Saturday, March 10, 2012
Gloria Allred should be careful what she wishes for
Feminist lawyer Gloria Allred has demanded that authorities arrest Rush Limbaugh for calling Sandra Fluke a, well, bad name. Allred is basing her request on a Florida criminal statute that theoretically subjects to arrest anyone who "speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastity." Allred's charge is, in law, asinine, as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh amply demonstrates here.
However, let us consider for a moment the arrest of Rush Limbaugh and what it might mean. Never mind that it would turn Rush in to a sympathetic figure, give advertisers a path back, and probably boost his audience. How would "progressive" media folk and on-air personalities -- even those who do not support the First Amendment, and there are many such people -- reconcile their hatred of Rush, their belief that words hurt more than sticks and stones, and their desire to say whatever they want about conservatives without fear of censorship? The cognitive dissonance would be, well, arresting, and -- this is the important part -- extraordinarily entertaining.
Give Gloria what she's asking for. Please.
15 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Mar 10, 11:23:00 AM:
When she goes after Bill maher, then she can go after others. Until then, she is a Hypocrite.
By 
Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Mar 10, 11:31:00 AM:
By MTF, at
Sat Mar 10, 02:16:00 PM:
On the plain facts, how is it possible to wrongly accuse Ms. Flucke of a want of chastity? Isn't she trying to get you and me to pay for her birth control pills?
The primary purpose of her use of those pills is to prevent pregnancy from unchaste sex. By the way, I'm generally in favor of unchaste sex, though it was embarrassing to watch the foolish tool, Sandra Flucke, try to get me to pay for her pills. The new American national motto seems to be, "Free Shit! I want free shit!".
Anyway, Florida law seems right on point, but not as the media-slut (just kidding there, GA) Gloria Allred would wish to have it.
By , at
Sat Mar 10, 05:21:00 PM:
I think media whore more appropriate.
By , at
Sat Mar 10, 05:22:00 PM:
Media whore would be more appropriate.
By , at
Sat Mar 10, 10:49:00 PM:
I find Rush's comments utterly deplorable. Only Gloria Allred could find a way to make him appear sympathetic. She does not represent women and could care less about Flucke. Allred just LIVES to have her own name and face name in the media.
By pam, at
Sun Mar 11, 12:27:00 PM:
I'm with anon 10:49. Allred's on my shortlist of blowhards whose 15 minutes are long, long finished.
By darovas, at
Sun Mar 11, 01:58:00 PM:
By , at
Sun Mar 11, 03:20:00 PM:
The debate over what Sandra Fluke said has degenerated just the way Obama & Co wanted. If the debate is about unwed sex and contraception, Obama wins.
Rush stepped on his dick, big time. Drawing more attention to what he said won’t help him or the cause.
What’s lost is that this started with HHS Head Kathleen Sebelius defining the one-size-fits-all health coverage that’s being mandated for most us. Where’s my free Viagra!
Before RomneyCare, Massachusetts was already a state with high mandates for coverage and thus expensive insurance for one and all, so that RomneyCare didn’t change the coverage calculus all that much. But just wait until the high mandates of ObamaCare are forced onto the rest of the country. Many industries will drop coverage in response. The costs will then fall onto the federal government. As if the bank wasn’t broken enough already.
The politicization of healthcare coverage will just go on and on, if the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn ObamaCare.
Obama & Co. love this as it presents no end of opportunity to divide and conquer over fights over coverage for favored constituencies.
Agreed. Gloria Allred is a despicable media whore. I don’t know of a male equivalent to Gloria. Just observin’.
The Florida statute Allred wants to invoke is another interesting example of the surprising things made criminal by laws on the books. I had reason to look at Georgia’s criminal statutes recently and when I saw the section on “sodomy” I took a look. The Georgia statute is remarkably detailed in its coverage of oral sex – not just anal -- and gender and sexual orientation neutral, and covers married couples too. So if you’ve ever “blanked a blank” as Lenny Bruce would say, then you’d be a felon in the Peach State.
Energy is Obama’s Achilles heel. I’d leave ObamaCare to the Supreme Court for the moment. Energy is the best ground to call Obama out in ways that are harder for MSM to distort. “Are you going to believe me, or your lying eyes”, indeed.
Let’s hope that Breitbart left more tapes in the vault than the Derrick Bell stuff that was recently leaked. It would fit Breitbart’s MO to have even better follow-up.
By Aegon01, at
Sun Mar 11, 05:04:00 PM:
MTF, you wouldn't be paying for pills with tax money. It's an insurance mandate for the employed, not a handout to the mob.
That said, I don't really think contraception or birth control pills *should* be free, unless it's used as medicine, for example, to treat ovarian cysts. Then it should certainly be covered, since conditions like that left untreated would cause a lot more harm (and be more expensive down the road).
But I'm tired of hearing this Fox News talking point; that college students are "getting paid to have sex." That's being deliberately dishonest and/or lazy. I *do* think that college students could just take the free condoms in the R.A office if they can't afford pills.
By , at
Sun Mar 11, 06:36:00 PM:
“you wouldn't be paying for pills with tax money. It's an insurance mandate for the employed”
Not if I understand it right. Under ObamaCare those of us in GenPop will have to buy the mandated package – employed or not – or pay a tax.
It’s hard to separate health care coverage from taxes. E.g. if you put contraceptive pills in the mandated package, then they’re paid for pre-tax. Else Sandra Fluke would be paying for them with her after-tax dollars.
I’m a dude. I personally don’t need to pay for (or "insure" for) contraceptive pills. The females in my family might, but that’s incidental. If you force me into a risk pool with those who do, it’s a subsidy. Collectively we dudes will be subsidizing Sandra Fluke, but only some of us will get a personal payback.
Contraceptive pills aren’t “insurable.” “Health care insurance” is mostly a misnomer. Auto insurance is insurance. It doesn’t buy you the car, or pay for your oil changes – let’s call that “Auto Insurance Plus”. If you could get employer-provided Auto Insurance Plus paid for with pre-tax dollars, and get yourself put into a better risk pool in the bargain, most of would be getting our oil changes paid for under a company plan.
What’s likely to happen is that the mandated package will favor some types of contraception over others, many of which will be more expensive than what Sandra Fluke would buy with her own dollars. But the mandated package may also skimp on other things that are worthwhile. It opens the door to even more politicking and crony capitalism.
Only some of us will be in GenPop. Many will get waivers to opt-out, or be blessed by being included in better plans – government workers especially. Those in GenPop will suffer from denials of care, necessary to keep costs down, so that Sandra Fluke can get her pills for free.
Granted, contraceptive pills aren’t a huge driver of costs, but there will be lots of other examples of this type of thing going on. Collectively, they’ll drive up costs, even more than now.
“college students are "getting paid to have sex””
No, but under ObamaCare they’ll be subsidized to have sex under a national mandated plan.
I had mandated health insurance in college and grad school, but it was actually voluntary as I decided to go to that school. It was cheap, as the risk pool wasn’t risky. Women in school would see the doctor regularly, mostly for girl things. I never saw a doctor in the seven years. So the guys were subsidizing the gals. On the other hand, the guys made out on the school food plan. We’d be going back for seconds on the entrée, while the gals had just a little salad.
By , at
Sun Mar 11, 08:48:00 PM:
Arrest Rush, then arrest all of the Lefties that have said objectionable things, starting with Jane Fonda during the Vietnam War and moving from that date forward. After each arrest tell the left wing radicals, "Let Rush go free and we shall release all of your lefties". See how long it takes before the left wing agrees that Free Speech is a wonderful thing.
By MTF, at
Sun Mar 11, 09:13:00 PM:
"MTF, you wouldn't be paying for pills with tax money. It's an insurance mandate for the employed, not a handout to the mob."
Aegeon, the Justice Department is calling the insurance mandate a tax in its legal defense of the law. It's also assessed against all adults, employed or not, so it's a unique sort of tax in that it isn't assessed against income or assets. Any breathing adult owes the tax.
As far as it being a handout to the mob, you raise an interesting point. I agree it's not intended as a handout to the mob, I think it's a bare-knuckled attempt to grow government power over the people, as well as government employment and revenues. What the people want didn't enter into it, I don't think.
By Aegon01, at
Mon Mar 12, 12:43:00 PM:
Well, I guess I stand corrected. Although I didn't really support free pills in the first place.
"What’s likely to happen is that the mandated package will favor some types of contraception over others, many of which will be more expensive than what Sandra Fluke would buy with her own dollars."
Well, according to some people I asked on Facebook that know more than me, the companies can't prioritize one type of contraception over another. Naturally, I would guess that given the choice between the $15 Kroger-brand pill and a $500 IUD, most women would go for the IUD. That won't keep costs down at all. I think that if the companies *were* able to decide what methods to prioritize however, free contraception would get a lot shittier very quickly in order to minimize losses.
This whole idea is really stupid, and it's causing a lot of drama on both sides between feminists and the kind of people that think protected sex is baby murder. These are both very dramatic subsets of people. I think if Republicans want to do this right, they'll drop the religious argument, keep their cool (that also involves not calling people sluts), and make the "it doesn't make economic sense" argument. But contrary to what he might think, I don't think Rush is exactly helping things by giving Jon Stewart ammo.
By , at
Mon Mar 12, 01:09:00 PM:
Anon Attorney drools over the opportunity to depose and cross-examine Ms. Fluke as to the state of her chastity. Ms. Fluke would get the opportunity to testify under oath to the intimate details of every sexual encounter she has had in years.
I don't list to Rush, but I suspect he would have a ball with this and his ratings would skyrocket. He should publicly dare the prosecution to move forward.
And the conservative blogosphere missed the most interesting part of this story. Ms. Fluke testified that she attends Georgetown on a public interest scholarship. What are these "public interest" scholarships? Why do they always go to leftists? And why would Georgetown, a Jesuit institution, give a public interest scholarship to someone whose career has been to advocate for abortion rights?
Agree with Ignoramus that Rush was baited and this entire even was planned as a distraction by the Obama administration. He has to keep the focus away from his multitude of failures. Look for more diversions.
