Palau

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, washed the t-shirt 23 times, threw the t-shirt in the ragbag, now I'm polishing furniture with it.

So I Lied, So Sue Me

'08/12 Election, Abortion, Parenting, Sexuality, Women
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I know I said I’d do nothing else on Palin but I just came across this post at Cornell Professor Michael Dorf’s personal blog.

While decrying the GOP’s vetting procedure Dorf makes a point I’ve not seen anywhere else – the massive disconnect between evangelist Palin’s professed anti-abortionism and her having amniocentesis while pregnant herself:

….one acquires the information available through an amniocentesis only at the small but real risk of terminating the pregnancy. This is why younger women are generally not offered an amniocentesis at all — the risk of miscarriage is too great to justify the procedure. For a person in a higher-risk category (an older woman, for example) who either will or might terminate a pregnancy on the basis of a positive result, this risk might be worth taking. But for a person who will not abort no matter what the result is, it would not appear to be. This makes me think that, at least for the moment that she decided to have an amniocentesis, Sarah Palin considered having an abortion.

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Oh, Sure

Civil liberties, Europe, Policing, Race
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Oh yeah, that must really be the explanation:

MUNICH (Reuters) – Young men who die suddenly after being arrested by the police may be victims of a new syndrome similar to one that kills some wild animals when they are captured, Spanish researchers said on Tuesday.

Manuel Martinez Selles of Madrid’s Hospital Gregorio Maranon reached the conclusion after investigating 60 cases of sudden unexplained deaths in Spain following police detention.

In one third of the cases, death occurred at the point of arrest, while in the remainder death was within 24 hours, Selles told the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.

All but one of the casualties were male and their average age was just 33 years, with no previous history of cardiovascular disease.

“Something unusual is going on,” Sells said.

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Who funded the research, the police union? And was it broken down by race and/or national origin?

UPDATE: Amnesty International’s report on Spanish human rights abuses.