Remember when Alito's wife cried during his confirmation hearings?

Remember when Alito's wife cried during his confirmation hearings?

The phone rang a bit ago. The young man on the other end said it was a survey, would I mind spending a few minutes.

I figured, what the heck, I need a break from the daylong angst. So, sure.

He started off with some generic voting questions (easy, difficult; always, rarely). Then it went to the governor's race for about three questions, then would I vote for the Republican or the Democrat. Same drill for the Senate race.

Then he got to the meat of the survey, a series of questions about the local race for the state legislature. About three questions in I could see that the questions were going to be numerous and a bit more in depth; so, in an effort to save him some time (he seemed like a nice enough kid) I explained that I was working on the campaign of the Democratic candidate, that I was doing so because I had been very impressed with the caliber of his work and wanted to see much more of the same. He paused, then chuckled a little as he ticked off responses on his call sheet.

He then asked if he could ask a couple of questions of gun legislation, which my candidate had supported. By the way, I live in Colorado where this has been quite the issue. His first question was about background checks. I told him that years ago I'd been shot at by a guy who had a long record of violence and assaults, someone who should have never been allowed to purchase a gun; I explained that I'm alive simply because he was too drunk to maintain his aim from twelve feet away, that the wall to my left had a sizable hole in it instead of me. The caller paused, then said he could go ahead and assume the rest of my responses. He thanked me for my time and then hung up.

Nice break. Now back to the angst.

Some days, okay most days, I find myself wishing I was younger. Or, rather, that I could be younger and more physically able but still have some of the wisdom that has fallen into my life. I do miss being able to play tennis, ride horses, dance all night, get up from a chair without moaning and groaning. Yeah. But today I found myself glad to be “of a certain age”, no longer needing to report to higher-ups in the work chain.

Over the years I’ve had some interesting employers, some better than others. Those others, well, some of them still creep me out just in the remembering. The prospect of having to discuss with them my options for birth control, ye gods, I cringe at the mere thought. Of course, back in my younger years those bosses could say grotesque things to female employees, things that the female employee had no legal way to repulse. They could touch and make crude gestures to go with the crude comments. And, on the rare occasions when they got ratted out, the female employee was generally assumed to have “invited” the behavior.

So, even though there are now laws to inhibit such behaviors there are no laws that prohibit the generative invasive thinking; they just don’t act on the thoughts as often as they used to. They might have to keep their hands to themselves, and they might have to keep their mouths shut more often. But sometimes sneakiness wins. And there is no more repulsive sneakiness than that which wraps a vile thing in a guise of godliness. Today, in the name of godliness (or religion, if you will) bosses are once again allowed to invade the female psyche through connotations of the most intimate nature; the boss’s authority now extends into her vagina, her uterus, all the way to her ovaries, because her denial of such access would somehow be construed to violate his deeply held religious beliefs, or some other equally handy excuse for rape.

People on the “religious right” are extolling the court’s Hobby Lobby decision, asserting that it ends an abuse of the free exercise of religion.

That’s kind of like claiming that suffocating me would preserve your right to breathe.

Does the court's ruling address, in any way, whether Hobby Lobby's employee insurance will cover vasectomy or Viagra? Or does the decision impact only female employees?

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit aimed at overturning Colorado’s new gun laws, upholding the expansion of background checks on private gun sales and transfers and the ban on magazines of more than 15 rounds, FOX31 Denver is first to report

“The Clerk of the Court is directed to enter judgement in favor of the defendant on all claims and to close this case,” reads the final ruling from Chief U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger.


In Krieger’s view, neither the magazine ban nor the background check expansion unreasonably burden gun owners or sellers.

read the rest:
http://kdvr.com/2014/06/26/judge-upholds-colorados-gun-laws-tosses-lawsuit/

link contains pdf link for full text of the ruling

(apologies for the fox link, could not get past the full page ads on the newspaper site)
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Footnote: In the photo is Sheriff John Cooke, now running for state senate. His entire campaign is based on getting rid of the new gun regulations. He was one of the first LEOs to announce refusal to enforce Obama's initiatives; then he promised non-enforcement and overturning of the new Colorado laws. Heh.