100 yrs ago, Sunday: Oct. 16, 1916: My preface, plus “How Planned Parenthood Changed Everything”, from TIME.com

Contraception has only been entirely legal in all 50 States for less than 50 years. There are still people fighting to take us backwards.

I’ve said for several years now that a large fraction of the Anti-Choice/Anti-Abortion lobby isn’t so much against abortion per se, but against ‘illicit’ sex and ‘recreational’ sex, even among married couples. Until Pro-Choice and Pro-Birth Control advocates understand that, they will never be able to properly fight the so-called ‘Pro-Lifers’.

The so-far invisible fracture lines in the anti-Choice movement — Anti-abortion, anti-recreational sex, and anti-birth control — must be split apart in the public discourse. These are distinct groups even though there is obvious overlap, and they have made common cause.

Many Americans are sympathetic to some aspect of the Pro-Life argument, but most part company with the opponents of birth control and non-reproductive (i.e., ‘recreational’) sex. The vast majority of Americans want to manage their fertility and control the number of children they have. (the “planning” part of Planned Parenthood).

Once these distinct groups are exposed as individual interest groups that have made common cause, the Pro-Choice fight might be more successful.

– Mike

___________________________________________________________________

“In 1965, the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that it was unconstitutional for the government to prohibit married couples from using birth control. In 1967 activist Bill Baird was arrested for distributing a contraceptive foam and a condom to a student during a lecture on birth control and abortion at Boston University. Baird’s appeal of his conviction resulted in the United States Supreme Court case Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which extended the Griswold holding to unmarried couples, and thereby legalized birth control for all Americans.” ~ Wikipedia

“When Sanger appeared before the judge, he waved a cervical cap from the bench and argued that no woman should have “the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception.” She went to jail for 30 days.” ~ @charlottealter, Oct. 14, 2016 (TIME.com)

___________________________________________________________________

How Planned Parenthood Changed Everything

@charlottealter, Oct. 14, 2016 (TIME.com)

Margaret Sanger Clinic

Underwood Archives / Getty Images Women and men sitting with baby carriages in front of the Sanger Clinic in Brooklyn, N.Y., October 1916.

The first birth-control clinic in the U.S. opened 100 years ago, on Oct. 16, 1916

More than one hundred years ago, Sadie Sachs tried to give herself an abortion. The 28-year-old mother of three knew she and her husband could not afford another child. So one hot July day in 1912, Sadie’s husband Jake came home from work to find her unconscious in their bed, their three children screaming. Jake called a doctor, who called a nurse, who was named Margaret Sanger.

Sanger and the doctor worked for three weeks to fight Sadie’s sepsis and nurse her back from the brink of death. When she was finally getting better, Sadie asked the doctor if there was anything she could do to prevent another pregnancy. In her memoir, Sanger later wrote that the doctor advised Sadie to resist “any more such capers,” and then this happened:

“I know, doctor,” she replied timidly, “but,” and she hesitated as though it took all her courage to say it, “what can I do to prevent it?”

The doctor was a kindly man, and he had worked hard to save her, but such incidents had become so familiar to him that he has long since lost whatever delicacy he might once have had. He laughed good-naturedly. “You want to have your cake and eat it too, do you? Well, it can’t be done.” Then picking up his hat and bag to depart he said, “Tell Jake to sleep on the roof.”

I glanced quickly at Mrs. Sachs. Even through my sudden tears I could see stamped on her face an expression of absolute despair. We simply looked at each other, saying no word until the door had closed behind the doctor. Then she lifted her thin, blue-veined hands and clasped them beseechingly. “He can’t understand. He’s only a man. But you do, don’t you? Please tell me the secret, and I’ll never breathe it to a soul. Please!”

Three months later, Jake Sachs called Sanger again. This time, Sadie died ten minutes after Sanger arrived. That’s when Sanger decided: “I was finished with palliatives and superficial cures; I was resolved to seek out the root of the evil, to do something to change the destiny of mothers whose miseries were vast as the sky.”

[See full article HERE.]

Here’s the Video Donald Trump Worried Would Be Used in a Campaign Ad (TIME Magazine)

The thing that struck me when I watched this was how much Trump rambled.

I’ve had to testify under oath. Paraphrasing, the best advice I ever got was, “Answer the question honestly. Answer what was asked. No more and no less.”

Trump’s lawyer jumps in once at the Serta question and cautions Trump about confidential information (I guess she can’t tell him not to talk so much), and for a few seconds Trump confines himself to yes and no answers, but then he returns to unnecessary embellishment and self-aggrandizement in his answers.

He Just. Can’t. Resist.

The full videos are at BUZZFEED.com. Click here for that article with complete videos.

Mike

_____________________________________________

Here’s the Video Donald Trump Worried Would Be Used in a Campaign Ad

(@tcberenson),Sept. 30, 2016

“Trump gave [this June 16, 2016] deposition in … connection with a lawsuit he filed in 2015 after chef Geoffrey Zakarian pulled out of plans to open a restaurant in Trump’s new D.C. hotel.” ~ Tessa Berenson (Video from POLITICO.COM) CLICK ON THE ARTICLE TO SEE THE VIDEO.

A video was released Friday of Donald Trump testifying under oath about his inflammatory rhetoric about Hispanics and immigrants, despite his lawyers’ arguments that it could be used in a campaign ad.

Trump gave the deposition in June in connection with a lawsuit he filed in 2015 after chef Geoffrey Zakarian pulled out of plans to open a restaurant in Trump’s new D.C. hotel. A D.C. Superior Court judge ruled the release of the video Thursday after Trump’s lawyers requested it stayed sealed over fears the content could be subject to “partisan editing,” Politico reports.

[Click HERE for full article with videos.]

Women’s Suffrage: 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – Women’s Right to Vote.

19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women’s Right to Vote. Joint Resolution of Congress proposing a constitutional amendment extending the right of suffrage to women, May 19, 1919; Ratified Amendments, 1795-1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives. ~ National Archives and Records Administration

Continue reading

Birthright Voting: The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution – Which States Ratified It, and When

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. ~ 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Primary Documents of

Continue reading

🎊 The EPA’s Decision is a Tremendous Victory for San Jacinto River! 🎊 (TexansTogether.org)

Texans Together‘s mission is to develop grassroots leaders in Texas and to engage and empower their communities.

 The EPA’s Decision is a Tremendous Victory for San Jacinto River!

On September 28th, there was a huge victory for the Highlands and the San Jacinto River communities when the EPA announced their decision to remove the waste from the San Jacinto River Waste Pits.

The Highlands area community residents have been struggling with toxic waste in the San Jacinto River for a long time. In 2010, Texans Together joined the fight with local residents who created the San Jacinto River Coalition (SJRC). From the start, we knew it was and was going to continue to be a long hard fight and it did not disappoint.

The SJRC’s main goal was to have the waste from the Superfund Site called the San Jacinto River Waste Pits removed from the river. The site was called “a loaded gun” pointed at the “most vulnerable of sites.” The polluting companies wanted to leave the waste in the river under an “Armored Cap.” Their studies showed it would be safer and, of course, cheaper.

Through the outreach efforts of the SJRC, it went from a few individuals in a parking lot educating the community to monthly packed community meetings.  The Environmental Protection Agency, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services, Media Organization, and other Environmental Groups have attended and presented at the meetings.

There were long days with volunteers speaking with seriously ill residents that were skeptical or outright hostile to their efforts. Canvassers told stories of skeptics recounting terrible illnesses that affected them and their neighbors, but denying there was a problem.  It had become normal for the community to see so many cases of illnesses, rare cancers, and diseases. They thought that was “just the way it was” and were hostile to people who might stir up trouble for them.

In 2010, Jackie Young began volunteering with the SJRC. After her and her family’s serious health problems, she began to research what was happening and it brought her to a degree in Environmental Geology and Texans Together.

As a volunteer, she told her story to the community and explained exactly how abnormal things really were.  In 2013, she was hired by Texans Together to lead the coalition.  She brought firsthand knowledge, passion, and a dedication to get justice for her community.

Jackie used her contacts in academia to get an independent study done of the site, and brought in an environmental activist, Lois Gibbs of Love Canal fame, to bring attention to the cause.  Jackie’s work was featured on Fox News, and Al Jazeera America, and in Texas Monthly, Houston Press and the Houston Chronicle.  She testified in front of the Harris County Commissioner’s Court, and the Texas Legislature.  She led the SJRC to work with public officials to petition for health studies, to bring a lawsuit against the companies responsible for the waste, and to remove the waste. The persistent effort of the community with Jackie’s leadership led to the SJRC moving to her new organization, Texas Health and Environmental Alliance (THEA).

For more information about this decisive victory for environmental justice follow this link: http://txhea.org/

Congratulations to the Highlands Community, Jackie Young, and dedicated volunteers in the SJRC. You made change happen!

If you are interested in volunteering or becoming a leader helping your community to become healthier, please contact Texans Together at 713-782-8833 or info@texanstogether.org

If you wish to donate to Texans Together, you can contribute here: (Donate)
Follow Us: @TexansTogether on Twitter or Like us on Facebook/TexansTogether.

Copyright © 2016 Texans Together Education Fund, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:

Texans Together Education Fund
P.O. Box 1296
Houston, TX 77251

Add us to your address book

The BRAD BLOG: DoJ Announces ‘End’ of Private For-Profit Federal Prison System; Plus: GOP ‘Civil War’ vs. Reality: ‘BradCast’ 8/18/2016

By Brad Friedman on 8/18/2016, 6:01pm PT

Guest: Carl Takei of ACLU’s National Prison Project

Shockingly good news on today’s BradCast, following today’s remarkable announcement by the U.S. Dept. of Justice that they are working to end the federal government’s “use of privately operated prisons”.

After that, you may want to pop up some popcorn to best enjoy the rest of today’s program. [Audio link to complete program is posted below.]

First up today, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates issued a memo, as Washington Post reported, instructing federal officials “to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or ‘substantially reduce’ the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is ‘reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons.’

Wow. Her memo goes on to cite a recent DoJ Inspector General’s report finding that privately run prisons do not provide same level of service, “do not save substantially on costs” and “do not maintain the same level of safety and security” as those run by the federal government’s Bureau of Prisons.

I am joined by Carl Takei, staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Prison Project, for both an explanation and a bit of a victory lap after his organization and others have spent decades taking on the private, for-profit prison industry. Takei details what the announcement means, why it has finally come about now, and how the ACLU and others — including investigative reporters, the Bernie Sanders campaign, and eventually the Hillary Clinton campaign — have long argued precisely what the DoJ has admitted today.

[Full Article Available Here]

Is the Universe Timeless Unless Someone Somewhere Exists to See It? Explaining the Arrow of Time: Random Thoughts of a Lay Person

I ran across the following article in Quanta Magazine:

“A Debate Over the Physics of Time

“According to our best theories of physics, the universe is a fixed block where time only appears to pass. Yet a number of physicists hope to replace this “block universe” with a physical theory of time, By Dan Falk, July 19, 2016

___________________________________

By Michael R. Honig

The article is written, insofar as is possible, for the ‘lay’ person. If you are interested in such cosmological esoterica, it makes for interesting, if challenging, reading. I also highly recommend looking at the comments, which are uncommonly thoughtful and erudite.

The article made me think of some other possible perspectives.

At one point in the article, it is suggested “… although the universe appears continuous at the macroscopic level, if we could peer down to the so-called Planck scale (distances of about 10–35 meters) we’d discover that the universe is made up of elementary units or “atoms” of space-time.”

Rather than use an imprecise term like “atoms of space-time,” I might suggest theoretical Time Particles which we might call “Chrōnons”, if such particles might exist

Based on Heisenberg (as I understand it), I might posit that the Universe would be ‘timeless’ (no future, present or past) if no one existed to observe it. As some of the article’s commenters suggested, The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Schrödinger’s Cat may well explain the ‘arrow of time’. Once a thing is observed, the quantum ‘wave function’ (i.e., all possible outcomes) collapses into a single observed state. Thus, at the moment of observation, Schrödinger’s Cat lives or dies and becomes part of the present, and future, thus establishing time’s arrow in a forged path.

Where this starts to get even more interesting is the question of what happens if beings elsewhere in the Universe (ETs) observe an ‘event’, thus causing the quantum wave function to collapse and making the event become a fixed point of reality in ‘time’ before we humans observe it. Have the ETs established this fixed event in time for all beings everywhere in the Universe, or can other beings cause a different quantum wave function collapse and see/create different events in space/time which represents a subsequent and different observer’s reality?

What if observers of a particular event in time from different times and places in the Universe later meet to observe the event jointly? Will they see the same thing? Can Schrödinger’s Cat be resurrected if two observers from different points in time and space later come together to make a joint observation? If their observations originally differed and one saw the cat dead and the other saw the cat alive, what happens when they subsequently view the cat together?

Or, does the first observer in the Universe determine the fate of Schrödinger’s Cat for everyone, for all time everywhere?

Deep stuff. How can we possibly ever truly know, given the scope of the Universe in space and time?

Sincerely as puzzled as you,

Mike Honig