AND now for one more example of ultra-conservative oppression creeping into modern life:

Druggists refuse to give out pill
For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because she did not believe in birth control.

"I was shocked," says Lacey, 33, who was not able to get her prescription until the next day and missed taking one of her pills. "Their job is not to regulate what people take or do. It's just to fill the prescription that was ordered by my physician."

Some pharmacists, however, disagree and refuse on moral grounds to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And states from Rhode Island to Washington have proposed laws that would protect such decisions.

Mississippi enacted a sweeping statute that went into effect in July that allows health care providers, including pharmacists, to not participate in procedures that go against their conscience. South Dakota and Arkansas already had laws that protect a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medicines. Ten other states considered similar bills this year.

The American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy that says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on moral grounds, but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill.

In Madison, Wis., a pharmacist faces possible disciplinary action by the state pharmacy board for refusing to transfer a woman's prescription for birth-control pills to another druggist or to give the slip back to her. He would not refill it because of his religious views.Some advocates for women's reproductive rights are worried that such actions by pharmacists and legislatures are gaining momentum.

Oh. My. God. In the "richest country in the world". There are no words for how unacceptable this is:

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.

The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk. It suggests that almost everyone knows a family who has received food stamps, or will in the future, said lead author Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

"Your neighbor may be using some of these programs but it's not the kind of thing people want to talk about," Rank said.

The analysis was released Monday in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The authors say it's a medical issue pediatricians need to be aware of because children on food stamps are at risk for malnutrition and other ills linked with poverty.

"This is a real danger sign that we as a society need to do a lot more to protect children," Rank said.

Read more

My brother is an elementary school teacher in a mostly minority area, and we've talked about this before. He told me that the school lunch program is often the only meal many children at his school get each day. And we know how healthy those meals are. My brother (and other teachers) have taken to buying fresh fruit out of their own meager salaries to make available to these kids.

The ramifications of this heartbreaking demographic will reverberate over decades: in health statistics, in education levels, in our economy, in crime statistics. And it's a situation for which no one should be complacent.

John put up a couple of posts yesterday pointing to William Kristol's delusional OpEd, Why Bush Will Be A Winner at the Washington Post yesterday. Kristol writes at the beginning of his article:

I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one.

Somehow, I don't think Mr. Kristol knew just how much harmless ridicule was headed his way, but The Post should have. As I write this there are some 124 PAGES of comments and after reading nearly 40 of them I could only find one or two individual posts that were supportive of him.

"Why is the Post printing anything by that idiot Kristol? Who's paying the Post to print this drivel?

"Criminy, kids hide your model sets Uncle Billy's been huffing airplane glue again."

"This piece was supposed to go in The Onion but missed their deadline."

"The 27% is slipping away from Bush and the GOP. Fortunately for Kristol, these are the goobers who buy the penis extension pills and baldness remedies advertised on Limbaugh's show. The point being that it doesn't take a lot to schnooker them.You really need to drug-test your contributors before printing delusional fantasies such as this."

"What bothers me most about Kristol's idiodic posting is that I encoutered it in th Washington Post. What are the standards? What would be too stupid to print in the Post?"

*Update: There are now 200 pages of comments and still, no love for Baghdad Bill...

"More than a dozen states are considering new laws to protect health workers who do not want to provide care that conflicts with their personal beliefs, a surge of legislation that reflects the intensifying tension between asserting individual religious values and defending patients' rights. About half of the proposals would shield pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and "morning-after" pills because they believe the drugs cause abortions. But many are far broader measures that would shelter a doctor, nurse, aide, technician or other employee who objects to any therapy....read on"

I agree with Cole's opinion that: "There is little room for nuance in my opinion on this. If your religious beliefs interfere with your job providing any and all desired or required care for a patient, you have several options- change your job, change your religion, suck it up and hope yours is a forgiving God."

These people are a danger to our health care system.

More Illinois Pharmacists Join Abortion Drug Lawsuit Against Governor

Springfield, IL (LifeNews.com) -- More Illinois pharmacists have joined one of the two lawsuits failed against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. They seek to overturn his order requiring pharmacists there to fill all prescriptions for legal drugs, including morning after pills that can sometimes cause abortions.

: The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which specializes in constitutional law, today filed an amended complaint in state court in Illinois adding four additional pharmacists to its lawsuit challenging Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s emergency amendment to the state code requiring pharmacists to dispense medication even if filling the prescriptions violate their conscience and religious beliefs...

All the wingnuts say that we live in America, the land of opportunity and if you are poor, its your fault. If we use that as a compass then I say if you can't do your job Mr. moral pharmacist, get another one. Your job is to dispense legal drugs via prescription from a doctor. If you are incapable of doing that then please find another line of work, its America after all. You are entitled to your beliefs but not at the expense of others.

(Update):-The Left Coaster really does a full scale analysis of the morning after pill and this case.

NY Times

Scattered reports suggest that a growing number of pharmacists around the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for contraceptives or morning-after birth control pills because of moral or religious objections. Although the refusals are cast as important matters of conscience for self-described "pro-life" pharmacists, they have the pernicious effect of delaying, and sometimes even denying, a woman's access to medications that may be urgently needed.

This is an intolerable abuse of power by pharmacists who have no business forcing their own moral or ethical views onto customers who may not share them. Any pharmacist who cannot dispense medicines lawfully prescribed by a doctor should find another line of work....read on

The time is coming when the article will read: Moralist Doctors: Doctors that refuse to write prescriptions or treat patients based on their moral principles. With the decline of the health care industry and soaring health care costs, a patient will have no where to go if this trend bleeds over to the doctors themselves, because their insurance will not permit them to see another physician. Especially when dealing with HMO's, when a patient needs a referral to see another doctor. Sounds out of touch? Who thought we would be talking about " some pharmacists are so certain of their moral high ground that they berate, belittle or lecture their customers." ...Stay tuned...

Yeah, those too

David Frum opens up a can of worms and spills it all over himself:

True story: I arrive at a Washington DC office building this morning. The guard asks me to show ID so he can sign me in. I produce a driver’s license. He says: "Sorry I can’t read small type – would you mind spelling out your name for me?" I reply, "Sure. A-b-r-a-h-a-m, L-i-n ..." Okay, that last part I made up. But is anybody else getting the impression that some of these so-called office security policies are kind of beside the point?

Never mind office security policies -- have you looked at so-called national security policies lately?