Category: Abortion, Feminism, Women’s Rights
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GiftGate: “If I Were a Rich Man . . .!”
By Peter Galuszka Richmond’s “Giftgate” scandal just gets worse. On Friday, Atty. Gen. and presumed GOP gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Cuccinelli announced that he was amending his required disclosures of gifts to show that he took more goodies from Star Scientific plus previously undisclosed gifts of a $7,750 trip in 2010 to Southwest Virginia from coal…
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The Virginia GOP’s Destructive Palace Coups
By Peter Galuszka Just how out of control are Virginia’s Republicans? This week’s redistricting coup attempt staged by prominent Republicans John Watkins and his cohort Thomas K. Norment in the otherwise evenly divided state Senate is as cynical as it is destructive. On Monday, the pair took advantage of the absence of a key Democratic…
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A Respite from the Culture Wars?
by James A. Bacon It sounds like Virginia Republicans have learned a lesson — at least temporarily — from the shellacking they took in the November elections. All the talk of “legitimate rape,” rape-induced pregnancy as a “gift from god” and, earlier this year, trans-vaginal ultrasounds has poisoned the Grand Old Party in the minds…
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Are We Going Back to Selma?
By Peter Galuszka Imagine it is Alabama in early 1965. The Southern state, like Virginia, has for decades deployed a number of ruses such as poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent U.S. citizens and state residents from voting. These people otherwise would have been qualified voters but also happened to be African-Americans whom the…
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Kissing the Pig — Wrapped up in a Bow
by James A. Bacon When push comes to shove, are Virginia’s Republicans fiscal conservatives first or culture warriors first? We found out yesterday when the Senate Republicans and Democrats reached agreement to pass a state budget. Republicans succeeded in batting down a $3 million Democrat-inspired provision for the state to pay for ultrasounds required of…
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“Our Bodies; “Our Idiot Selves”
By Peter Galuszka Forty two years ago, a feminist group titled “the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective” got together to start researching their own books about female health since they distrusted what they considered the male-dominated medical establishment. A substantial part of their research had to deal with birth control since the pill had been…
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Bob McDonnell: Natural Libertarian
by James A. Bacon It is with great trepidation that I venture into the shark-infested waters of Virginia’s culture wars, which I regard as a distraction from the pressing fiscal, economic and environmental issues facing the state. I belong in the muddled middle of the electorate that sees elements of truth in both sides of…
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National Laughingstock, Again
By Peter Galuszka Saturday Night Live’s recent mocking of the Virginia General Assembly’s proposed legislation to force women considering abortion to have trans-vaginal ultrasound exams and establishing conception as the moment of life’s beginning makes the Old Dominion the butt of national jokes once again. It seems that no matter how Virginians try to build…
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From Rising Temperatures to Big Government In Six Easy Steps
by James A. Bacon When the United Kingdom’s Met Office released its 2011 global temperature numbers back in November, the results were ambiguous enough that both the Global Warming (GW) establishment and skeptics felt vindicated. A compilation of the world’s three leading global temperature databases — the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, the NOAA Climate…
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The Ultrasound Abortion
By Peter Galuszka Abortion is always a very unpleasant topic just as it must be horrendous for a woman to be in a position to make such as choice. Still, it is her constitutional right, the law of the land. So, after years of trying, Virginia’s conservative legislators are on the verge of putting themselves,…