Palau

This post from TBogg and the following comments made me giggle uncontrollably – sometimes commenters are more entertaining than the orginal post. You have to wonder why ‘cinc’ is not blogging her or himself.

The Geography Of The Psyche

I was puttering around earlier working on something else and I came across this hilarious paper dealing with the spousal notification issue from the “men’s rights” perspective.

[…]

This reasoning might be questioned on several fronts. First, it is not the case that the biology is all with the women. As dozens of studies of couvade syndrome indicate, expectant fathers experience biological symptoms of pregnancy along with their partners. Both partners may feel nausea, irritability, food cravings, indigestion, and so on. Both can anticipate discomforts from pregnancy and the stresses of infant care. While the man?s aches and pains are “psychosomatic,” and are likely to be less intense than the woman?s, they are not inconsequential. Men and women both experience biological effects of pregnancy.

And they both have that glow…

In any event, the right to privacy recognized in Roe v. Wade is not based on biology only, but also on issues of emotion and identity. Justices O?Conner, Kennedy and Souter stated as much in Casey, observing that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy. These choices include the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. This is not the language of biology, but of religion or philosophy.

And if men choose to define their “concept of existence, of meaning, of the mystery of life” as being pregnant, the law should give them equal rights to the female body that is actually, you know, biologically pregnant. That’s called equality.

The greater maternal involvement in biological pregnancy cannot by itself resolve these larger issues. What matters, in addition to the physical effects on the body, are the consequences of abortion for the individual?s basic value structure and self-concept. Once the liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment is phrased in terms of choices and a concept of the self, rather than biology alone, the argument that the woman?s interests should trump the man?s requires further elaboration. Both men and women face choices about their roles as parents and their concepts of their own identities. Both men and women become bonded with the fetus. The fetus may be physically growing in the woman?s belly, but in the geography of the psyche, it is inside the man as well. To exclude expectant fathers from juridical notice on grounds of biology is to miss the importance of pregnancy in a man?s concept of himself as a parent and a procreative being and his vision of the meaning of his life.

Waaaah! So he wants us to give his emotions corporeal form in law now?

Commenter cinc notes the absurdity:

Seriously, I could see allowing such a law if each man seeking to enforce the law had to prove in court that (1) he is the emotional father, and (2) he is impregnated by the geography of psyche. The father should have to do this after he learns of his “emotional pregnancy,” whether by communication from the mother or by psychosomatic pee test. Once established, the right would be registered. A woman seeking an abortion could then check against the database without the delay of court proceedings.

It is really quite a beautiful solution. The woman could only subjugated by a man that is legally emotionally pregnant with her child, which I believe is the Constitutional standard. And it avoids any direct communication between the couple.

cinc 11.03.05 – 1:36 am #

Read the whole thing here…

Democracy, Republican Style

From US Senate majority leader Bill Frist’s website ( thanks to Atrios for the link)

Senate Shutdown
Why do you think Democrats shut down the Senate yesterday?

Party of No Ideas c

Party of No Principles c

Party of No Hope c

All of the Above c

Fair and balanced it’s not.

If They Can’t kill You the First Time, They’ll have Another Go

Meanwhile in other news, the Washington Post has this:

THE USA PATRIOT Act is intended to give the government the authority it needs to prevent terrorism. But the House has larded its version of the bill reauthorizing some of those powers with extraneous provisions that would significantly reshape the federal death penalty — and not just in terrorism cases. Whatever else happens in the House-Senate conference committee that will meet soon to reconcile differing versions of the bill, these provisions need to be removed.

The most troubling is a little-noticed section that would dramatically alter capital sentencing proceedings. Currently a jury has to be unanimous to impose death: one dissenter and the punishment defaults to life in prison. The bill would change that by allowing a new jury to be empaneled whenever a sentencing jury cannot make a unanimous decision one way or the other. This would effectively give prosecutors a do-over in many of the cases in which they fail to achieve a death sentence the first time around — or the second time or the third. We oppose capital punishment, but even its supporters should agree that a sentence so severe and irreversible should be meted out only when the arguments for it are overpowering. When a qualified juror is not persuaded, prosecutors should not get another chance.

Another House proposal would permit a death sentence in terrorism cases even when the defendant did not intend to kill. Under current law, capital sentences require not merely a homicide but evidence of intent either to kill or to seriously injure someone, except in cases involving espionage and treason. The new language would group terrorism crimes in with those espionage and treason cases, where intent to kill is not necessary. It would become easier to execute low-level conspirators who raised money or aided a plot in some way but who did not mean for their actions to cause death or injury. Depending on how the courts interpret this change, it could dramatically expand the federal death penalty. (My emphasis)

Thanks to Norwegianity for linking to Dispatch From The Trenches

When I started blogging three years ago, I was the only true working-class blogger I could find. Of course, as I?ve written elsewhere, I was so ashamed of blogging as a plain old worker in a blogtopia overrun with intellectuals that I ducked out of saying what I was.

More…

“I mean, the background check for high level security clearances just has to include whether or not the subject has ever written porn stories that include pedophilic beastiality. Doesn’t it?*”

Amanda at Pandagon on Scooter Libby’s taste for kinky sex:

Inside the dank corners of Scooter Libby’s mind

Posted by Amanda Marcotte at 08:13 PM

God, I’m glad I’m a wholesome porn liberal. Sure, many sexual practices get referenced all the time here on the street corner known as Pandagon, but they are wholesome American ones like BDSM and anal sex and “contracepting”, certainly nothing like what you might find in, say, a 1996 novel written by Scooter Libby.

At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.

All similiarities to the training required to be married to a Republican politician purely coincidental.

Shakes Sis has more. There is a lot I could say about this but I’ll just note in passing that it took Libby 20 years to finish this book. Which means that this passage about poking a horny bear with a stick is the product of a labor of love that lasted longer than many marriages.

Filed: Conservatives Sure Are Funny

It seems Libby is not alone in his odd tastes. Pedophelic ursine coupling seems to appeal to a lot of Republicans –

Amazon Sales of Scooter Libby Novel Soar After Indictment

While attending Yale, Libby took a political science class taught by Wolfowitz, who ultimately persuaded him to join the Regan administration. In 1981, Libby began his government career, working in the State Department as a member of the Policy Planning Staff in the Office of the Secretary. From 1982 until 1985, he served as director of special projects in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. It was perhaps this post that inspired him to write “The Apprentice,” his 1996 thriller that takes place in 1903 Japan.

The novel earned Libby favorable reviews. The Boston Globe called The Apprentice an “alluring novel of intrigue” while the New York Times Book Review said Libby’s “storytelling skill neatly mixes conspiratorial murmurs with a boy’s emotional turmoil.”

Well, now you know. Since the indictment, Libby’s book, The Apprentice (St. Martin’s Press), has jumped from #16,249 in sales on Amazon.com to #379, as of Friday evening.

Sick, sick, sick.

(*Thanks to Panadagon commenter libdevil for the quote)