PunkAssBlog.com

Maybe it’s because it’s an election year, but I’ve been feeling outright pounded by abortion news lately. To wit:
WSJ:
The American Psychological Association said Wednesday there is “no credible evidence” that a single, elective abortion causes mental-health problems for adult women.
The report, which came after a two-year review of published research, was anticipated by […]

How quaint! Too bad he’s spying on you.
I’m no fan of the RCMP, one of our glorious national symbols. They had a historical role in abducting indigenous children from their families so that they could be tortured, brainwashed, and frequently killed in residential schools. More recently, they’ve been responsible for an out-of-control taser epidemic that […]

50 comments and still going strong! I don’t normally get that many comments on anything I post here, so I’m happy to see a lively debate. (That’s not sarcasm. It’s pretty cool that the discussion remained relatively civil, too.)
Anyway, new PunkAssReaders, I hope you’re still reading, because now that I have your attention, I’d like […]

Mounties use tasers to sexually assault an aboriginal child. And get away with it.
Predictably, the article doesn’t call it sexual assault. But what does this sound like to you?

The girl, who was 16 at the time of the incident, said she was held down by four officers, one for each limb, while a taser was […]

Yet another set of relics from the post-satire age:

As the keychain says, truly “It don’t GITMO better than this.”
Welcome to “Taliban Towers” at Guantanamo Bay, the most ghoulishly distasteful tourist destination on the planet. As these astonishing mementoes show, the US authorities are promoting the world’s most notorious prison camp as a cheap hideaway for […]

Whatever side one falls on in the gun control debate, most people agree that handguns should not be in schools. It’s just a bad mix—volatile, trapped kids and deadly firearms. Any sane person ought to feel a bit uncomfortable at the thought of guns in a high school.
Unfortunately, sane people aren’t in charge in my […]

I wonder at what point a country accumulates enough of the markers—surveillance, botched elections, out-of-control law enforcement, and so on—that citizens and government alike can just shrug their shoulders and say, “Yep, we’re living in a police state. Can someone please liberate us now?”
The U.S. is pretty well there, I think. Check out this story […]

What I care about is human life, and the ending of it that could be prevented, no matter how great or small that chance of the life ending might be. Lives, lives that would otherwise be in no danger at all, are being lost to pregnancy!
Like these folks, I am […]

So I was just sittin’ at home, relaxing with some online poker and surfing the Blogosphere to occupy the mental space between hands, when on Feministing I came across this:
After the highest court of Maryland reheard the case which made the horrifying ruling that a woman cannot be raped once she has consented to […]

Drawing by Sami al-Haj, imprisoned Al Jazeera cameraman
After over two years, the U.S. military is finally releasing AP photographer Bilal Hussein. Hussein, guilty of practicing journalism while Arab, had been imprisoned without evidence or charges, and presumably will be released without apology.
These days, holding folks for no reason, indefinitely, is apparently no big deal. (Even […]

If we need to have fascism, can it at least be well-dressed fascism?
Okay, so this fellow Scalia has actually managed the unthinkable, which is to change my mind on the ethics of torture. Previously, as you may recall, I had the sane belief that torture was always unethical, under any circumstances. But this good judge […]

Some mystery organization, which only wants us to know the truth, has put out a handy-dandy Roe V Wade IQ test, 12 simple questions designed to test your knowledge of the 1973 Roe V Wade judgment. Alternately, this quiz will also test your understanding of what exactly judges do when they issue a ruling. […]