That’s one way of putting it.

Across the U.S. and in many places abroad, transgender athletes are breaking barriers in high school, college and pro sports and being embraced by teammates and fans. But resentments can still flare when transgender women start winning and dominating their sport.

Well now what do we mean by “barriers”? Not all barriers need breaking. If you have a barrier between you and the local grizzly bears, you don’t much want it broken, do you.

And they’re not really breaking “barriers” anyway, because there are no “barriers” labeled “No Trans People Allowed.” What they’re doing is breaking the rules, which doesn’t sound quite so progressive. People with male bodies are breaking the rules … Read the rest

Another Pronouns War:

A debate about the gender identity of Dr James Barry, the pioneering Victorian who adopted a male persona to become the UK’s first female-born doctor, has erupted after the award-winning author EJ Levy was accused of disrespecting Barry’s legacy by using female pronouns in a forthcoming novel.

Levy announced last week that she had sold a novel about the “true story” of Barry, titled The Cape Doctor. The forthcoming book, which will be released by Little, Brown, will trace Barry’s life story: born Margaret Ann Bulkley in Ireland, the future doctor became Barry at the age of 20 and left for Edinburgh to study medicine as a man. Barry joined the army after graduation, the start

Ok the Republicans are the minority and they’re hostile, while the Democrats are the majority and…not friendly, not affectionate, but not hostile in the sense of hostile to Cohen’s presence and testimony. Grant all that. It’s Democrats versus Republicans, with all that follows from that.

But if the two were reversed would Democrats be this assholish? This challenging, this stern, yes, but it’s more than that – there’s also taunting, sneering, raging, screeching. Do Republicans give themselves permission to be Trump-like in the era of Trump in a way they wouldn’t have before?

Update: Rep. Carol Miller, R-West Virginia, thinks it’s “a game” to establish whether or not Trump is a criminal.

It’s not a game, Representative Miller. It couldn’t … Read the rest

Good lord.

https://twitter.com/mattgaetz/status/1100503846386835456

I seem to follow a lot of lawyers.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1100508004665962496

1st q asked by @NicolleDWallace about this despicable tweet was "is this illegal?" Answer is it's likely witness threat, but q should be why is MOC allowed to act this way even if it wasn't a crime.

— Jill Wine-Banks (now on Threads as jillwinebanks) (@JillWineBanks) February 26, 2019

Aaron Blake at the Post:

A Republican member of Congress on Tuesday suggested without evidence that Michael Cohen engaged in affairs with multiple “girlfriends” and suggested his wife might cheat on him while he’s in prison — all on the eve of Cohen’s public testimony.

President Trump and his allies have camped out in a whole host of

Trump told an audience of governors yesterday that Princess Ivanka has created millions of jobs. Of course she hasn’t. She and Daddy got some corporations to sign something saying they would offer lots of training – but they were doing that anyway, and signing something isn’t the same as actual jobs. Daddy was telling a whopper as usual.

In July of last year, Trump signed an executive order creating the National Council for the American Worker, co-chaired by Ivanka Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. One of the council’s priorities is asking companies across the US to sign the Pledge to America’s Workers. The pledge involves “committing to expand programs that educate, train, and reskill American workers from

Oh that’s where all the anti-vaxxing is coming from.

In 2008, Vaccinate Your Family, the nation’s largest nonprofit dedicated to advocating for vaccinations, had to stop posting videos to YouTube.

Then known as Every Child By Two, the organization had used its channel on the massive video platform to post interviews with doctors, public service announcements and testimonials from parents of children who had died of vaccine-preventable diseases.

But those messages were quickly sabotaged. YouTube’s recommendation system, which appears alongside videos and suggests what users should watch next, would direct viewers to anti-vaccination videos, according to Amy Pisani, executive director of Vaccinate Your Family.

Yes, it’s The American Way. You’ve read /listened to /watched something reasonable and evidence-based, now … Read the rest

I wrote a thing for The Freethinker about the ludicrous arguments the pope has to resort to when he and his cronies gather to talk about the long history of child-rape by priests.

So now that we’re properly cowed and humbled by the Procession of Ecclesiastical Nomenclature, let’s look at how Frank presents this worrying puzzle of how Mister God let all this rape of children by priests go on for decades and, it seems safe to assume, centuries.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

As I thank the Lord who has accompanied us during these days, I would like to thank all of you for the ecclesial spirit and concrete commitment that you have so generously demonstrated.

Problem. We have a

Glinner (Graham Linehan) is seeking anecdotes.

I'd like to collect some anecdotes about when and why you first became involved in the debate about gender ideology/activism. If you don’t feel you can talk about it, you can simply say that. Otherwise, I’d like to hear your stories.

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) February 26, 2019

Lots of interesting replies, as you’d expect.

When women were told to stop talking about their periods or pregnancies because "not all women" can have either of those things.

— Carrie (@NewNellieBly) February 26, 2019

I recognize that one! In my case it was abortion rights, and my response was No. PZ’s goon squad took copious notes.

https://twitter.com/DelcCris/status/1100414304027721731… Read the rest

Sweaters for elephants. That’s right, sweaters for elephants.

Winters get chilly in Northern India, so volunteers at the the Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Center decided to knit giant sweaters for its rescued elephants.

It takes around 4 weeks to make one sweater, and it does not come as a surprise knowing that elephants are the largest land mammals on the planet. Still, the volunteers make sure that the knits are not only warm and cozy, they are also colorful , and even fashionable.

I hope they’re also washable, because elephants love coating themselves with dirt.

“It is important to keep our elephants protected from the bitter cold during this extreme winter, as they are weak and

The BBC shared a graph last year after the Oscars:

Pretty stunning, isn’t it. Chicago is the only one in which women speak more.

Just think how that seeps into all of our consciousnesses, without our even noticing it. Just think how it’s been seeping in our whole lives, and the implications for how absolutely everyone sees and understands and thinks about women. What does all that silence and absence suggest? That women are an afterthought, an oddity, an exception, a deviation from the normal; that women live in the shadows, doing their weird spooky womany thing, and emerge only occasionally, to say “thanks honey” or cuddle a baby or be raped or murdered or both. That women are … Read the rest

Well, if Barr won’t and Mueller can’t and the Senate won’t, the House can and will.

House Democrats are planning to cross one of President Donald Trump’s red lines: investigating his personal finances.

With special counsel Robert Mueller expected to wind up his work soon, Democrats are launching an investigation to discover why Deutsche Bank was willing to lend the Trump Organization money when other banks wouldn’t and whether Russia was involved.

For more than two years we’ve known there was this Deutsche Bank issue but it’s been buried because the Republicans successfully stole everything.

The House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees have been staffing up for their probes into the bank and Trump’s Russia ties. Democrats on the