Everyone knows McCain is comfortable staying in Iraq for the next 100 years.  If you think that is the only area where he would have a lasting impact of equal duration, you are mistaken. Click on the image below to see what hangs in the balance:

Consider the legally protected (for now) reproductive rights of women.  Any women under the age of 40 can be forgiven for assuming "it was always like this" and will always be like this.  After all, many take it for granted that "choice" means deciding which type of birth control to use.  

The reality is quite different.  The reproductive rights women take for granted hang by a slender thread.  Unlike the legal rights of African Americans to citizenship or voting, the reproductive rights of women are not protected by any constitutional amendment or acts of congress specifically drafted for their benefit.  Reproductive rights are protected only by a handful of Supreme Court rulings.   Over the years there has been a constant campaign to undo these gains.  In recent years, these attacks have all been held back by narrow 5-4 decisions.  

Here are some numbers liberals should keep in mind for the upcoming presidential election: 88, 75, 68, 69.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as the Peace Tree and the Independent Bloggers Alliance.

Typically, I'm not one to post rants. It's just not my style. Instead I enjoy reading the skilled rants of others. Maryscott O'Connor's rants on My Left Wing for example are a touchstone for my own emotions about the state of the world. Nobody cuts to the chase like Maryscott.

I always get a chuckle out of the folks who say "some scientists" question global warming... because the US NAVY sure as hell doesn't have any question about it.  In fact, it looks like they are positioning to ask for a whole new fleet to police the newly opened seas!

Consider this recently declassified report:

It's called "Naval Operations in an Ice Free Arctic"

Amy Richards is at work on Opting-In: The Case for Motherhood and Feminism, which will be published in 2007. She is also the co-author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide to Feminist Activism. In 1992 she co-founded the Third Wave Foundation and since 1995 she has been the voice behind Ask Amy, an online advice column.  This is her first time writing on www.RHRealityCheck.org.

Bill O'Reilly doesn't scare me. I have been on his show a few times and know that his bark is a lot louder than his bite. He's a bully, in that classic playground sense - he's not nice, unless you play his game. That said, however, when his producer invited me to contribute to a segment about the then impending Supreme Court cases dealing with later-term abortions, and the medical records from two abortion providers in Kansas being turned over to that state's Attorney General after a two year escapade, I was apprehensive.

Cathy Mahoney is the Legal Director for NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Last Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases challenging the Federal Abortion Ban, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in 2003.  More than anything else, the decision to schedule this argument, the day after a now monumental election day, serves as a chilling reminder of what's at stake for women's health and Americans' right to privacy now that the Court has been reconfigured by President Bush and his anti-choice colleagues in the Senate.  

   

RH Reality Check editor Scott Swenson and associate editor Tyler LePard went to the Supreme Court on November 8 and talked with demonstrators from both sides about the late term abortion cases before the Court.

For more on that day, read Scott's reflections and Tyler's reflections.

And think about adding your comments! What do you make of this video? The footage mostly shows comments from anti-choice protesters, including an extended interview with Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition. The ambiguity in these arguments is fascinating.

How would you respond?

Watch the footage at YouTube.

"Now, if Congress is right, there will be no such case, so it's no problem. But if Congress is wrong, then the doctor will be able to perform the procedure and Congress couldn't object."

With those words, Justice Breyer made clear the hypocrisy of Congressional and Judicial attempts to intervene in private medical decisions of pregnant women.  On the one hand, anti-choice advocates in and out of Congress suggest there is never a need for doctors to perform late term abortions to preserve the health of the mother. On the other hand, they want to prevent the supposedly unnecessary procedure. Yet more evidence that social conservative ideology, not medical judgment, has manipulated Congress and the Judiciary to score political points.

Nancy Northup is the President of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

We have  been down this road before.  And we  really shouldn't be going down this road again.  Let me start with this term,  "Partial-Birth Abortion."  There is  no such medical procedure as "Partial-Birth Abortion."  It is a political  soundbite.

 

The Center for Reproductive  Rights brings cases both in the United  States and around the world and works with  women's health advocates to strengthen laws protecting women's reproductive  health.  And we don't deal with this  issue of "Partial-Birth abortion" anywhere else in the world.  And that is because it was created as a  political soundbite here, for American politics.

The first sentence of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 is a lie. It's also an appalling run-on sentence, but we won't get into that. The Act, signed into law by President Bush in 2003; challenged and struck down by three separate federal judges in 2003 and 2004; and now, amazingly, making its way onto the Supreme Court docket for November 8; starts like this:

   

A moral, medical, and ethical consensus exists that the practice of performing a partial-birth abortion - an abortion in which a physician deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living, unborn child's body until either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother and only the head remains inside the womb, for the purpose of performing an overt act (usually the puncturing of the back of the child's skull and removing the baby's brains) that the person knows will kill the partially delivered infant, performs this act , and then completes delivery of the dead infant - is a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited.

   

"Here we are coming down the stretch of an election campaign, and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting," President George Bush replied when asked about Washington's most recent sex scandal.

By contrast, the Supreme Court had complete discretion in the scheduling of oral argument in two cases important to "pro-life" ideological extremists: the cases of Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood.

The Supreme Court is refusing to hear the case of parents complaining that their children are being taught Islam in California's public school system.
Also, a Republican governor is reportedly a staunch advocate for substantially expanding governmnent-funded health insurance, and the minumum wage still hasn't been raised since 1997. What's next?

Religion Taught In Public Schools and Other Surprises

So, the Supreme Court is refusing to hear the case of parents complaining that their children are being taught Islam in California's public school system. What on earth is going on here?

Apparently, since it wasn't bringing the case forward, the ACLU is snug with this development. But if schools were teaching the Christian Bible, the ACLU would be all over it in an uproarious protest.

"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." ~~Winston Churchill

And so we sit, shackled by self-imposed chains of fear, captivated by shadowy forms that move discordantly across the walls of our perception. Once again we are eager to accept appearance for reality. The Supreme Court ruling last week rejecting George Bush's military commissions to try Guantanamo detainees casts a huge shadow on the wall. Many are saying it not only curbed Bush and Cheney's unlimited presidential power grab, but absolved us of the responsibility of having to do anything about it.

The U.S. Supreme Court has just overturned a ruling for President Bush that upheld Guantanamo Military Tribunals.

The Court said that the procedures adopted to try Guantanamo prisoner Hamdan violated the Geneva Conventions.

Once Again, the Bush Administration has overstepped its legal authority:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President George W. Bush overstepped his authority in creating military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed tribunals were illegal under U.S. law and the Geneva Convention.

In a just world, Armando would be carrying this fight to the blogosphere.  He understands the subject far, far better than I ever will.  He knows the implications and the ramifications.  He could smack everyone around and make the point clear as a sharp stick in the eye.  It's not fair that an idiot managed to deprive so many blog communities of Armando's knowledge and ready wit.  

This is a subject already touched on several sites, but it's not gotten the attention it deserves.  So I'm here to harp on it again and hopefully blow away some of the fog around this issue.  I want to tell you why the "No Knock" ruling by the Supreme Court is not just unsettling, it's momentous.

And why the "no knock" ruling has almost nothing to do with knocking.