Recommended reading

-Virtual money is threatening stability of Chinese currency. [Boing Boing]

-AMA picks fight with Ricki Lake, resolves to ban home births. [feministing, RH Reality]

-Memphis police caught on tape bashing transwoman prisoner. [Pandagon]

-Networked percolators at risk of denial-of-coffee attacks, BSG fans say we were warned. [Craig Maloney]

-Jack Abramoff convinced White House officials to fire his enemy, House Oversight Committee reveals. [WaPo]

-"Psychic" makes baseless sex abuse claim, panics mother of autistic child. [Pharyngula]

-Blackwater asks to be tried under Islamic law in deaths of GIs. [firedoglake]

Comments

[cfrost]

Re: “-Jack Abramoff convinced White House officials to fire his enemy, House Oversight Committee reveals. “

First, how is it that a lobbyist knows when a fed employee's term appointment is up? I don't know the law here but it has an unethical smell.

Second, justice will be served when these BushCo turds have their silk ties and tacky cuff links shoved down their fucking throats while on their way to federal penitentiary. No, wait, Justice will be served when they're all working in Marianas Islands sweatshops as slaves.

Third, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is only digging these morsels out of the Dubya White House manure heap because a razor-thin margin of Democrats have seized the House of Reps from the GOP fascists and can assign committee chairs. Make sure you're registered to vote folks.

[B-Money]

The article on the AMA trying to criminalize home births is disturbing. That is just another example of medicine becoming more about money than anything else. Hospitals and doctors see $$$ being lost due to home births and want that revenue. If the AMA succeeds, that will be a sad day. However, I see a long drawn out court battle over this if they push harder and harder.

[Autumnal Harvest]

I agree, it would be outrageous for the AMA to try to ban home births, but I see no evidence that they are. The resolution that they passed says:

RESOLVED, That our AMA develop model legislation in support of the concept that the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital, or a birthing center within a hospital complex. . .

I suppose that "model legislation" could be a ban of home births, or even a plan to kidnap pregnant women and shackle them in hospitals. But it could just as easily be legislation for government propaganda to encourage people to give birth in hospitals, and that seems much more likely.