In what can only be called an effort to torpedo his own campaign, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), running for the Senate in Missouri said that "legitimate rape" leads to "the female body [trying] to shut that whole thing down." Comments are here and the video of the morning show he said this on is available here. Yes, he said that women who are raped rarely ( Read more... )

There was already a rant ready to go when this little gem made its way to the MidnightRanter headquarters. Yes, it's verified by two sources and all, but Bristol Palin is writing a memoir. Many have already commented that her age makes it ridiculous to write a memoir, but age really isn't the issue. After all, Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic were ( Read more... )

Americans have traditionally been defined by two things, people who distrust authority and who love a good fight. It's how we came to be a country and it's how we have continued to define ourselves. It rarely matters what the authority is, someone in this country will start fighting it. One of the more recent and bloody of these battles has been ( Read more... )

This rant was meant to come out much earlier, but it is fortunate there was a delay. On Friday, McCain's choice of Sarah Palin. She is currently the governor of Alaska for 21 months now and before that was the mayor of Wasilia, Alaska, population of about six thousand (sources vary on this, placing the population between 5000 and 8000). She's a 44 ( Read more... )

For the past two weeks, there have been stories all over the web and news channels about the Yearning for Zion Ranch raid and the subsequent legal battles that ensued. So far, almost 400 children were taken from the sprawling ranch in the hinterlands of west Texas, disrupting the lives of the hundreds of people who live out there. The Yearning for ( Read more... )

In what can usually be ascribed to a slow news day, CNN has dramatically increased their coverage of autism. They even made a special section for it. Except that it's not just some random slow news day, today was Autism Awareness Day (which I didn't know until I was writing this blog). For too long, autism was ignored or seen as just a ( Read more... )

In what can only be called both ridiculous and logical in a nonsense kind of way, a judge in Nassau County, New York (on Long Island) has ruled that a man who donated his sperm to a woman has to now pay child support for the child created from his sperm. Now, given most of my opinions on child support, privacy, responsibility and men's rights, one ( Read more... )

Alternate, more vulgar title, Rudolph the Red-Assed Prisoner. (yeah, I'm sick) Apparently, Olympic and abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph is finding life behind bars to be less than what he hoped for. The man who bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics (killing 2 and injuring 111), two abortion clinics and a predominantly lesbian nightclub. A total of ( Read more... )

Today history was made, or rather stopped. President Bush issued his first veto concerning federal funding for stem cell research. This is the first veto of President Bush's administration and ends the longest streak without a veto in American presidential history, almost six years. President Clinton used his veto 38 times. FDR used his over 600 ( Read more... )

Apologies for the breaks, but they will happen more often from now on. I have life that doesn't involve me being mad at all kinds of social/political issues. Luckily, there are those things that still piss me off, so the rants will continue. And this time, well, there's more than enough to go around, but it's to focus on something that escaped most ( Read more... )