If you have a fetus outside the womb that is no longer alive, what you have — under the law of the land — is a dead baby. Even in a state with a Freedom of Choice Act, police would be obliged to investigate the circumstances of the death and consider prosecuting the mother for negligence or murder. I suspect that,…

Legally speaking — this is federal law and always has been — a fetus who is born alive already <i>is</i> a living child. You don't gain legal personhood status by surviving for a certain amount of time outside the womb; you have it the instant you exit.

Wonderful to see the good folks of the Star Wars Players Committee get such a high-profile plug!

I thought everyone stopped taking Toobin seriously as a pundit after they started looking at his predictions record. (He thought NFIB v. Sebelius would never even reach the Circuit Court of Appeals, much less win a Commerce Clause restriction at SCOTUS!) But I guess the New Yorker decided otherwise. Oh, well — you…

Electability in a general has never stopped anybody from running for and winning the GOP nomination! Look at Mitt Romney.

The judge who appointed the prosecutor is a Republican, but both the group that brought the criminal complaint and the special prosecutor himself are Democrats.

Actually, over on the Right, I think this has, if anything, boosted his chances. Last week, he was still (nationally) the nincompoop who couldn't remember the third federal department he wanted to get rid of. This week, he's the victim of the most absurd felony charge in the history of politics, having been charged,…

What we have right now is certainly not working, but it is entirely possible for poorly crafted legislation to make things *worse*. One should never pass a bill if one isn't 99% certain what the impact of it will be.

I mean, the outcome is bad, but correct. The FDA is under an obligation to ensure the health and safety of foodstuffs, but helping prevent the rise of superbugs is not part of its mandate. It's Congress's responsibility to pass something to fix this — and Congress should do so, posthaste.

Jezebel, of course, pulled out one line of Sen. Kelly Ayotte's bill and mocked it. According to her press release, the bill adds this (arguably unnecessary) protection / confirmation of current law, but also expands contraception access. Unfortunately, it was only introduced yesterday, so the bill's text is not yet…

Under ecclesiastic law (which literally <i>is</i> the civil law in the Vatican), any person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. There's good reason for that: amid the many completely true reports of sex abuse (which make the morning papers), there have been a great many others that were either never…

I've never seen G.I. Joe before, and my wife had to inform me — several minutes into the episode — that G.I. Joe was not actually a single person, but a whole organization of dudes with ridiculous names.

That episode was still beyond amazing. The thing about pop culture references is you don't necessarily have to…

But the overwhelming majority of <i>married</i> women are Republicans. Also the majority of white women. And if there's a ladies' site more white and married than Pinterest, I don't know about it.

Um, guys? South Carolina law ALREADY defines an "unborn child" using almost identical personhood language. See SECTION 16-3-1083. That's been on the books since 2006. Similar language is in the statute books of about 30 states.

Hobby Lobby's interpretation of the law was the law of the land from 1963 (Sherbert v. Werner) to 1990 (Employment Division v. Smith). The sky did not fall. Segregation did not survive. Sadly, Jezebel does not really do depth or context — it just rips the headlines off ThinkProgress and scrubs away any inconvenient…

Hey, there's more than Potbelly out there. We've got Erbert & Gerberts, we've got Jimmy John's, we've got Which Wich?... and that's just the good ones!

On what grounds, out of curiosity? Would you go for "undue burden"?

To be fair to your acquaintance, the fetuses-in-dumpsters thing did happen (still does, occasionally). Wikipedia refers to the most significant instance as the "Los Angeles fetus disposal scandal"; it occurred in 1982 and was a national controversy.

Just 5? I don't know about other faiths, but the Catholic religion holds that there are 55 to 56 days every year where you must attend Mass, on pain of mortal sin.

Isn't Gov. Brewer term-limited? Pretty explicitly, as I recall?