If I understand the nature of the Florida laws, and the outcome of the recent trial of George Zimmerman, if I should find him behind me on the street I am legally justified in killing him ( Read more... )

Last week Representative Brown spoke on the floor of the House, in discussion relating to one of the multitude of bills introduced by Republicans all over the country that act to limit or eliminate access to reproductive health care by women. The official line is that all of these bills are meant to stamp out the murder of unborn Americans (my own ( Read more... )

I just saw a news piece concerning a speech made by Dr. Richard Leakey. One statement he made was that he believes that people would stop denying the existence of evolution in the next few decades. It seems that this statement was based in the increasing quality and volume of information being uncovered about who we are and where we came from ( Read more... )

On April 29 a minister in North Carolina named Sean Harris spoke to his congregation at Berean Baptist Church about what to do to prevent their children from becoming gay. Since the tape of his advice was posted online, he has made a statement about his comment being misunderstood, and that he's sorry people were offended when they failed to ( Read more... )

A week or so back I wrote about a bill that had just gone through the Arizona legislature. It was easy to gloss over it as one more bill intended to restrict abortions by forcing extra steps into the process, requiring tests of dubious or nonexistent medical value, and so forth. The subtle detail hidden in the bill was that pregnancy was defined as ( Read more... )

If you've been watching the recent flood of "pro-life" legislation, and wondering how far the extremists who are driving the neuvo-Republican Party want to go, the Arizona House has just offered a pretty good idea. As an easy-to-miss element in their latest effort to restrict abortions, they want to define life as beginning when the woman starts ( Read more... )

The vet left a couple of minutes ago, carrying the tiny bundle that is all the physical remains of Rico. Being the cat he was, he was stubbornly continuing to go to the sink for water, and he still used the box to the end. He got to sit in a pool of sun this morning, but he wasn't interested in looking out the window, something he usually loved to ( Read more... )

Six years and fifty weeks ago, tomorrow, I went to the South Shore in Massachusetts to meet a cat who had been saved from his second period in a shelter, one which would have killed him if no one would take him. The woman who adopted him from the first shelter, not a cat person, had turned him back saying he was a "vicious cat ( Read more... )

This morning I phoned the vet's office. Based on the vet's schedule, he will come here between noon and one tomorrow to give Rico the only help that is still available ( Read more... )

Those of you who know us are aware that we're owned by cats. Our count has been five for the last couple of years. The senior male is a rescue named Rico, an Abyssinian who came to us just a few days short of seven years ago. At that time the minimal records on him placed his age at about three years, but I've always harbored a sense that he was ( Read more... )