Monica Potts

Yesterday, New York Gov. David Paterson signed the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, a state law passed a couple of months ago that gives domestic laborers almost the same rights most workers have in offices or factories. For many, it’s probably true that the protections don’t go far enough: It only guarantees nannies, housekeepers, and […]

Via Jezebel, Candi Cushman of Focus on the Family, the Christian conservative group, believes that anti-bullying campaigns push a gay agenda because they try to prevent the bullying of, among others, LGTB students. For Cushman, though, that means an anti-Christian agenda. ‘We feel more and more that activists are being deceptive in using anti-bullying rhetoric […]

A few weeks ago, Utah state Sen. Daniel Liljenquist caused a commotion when he suggested the state should try to rein in Medicaid spending by cutting reimbursements for epidurals and elective Cesarean sections. The outcry, of course, was deserved: Suggesting poor women should experience pain during childbirth to save money is ridiculous. But if I […]

Despite what you may have heard about Mama Grizzlies, 2010 is poised to be a bad year for women in Congress, according to the Los Angeles Times. There are a number of female candidates for Congress and governorships across the country, but the most striking thing about them is their tone; for the most part, […]

The New Jersey Education Commissioner was fired over a Race to the Top grant proposal mistake, but that’s not the real story. The story is that he said today he asked to be fired, instead of offering to resign, so that he could collect unemployment benefits. “I asked if they would mind writing a termination […]

When the D.C. area and other Southern cities had record snowstorms, conservatives tried to use it as “proof” that global warming didn’t exist, as in the Fox News clip above. Climate, as many pointed out in return, is of course different from weather, and any day’s given weather event isn’t proof or disproof of anything. […]

Jonah Goldberg posted a defensive bit today at The Corner, proclaiming, “Here’s Some Religious Intolerance for You.” He then pastes in the sad story of an Ahmadiyya Muslim who was killed in Pakistan because of his religion. That does sound like religious intolerance. You got me, Goldberg! But what is it in response to? There […]

Voters yesterday in Alaska approved an anti-abortion measure that requires parents to be notified before their teenage daughters can receive abortions. A campaign against the measure argued that it was unnecessary government intervention that dictated communication between families. What it clearly does is curb the rights of teenage girls: most already involve parents, but the […]

One of the things lost in the furor over vaccines in the past few years is that people still contract and die from some of the disease vaccines prevent. Eight people have died in California stemming from a whooping cough epidemic that has affected 3,000 people this year. Whooping cough cycles through the population regularly […]

In Virginia, the latest effort to circumvent Roe v. Wade and popular opinion on abortion comes from the state’s renegade attorney general Ken Cuccinelli. He issued an opinion saying the state has legal authority to require abortion providers to meet the same standards hospitals do. Though the opinion is not legally binding and the Board […]