You guys got the Obama Plan B thing comprehensively wrong. Reread the second article that you quote. He's fine w the FDA's plan to let 15 and 16 year olds have full Plan B. And the quote is him defending that position by invoking science.

What he's not OK with is the court decision to extend that to 14 and 13 and younger. I think we can all agree that there is some age below which it's inappropriate and dangerous for kids to be having sex, and parents need to know for their kids safety. Certainly 5 year olds shouldn't be doing it. He's saying that line is at 15, and I think most parents would agree (if not even a higher age).

So he's defending his recent decision to make Plan B more available to 15 and 16 year olds, but holding the line there. Give the guy a fucking break.

Plan B seems like a significant victory even if there are some irritating wrinkles.

@2, You are imposing your moral views on someone else's medical decision.

Whether or not the FDA should approve Plan B, and to whom, should be based on medical science, not your morals. Or Obama's. According to medical science, Plan B is a safe drug to take, even for younger girls. Therefore it should be available without prescription and without age restriction.

Now, you are free to lobby to impose your morals on others through legislation, but not through the FDA drug approval process.

Hey, great news! Thanks to Obama, Pelosi, Bloomberg, and all you media types, NRA membership just passed the five million mark. Job well-done, and keep up the good work.

The FBI has named the first woman ever to its most wanted list of domestic terrorists: Assata Shakur. A 60-year-old former Black Panther now living in exile in Cuba

Killing people is bad; killing cops is especially damaging to society; it's understandable that it's an especially sensitive point for the FBI and other forces of law and order; and spending decades as a fugitive doesn't absolve you of wrongdoing.

All those caveats having been stated, if the highest-priority fugitive or suspect of the FBI is some woman who killed a cop 40 years ago and was last seen hiding in Cuba (with no great risk she'll kill again at this point), we must be in pretty damn good shape. She's not exactly an active serial killer nor a mob boss. She should never be let off the hook, to be sure - but #1 most wanted? There are no more threatening, more vicious, or more effective criminals that concern us?

Actually, with a quick Google search the reason becomes clear. She's not on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List; she's on some "Terrorism Most Wanted List". And good news: the FBI doesn't actually need a "Terrorism Most Wanted List".

@5, wow. 5 million out of a population of over 300 million. Awesome! Fap, fap, fap.

Lets see now...
AAA has over 50 million members
AARP has over 35 million members.
The YMCA has over 20 million members

Hey, this is fun!

That explosion makes it sound like people say "Allah Akbar" (and apologies if that's not what they're saying -- sure sounds like it to me) in the same way we say "Oh my god!" when something insane happens, not necessarily as a prayer or as a call to arms.

@4: No age restriction? Age restrictions on drugs is not about morality as it as about common sense and medical science.

#6

I think she should be punished, but that said, almost all the Weathermen got off nearly Scot free.

The 2002 documentary is excellent by the way:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343168/

The few who did get long convictions didn't have rich connected parents or make deals...the middle class "true believers" who think that "revolutions" are anything more than the idol games of the elites.

@9,
And the FDA and medical experts have determined that the morning after pill is safer than aspirin and should be available over the counter, for all ages.

The common sense and medical science ruling is that there should be no age restrictions.

It's the morals groups that want it restricted.

@4: public policy is never solely a function of what's scientifically possible. 10 year olds are physically capable of flying planes, but we limit private pilots licenses to 12 or older as a public policy choice.

If it's imposing my morals to say that 5 year olds shouldn't have sex, then I guess I'm a moralist.

I started to read Assata Shakur's autobiography a few years ago and got halfway through it before I was distracted and it was due at the library. Need to go get it again and finish it.

Good Lord, it almost seems like the FDA is seeking the sexualize our young girls for the convenience of pedophiles.

@15: I'm saying the parent of the 12 year old needs to be part of the conversation.

@12

You're more than 12; do you want to talk to your parents about your sex life and your sexual health? Whether you do or don't or don't know if you've got genital warts or HPV or whatever else, and how you might or might not have contracted anything? And you're more mature and confident than a twelver.

Crap. @17 should have been @16.

@16 my parents would have beaten me, taken me out of school, and forced me to have the baby. You are advocating a policy that assumes everyone has awesome parents. We can't know that everyone has awesome parents. Even the neighbors might not know. But the daughter does. That is why the decision to involve her parents should be hers alone.

@16 Getting pregnant, or fear thereof, shouldn't be a government-mandated forcing function for a 12/13 year old to have to talk about sex with their possibly crazed moralistic parents. That kind of thing is currently none of anybody else's business. Just because your parents are moralistically or religiously crazy enough to prevent you from making an actually smart choice (as opposed to your concern about the initial decision) doesn't mean we need to punish kids or ruin their future.

Science is winning, religion is losing. Let's step bravely into the future. Or at least the current century, really.

As long as a girl is past puberty, what is the problem? They are always telling us about morality when it's sex they speak of, but never when it's money or guns. Some morality, indeed.

Dude, Obama is NOT appealing the 15 and over plan B over the counter rule change. He supports it being available for girls 15 and over.

What he did, was overrule the FDA in 2011 to make it available to girls of all ages.

Hey SLOG! I just started a White House petition to get Assata Shakur off the FBI's most wanted list and de-classsified as a terrorist;

http://wh.gov/zwrc

Now, I know that it's rather absurd to think that an e-petition would do a damn bit of good, but it's MORE absurd that she is on that stupid list. We have until June 4th to get 100,000 signatures! What's more, it won't go public unless THAT link up there gets 150 signatures... Get to it SLOGGERS!

@17, @19, @20, and @21: are you really arguing that once someone hits puberty, they can do whatever they want without parental involvement because some parents are assholes? My daughter hit puberty at nine.

Good luck with that policy. In the real world, parents gradually give kids more responsibility and freedom as they demonstrate good judgement and as they approach independence.

And for the record- my 15 year old IS old enough and wise enough to make her own reproductive decisions. (Though I hope that she would talk to me about a difficult situation if it came up.) But she wasn't mature enough at 9 or 12 to be either having sex or making decisions that could have arrisen from that.

I'm a little surprised there is so little mention of Mike Daisey's current shows on SLOG.

The "American Utopias" show was powerful. He weaves in some comedy and absurdist imagery about Disney, Burning Man, and Zucotti Park into a meditation on the nature of public/private spaces, the nature of corporations in modern America, the idea of assembly, and the ideas of genuine versus manufactured experiences.

The themes of the show are very relevant to what's going on now, including what happened on Capitol Hill last week. It seems bizarre to me that the entire SLOG staff apparently missed this show.

Looking forward to Fucking, Fucking, Fucking Ayn Rand next week.

are you really arguing that once someone hits puberty, they can do whatever they want without parental involvement because some parents are assholes?

No, they're arguing that once someone hits puberty, whether or not they have a baby is no one's decision but their own.

It has less than nothing to do with whether or not someone who has just hit puberty should be having sex. It has to do with whether or not we're going to tell pregnant people whether or not they going to have a baby.

@#26
The problem is that Daisey so thoroughly sh!t the bed with his lies, exaggerations, and confabulations in his Apple show. It makes him a very difficult subject. I'm sure he's saying important things and saying them well in his new show. The problem is, he was saying important things and saying them well in his Apple show too - but upon deeper inspection it turned out he'd taken a lot of shortcuts for the sake of narrative simplicity and rhetorical effect, and so some of those important things he was saying so well weren't actually true. Anyone talking about his new show is going to have to wade deeply into the weeds of these and similar issues, and frankly it sounds like quite a chore.

@25,

No, we're arguing that they're old enough to make the decision not to get pregnant.

This isn't all about YOU, by the way. Good job on building a strong relationship with your daughter, but she has a right (had it since she hit puberty at 9) to make her own decisions regarding her reproductive health, in particular to avoid the repercussions of sexual contact, whether consensual or not, as do all girls at reproductive age. Or would you have preferred that your daughter give birth at 9 years old?

I mean, you do realize what Plan B is and what it's designed to do, right? It's for girls/women who have already had sex (or been raped) who want to avoid pregnancy. It's a little too late to whinge about girls having sex too early when the discussion is whether they should be pregnant and give birth. I say, no, they shouldn't. That the consequences of pregnancy and birth for a girl under the age of 15 is even worse than the consequences of having sex too soon.

In short, fuck your moralizing, and fuck you.

@25 You're missing the point-- many shockingly young underage pregnancies are not the result of young girls choosing to have sex. They're the product of rape and incest.

And in which case the parents are already "involved", you jackass.

@29: kesh, you and I have known each other on SLOG for many years. We've agreed at times, and disagreed at times. But If you think that my posting an opinion regarding the role of parents in their very young children's health care merits a "fuck you", then you are a deeply sad and angry character, and I feel sorry for you.

@30: so the fact that parental rape exists means that patents have no right to know what decisions their very young children are making? Why don't we just put all the kids in communal creches where the state can do all the "parenting"?

Sven, this is what Slog has turned into these days. It's a Fuck-You Fest. I miss the old Slog very much, but I'm afraid it's gone forever.

Thanks, 5280. Some of the old timers are around. Fnarf doesn't post nearly enough (though I know you and he mix it up quite a bit) and I deeply miss Elenchos' sense of humor and appreciation for absurdity (he's busy raising young 'uns...) Some times I think there isn't room for middle aged pragmatic suburban breeders here on the SLOG, but then a new day rises and hope springs eternal...

Eh, Fnarf has turned into a parody of himself. "Fuck you" seems to be his reaction to everybody and anything these days. OK, he was never "Mr. Mellow," but he's turned into a much grumpier old man than I have. Sigh.

Just for shits and giggles, here's a funny anecdote you'll appreciate. Was talking with a friend earlier about the new NRA president, and she said "The South shall rise again!"

I said "Again? That implies that there was a first time. When exactly was that? I seem to have missed it."

@28 If you think of the Steve Jobs monologue as a theater performance then complaints about rhetorical effect and narrative simplicity start to seem rather silly.

The skill of a performer like Mike Daisey is entirely in how he combines disparate narratives into rhetorical arguments. Criticizing his performance for not being fact checked strikes me as being about as silly as trying to fact check a Laurie Anderson show. Does X really equal X?

@28 And somebody did the work.

http://crosscut.com/2013/05/06/theatre/1…

@38: I would agree that registration has helped a lot. I always just ignored the random/tourist stuff. Perhaps we all need to drink together more...