Mother Jones reports:

In North Carolina, women can’t legally withdraw their consent in the middle of sex, even if things get violent—and attempts to change that reality at the Legislature aren’t going well.

According to a 1979 state Supreme Court ruling, State v. Way, a man isn’t guilty of rape if he continues to have intercourse with a woman who asks him to stop, so long as she agreed to the encounter at the outset.

Hmm. So once she says yes he can discard the mask of a decent human being and treat her like a prop or a slave or a captured enemy or whatever other abusive fantasy turns him on? No matter how psychotic he may … Read the rest

Via Barry Duke at The Freethinker, a story of a guy on a bus in Istanbul who told off a young woman for wearing shorts during Ramadan.

He said in a statement:

I warned the woman in shorts because it caught my attention that her clothes were too revealing and her crotch was visible; and, I was fasting [for Ramadan]. I said to her: ‘My friend, there is something called manners and morals. Getting on a public transportation like this is not proper.’

So, in response to this, the woman told me ‘not to look, then’… I told her that sometimes people cannot control their desires and told her that her way of dressing turned me on. She huffed

Obama on the Republican plans for the ACA:

Our politics are divided. They have been for a long time. And while I know that division makes it difficult to listen to Americans with whom we disagree, that’s what we need to do today.

I recognize that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act has become a core tenet of the Republican Party. Still, I hope that our Senators, many of whom I know well, step back and measure what’s really at stake, and consider that the rationale for action, on health care or any other issue, must be something more than simply undoing something that Democrats did.

We didn’t fight for the Affordable Care Act for more than a … Read the rest

The Committee to Protect Journalists increases its Washington staff by one.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has created the new position of Washington Advocacy Manager to lead efforts to advance press freedom around the world with the U.S. government and other policymakers in Washington, D.C. Michael De Dora will be the first to occupy the post.

“The United States plays an important role in promoting and protecting press freedom worldwide,” CPJ Advocacy Director Courtney Radsch said from Washington, D.C. “It is imperative that press-freedom norms are respected here and serve as a benchmark for other governments. We look forward to increasing our cooperation with partners, policymakers, and lawmakers to promote and protect a free press, in the United States and

More from the Times on Darren Osborne.

He had family problems and was known by locals as belligerent and aggressive, with a drinking problem. He had Muslim neighbors, who described his behavior as fairly unremarkable, and his children had Muslim friends.

No one on the cul-de-sac in Cardiff, Wales, where Darren Osborne, 47, lived could readily explain what he is believed to have done: rented a van, driven it 150 miles to London and plowed into a crowd of Muslims as they finished prayers at the Finsbury Park Mosque early Monday.

Numerous residents here said that Mr. Osborne was often agitated, even disturbed, but few described him as frightening and none said he had expressed political sentiments, much less

Damn but misogyny is casual sometimes. Ben Mathis-Lilley lets it all hang out at Slate.

Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff lost a special House election in Georgia on Tuesday to Republican Karen Handel. It’s the fourth high-profile special election Dems have lost since November. California Rep. Nancy Pelosi is the leader of the House Democrats. Should she be replaced, as some rabble-rousers are starting to suggest?

Oh yeah, obviously, because the Speaker of the House is to blame when a same-party candidate loses.

Reasons to put Nancy Pelosi on a raft in the Hudson Bay (metaphorically):

Ahhh fuck you, dude. That’s “metaphorically” the way “die in a fire” is metaphorically.

• She’s both unpopular and, for a congressional figure, relativelywell-known

The man who died in the Finsbury Park terror attack died of injuries from the attack, as opposed to dying of whatever had caused him to collapse on the pavement before the attack. He was Makram Ali.

Makram Ali moved to Britain from Bangladesh when he was 10. He and his wife raised four daughters and two sons. He loved strolling in parks with his two grandchildren. His family was about to take a vacation in Canada.

Mr. Ali, 51, was returning from Ramadan prayers early Monday morning when he collapsed on a street in North London; he was known to have a weak leg.

First aid arrived, and Mr. Ali was receiving medical assistance. He appeared to feel

Max Ehrenfreund at the Post says Republicans have had good success at putting a halt to current progressive policies but not so much at reversing them. I think the 1994 Congress did a fair bit of reversing, but that may be an exception.

Throughout the modern history of Congress, lawmakers have inexorably expanded progressive social policies, and while conservatives have successfully forestalled expansions to the social safety net, they’ve had very little success in reversing them.

Right now, however, Republicans have a chance to buck that trend, as they prepare legislation aimed at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The Senate bill released on Thursday, coupled with the House bill passed earlier this year,

The Times summarizes the Senate Republicans’ health insurance bill.

Senate Republicans, who have promised a repeal of the Affordable Care Act for seven years, took a major step on Thursday toward that goal, unveiling a bill to cut Medicaid deeply and end the health law’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance.

The 142-page bill would create a new system of federal tax credits to help people buy health insurance, while offering states the ability to drop many of the benefits required by the Affordable Care Act, like maternity care, emergency services and mental health treatment.

The Senate bill — once promised as a top-to-bottom revamp of the health bill passed by the House last month — instead

Remind us how Kushner managed to get a security clearance? And why he still has it?

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee want to see White House records on the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, his security clearance and his access to classified information.

In a letter to White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the oversight panel’s 18 Democrats question why Kushner’s security clearance hasn’t been revoked.

The Democrats say Kushner, one of President Trump’s closest advisers, had meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and the CEO of a Russian state-owned bank. They say he failed to disclose the meetings as he applied for security clearance and allowed administration officials to say he’d had no such meetings.

“It is unclear