Anonymous- U.S. Military Could Occupy Our Streets; Make Political Enemies Disappear

From the St. Petersburg Times:

…the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, approved by the Senate last week, […] would require the military to arrest terrorist suspects in the United States and detain them indefinitely without trial.

This includes all people on American soil, citizen or no. It is a law that could allow the U.S. government to disappear me forever because of my political beliefs, and it could happen to you, too. This bill has far-reaching implications and would set some frightening precedents–such as the use of the military against people on U.S. streets, violating Posse Comitatus.

So I decided to pass along this communique from Anonymous, because I like Anonymous, and because they’re seemingly the only highly visible collective disseminating propaganda these days. A lot of people are put off by the Guy Faux thing, but I’m really not concerned with their choice of motif as I am the message and values they hold.

Looking in the comments to this video, I had some pretty facepalm-ish moments. Like this one:

The bill in question is almost 1000 pages long. Care to tell me which sections the offending text is in? It would make informed agreement or disagreement so much easier.

You’re sitting in front of a fucking computer and don’t know how to fucking Google this bill and news on it?

[Referring to the number of thumbs-up] 13167 are being followed by black helicopters

Again, I have to wonder how this person functions in life and even on the internet if they don’t know how to type the words “2012 National Defense Authorization Act.” Does someone wipe your ass for you, too? When someone accuses another person of being conspiratorially-minded, but obviously couldn’t think their way out of a Chucky Cheese’s coloring book, it makes me want to puke. A lot.

“Let Women Die” Bill Will Go To Senate; Conservatives Say “Nothing to See Here”

The effort to criminalize birth control and make legal abortion impossible to access continues. Over 1,000 bills introduced in 49 states aim to achieve these goals. On the national level, H.R. 358 (aka the “Let Women Die” Bill) and its bizarre provision allowing hospitals to refuse to give a life-saving emergency abortion—and refuse to transfer the patient to a hospital that will—passed in the House by a vote of 251 to 172.

There were 15 Democrats who voted yes on the bill; all were male.

Groups like Family Research Council and the American Family Association, as well as conservative bloggers and politicos like Towhnall.com’s Katie Pavlich, have been hard at work misrepresenting the stance of opponents as well as the content of the bill itself. Conservatives are painting H.R. 358 as a bill that simply “stops abortion funding in Obamacare.” (and here.)

From the Family Research Council:

Despite misleading comments by abortion proponents, the Protect Life Act simply removes abortion funding and funding for health plans that include abortion. It ensures that Americans who want health care insurance with abortion coverage or supplemental abortion coverage can purchase it, but not with federal dollars. This was the long standing policy of the Hyde amendment until Obamacare bypassed this 30 year-old provision by directly spending money on new programs without any abortion funding restriction and creating tax subsidies for plans with abortion. The Protect Life Act restores this principle. (frc.org)

But here’s what the FRC doesn’t want you to know:

Congress to Vote on Allowing Hospitals To Let Women Die Rather Than Give Them an Abortion

This is a quick repost to give folks a primer on what’s going on with H.R. 358. There’s still time to stop this bill in its tracks.

TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro writes:
 

A bit of backstory: currently, all hospitals in America that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding are bound by a 1986 law known as EMTALA to provide emergency care to all comers, regardless of their ability to pay or other factors. Hospitals do not have to provide free care to everyone that arrives at their doorstep under EMTALA — but they do have to stabilize them and provide them with emergency care without factoring in their ability to pay for it or not. If a hospital can’t provide the care a patient needs, it is required to transfer that patient to a hospital that can, and the receiving hospital is required to accept that patient. In the case of an anti-abortion hospital with a patient requiring an emergency abortion, ETMALA would require that hospital to perform it or transfer the patient to someone who can. (The nature of how that procedure works exactly is up in the air, with the ACLU calling on the federal government to state clearly that unwillingness to perform an abortion doesn’t qualify as inability under EMTALA. That argument is ongoing, and the government has yet to weigh in.) Pitts’ new bill would free hospitals from any abortion requirement under EMTALA, meaning that medical providers who aren’t willing to terminate pregnancies wouldn’t have to — nor would they have to facilitate a transfer. The hospital could literally do nothing at all, pro-choice critics of Pitts’ bill say. “This is really out there,” Donna Crane, policy director at NARAL Pro-Choice America told TPM. “I haven’t seen this before.” Crane said she’s been a pro-choice advocate “for a long time,” yet she’s never seen anti-abortion bill as brazenly attacking the health of the mother exemption as Pitts’ bill has. NARAL has fired up its lobbying machinery and intends to make the emergency abortion language a key part of its fight against the Pitts bill when it goes before subcommittee in the House next week.

You can call (202) 730-9001 to be connected to Planned Parenthood, who will redirect you to a Washington operator board so that you can tell your Representative to say no to H.R. 358 and focus on jobs creation instead. I recommend knowing your district/Congressperson’s name before calling.

Anti-Abortion Lawyer “anything but competent” for “self-serving entreaties of attention-seekers”

Legislators in Texas, Dan Patrick and Sid Miller, recently filed a motion to appeal a ruling regarding their manipulative and senseless ultrasound-before-abortion legislature. Federal District Judge Sam Sparks has ruled against the motion, made by an unsavory anti-abortion sideshow lawyer in Texas named Allan Parker,  whose sloppy tactics did not go unrecognized by the Judge:

[T]he Court is forced to conclude Allan E. Parker, Jr., the attorney whose signature appears on this motion, is anything but competent. A competent attorney would not have filed this motion in the first place; if he did, he certainly would not have attached exhibits that are both highly prejudicial and legally irrelevant; and if he foolishly did both things, he surely would not be so unprofessional as to file such exhibits unsealed. A competent attorney who did those things would be deliberately disrespecting this Court and knowingly shirking his professional responsibilities, offenses for which he would be lucky to retain his bar card, much less an intact bank balance.
For Mr. Parker’s sake, and because the Court has no time to hold a sanctions hearing –- in part because it must take time out of deciding the actual legal issues in this case to address the self-serving entreaties of attention-seekers like Mr. Parker –- the Court assumes Mr. Parker is as incompetent as he appears. Rather than sanction him, the Court simply does what Mr. Parker would have done if he was a competent professional, and seals attachment 7 to his motion.

Anti-evolution and Intelligent Design lawyers also tend to strategize in the same way: they mistake spectacle for substance.