Oregon Democratic Governor Kate Brown
Credit: Associated Press

SALEM, OREGON— Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Tuesday signed into law a bill expanding coverage on abortions and other reproductive services to thousands of Oregonians, regardless of income, citizenship status or gender identity. Proponents called it America’s most progressive reproductive health policy.

The Pro-Choice Coalition of Oregon said it is the first legislation in the United States to comprehensively address systemic barriers to accessing reproductive health care. Chris Pair, Brown’s press secretary, confirmed Brown signed the bill Tuesday.

Opponents have noted it will force taxpayers, even those who object morally to abortions, to assume some of the costs.

“Brown has enshrined into state law forced abortion funding, including for illegal aliens, even late-term and sex-selective abortions,” Republican state Sens. Kim Thatcher and Dennis Linthicum said in a joint statement. Linthicum predicted lawsuits will be filed over the issue.

Oregon’s legislation was introduced …

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Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott
Credit: AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman/Jay Janner

AUSTIN, TEXAS — The Republican governor of Texas signed into law on Tuesday a measure that will restrict insurance coverage for abortions, compelling women to buy a supplemental plan if they want coverage for the procedure.

Governor Greg Abbott said the measure known as House Bill 214 would protect abortion opponents from subsidizing the procedure. Democratic critics decried it as forcing people to buy “rape insurance.”

Texas, the most-populous Republican-controlled state, has been at the forefront in enacting abortion restrictions, with many of its measures followed by other socially conservative states. But when HB 214 goes into law on Dec. 1, Texas will be the 11th state to restrict abortion coverage in private insurance plans written in the state.

“As a firm believer in Texas values, I am proud to sign legislation that ensures no Texan is ever required to …

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Credit: Sam Cammack

Charnesia Corley was a 21-year-old college student with no criminal record when two cops from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office stopped her in June 2015 for running a red light.

After searching her car, police claimed to have found .02 ounces of marijuana. That was enough, they apparently felt, to justify a full-body cavity search. When Corley refused to remove her clothes in the dimly lit parking lot where she was being detained, one of the officers threw her to the ground, pushed her partially underneath her own car, and yanked Corley’s pants down to her ankles. For the next 11 minutes, dash cam video of the incident shows, she was held down by two officers while being searched. Corley claims that fingers repeatedly probed her vagina and that the officers ignored her protests. A third officer stood nearby holding a flashlight. No drugs were found …

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German coal workers
Credit: Jochen Tack/ Stiftung ZollvereinJ

Seventy-seven-year-old Heinz Spahn — whose blue eyes are both twinkling and stern — vividly recalls his younger days. The Zollverein coal mine, where he worked in the area of Essen, Germany, was so clogged with coal dust, he remembers, that people would stir up a black cloud whenever they moved. “It was no pony farm,” he says — using the sardonic German phrase to describe the harsh conditions: The roar of machines was at a constant 110 decibels, and the men were nicknamed waschbar, or “raccoons,” for the black smudges that permanently adorned their faces. 

Today, the scene at Zollverein is very different. Inside the coal washery where Spahn once worked — the largest building in the Zollverein mining complex — the air is clean, and its up to 8,000 miners have been replaced by one-and-a-half million tourists annually. The whole complex …

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Newt Gingrich

From the August 14 edition of Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum:

MARTHA MACCALLUM (HOST): Let me ask you about these Confederate statues because as we just reported the mayor in Lexington is about to take one down of a Confederate general. And where does that stop? At what point do you — are you erasing history and not sort of understanding? The role that these people played and the times that they lived in?

NEWT GINGRICH: I think the point is we ought to be a country focusing on the future, not a country frothing at the mouth about the past. And It tells you something about the intellectual collapse of the left. That all they have is this kind of rabid behavior. And of course, mayors in towns that are largely black are going to pander to their audience. They are going to …

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Charlottesville Christofascist White Supremacy rally

The white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past weekend were not ashamed when they shouted, “Jews will not replace us.” They were not ashamed to wear Nazi symbols, to carry torches, to harass and beat counterprotesters. They wanted their beliefs on display.

It’s easy to treat people like them as straw men: one-dimensional, backward beings fueled by hatred and ignorance. But if we want to prevent the spread of extremist, supremacist views, we need to understand how these views form and why they stick in the minds of some people.

Recently, psychologists Patrick Forscher and Nour Kteily recruited members of the alt-right (a.k.a. the “alternative right,” the catchall political identity of white nationalists) to participate in a study to build the first psychological profile of their movement. The results, which were released on August 9, are just in working paper form, and have …

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