Sweet bitter love
Sweet
Sweet bitter love

What have you awaken
And then forsaken
A trusting heart like mine
Ooh like mine
Sweet bitter love

Sweet bitter love
In the middle of the night
I want your sweet sweet sweet
Sweet bitter love
Sweet bitter love

Sweet
Sweet bitter love

You slipped away
Sweet
Sweet bitter love
Sweet bitter love
Sweet
Sweet bitter love.

Van McCoy

Right to Life?

Offer your feedback and comments at Rogi's Kitchen Table.

What do you hypocrites know about rights to life? Here's your inheritance:

MARY TURNER

In May, 1918, a white plantation owner in Brooks County, Georgia, got into a quarrel with one of his colored tenants and the tenant killed him. A mob sought to avenge his death but could not find the suspected man. They therefore lynched another colored man named Hayes Turner.

His wife, Mary Turner, threatened to have members of the mob arrested. The mob therefore started after her.

She fled from home and was found there the next morning. She was in the eighth month of pregnancy but the mob of several hundred took her to a small stream, tied her ankles together and hung her on a tree head downwards.

Gasoline was thrown on her clothes and she was set on fire. One of the members of the mob took a knife and split her abdomen open so that the unborn child fell from her womb to the ground and the child's head was crushed under the heel of another member of the mob; Mary Turner's body was finally riddled with bullets.

She was still alive when her baby was killed.

Document 7: "The Anti-Lynching Crusaders: The Lynching of Women," [1922], NAACP Papers, Part 7: The Anti-Lynching Campaign, 1912-1955, Series B: Anti-Lynching Legislative and Publicity Files, 1916-1955, Library of Congress (Microfilm, Reel 3, Frames 570-73).

Little Potato

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Written by Malcolm Dalglish, Oolitic Music, BMI, and recorded on Metamora, Sugar Hill Records, SH-CD 1131

You're my little potato, you're my little potato,
You're my little potato, they dug you up,
You come from underground!

The world is big, so big, so very big! To you, it's new, it's new to you!

You're my little potato, you're my little potato,�
You're my little potato, they dug you up,
You come from underground!

Let's talk about root crops (they dug you),
And lamb chops (they chew on you),
And things to eat...like apples and cheese and 'nanas and cream,
Jellies and butter, it's late at night, I hope this little bottle helps you go to sleep!

They must have grown you wild, you make a grown man a child,
I'll go and play in the mud to be with you my spud (potato).

When you came out looking red as a beet,
You had wrinkles on the bottoms of your feet!

Oh, you are so sweet potato!

You're my sweet potato, you're my sweet potato, dug you up!
You come from underground!

You smile, a smile, a little smile!
The world is small, so small, it's very small!

You're my little potato, you're my little potato, you're my little potato, they dug you up,
You come from underground!

You're my little potato, you're my little potato, you're my little potato!


just some of the things I missed and miss.

Life Matters

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Independent Lens
"Life Matters"

Tuesday, January 20, 2004
10 - 11:00 pm

A straight-arrow rural Texan Pentecostal/Baptist minister, Curtis Boyd relinquished the pulpit in the heat of the social changes of the 1960s and became a doctor who provided thousands of safe, illegal abortions prior to Roe v. Wade. (CC, Stereo)

Learn more about Dr. Boyd and go behind-the-scenes of this film at the companion Web site.
Life Matters

I want my daughter back

Offer your feedback and comments at Rogi's Kitchen Table.

SHe would have been seven this Christmas. That's a good age for lots of fun.

Cookie baking, snowflake making, tree trimming, story telling....

Look, you took my health. You took my employability. You took my dignity. You took my independence. You took my mobility. Did you have to take her, too?

How do I continue to survive, year after year, with no family, no future?

Why did you take her, too?

Count to 14

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Fourteen seconds. Count.

There. Another person is infected with AIDS.

Count another fourteen seconds. There. Another person is infected with AIDS.

Did you have a hard day?

I did. I'm emotionally exhausted, from telling a new friend, Stu, a little of my experience with homelessness and with losing my daughter, all the while being socially ostricized.

I'm physically exhausted from trying to do too much work outside, too fast, while the weather holds out.

I'm in a lot of pain.

But I am not an infant child, dying of AIDS, orphaned because BOTH my parents, and most of my siblings, died of AIDS, too.

I am not a raped woman in India, whose husband gave her the virus and then threw her out when she showed symptoms.

I am not dying of AIDS, alone, socially ostricised, hungry, homeless and helpless.

Count to fourteen. There. Another person is infected with AIDS. Every fourteen seconds.

Now, go here and donate one little dollar: 46664. That's Nelson Mandela's prisoner number.

You think you had a hard day?

DO IT!

Thank you,

Rogi A. Riverstone