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Culture in Flames: States Allow Men to Expose Themselves to Girls in Public Bathrooms

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I know that many conservatives don’t like talking about the politics of sex and how our country has now normalized perversion. But it’s precisely due to this passivity that we’re now at a point in many states where a man, calling himself “transgendered,” can legally walk into a girls’ locker room, strip down, and lay out spread eagle for everyone to see.

Yes, it really happened in the state of Washington. That state, as well as 15 others plus the District of Columbia, prohibit “discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression.”

So what exactly does that mean? If the state has a public facility, it can’t prohibit access based upon one’s declaration that he is a “woman trapped in a man’s body” or vice-versa.

The insanity of this is obvious to any common-sensed American. And if you have any doubt, what happened last month in Olympia, Washington, should make that insanity crystal clear.

Evergreen State College has a swimming pool that it shares with several secondary schools in the Olympia area. Of course, in addition to a pool, the college also has a women’s locker room. A man named Colleen Francis (pictured above), who claims he is “transgendered,” stripped naked, laid out in the sauna, and according to Fox News, “exposed his genitals on several occasions.”

After several high school girls in the women’s locker room saw him, they complained.

Nevertheless, given Washington law that “requires equal access to state facilities regardless of gender identity,” it appears that Francis’s naked display to juvenile girls was legally protected.

So what’s the solution? The minor girls are now using a smaller locker room at the pool while Mr. Francis may continue to expose himself to the adult female patrons in the larger facility.

This is flat out CRAZY. And frankly, it hits close to home. I fly through the Seattle Airport, not infrequently, with my beautiful daughters and wife. They use the women’s public restroom that the State of Washington says Mr. Francis must have equal access to. So now, I get to cross my fingers hoping that some “transgendered” man won’t be lurking in the female restroom, waiting to (legally) expose himself to my young girls.

But why should I be surprised at this world-upside-down? My GOP-led state just allowed Alaskans to choose what sex they are on their driver’s licenses . . .

NY Times: Voter Registration Databases Can Easily Be Hacked

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Computer security experts have identified vulnerabilities in the voter registration databases in two states, raising concerns about the ability of hackers and others to disenfranchise voters.

In the last five years, Maryland and Washington State have set up voter registration systems that make it easy for people to register to vote and update their address information online. The problem is that in both states, all the information required from voters to log in to the system is publicly available.

It took The New York Times less than three minutes to track down the information online needed to update the registrations of several prominent executives in Washington State. Complete voter lists, which include a name, birth date, addresses and party affiliation, can be easily bought — and are, right now, in the hands of thousands of campaign volunteers.

Computer security experts and voting rights activists argue that a hacker could use that information to, say, change a person’s address online to ensure that the voter never receives a ballot in Washington, where voting is now done entirely by mail. In Maryland, hackers could ensure that a voter is not listed on the precinct register at a designated polling station. In that case, the voter would be redirected to another precinct, or asked to fill out a provisional ballot. In both cases, the person would not be able to vote in local, or possibly, Congressional races.

But the real concern, critics say, is that large numbers of voters from one political party, or demographic, could have their information changed by automated computer programs. A program that could change tens of thousands of voter records at once, they say, would require only a dozen lines of code.

Read more from this article HERE.

DC Fetal Pain Bill Fails House but Pro-Life Leaders Remain Optimistic

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A bill that would ban abortions in the District of Columbia after 20 weeks of pregnancy failed to pass the House on Tuesday, but anti-abortion activists hailed the vote as a sign that their efforts ultimately would succeed.

The bill was based on the disputed claim that fetuses can feel pain at a gestational age of 20 weeks or older. The National Right to Life Committee, an anti-abortion group, made the legislation its top priority on Capitol Hill this year. Nine states have passed similar measures, and a federal judge upheld a similar law in Arizona this week.

The vote in favor of the bill was 220-154, with 17 Democrats joining 203 Republicans to support it. But because it was considered under special rules requiring a two-thirds vote for passage, the bill won’t proceed to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it was unlikely to come up for a vote.

Opponents said the bill was an attempt to roll back a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Advocacy groups on both sides of the abortion debate were noting how each lawmaker voted, putting members under additional pressure.

“Today’s groundbreaking majority vote constitutes a giant step towards this bill ultimately becoming law,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee. He added that the lawmakers who voted against it “will have to explain to their constituents why they voted to endorse a policy of legal abortion for any reason, until the moment of birth, in their nation’s capital.”

Read more from this story HERE.

More vote fraud opportunities: Washington first state to use Facebook for voter registration

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Washington will become the first state to offer voter registration via Facebook with a new application to be launched as soon as next week, according to a state election official.

Once online, the app will be accessible on the secretary of state’s Facebook page, said Shane Hamlin, co-director of elections for the state.

Washington, which has approximately 3.7 million registered voters, conducts elections entirely by mail and enacted online registration in 2008. Since online registration started, Hamlin said close to 500,000 voter registrations or address changes have been processed.

Facebook, Washington state and Microsoft have teamed up to create an app that allows users to register on the social media site through the state’s new “MyVote” app. The effort came about last fall when Microsoft approached Washington state after Facebook contacted the software giant with the idea.

When Facebook users download the application, they will have to agree to allow Facebook to access their information, including name and date of birth, which is pre-filled into the voter registration form.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Thos003

Sen. Patty Murray: Democrats will go over ‘fiscal cliff’ unless GOP relents

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With the US economy speeding toward a year-end fiscal cliff of some $560 billion in higher taxes and draconian spending cuts, Sen. Patty Murray (D) of Washington bluntly laid out her party’s position on how Congress should handle the nation’s coming fiscal travails: Go big or go over the ledge.

“Millions of jobs could be lost through the automatic cuts, programs families depend on would be slashed irresponsibly across the board, and middle-class tax cuts would expire. And once again, if Republicans won’t work with us on a balanced approach, we are not going to get a deal,” said Senator Murray, the Senate’s No. 4 Democrat, in a speech at the Brookings Institution on Monday.

“[I]f we can’t get a good deal – a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share – then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013, rather than lock in a long-term deal this year that throws middle-class families under the bus,” she said.

The chair of the party committee charged with electing Democrats to the Senate laid out the broadest, most full-throated explanation of the party’s views on the party’s negotiating position vis-a-vis the fiscal cliff, while outlining the party’s strategy for attacking Republicans at the polls in November.

While optimistic “that we can get a good deal,” Murray said Democrats would not, for example, sign on to a plan that would offset the $55 billion portion of the $109 billion in automatic spending cuts mandated by the “sequester,” the budget-slashing mechanism agreed to as part of 2011’s debt-ceiling showdown. The remainder of the reductions come from discretionary spending, home to Democratic priorities like social welfare programs, and reductions in payments to Medicare providers.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: ozmafan

Video: Obama needs to walk around DC once in a while

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In this short Stoplight commentary, Stuart Shepard takes us along for a walk in the nation’s capital and explains how Obama completely misunderstands our nation’s religious history.

 

Photo credit:  Rob Shenk