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Speakers' Corner
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Senate bill rewrite lets feds read your e-mail without warrants
This is a pretty big deal.
[The] bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans’ e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge.
Pennsylvania Fracking Law Opens Up Drilling on College Campuses
Today in What the Frack.From the article: Last year, when Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett suggested offsetting college tuition fees by leasing parts of state-owned college campuses to natural gas drillers, more than a few Pennsylvanians were left blinking and rubbing their eyes. But it was no idle threat: After quietly moving through the state Senate and House, this week the governor signed into law a bill that opens up 14 of the state’s public universities to fracking, oil drilling, and coal mining on campus.
This is a big deal. Fracking poisons groundwater. Fracking IS a health concern. Society says we MUST have a college degree if we want to succeed. Then the open our schools to this by “quietly” moving a bill through the house, senate, and having it signed into law, before it got ANY press coverage. The lawmakers who voted for this are putting profits above the health of our state and our future. I’m pissed. I like being able to shower and drink the water from my tap without becoming ill. Welcome to the future, where we pump our earth full of poison instead of using wind or water energy and claim in the process that it’s going to help kids have a more successful future. I seriously can’t believe this.
Fracking poisons ground water.
First Obamacare is upheld! Then congress prevented student loan rate increases!
This has been the best birthday weekend ever!!! :-D
Mother Jones is still winning. We love you, at Speaker’s Corner, btw. Can we call you Mama Jones? :-)
(via Romney leaves a handwritten note for reporters on ‘party bus’ | The Ticket - Yahoo! News)
WEATHERLY, Penn.—Chasing Mitt Romney around the country is often a blur of random cities, with each stop requiring its own unique logistics for the reporters who regularly cover the Republican nominee.
In Pennsylvania, where Romney is in the midst of day two of a six-state bus tour of key battleground states, the Romney press corps was surprised to find they wouldn’t be traveling on a long tour bus usually rented by the campaign to trail Romney. Instead, the campaign had procured what can only be described as a party bus—a short white motor coach usually hired to ferry around drunk party-goers.
The bus featured leather seats, neon lighting and, in its most unusual quirk, electric plugs in the ceiling above each seat. Soon, the bus looked like it was full of white streamers—only, it was an array of plastic cords, not tissue paper.
It took little time for the bus to become the subject of jokes among reporters—and, to their surprise, Romney.
After the candidate’s first event here this morning, the press corps arrived back to the bus to find a note from the candidate taped to the front wall of the bus. “You guys have it way too soft—nice ride,” Romney wrote, signing the handwritten letter with a simple, “Mitt.” “P.S.—Erased your hard drives.”
Romney, I think you would make a terrible president, and I really hope you don’t get elected. I also don’t think you’re a terribly wonderful person, and you’re probably not someone I would want to be friends with.
But… I give you props for this. You made me laugh, so you can have a point. It’s not enough to get you my vote, but it’s still pretty funny.
Woman Behind Controversial Military Breastfeeding Photo is Fired from Her Civilian Job | Parenting - Yahoo! Shine
“She was fired due to her passion about the Mom2Mom breastfeeding campaign and speaking out on gender equality and women’s rights,” her lawyer, Patricia (Pat) K. Buchanan, told Yahoo! Shine in an interview on Friday.
…
Her lawyer says that the publicity over the photos was only part of the reason Scott lost her job. In May, Scott had complained about gender bias at Schryver Medical, where she had been working for about 16 months, Buchanan says. Her boss asked her not to file a formal complaint, saying that “he’d handle it,” Buchanan says. Two weeks later, Scott was fired.
According to Buchanan, Scott had complained to her supervisor about favoritism shown toward male employees and condescending statements and name-calling aimed at women in the office. “When she asked to be on the day shift, which she was entitled to by seniority, she was treated very condescendingly and was called names,” Buchanan said, including things like “You’re a baby” and “You’re a woman, you can’t go there, it’s scary.” Still, Scott agreed not to file a formal complaint at the time, in part because “she loved her job,” Buchanan says.
If you read the rest of the article, you’ll see it wasn’t totally about her gender inequality stunts, and that she had actually done some work things wrong, which she probably could (should?) have been fired for.
But the fact that sexism like this is still happening in the work place (and it is, it happens at my job too), just really upsets me. Worse, it’s that no one seems to be upset by it. When I tell my (male) coworkers that I don’t like to be referred to by “woman” they laugh. Like it’s cute that I would be intelligent enough to be offended. On a whole, the women’s equality movement still isn’t over, and it needs a lot more attention.
Arts Education an Operatic Tragedy
Believe it or not, this Saturday the Pittsburgh Opera is planning to honor Gov. Corbett with a lifetime achievement award for his contributions to … wait for it … EDUCATION! I kid you not. The Opera announced that Corbett “will be honored for his early work as a teacher as well as his long-standing protection of the public interest” and that, “as Governor, he has recognized the economic, educational, and social value of the arts.”
(Source: mywhitecoatisonfire.com)
I still really don’t understand why no one is talking about how California has permanently cut public school buses out of the state budget.
Never in my life have I been more angry, frustrated, alienated, disappointed, hurt, and betrayed by our government.
The supposed ‘social justice’ community on tumblr hasn’t been saying anything, the press has said hardly anything, non-profits aren’t saying anything, our own government reps voted this in, even the ‘radical education’ community isn’t saying anything.
The only people who’re saying anything are the communities with kids who now can’t get to school this August, and clearly nobody gives a fuck about them.
This is the first I’ve heard about this. That’s horrifying.
We were also unaware. Why did this not make the news??
(Source: emeraldtriangleprincess)
Full, horrifying, utterly unsurprising context here.
Thank you, Rush Limbagh, for your inspiring words of wisdom, you disgusting, misogynistic, perverted man.
(Source: teapartyjesus)
