News that makes me want to scream
-A federal judge found that a hospital was within its rights to allow a woman to die without her family at her side because the family in question was the woman's female partner and their adopted children. The surviving woman wasn't even kept properly updated on her partner's condition. How do people working at a hospital have so little sense of compassion? This is why marriage equality matters; legal documents like power of attorney lack the simplicity and force of a marriage license.
-Thirty senators apparently don't give a damn about rape victims. They voted against a bill to prohibit the Pentagon from doing business with contractors that forbid their employees to sue over cases of rape. This new law was aimed at Halliburton and its subsidiaries, and it was necessitated by numerous serious complaints. The bill passed, thank goodness, but it utterly appalls me that nearly a third of the Senate, including John McCain apparently feel that gang rape (and suppression of the evidence thereof) is just a minor problem that can be solved in arbitration without any possible recourse to courts. In this Guardian article about the bill, it says that reasons from the senators who voted against the bill include "claims that the government had no business interfering in a private contract between a company and its workers." NO. These are government contractors; the government has every right to say that they won't do business with these companies if they don't keep to appropriate ethical standards, such as doing everything possible to prevent rape, prosecuting rapists, and not boiling kittens alive. The government would certainly care if they were doing something like employing undocumented immigrants.
EPIC FAIL, America.
-Thirty senators apparently don't give a damn about rape victims. They voted against a bill to prohibit the Pentagon from doing business with contractors that forbid their employees to sue over cases of rape. This new law was aimed at Halliburton and its subsidiaries, and it was necessitated by numerous serious complaints. The bill passed, thank goodness, but it utterly appalls me that nearly a third of the Senate, including John McCain apparently feel that gang rape (and suppression of the evidence thereof) is just a minor problem that can be solved in arbitration without any possible recourse to courts. In this Guardian article about the bill, it says that reasons from the senators who voted against the bill include "claims that the government had no business interfering in a private contract between a company and its workers." NO. These are government contractors; the government has every right to say that they won't do business with these companies if they don't keep to appropriate ethical standards, such as doing everything possible to prevent rape, prosecuting rapists, and not boiling kittens alive. The government would certainly care if they were doing something like employing undocumented immigrants.
EPIC FAIL, America.