No question. I mean, look at this bracket. KU vs K-State in the final four? Nuf said. Smartest POTUS ever.

In the last couple days, Virginia Del. Bob Marshall has come under fire for specific assertions, as reported by the News-Leader in print and audio, that women who had abortions were punished by God with subsequent children who were disabled.  Marshall stated, “The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.”

This is not the first time that Marshall has suggested that women who have abortions will face complications in later pregnancies.  In his 1991 book “Blessed are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood,” Marshall suggested that, despite studies indicating otherwise, when a woman has an abortion it increases the likelihood that subsequent pregnancies will result in complications.  Marshall sets up a straw man using a American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) white paper on the safety of legal abortions that details a 1989 study conducted by Planned Parenthood that found, “there was no loss of fertility” in the women who received the 170,000 abortions they examined in the study.  Marshall disagreed, stating, “This is an interesting assertion,” since the study failed to follow up with all 170,000 women initially examined.  Marshall further claims that:

Planned Parenthood’s follow-up procedures are limited to immediate or short-term postabortion [sic] complications, and they do not include verifying postabortion childbearing capabilities,  Moreover, a majority of Planned Parenthood’s abortion clients accept contraception that is offered as part of the abortion service.  How was their return to fertility verified?

…Did the “no loss of fertility” simply mean the return of menstruation or did it mean successful childbirth?  [Blessed are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood, Robert G. Marshall, p. 199-200, 1991]

For Marshall now to claim that he was taken out of context appears disingenuous at best given the fact that while he hadn’t spelled it out before, Marshall has for years suggested that abortions lead to future pregnancy complications.

There’s a petition urging Marshall to resign which you can sign here.

It’s officially the most snow in the District of Columbia since they started counting. That’s 126 years. If you’re counting, Chester A. Aurthur was president and on November 4, 1884, “Democrat Grover Cleveland defeats Republican James G. Blaine in a very close contest to win the first of his non-consecutive terms.”

Via – DCist

As the snow totals have been steadily piling up, we’ve all been thinking that we can’t remember ever seeing this much snow in D.C. before. Well, now it’s official: no one has seen this much snow in D.C., at least not since Pat Collins‘ great-great-granddad started sticking yardsticks in area snowpacks back in 1884. As of 2:00 this afternoon, the National Weather Service is reporting that this is indeed the snowiest winter in recorded history for D.C., Baltimore, and Dulles.

Please give what you can to victims of tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti. Text “Haiti” to 90999 to contribute $10 to the Red Cross.

allen

DCist Brings the good news:

No big surprises in the first D.C. Council vote on legalizing same-sex marriage: the Council today voted 11-2 to approve the “Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009,” with Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) the only dissenters.

Via – LJWorld.com stories: Sports

There are reminders of Kansas University’s 2008 national title victory over Memphis all over Allen Fieldhouse.

Thanks to Doug of Doug Draws the new nesbittresearch.com has drawn some initial design praise. Thanks to Doug for the flattering write up and once more to our design team of Billy from Protagonist Theory and John from DIY Ninjas, both are excellent. Of course, none of this would have been possible without Wordpress and Thesis Theme, what a bargain!!!

Doug writes:

To give you an idea what I’m talking about check out this site for Nesbitt Research. This is an awesome example of simplicity and what’s even more amazing is that Nesbitt is using the Thesis theme. The reason simplicity works is because …

Via – Think Progress

On the eve of Veterans Day, a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School has released a study finding that an estimated 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they did not have health insurance. That “translates to six preventable deaths per day” and more than twice the number killed in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

Being uninsured raises a person’s odds of dying by 40 percent. The researchers found that 1.46 million veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 lacked insurance in 2008. While most veterans are eligible to receive excellent care from the Veterans Administration, those who were not injured in combat and whose income is above a certain threshold are often ineligible. Others are assigned low priorities, providing them with less consistent and more expensive access to care:

“Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people – too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at Harvard Medical School. [...]

Dr. David Himmelstein, the co-author of the analysis and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, commented, “On this Veterans Day we should not only honor the nearly 500 soldiers who have died this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the more than 2,200 veterans who were killed by our broken health insurance system. That’s six preventable deaths a day.”

Unfortunately, health insurance is just one of many serious problems vets face. Up to one-in-five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, while male vets face suicide rates double the national average. And, as the VA under President Obama recognized, veterans still account for up to a quarter of all homeless.

The fact that even veterans cannot receive adequate health care demonstrates that the current system is broken and in need of dramatic overhaul. A robust public option will guarantee that vets and all working-class Americans will be able to afford quality health insurance. Still, the study’s authors warn that the health care legislation “would do virtually nothing for the uninsured until 2013” and would “leave at least 17 million uninsured over the long run when reform kicks in,” leaving many veterans without care.

Via – AARP Bulletin Today

AARP, the 40-million-member association of older Americans, today announced its endorsement of the sweeping House health care reform bill.

Via SF Gate & AP: Half of US kids will get food stamps, study says: “Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say.”