To their neighbors, Sharon Jones and her daughter Cecila McDonald appeared to have caring instincts toward children.

But when the two learned that Jones' 14-year-old niece was pregnant in early 2013, the result of a rape by a family member, they and two other relatives "took matters into their own hands" by turning on the girl, Dallas police said Wednesday.

Deputy Chief Gil Garza said the foursome committed a "very tragic and disturbing" attack against the young teen. They are alleged to have beaten her for hours at Jones' Pleasant Grove home to induce an abortion.

Then, police said, they tried to burn the stillborn baby on a charcoal grill to cover it up.

Thanks to those forced-birth rules the Texas legislature adopted last year, almost all of the clinics providing safe abortions in Texas have closed. That was, of course, the goal. But victories like that come with tragic (and fully intended) consequences.

A nutcase paraded around the Atlanta airport armed with an AR-15.

In both cases the armed citizen argued with police for EVEN NOTICING that they were better armed than a soldier going into combat.

Los Angeles Times | June 4, 2015
Hillary Clinton attacks Republicans over voting restrictions - "Hillary Rodham Clinton positioned herself as a crusader for voting rights Thursday, calling for an overhaul of election laws so that every citizen would automatically be registered to vote on their 18th birthday. In a speech at Texas Southern University in Houston, a historically black college, Clinton blistered Republicans, accusing them of 'systemically and deliberately' seeking to disenfranchise voters throughout the nation with laws that make it harder to cast ballots. Calling out potential Republican rivals by name, she pointed to measures embraced by Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Chris Christie of New Jersey and former Govs. Rick Perry of Texas and Jeb Bush of Florida that she said had made voting more difficult in their states."

Good for her. Charles Pierce offers his own inimitable take on the subject:

"Make no mistake. This is a fight worth making and a debate worth having. The Republican party considers its efforts to restrict the franchise an unalloyed triumph. [...] Voter suppression is a litmus test on the political Right now, and it is a central pillar of Republican politics general, and it has been ever since Karl Rove used it as the casus belli in his purge of U.S. Attorneys nine years ago. It is a long game they've been playing.

"As hard as it may be for the likes of Chris Cillizza to understand, there is considerable merit in taking on important issues that do not necessarily poll as well as 'Eeek! Moosssslims!' does. The corruption of our politics by the money power, and the new mechanisms enacted to safeguard it, is the fundamental issue of our time because, unless it is reversed, and soon, all of the other issues won't matter because no real solutions will emerge from the one place where they are supposed to emerge. Ms. Rodham Clinton seems to get this. Good on her for bringing it up."

What Harry Potter Is Actually About. Childhood Ruined.

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a landmark report on Tuesday that extensively details accounts of aboriginal children undergoing forced assimilation and physical and sexual abuse in state-funded, church-run boarding schools.

After conducting six years of research and over 6,000 survivor interviews, the commission's report  found that what happened at the schools, and the broader aboriginal policy that they were a part of, "can best be described as 'cultural genocide.'"

The best quote

The US Senate rejected Veterans' benefits to same sex couples and their children whose marriages were legally celebrated in a state, but who live in states where their marriages are not recognized.  An Amendment to the 2015 Defense Authorization bill sponsored by Jeanne Shaheen (D. NH), failed 53-42 (60 votes needed).

Graham was bullish on his foreign policy credentials leading him to victory over a crowded GOP field. "It's a tough message," co-host Steve Doocy said. "A lot of people are just worn out by war."

"Then don't vote for me," Graham responded. "Because I'm telling you what's coming.

Assuming he wrote this, kudos for being an excellent writer.

In that sense, you could argue there is nothing new, nor even particularly noteworthy, about "The Briefcase," a summer series that premiered last week. Its premise is that a struggling family is given a briefcase full of cash -- $101,000 -- with the stipulation that they may choose to keep all of the money, keep some and give the rest to a second down-on-its luck family or keep none of it and give the entire amount to that other family.

It is a rigged morality tale, a financially strapped couple wrestling with questions of self-preservation versus altruism. In that situation, should you be selfish or selfless? At one point, each couple is taken to tour the other couple's home while those people are away. They rifle through the other family's overdue bills, inspect their busted appliances. The twist is that unbeknownst to each couple, the other has received an identical briefcase, has taken the same tour, and is wrestling with the same question: What is the moral thing to do?

"The U.S. economy produced an additional 280,000 serfs last month. This, combined with the news that hourly wages crept up several cents, has resulted in some of the greatest panic seen recently among our vaunted "job producer" class. The cry went out that maybe a fraction of the approximately two trillion dollars these business leaders have been hoarding should be pried loose and spent on even more employment. ("More employment" is defined by The Masters as more employment........ for robots.")  

Quoting John Iwantitall, head of the National Chamber of Commerce, "This is just crazy, we had no idea that when Obama, Geithner, and Bernanke gifted The U.S. Treasury to us as a reward for exploding the World Economy it came with strings attached. We didn't spend all that money buying the Government to have them just turn around and produce more serfs. Why do they think we sent all of our best and brightest lobbyists to Washington, for Gawd's sake?

Everyone knows Congress got stalled on the wording of these new Atlantic & Pacific, so-called, Trade Agreements (Better known in our circles as "The Great Race to the Bottom" Bills.) They were all worried about how they could phrase, "screw American workers," yet have it sound like a plus. So, our lobbyists have been working day and night showing them how it's done. (Not to brag, but, we're very good at that.)

Anyway, let them have their fun. After we ram through the TPP (making the lowest paid, undeveloped country worker, the "new normal") it won't matter anyway. Here's the beauty, and the genius, of our plan: Not only will the millions of robots we're building eliminate the need for new jobs in the future, but, even the job-eliminating robots themselves, thanks to The TPP, will be built by the lowest paid workers in the world.

And, if that ain't beautiful, I don't know what is."

Anything that can drive right wing talk radio freaks this completely baths!t can only be completely good.  Mea culpa.

My absolute favorite is Mann Coulter-

"Liberals are always -- you know, science, science and conservatives don't believe in science," Coulter said. "This Bruce Jenner still has Y chromosomes in every cell of his body. Do not tell me he is a girl.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.

While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.