Maybe I've been in a cave somewhere, but I really didn't know that the feds and states are proposing laws requiring doctors to offer pain medication specifically for the fetus to women getting abortions at 20 weeks or more - and to tell them that the fetuses feel pain.

Anyway, now there's a study to refute the notion.

Taking on one of the most highly charged questions in the abortion debate, a team of doctors has concluded that fetuses probably cannot feel pain in the first six months of gestation and therefore do not need anesthesia during abortions.

Their report, being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on a review of several hundred scientific papers, and it says that nerve connections in the brain are unlikely to have developed enough for the fetus to feel pain before 29 weeks.

Bowing to the radical right cries against illegal immigrants, Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff today said the U.S. plans to toughen the deportation system :

"In addition to [cameras and motion detectors] the secretary intends to bolster the deportation process so that an overwhelmed detention system does not cause illegal immigrants to be set free instead of being sent home. He plans to add beds for detainees, expedite deportations by making more judges and lawyers available, and try to track down more illegal immigrants who do not appear for deportation hearings.

Take the Democratic Loyalty Quiz. It's got some humorous choices. I scored a 9 out of 10:

You are a pure, unabashed, die-hard Democratic loyalist. You are appalled by the way Republicans are turning America into a theocratic, corpo-fascist police state, and you'd gladly walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit to elect a Democratic president. In your view, there is no higher form of patriotism than defending America against the Republican Party and every intolerant, puritanical, imperialistic, greed-mongering, Constitution-shredding ideal for which it stands.

[Via Ralph at Colorado Soapblox.]

“Drinking Liberally,” the meetup for liberals that has met with pretty good success across the country is coming to Denver beginning this Wednesday. You can meet and commiserate with your fellow liberals over a beer or drink. Soapblox Colorado has the details.

It's at 7:30pm at Mario’s Double Daughter’s Salotto, 1632 Market St., Denver.

Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bulls**t Protector" flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

[Via Democratic Underground]

New York City has just signed a $212 million security contract has just been signed with Lockheed Martin. 1,000 cameras, 3,000 motion detectors will be installed on subways and other forms of mass transit. The intent is:

to stop attacks before they happen by spotting unattended packages that may contain bombs and alerting its employees to unauthorized intruders in its tunnels and other sensitive areas.

Of course, it won't spot explosives or biological agents. I guess hand searches of your bags will do that.

Get your TalkLeft Fourth Amendment subway tote and confront the searchers with those hallowed words every time you're on the subway. It may not make a difference, but it will make you feel good.

Move over, John Walker Lindh. You no longer hold the title of "American Taliban." Daily Kos explains - it's because the American Radical Right has taken the title.

Is there any doubt that the American Taliban has more in common with our Islamic fundamentalist enemies? They're cut from the same cloth -- the belief that a system of secular rules and laws must be replaced with "God's laws".

And while the religions may be different, the core of them is not -- opposition to rival faiths, hostility to science, interference in people's private lives, control over women's bodies, an irrational belief in the supremacy of the male over female, militancy, anti-intellectualism and a rejection of logic, an unassailable belief in their own righrousness, and the deifying of certain unelectable, unaccountable individuals as "spokesmen for god", be it Pat Robertson or the Ayatollahs.

The American Taliban wants for the U.S. no less than what Iran has, and Iraq will soon have.

by TChris

The Bush administration's Pentagon has taken to branding gravestones with one of the PR slogans developed to induce support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq: "Operation Enduring Freedom" or "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The Pentagon claims to give families of the fallen approval over the contents of the gravestones, but that hasn't always happened.

Nadia and Robert McCaffrey, whose son Patrick was killed in Iraq in June 2004, said "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ended up on his government-supplied headstone in Oceanside, Calif., without family approval.

"I was a little taken aback," Robert McCaffrey said, describing his reaction when he first saw the operation name on Patrick's tombstone. "They certainly didn't ask my wife; they didn't ask me." He said Patrick's widow told him she had not been asked either.

"In one way, I feel it's taking advantage to a small degree," McCaffrey said. "Patrick did not want to be there, that is a definite fact."

The owner of the company that manufactures gravestones for the cemetary at Arlington recognizes how offensive it is for the administration to turn grave markers into a PR ploy.

Received by e-mail from Progressive Democrats of America: Arizona Democrats have passed a resolution with a message to President Bush: Bring home the troops and fund benefits for vets:

Whereas the AZ Democratic Party is supportive of our Men and Women in military service and supportive of their families;

And whereas the AZ State Democratic Party opposes the reasons previously stipulated by the Bush Administration for war in Iraq, the method of prosecution of the war and its failure to have an adequate exit plan from Iraq;

Be it resolved that the AZ Democratic Party call upon the Bush Administration and the US Congress to support the families of our service people, and to fully fund veterans and military benefits for our service personnel, and to remove our troops from Iraq in as responsible and expeditious a fashion as possible."

Tom Hayden has new post outlining a petition making the rounds with the core principles of an exit strategy.

What's up with this? All three major networks have refused to air an ad about Darfur by BeAWitness?

American Progress created a television advertisement for BeAWitness.org, our netroots campaign that calls out the television news media for their deplorable coverage of the genocide in Darfur. Over the last few days, three Washington DC television affiliates, NBC-4, CBS-9, and ABC-7, informed us that they refuse to air the ad.

Go over and watch the ad. It's powerful and accurate. Then send your message to the networks demainding they air the ad.

If you're looking for a lighter read today, check out these "just-disovered" documents found in a Durham, N.C. courthouse clerk's office.

Covered with soot and coal dust from the heating fires of a bygone era, a batch of 19th- and early 20th-century legal records has emerged from a courthouse cubbyhole to weave a human drama involving long-dead drunkards, adulterers, businessmen, stable keepers and ordinary people in crisis.

There are tales of bawdy houses, financially encumbered horses, business disputes and broken marriages, not to mention -- in the words of one document --"tippling, whoring, fighting and cursing."

Via Eric at Is That Legal.

Pat Robertson's tv appearance in which he called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is resonating throughout the blogosphere. Check out:

• Sideshow
• Think Progress
• Crooks and Liars wonders if Robertson committed a crime.
• Norwegianity
• Pudentilla at Skippy
• Media Matters has more on Robertson.