With millions of Americans out of work, House Republicans are focusing in on real priorities: decimating private abortion coverage and crippling public funding for abortion, as Jessica Arons reports in RH Reality Check.
In AlterNet, Amanda Marcotte notes that the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, or H.R. 3, also redefines rape as "forcible rape" in order to determine whether a patient is eligible for a Medicaid-funded abortion. Under the Hyde Amendment, government-funded insurance programs can only cover abortions in cases of rape and incest, or to save the life of the mother. Note that the term "forcible rape" is legally meaningless. Supporters of the bill just want to go on the record as saying that a poor 13-year-old girl pregnant by a 30-year-old should be forced to give birth.
Feminist blogger Sady Doyle has launched a twitter campaign against the bill under the hashtag #dearjohn, a reference to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Tweet to let him know how you feel about a bill that discriminates against 70% of rape victims because their rapes weren't violent enough for @johnboehner, append the hashtag #dearjohn.
Everybody chill out
A federal judge in Florida ruled the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional on Monday. However, as political scientist and court watcher Scott Lemieux explains at TAPPED, the ruling is not necessarily a death blow to health care reform:
[T]his ruling is less important than the controversy it will generate might suggest. Many cornerstone programs of the New Deal were held unconstitutional by lower courts before being upheld by the Supreme Court. This ruling tells us nothing we didn't already know: There is a faction of conservative judges who believe the individual mandate is unconstitutional. Unless this view has the support of five members of the Supreme Court -- which I still consider very unlikely -- it won't matter; Vinson's reasoning would have a much greater impact if adopted by the Court, but for this reason it is even less likely to be adopted by higher courts.
In a follow-up post, Lemieux explains the shaky legal reasoning behind Judge Robert Vinson's decision. The judge asserts bizarrely that being uninsured has no effect on interstate commerce. That premise is objectively false. Health insurers operate across state lines and the size and composition of their risk pools directly affects their business.
Given the glaring factual inaccuracies, Judge Vinson's decision may be overturned by a higher court before it gets to the Supreme Court.
Scamming Medicare
Terry J. Allen of In These Times win's the headline of the week award for an article entitled "Urology's Golden Revenue Stream." She reports that increasing numbers of urologists are investing millions on machines to irradiate prostate cancer in the office. The doctors can bill Medicare up to $40,000 per treatment, but they have to use the machines a lot to recoup the initial investment. So what does this mean for patients? Allen explains:
Rather than accessing centralized equipment and sharing costs, physicians are concentrating their own profits by buying expensive in-practice technologies that pay off only if regularly used. One result is overtreatment, which is driving up health care costs, exposing patients to unnecessary radiation and surgeries, and is frequently no better than cheaper approaches.
One third of Medicare patients with prostate cancer undergo the expensive IMRT therapy, as the procedure is known. In 2008, Medicare shelled out over a billion dollars on a treatment that has not shown to be any better for patients than less expensive therapies.
Obstetric fistula in the developing world
Reproductive Health Reality Check is running a special series on the human rights implications of obstetric fistula. Fistula is a devastating complication of unrelieved obstructed labor in which the baby's head gets stuck in the birth canal and presses against the soft tissues of the pelvis. If labor goes on long enough, the pressure will starve the pelvic tissues of blood, and they will die, creating a hole between the vagina and the bladder, and/or between the vagina and the rectum. Fistula patients face lifelong incontinence, chronic pain, and social ostracism.
The condition is virtually unknown in the developed world, where women with obstructed labor have access to cesarean delivery. However, an estimated 2 million women, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, have untreated fistulas with an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 new cases occurring each year. Without reconstructive surgery, these women will be incontinent for life.
Sarah Omega, a fistula survivor from Kenya, tells her story. Omega sustained a fistula when she delivered her first child at the age of 19. She suffered for 12 years before she finally obtained the surgery she needed. As Agnes Odhiambo explains in another installment in the series, fistula is a symptom of a dysfunctional health care system. Women suffer needlessly because they can't get access to quality health care.
The most likely victims of fistula are the most vulnerable members of their respective communities. Early childbearing increases a woman's risk of fistula. Pregnant rape victims may face even greater barriers to a safe delivery, thanks to the social stigma that accrues to victims of sexual violence in many societies. (Not to mention any names, House Republicans...)
Preventing and repairing obstetric fistula is a major human rights issue. The U.S. should make this effort a high priority for foreign aid.
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I am going to do a series of posts on this subject as there is a lot of ground to cover. I am going to quote Jessica Arons of The Center for American Progress first to just give you a taste of how far reaching and dangerous this bill is. Then we need to go back over history to see how we got to these terrible straits.
The number of HR #3 tells you a lot. This bill is very important to the Republican majority in the House, the Republican party. This bill unites all the elements of the right. There is no squabbling amongst them all on how important it is to restrict the rights of women to make decisions about their lives so they can be free and equal participants in our democracy. On that they all are singing on key.
What's more, H.R. 3 would redefine the concept of government funding far beyond the current common understanding. It does not simply prohibit the use of federal funds to directly pay for abortion. Instead, it would insert itself into every crevice of government activity and prohibit even private and nonfederal government funds from being spent on any activity related to the provision of abortion any time federal money is involved in funding or subsidizing other, nonabortion-related activities.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking would prohibit roads built with federal funds from passing by abortion clinics, drugs developed by the National Institutes of Health or approved by the Food and Drug Administration from being used at abortion clinics, or medical students with government loans from receiving abortion training-all because such uses could be viewed as "subsidizing" abortion with federal dollars.
Taken to its logical conclusion and of course, restraint is not what the radical right is noted for this bill theory could affect a large swathe of what we have always considered here in America to be private actions and private decisions.
They are not just doing this bill for show or to make a point. They will do what they need to do to make this bill pass. The House has a large Republican majority. Everyone one of them will vote for the bill, plus there are 10 anti choice Democratic sponsors. I have long said they will blitzkrieg this bill through the House. Then they will look for ways to scale the walls of the Democratically controlled Senate. Just like yesterday Mitch McConnell attached the repeal of the Affordable Care Act to the FAA authorization bill, there are many, many ways to bring this bill to the floor, even if the the Majority Leader would not on his own bring the bill to the floor.
On Tuesday, the Obama administration is scheduled to begin its first trial of a prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay. Omar Khadr was only 15 when he was captured in a firefight in 2002 with U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Now 23, he'll finally have his day in court. Only instead of an experienced federal court with a long history of trying terror suspects, Khadr will be tried in a military commission, created just last year. In the eight years since President George W. Bush created the first military commissions at Guantanamo, they have convicted only four terrorists - only two in contested trials. Regular federal courts in the United States, by contrast, have convicted more than 400 in the same time period.
Khadr was only nine when his father, an alleged Al Qaeda financier, dragged him from Canada to Afghanistan and put him to work helping his Al Qaeda-connected friends. Khadr has said that he never had a choice. And a Canadian intelligence agency reported, based on interrogations of Khadr in 2003, that Khadr viewed Al Qaeda "through the eyes of a child" who didn't understand that his father's activities were linked to terrorism.
What's more, based on what's been presented in pretrial hearings so far, there appears to be little or no evidence, other than "confessions" extracted under highly suspicious circumstances, that Khadr actually committed the most serious crime he's accused of: throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.
Even if he did, Khadr shouldn't be tried in a military commission.
Under international law, a child captured in combat is supposed to be treated as a victim rather than a warrior, offered rehabilitation in custody and eventually repatriated home. Khadr, who has relatives in Canada, was offered neither option.
In addition, the crime of murdering a U.S. soldier isn't actually a war crime. In war, it's not a crime to target the other side's soldiers. But because Khadr was a civilian, rather than a member of a regular foreign army, throwing a grenade is a criminal act that could be prosecuted in a regular criminal court. Although the military commission rules characterize his crime as one that falls within the commissions' jurisdiction, the legal authority of the commission to prosecute conduct that was declared a war crime after the act was committed, or ex-post facto, remains legally questionable.
Khadr's lawyer has also questioned the legality of the military commissions as a whole, filing an appeal just this week with the Supreme Court arguing that the commissions are unconstitutional because they target only "aliens"--people who are not U.S. citizens. Though the courts have so far punted on this issue, it's clear that even if Khadr is convicted, he'll have several strong grounds for appeal.
So why is the government bringing this case in a military commission?
Perhaps the government hopes that Khadr's statements, which he claims were extracted by various kinds of torture and abuse, will be allowed into court as evidence. Although Khadr's lawyer hasn't yet had the opportunity to present all the evidence of his client's treatment at Bagram and at Guantanamo Bay, what's come out at pretrial hearings so far is that when Khadr was captured by U.S. soldiers in July 2002, the teenager had been shot twice in the back, blinded in one eye and had a face peppered with shrapnel. Interrogators at the Bagram air base took to calling him "Buckshot Bob." But that didn't stop them from interrogating him while he was still recovering from life-threatening wounds and strapped to a hospital gurney. Using what the military calls a "fear up" technique, an interrogator testified, Khadr was told a story about another prison just like him who refused to cooperate - and who then was gang-raped and killed in an American prison.
Official documents also reveal that at Guantanamo, Khadr was subjected to the military's "frequent flyer" program -- meaning he was moved every three hours for weeks at a time to keep him from sleeping prior to interrogations.
So just how reliable are the statements he made, either at Bagram or at Guantanamo?
Now, after eight years at Gitmo, Khadr insists he's not guilty. He has also at times said he'd boycott his own trial because he thinks the whole military commission process is a sham.
It's easy to understand why. Now 23, Khadr, has been interviewed by dozens of interrogators, each time led to believe that his cooperation would spare him from violence and lead to his release. He told interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear, but that release never happened. If Khadr had been imprisoned in the United States, he would have been tried and either convicted or released long ago. But instead, Khadr has been held without trial on a secluded prison camp in Cuba for nearly a decade with little opportunity to defend himself.
Human Rights First has been observing the military commission hearings since their inception in 2002. Repeatedly, our observers have been astounded by the injustices, inefficiency and wholesale fiasco that many of the inexperienced and legally questionable commissions' proceedings produce.
That's partly because the commissions are so new - created by a law passed in 2009. The first military commission system, created by the Bush administration, was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006. As a result, there's is almost no legal precedent to guide commission judges. The Military Commissions Manual, meanwhile, was only issued in late April - on the eve of Khadr's first pretrial hearing. The resulting confusion offers yet more opportunity for Khadr and anyone else convicted in a military commission to challenge their convictions on a broad range of legal grounds. Decisions on the prisoners' fate will be delayed that much longer.
There's another reason that this whole military commission system leaves me scratching my head: the extravagant expense involved. Keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and military commission system open for fewer than 180 detainees costs taxpayers a lot of money. Construction and renovations to the camp have cost about $500 million so far; operating costs are another $150 million every year. The Washington Post recently estimated the bill, much of which has been paid to KBR and Halliburton, has so far exceeded $2 billion. Just the cost of flying dozens of journalists and observers like myself, plus all the lawyers involved, to and from Guantanamo to attend each of these hearings so the government can claim that they're "public" is astronomical. Meanwhile, federal courts and secure prisons in the United States are readily available and already paid for. And the government doesn't have to cover anyone's costs to get there.
I'm in Guantanamo Bay this week to observe the end of Khadr's pretrial hearings and the beginning of his trial in a military commission. But I doubt I'll gain any better understanding of why the Obama administration chose to try him there.
Update: Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, Omar Khadr's military defense lawyer, just gave a quick news conference in the sweltering airplane hangar here at the Gitmo base. (Only prosecutors are allowed to use the indoor air-conditioned rooms for press conferences.) "This case will echo in the future," Jackson said, noting that it will set a sad precedent for the United States' right to try a child soldier as a full-fledged war criminal.
It will also create a lasting legacy for the Obama administration."Forever the Obama administration will be remembered as starting the military commissions with a case of a child soldier," Jackson said.
Somehow that doesn't seem like the sort of legacy Obama had in mind when he vowed to close the Gitmo prison down on his first day in office.
I'm not the only woman in the country who once had a partner who took my paychecks and deposited them in an account that I had no access to; not by debit card, not by checkbook. That started the first year we were married, when I was 18 and I balanced our checkbook wrong. Did I get to revoke his bank privileges later on when he would be late with rent, didn't pay our utility bills, or threw money away on expensive outings and crazy schemes? No.
Years later, at 22, I still had to ask for lunch money every week to take to work, something he'd often conveniently forget about if he was in a bad mood. He was often in a bad mood. My workweek lunch money regularly came out of the change jar and only covered vending machine snacks.
If I'd had a child from that relationship, one way or another, it would have meant two decades of that creep still messing with my head on a daily basis--a fate I was saved from only by a miscarriage brought on by a 2 lb. ovarian cyst, which my Catholic hospital doctor told me couldn't be operated on unless I did miscarry on my own--so lucky me. And he only hit me once in five years, threatened and starved me, so I didn't have it nearly as bad as some of the women for whom the Senate abortion coverage restrictions might as well be a hand covering their mouths and holding them down.
Under the Senate system which makes abortion part of the initial purchasing decision, a woman's employer, male partner or parents can all potentially prevent her getting insurance coverage for it, whereas now, it usually doesn't come up because most private plans just cover it. Now, of the one in three women likely to need an abortion in her life, millions of women never have to have that conversation. Under the current wording of the health bill, that second check is the federal spousal and parental notification law that never managed to pass.
Then if the administrative expenses and familial approval weren't enough, the second check creates a stigmatizing paper trail for anyone worried about public pressure or vulnerable to retribution by disapproving superiors. Even people who might support abortion might be pressured into dropping plans that cover it and one way or another, abortion coverage will end. That's always been the point of both the Stupak amendment and Nelson's Senate compromise, which will simply work more slowly to eradicate insurance coverage of abortion.
And you might say, well, it's just writing another check for $1. Or you might say, hey, even if the insurance doesn't cover abortion, lots of women will still be able to afford it. And then I'll tell you, look, you don't get it, that's not the point.
Because he used to take my lunch money, and I had nothing, nothing, that he would not allow, no matter what our household income was.
Women, who earn less, who are commonly responsible for the most time-consuming parts of the parenting saga, who are discriminated against by their employers for being parents, who are more likely to be abused, who bear all the health risks of pregnancy and childbirth, can never be fully equal in a society that doesn't prioritize and normalize our access to all forms of reproductive health care. When our health care is stigmatized, we are stigmatized. When it seems normal that men we don't know get to decide if we'll be forced into a two decade commitment, it's only natural that men we do know might think they have the right to decide that for us, too.
If you still want to pass this health insurance reform bill, and I understand why so many people do, understand the cost. Somewhere, right now, he's taking her lunch money, and this bill will let him force her into motherhood, too.
Have you ever heard a woman being told, or told a woman, or been told 'for your own good' as a woman, that women shouldn't ...
get into a car with a man, be alone in a room or apartment or house or gym or office with a man, dress like 80% of female pop stars, publicly enjoy alcohol, jog in parks alone, live alone, walk outside the house at night, have any kind of sexual contact outside marriage, etc.,
... or if 'something happens', by which the speaker means sexual assault, it was her fault?
I can be pretty sure that you have indeed heard some version of that. But let me put that another way, a more explicit way, the way any number of feminists might put it:
Men are fearsome, evil and dangerous predators who can't be trusted under any circumstances, excepting if they've gone through an ancient public ceremony with you while wearing a rented tuxedo.
The offenders put out a piece in the UK's Daily Telegraph suggesting that wearing provocative clothing makes women more likely to be raped. Only now, it's not just a nervous elderly relative or skeezy Bill O'Reilly saying it, but 'scientists.' As Goldacre was able to gather from talking to the dissertation candidate involved, her research showed nothing of the kind and the conclusion in the headline wasn't going to be reported as a finding because the evidence didn't support it.
But who wants to let facts and evidence get in the way of a little harmless slut-shaming?
Indeed, the research the paper was supposed to be reporting on seems not to have been focused on criminal behavior, and the researcher herself says that the survey structure wouldn't likely be suitable for answering the question assumed by the news article. But there has been research done on what marks people out for being crime victims, conducted by observing the responses of actual criminals, and the conclusions were very different than the prejudice-laden assumptions of the Daily Mail article.
Men In The United States Military Are Raping Men and Women Prisoners in Iraq. President Obama Is Covering It Up.
Barack Obama, the new President of the United States, the man who campaigned on a platform of having opposed the U.S. War Against Iraq from the get-go, the man who campaigned on a promise to end the U.S. War Against Iraq, the man who proclaimed to the world that he was different, he would not support or cover up or participate in or sponsor or allow the continuation of kidnapping, torture, and murder, that same President Obama is today continuing the policies of the Bush-Cheney regime, directing and authorizing the kidnapping, torture, and murder of people from other countries, has just authorized the military to release a statement to the public that the U.S. will continue to occupy Iraq as our colony for at least 10 more years, has already authorized a secret war against Pakistan, has refused to honor the law and release the prisoners against whom there is insufficient evidence to try them, has announced an entirely new adoption of the tool of dictators everywhere stating that the government may simply engage in preventative detention, imprison people forever without charges, without counsel, without rights, without a trial.
And President Obama is also directly and personally covering up the men in the United States military who have been raping men and women in Iraq as a weapon of torture. That's right: Rape. I've read that some of the children who were kidnapped and imprisoned at Guantanamo were raped, but cannot find a link right now. Who's next? Grandma? Do we have some big strong marine with steroid-biceps and tatoos of Mom all over his pec-implants who wants to rape Grandma? Is there any exemption for children under 6? No?
One of the retired generals who conducted an investigation into Abu Ghraib (like having Wall Street investigate itself) said he doesn't see any purpose to be served by releasing pictures of the rape other than a legal one. Well, yes. The purpose would be to enforce the law. Exactly. The purpose would be to enforce the law of our nation against rape, and bring to account the rapists in our military and the people who directed them. We should also allow the victims to receive monetary compensation, assuming the military didn't kill them after they were done with the gang rape.
I'll bet anything the rapists were "Christians," probably screaming out scripture as they pounded some little boy's butt until it bled to the cheers of his fellow Marines, all of whom apparently stood by and allowed it to happen, but made sure to get photos on their i-phones to send back home to their girlfriends. Are they all insane? Are we feeding them all amphetamines to ensure they will be psychotic, and commit acts of barbarism on command? Do you think Sean Hannity would say rape is not torture, and would he offer to allow himself to be raped -- for charity?
These rape photos, which include pictures of both women and men prisoners being raped by members of the United States Military (was it the few, are they proud, or was it the guys from the army of one?), were obtained in connection with an investigation into abuses at Abu Ghraib as well as 6 other prisons, specifically including 400 identified instances of abuse. This was systematic and institutional, not a case of a few bad apples. The systematic, institutional torture of prisoners was ordered and directed by people at the top of the Bush Administration. They need to be tried and imprisoned. If people in the Obama administration try to cover it up, they should be prosecuted and imprisoned for obstruction of justice and for ratifying and adopting the barbaric conduct.
This is how it works: if it is okay for the government to torture, rape and murder prisoners from some other country, it's okay for them to do it here too. That's what this is. It's just the beginning. It's going to get worse unless we stop it now. And Barack Obama not only refuses to do anything about it, he wants to just cover the whole thing up, let the bad guys go free, and send the signal out to the military: Keep On Raping, Boys. Have Fun. The Few, The Proud, The Rapists? An Army Of Fun? Is it any wonder we have such a high level of violence and suicide among vets, when their own government is teaching them to be murderers and rapists?
It's beginning to seem like the United States Empire and the institutions that own and control the world -- Wall Street, the Banks, the politicians they own, the corporations, and the U.S. military -- are really in charge of everything, and the President and Congress are just a circus for the peasants, a diversion to keep us distracted. And to waste our money making campaign contributions, as if that will make any difference at all.
What change? Exactly what has changed?
"LONDON (AP) -- A former U.S. general said graphic images of rape and torture are among the photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse that President Obama's administration does not want released. Retired Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who oversaw the U.S. investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, told Britain's Daily Telegraph in an article published Wednesday that he agreed with Obama's decision not to release the pictures.
"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them," Taguba was quoted by the Daily Telegraph. "The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."
"The prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib exploded after photos taken by soldiers appeared in 2004. According to the Telegraph, the new photos depicted much more serious abuses than previously documented. One photo reportedly showed an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner and another was said to show a male translator raping a male detainee, the Telegraph reported.
"The Telegraph said the photos relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 at Abu Ghraib and six other prisons."
Remember this one? A group of U.S. military men murdered an entire family so they could take turns raping a 14-year-old girl, then murdered her? Reportedly four U.S. soldiers decided they wanted to rape 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza. So they went to her home, took her mother, father, and her 5 year old sister into a bedroom and killed them, then took turns raping the 14 year old girl. When they were done repeatedly raping her, they shot her in the head and killed her, then set fire to her body.
The perpetrators of this rape and these murders were prosecuted and found guilty. But if we had never invaded Iraq, or if the top leadership in our country had not directed the military to use torture and rape on the occupied territory, none of this would have happened.
I suppose if anyone wants to prosecute the people who ordered and directed the rape, the top leaders of our country during the Bush regime, the Obama Administration will say that what they did is a top secret, classified, so the trial cannot go forward. Or, maybe President Obama will announce another new policy, like the preventative detention one. He could just issue an Executive Order saying that anyone who is rich and powerful, from Wall Street to government to private board rooms, is exempt from any liability for anything they do. They'll call it the Obama Doctrine.
Although the simple-minded mainstream media have christened some recent legislation on the far frontier of our colonial empire as "the Afghanistan rape law," it's worth noting that the same law that legalizes marital rape (specifically among the Shia) also forbids women to leave the house without permission from a male relative.
Ask Uncle Abdul before you walk out the door!
Meanwhile in the United States, popular revulsion against legalization of marital rape may undermine support for President Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan, since it isn't exactly easy to sell the idea of sacrificing American lives and money to make the world safe for rape.
This problem has produced an expectable wave of crazy excuses from Obama's koolaid-huffing partisans in the blogosphere, and one of the most bizarre is the egregious Jon Taplin's column on Talking Points Memo, "Holier Than Thou."
"We should remember that until 1993 marital rape was legal in North Carolina."
So let's not act "holier than thou" by protesting the legalization of marital rape in Afghanistan, because only 15 years ago, in the former Confederate state of North Carolina... and so on.
But if it were worth asking Mr. Taplin a question (and it isn't), someone might ask...
When is the last time US law forbade women to leave the house without permission from a male relative? Is it supposed to be insignificant that the so-called "rape law" also turns every home into a prison for women?
House-arrest for life!
What a beautiful empire!
So Mr. Obama wants more war in Afghanistan, and 30,000 more American soldiers to fight it, after seven long years of fighting to create a narco-state where 50% of the gross domestic product is produced by heroin, and millions of women will be prisoners in their own homes forever.
Monday on Democracy Now!, Amy hosted Playwright Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues), founder of V-Day, and Congolese Gynecologist Dr. Denis Mukwege who are working together to raise awareness of the War on Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC):
Tens of thousands of women have been brutally raped in the DRC as part of an ongoing internal conflict. We speak with playwright and V-Day founder Eve Ensler and Congolese gynecologist Dr. Denis Mukwege, founder of one of the only hospitals that treats victims of rape and mutilation. Dr. Mukwege has helped over 21,000 women in the past decade and was named "African of the Year" by a Nigerian newspaper last month.
Eve Ensler, award-winning playwright and creator of The Vagina Monologues, which has been translated into over forty-five languages and is running in theaters all over the world. She is the creator of V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. She is on a five-city tour this month to raise awareness about rape in the Congo. It's called "Turning Pain to Power."
Sarah Palin has through a number of incidents in her past revealed an array of views that seem pretty extreme to us hemorrhaging liberals. More than one person has witnessed Palin asking the librarian about "removing" books from the library. What books did she want to ban? Turns out she was incensed about some gay-positive books.
So what do conservatives think about this idea of banning pro-gay books from libraries? Well, if we asked them today, it would be hard to trust the answer given the incentive they have to support Palin. Fortunately, it turns out the GSS has been asking this for many years, so conservatives are on record. Survey says:
In a stunning development, a sternly worded letter to a Cabinet Secretary has resulted in a subpoenaed member of the executive branch being made available to comply and testify.
Dr. Kaye Whitley, Director of the DoD's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office had been told by her superiors, including Deputy Defense Undersecretary Michael Dominguez, not to attend an earlier hearing on the endemic sexual assault problem faced by female soldiers.
I'm actually torn between being mildly pleased and disappointed in this development.
That surprising ruling in Congress' favour from Bush 43 appointee Judge John Bates arrives not a moment too soon. In a hearing of a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee on the continuing travesty of military rape, Dr. Kaye Whitley, Director of the DoD's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, duly subpoenaed by the committee, failed to show:
Lawmakers could not ask Dr. Kaye Whitley, director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office at the Pentagon, to address the issue of sexual assault and what steps have been taken because Deputy Defense Undersecretary Michael Dominguez had barred Whitley from testifying, despite a Congressional subpoena.
Well that certainly sends the right signal to military women contemplating reporting being raped: Even the woman tasked to protect them from rape is muzzled from speaking publicly. Now what's your problem toots? Are you sure you didn't really want it?
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