MARIE DIAMOND, - Think Progress Health
Stephan: The war on women continues. Here's how you know that this is not about abortion it is about controlling women. Notice that there is no recognition of the inherent contradicton in their argument. While these people defend zygotes, once they develop into young humans and get born... they're on their own. These same anti-abortion people do everything they can to cut prenatal care, early childhood development, school lunch programs, and a host of other efforts designed to nurture healthy children.
Longshot GOP presidential hopeful and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum stomped for votes in Iowa on Tuesday, trumpeting his ‘culture wars
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NANCY PHILLIPS, STAFF WRITER - Philadelphia Inquirer
Stephan: This story is good news. For the first time there is a move to hold superiors in the hierarchy accountable. Where monetary reparations alone have not succeeded this accountability will.
Lawyers for Msgr. William Lynn, charged with child endangerment for allegedly enabling abusive priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said Monday that prosecutors had erred in bringing a criminal case against him, and they have asked a judge to dismiss the charges.
Lynn, former secretary for clergy for Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, is the first member of the Catholic hierarchy in the nation to be criminally charged for assigning known abusers to posts that gave them access to new victims. Lynn, 60, who most recently was pastor of St. Joseph Church in Downingtown, has pleaded not guilty.
He was arrested in February along with two priests, the Rev. James Brennan and the Rev. Charles Engelhardt; a defrocked priest, Edward Avery; and Bernard Shero, a former parochial school teacher. Prosecutors say the other four men raped and sodomized altar boys in the mid-1990s.
Lawyers for Brennan, Engelhardt, Avery and Shero said Monday that prosecutors had offered to recommend prison sentences of 7½ to 15 years if the men would plead guilty to rape, conspiracy and other charges. Each rejected that suggestion.
Brennan, 47, is charged with raping and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in 1996 while on leave from Cardinal O’Hara High School.
Engelhardt, 64, Avery, 68 […]
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BRAD JOHNSON, - Think Progress Green
Stephan: You know as I prepare each day's SR, I read story after story like this. It is like watching a good friend commit suicide.
While officials throughout the U.S. Department of Homeland Security scramble to deal with a torrent of extreme climate disasters, the Tea Party-controlled House of Representatives has voted to cripple their response. In a nearly party-line vote of 242 to 180 on Thursday, the House adopted an amendment by Rep. John Carter (R-TX) to prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from participating in the Obama administration’s Interagency Task Force on Climate Change Adaptation. Carter justified his amendment by saying DHS - which includes the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) - should focus on the Mexican border instead of ‘duplicating the work
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EMILY P. WALKER, Washington Correspondent - MedPage Today
Stephan: The Illness Profit System is so obviously failing that those who work within it, like the nurses, have had enough.
Thanks to Larry Dossey, MD.
WASHINGTON — Several hundred members of National Nurses United held a rally here on Tuesday to call for a single-payer healthcare system, an end to tax breaks for big corporations, and workers’ rights.
The nurses started their march in front of the White House and walked across the street to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce chanting ‘Hey Chamber, you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side.’
The union wants Congress to levy higher taxes on Wall Street, which would include the big companies that the Chamber of Commerce represents, Dan Rec, RN, of Jamaica Plain, Mass., explained.
The nurses then bussed over to the Capitol where they were serenaded by a singer/guitar player who belted social justice tunes, and then heard brief speeches from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Sanders, like the 175,000-strong nurses union, is a major proponent of a single-payer healthcare system.
‘If you have the money, you have good healthcare,’ Rec told MedPage Today. ‘If you don’t have the money, it’s ‘oh well.’ It needs to be healthcare for all.’
Boxer spoke out against Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to drastically change Medicare for those who are currently under 65, saying many in Congress don’t want to change the […]
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LESLIE H. GELB, - The Daily Beast
Stephan: Our problem in America is willful ignorance, and a commitment, by a significant percentage of our population, to fact-free ideologies. The solution to our problems is not rocket science, but it does require honesty, life-affirming compassion, and an allegiance to facts.
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
When Germany’s Angela Merkel is in Washington on Tuesday, President Obama should ask her to explain how her country manages to succeed with jobs and exports despite high taxes and welfare, says Leslie H. Gelb.
As President Obama decorates German Chancellor Angela Merkel with the Medal of Freedom on Tuesday, he might reflect on her economy, rolling along in ways that shame America’s foundering recovery. Obama and non-hallucinatory Republicans might ask her about the solidity of German growth and jobs, despite high taxes, high social-welfare benefits, and high wages, all the things many Americans scorn as business killers. If the scorners would listen for a change, here’s what they would hear from Merkel about a successful German economy:
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