“I was born female, I grew up female, everything around me was constantly approving of and reaffirming my gender, even if it was in tiny ways. I got to use the right bathrooms. I got to line up with other girls. On our birthday, I got dolls and teddy bears and toys that said ‘you are a girl.’ Even if I didn’t want them, they affirmed my gender identity. A name couldn’t take that away from me. Gerry didn’t get any of those things. He got the whole world telling him, every day, that his idea of who he was wasn’t right. I got the opposite of emotional distress. I got to know that me having a boy’s name meant my brother didn’t have a girl’s name. He got one thing, and I helped make that possible.”
Dont Shoot PDX activist Marcus Cooper is reporting on Facebook that he and five others were invited to sit down with Senator Bernie Sanders on Sunday, following a gigantic rally at the Moda Center.
According to Cooper's Facebook post, Sanders sat down with the activists—including Teressa Raiford, who was arrested earlier that day following an action to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown's killing in Ferguson—and listened to their concerns about his failure to address institutional racism as a campaign platform.
Correction: Cooper has since clarified that Raiford wasn't able to attend the meeting with Sanders because she was still sitting in Multnomah County jail.
"We asked how much time he had, and he said he had a flight to catch early... So I said OK," Cooper writes. "Then he said, 'What's your solutions'... I said first and foremost we are not here to attack or protest against you nor are we here to say we support you. I am here to speak out and educate you as much as I can with the platform of privilege that I have, and this is what I would like you to do as well."
Amid concerns the same would happen in Portland, Symone Sanders, who introduced the senator in Portland, warned attendees there might be a disruption, and requested that the crowd be ready to chant "we stand together" if it happened.
Don't Shoot PDX activists were present during the rally, as seen in the above photo, and they chanted for most of the event, but the crowd was too loud for them to be heard over the earsplitting cheers. They also remained to the side of the stage and didn't attempt to commandeer the microphone.
Cooper writes that Sanders told the activists on Sunday that he wasn't "going city to city to discuss ... individual topics."
"We reminded him that going from city to city and not discussing what the cities are facing but yet using your platform to discuss about those other issues is equivalent to silencing their screams," he writes. "We address that dialogue needs to happen but only with direct action. People are being massacred and there is no time for just more speeches. Bernie didn't have a response."
Cooper says the group suggested Sanders "reform the police" by placing them on on-call status, similar to a fire department.
"You don't see (fire fighters) driving around profiling for suspected houses to be on fire," Cooper writes. "WE reminded them that talking is one thing, but (the) platform that he has is a privilege and using that privilege with a direct action would bring direct results."
Cooper's post certainly got direct results: As of now, his 10-hour-old post has been shared 39 times, has garnered 88 likes, and has created a long comment thread.
Police arrested several protesters last night in Ferguson, Missouri during demonstrations to mark the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death. Brown was the unarmed black teenager fatally shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9, 2014, in an incident that brought long-standing racial tensions to a head throughout the United States and helped launch the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
The protests in Ferguson and surrounding St. Louis County this week have not been as chaotic or violent as the riots that erupted at this time last year, but isolated scuffles and an exchange of gunfire on Aug. 8—in which an 18 year-old was critically wounded by police—set people on edge and prompted county officials to declare a state of emergency yesterday.
High-profile activists including Cornel West, DeRay McKesson, and Johnetta Elzie were among the dozens arrested in St. Louis during the afternoon. Elzie went on the record before her arrest to assure the public that she is not suicidal—a nod to the controversial death of Sandra Bland.
If I'm arrested today please know I'm not suicidal. I have plenty to live for. I did not resist, I'm just black.
A Russian zoo is home to a unique animal - the liger. It is half-lioness, half-tiger. Mother Zita is pictured licking her one month old liliger cub
I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOU CALL IT LOOK AT HER HAPPY LITTLE FACE IN THE LAST PICTURES SHE’S SO PROUD OF HER LIL CUB AND HER SPOTS AND SHE’S GOTTA BE TOUGH MOMMA WHEN THE BABY’S LOOKING BUT AS SOON AS THEY TURN AROUND, SHE’S LIKE,
“:3 Look at it. I made a thing. I made a rly good thing. :3”
it’s actually more amazing than that
hybrids are sterile, they can’t have babies - but she did
Only males are sterile, but females are actually quite capable of having children. Hurray for Liger mommies!
Amnesty votes to decriminalise sex work and prostitution Irish Times Amnesty International has taken the controversial step of voting for the decriminalisation of sex work and prostitution, as well as for the decriminalisation of the purchase of sex. Up to 500 delegates from across the world passed the resolution on ...
My bladder: Hey Brain, hate to wake you up after just 3 hours of sleep, but go pee. We can go back to sleep immediately.
My brain: Oh, we're up? Here's a list of crippling fears and doubts and a song you can't get out of your head so you can't go back to sleep because I hate you.
Oh, god, I didn't realize I was going to have to listen to Trump explaining why he thinks abortions are A-OK when I said I was kinda glad to see that someone had sicced him on the Koch brothers...
I'm so sorry...
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are now working from the same playbook: attack Jeb! At his first press conference since last week's debate, Donald Trump Tuesday hit Jeb! on everything from Iraq to negotiating with China to immigration, but his comments on women's health were perhaps most damning if for no other reason than the simplicity of them.
"The women's health issues, I'm for that," Trump declared.
That's all Trump had to say after Jeb pondered last week whether the federal government was spending too much money on women's health. Trump's attack just highlights what an unbelievable gaffe Jeb's answer was—all Trump has to do to distinguish himself is simply state that he's "for" women's health. Because Jeb! obviously isn't all that big on it.
Trump went on to compare Jeb's remark to the 47 percent comment that sunk Mitt Romney's campaign in 2012.
"I watched Jeb Bush give the worst answer the other day—I think that is going to be his 47 percent. [...] I think Jeb's answer the other day on women's health issues is a disaster for him. He then went and said he 'misspoke.' How do you misspeak about that?
I will be great on women's health issues."
Right. Trump's gonna be "great" on everything. We already know that. What's important here is that Trump is now trying to bury Jeb! and, frankly, he's doing a pretty good job of it. It will be interesting to watch how the GOP establishment reacts now that Trump has put a bull's-eye on their lackluster candidate.
Well they have this tendency to act like if feminists talk about ANYTHING, it means we think it’s the MOST SERIOUS ISSUE EVER. That’s why I get so many messages like “Why do you think manspreading is the biggest issue facing western women?” when literally all I’ve ever done is reblog a few posts about it. As if we can’t care about multiple issues at once, or acknowledge that women face MANY forms of discrimination at widely varying levels, or understand that all of the issues women face, large and small, are interconnected and the result of a global patriarchy.
The uninsured rate has dropped by one third, or 15.8 million people since 2013, according to new information from the Obama administration.
In the first three months of this year, the National Center for Health Statistics said, 29 million people were uninsured. That was seven million fewer than the average for 2014, after a reduction of 8.8 million from 2013 to 2014. […]
In a report on its findings, the center said that the proportion of the population without insurance had declined by five percentage points, to 9.2 percent, in the first quarter of this year, from 14.4 percent in 2013.
Among people age 18 to 64, the number who were uninsured dropped by about one-third, to 25.5 million, in the first quarter of this year, from 39.6 million in 2013. And among children under 18, the number of uninsured declined to 3.4 million this year, from 4.8 million in 2013.
Repeal that, Republicans.
The biggest gains were for the poor and near poor. Nearly 40 percent of poor people lacked insurance in 2013 and that has dropped to 28 percent. Among those hovering just above the poverty line the rate dropped from 38.5 percent in 2013 to 23.8 percent. Had all the states expanded Medicaid, those numbers would be better. In states with the expansion, "10.6 percent of people age 18 to 64 were uninsured in the first quarter of this year, down from 18.4 percent in 2013." But in states without it, the uninsured rate is more than six points higher, at 16.8 percent now, down from 22.7 percent in 2013.
Speaking of states that didn't expand Medicaid, Texas is number one. Meaning that it's first at being worst. It's the only state in the country that has more than 20 percent of the population uninsured. Before Obamacare was implemented, 27 percent of Texans were uninsured. Now just under 21 percent are. Its neighbor, Arkansas, which also had more than 20 percent uninsured in 2013, now just has nine percent lacking insurance. Arkansas, of course, took the Medicaid expansion dollars.
Completely unbelievable. I mean, there's a COUCH RIGHT THERE. None of my greyhounds would have bothered with a dog bed if there was a couch right there for sitting on, sunbeam or no sunbeam. :-)
Have you ever wondered what White Feminism is? Are you vaguely familiar with the term, but still unclear on what it actually means – and how it affects you?
(Click on image to make larger)
To find out more about not only World Elephant Day but the preservation of both the species and their habitat, please click here. Thank you.
You’ve basically read this anti-trigger warning articlebefore. You probably didn’t even see the far-less-popular follow-up, “I was a liberal adjunct professor. My liberal students didn’t scare me at all.” The stories people share about trigger warnings tend to wildly misunderstand the issue; this latest one literally depicts modern college students as babies.
The Atlantic‘s piece makes some reference to work done by mental health professionals and the idea that perhaps trigger warnings don’t much help people who have PTSD, which is an argument I’ve heard before. However, the piece uses the idea of “exposure therapy” as a justification for why trigger warnings can harm students:
Students with PTSD should of course get treatment, but they should not try to avoid normal life … A discussion of violence is unlikely to be followed by actual violence, so it is a good way to help students change the associations that are causing them discomfort. And they’d better get their habituation done in college, because the world beyond college will be far less willing to accommodate requests for trigger warnings and opt-outs.
This assertion that classroom discussions are a “good way to help students” lacks a citation. Although “exposure therapy” worked for me, personally, that’s probably because a mental health professional was involved.
This article does very little to explore how educators might better serve PTSD sufferers; instead, the piece seems to assert that educators shouldn’t have to change a thing. Also, the title, photo, and overall framing of the piece emphasizes the myth of the oversensitive, trophy-hoarding millennial who just wants to get out of doing their homework. This assumption supposes that young college students are using their “fragile” natures as an excuse to not engage with “words and ideas they don’t like” (e.g. “students seem to be reporting more emotional crises; many seem fragile”).
And as for the words they “don’t like”? Let’s see:
The recent collegiate trend of uncovering allegedly racist, sexist, classist, or otherwise discriminatory microaggressions doesn’t incidentally teach students to focus on small or accidental slights. Its purpose is to get students to focus on them and then relabel the people who have made such remarks as aggressors.
Speaking as a millennial who got trophies for nothing (and I could tell I hadn’t “earned” them, by the way — we all could tell, and so we internalized worthlessness, not “specialness”), worked an unpaid internship for years in addition to being a full-time student and also working a paying part-time job, and had an abusive relationship that resulted in mild PTSD and anxiety, I guess you could say I’m an expert on bad millennial stereotypes. And this article is far from the first one I’ve seen to lean on these tropes. This is just one in a long line of misunderstandings on the part of older college professors who actually just seem angry at the “political correctness” their modern students have begun to demand. They may try to characterize us as literal babies, but they’re the ones who look like babies to me, given the refusal to acknowledge their students’ experiences. They can’t be bothered to make small changes to their own curriculums that might better facilitate conversations among their students about media depictions of violence, rape, assault, war, kidnapping, and so on.
I like the idea of trigger warnings, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not sure they do much to protect people from panic attacks. Unfortunately, almost no articles that discuss trigger warnings seem particularly interested in centering the experiences of people with anxiety and PTSD, and how those people might be better served by institutions and classes that they’re paying thousands and thousands of dollars to attend. Ahem. Anyway.
A trigger warning doesn’t necessarily stop me from engaging with content, but it does help me prepare for what I might endure. In my experience, though, it’s almost impossible for me to predict what will trigger a panic attack in me. That doesn’t mean I think trigger warnings are useless; I understand the purpose they’re meant to serve, even though they don’t always work. I think trigger warnings have arisen in response to the uncontrolled, fire-hose nature of the internet; young people use them as a way to cope with how little control we have over the way content has changed in the age of modern technology.
I don’t have evidence to back up my claims about how these warnings work, unfortunately, but I do have a lot of anecdotal stories from friends about how they have trouble predicting what will “set off” their anxiety, as well. What’s more, the treatment of anxiety and PTSD focuses on allowing people who suffer from these conditions to continue to enjoy and interact with media in spite of triggers. If your therapist tells you to just stop watching TV entirely, uh, get a new therapist because the best ones I’ve had have been the ones who’ve encouraged me to gain the tools to navigate even the hardest aspects of my daily life. The end goal of treatment, in my experience, is to be able to continue interacting with potential triggers without having a panic attack.
I don’t actually think these articles tend to be about PTSD sufferers at all, though. I think they are about silencing discussions of how media tends to depict violence and rape, and refusing to acknowledge how and why modern students are “offended” by many of these depictions. To me, the entire point of a good arts studies course would be to discuss how these representations tend to be framed, and to highlight whether or not those depictions are exploitative, or even sexist, racist, and transphobic. Millennials are not afraid of these conversations. Quite the opposite, in my experience. The reason why trigger warnings and content warnings have become a mainstay in progressive blogging spaces is because young people have finally begun to acknowledge how many of us have dealt with trauma and violence, and have craved places to discuss how our stories get depicted in media.
I’ll end this piece by highlighting an example of a college professor I had who did this right. Long before I knew about feminism or trigger warnings at all, I read the novel McTeague for a college course. In the run-up to the book, our professor told us that it would feature some implied sexual violence. In other words, she told us we might be a bit creeped out. She was right; it’s a pretty gross book. But we were prepared well ahead of time, and we came to class ready to discuss how the book navigated these topics.
If I had gone to my professor with a doctor’s note and explained that I couldn’t read the book, I’m not sure what would have happened. I’d like to think she wouldn’t have been a jerk about it, and that my condition would have been respected as much as any other time that I got sick over the course of my academic career. PTSD and anxiety are real, and they can be treated, and the end goal of treatment is … yup … allowing a student to go back to doing their homework. But, again, I don’t think that’s what this article was ever really about.
I wish that articles about trigger warnings would stop throwing anxiety and PTSD sufferers under the bus as a veiled excuse to mock students’ political correctness. If professors think trigger warnings are for “fragile” babies, then I’d hate to see how they navigate topics like sexism and racism in their classrooms. You’d think they’d want to be sure they were discussing these difficult topics in a way that didn’t alienate their most marginalized students. Even students who don’t suffer from anxiety or PTSD could benefit from a more respectful approach to tough topics, especially given how many students have had to navigate oppressive systems for their entire lives.
The fact that millennials have begun to call out institutions for their backwards ways makes me feel proud. Any attempt to frame these young students as afraid, oversensitive, and irresponsible should be seen for what it is: old institutions unwilling to accommodate the diverse experiences of their students.
Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”.
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
This is wild from start to finish
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.
i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.
the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.
When I was doing wizard of oz they forgot to put the oil can on stage so the tin man could be oiled up so the guy playing the scarecrow went ‘let’s use the magic snow!’ And they started rubbing the tin man with the fake snow.
Also at one point the stuffed dog that was supposed to be toto was left offstage and when they realised someone just launched it at Dorothy so this random dog just flew in in the middle of a scene.
This one time in my Junior year of high school we did Skrek the Musical and theres a Gingy puppet right
Well during the scene where he’s tortured they didn’t check to see if he was attached to the flying wall and when it was lowered it was blank.
Lord Farquaad quickly went “GUARDS! WHERE IS MY COOKIE” and the head guard said “maybe he didn’t get the memo” and they improved about 15 mins looking for him until we found them and the drama teacher forced me into a guard uniform and told me to bring him onstage and say something witty and so I ran on stage and panted really hard trying to think up a line and simply said “Sorry, I ate his legs” and Farquaad kicked me in the shins and I had to get off stage and change for the next scene so I rolled away holding my shin.
I was known as Shin Guard on our t-shirts
Urban legend, but West Side Story, Maria cradles Tony’s head after he’s shot, and then lets go. Tony’s head hits the wood stage with an audible “THUNK” and the audience freezes. And Tony, very dead Tony, goes “OOOWww.”
It's not that I'm surprised, but it's ugly nonetheless.
Newly obtained documents from Jason Leopold of VICE confirm what we already suspected: The Department of Homeland Security is not only fully monitoring the accounts of black activists and leaders, but has taken a cultural stance on who they are.
A lifelong educator and former Head of Human Capital for Minneapolis Public Schools, DeRay McKesson has poured his heart and soul out as a leading voice nationally on the the issues of police brutality and racial injustice. He's also my friend and we've come to know and respect each other a great deal over the past 12 months, most of which he was working full time in education while moonlighting as an advocate for victims across the country.
This stunning gallery on Blavity showcases eight up-and-coming visual artists influenced by Afrofuturism, science fiction that explores the experiences and culture of people of color. They’re amazingly diverse not just in their sci-fi visions, but the media they use to express them. Painting, comics, illustration, mixed-media collage, even masks—there are endless ways to bring the future to life.
I’m basically making my own potato texture mod, with an enb and weather that goes with it to help hide that ugly lod. I like the potato texture style, but I think a lot of fixing up needs to be done for it to be playable. So I’m going to attempt to make things like signs and faces readable but still fit the potato style. For example, certain puzzles need to be seen, so I’m going to edit those.
Democrats learned something in 2012 even if Republicans didn't—attacking Planned Parenthood is bad politics. Now Senate Democrats are targeting the vulnerable Senate Republicans who cast a vote to defund the organization: Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Jonathan Easley reports:
The DSCC this week will launch a five-figure "GOP Shutdown Watch" campaign featuring Twitter and Facebook ads and rapid-response news alerts “highlighting the latest developments in the Republican push to attack women’s health and shutdown the government.”
The DSCC media push is also targeting Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has attracted a primary challenger, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is running for president and senator simultaneously.
“Time and again, Republican Senators have voted to defund Planned Parenthood and other women’s healthcare programs, and now they need to answer if they will shut down the government to score cheap political points at the expense of women across the country,” DSCC National Press Secretary Sadie Weiner said in a statement.
Good for Dems. They ceded this fight to the right for a long time. But it's a loser for the GOP. Planned Parenthood just provides too many critical services to millions of women across the country even if the GOP doesn't know it.
Harry Reid isn't running for re-election and is feeling just a little bit unleashed. A lot unleashed. So he's taken to the opinion page of The New York Times to point out that his successor in Senate leadership, Mitch McConnell, has pretty much sucked so far.
The situation started when Republicans took over the House in 2011, but it has picked up rapidly since they took control of the Senate earlier this year. The conclusion is unavoidable: Republican control of Congress means constant crisis.
In the seven months that Republicans have controlled the Senate, we’ve suffered from the expiration of critical national security tools, come within hours of partially shutting down the Department of Homeland Security and witnessed a complete shutdown of the Export-Import Bank, a previously uncontroversial agency that supports hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Routine business like confirming nominees is ignored.
While Republicans have kept virtually none of their promises about how they would run Congress, one promise they have kept is their vow to use essential appropriations bills to manufacture even more crises. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican Senate leader, laid out this strategy last year, saying that President Obama “needs to be challenged, and the best way to do that is through the funding process.”
Reid's larger point is to highlight the fact that—despite all of McConnell's insistence that there will not be a government shutdown on his watch—we're headed toward a government shutdown. That's happening because of McConnell's instigating his fellow Republicans to use the funding process to "challenge" President Obama. Or repeal Obamacare, or defund women's health, or whatever the extremist cause du jour happens to be.
It doesn't have to be that way, Reid reminds McConnell and whoever else might be reading the NYT opinion page. He doesn't have to lead his conference into this kamikaze government shutdown. He can actually lead, and he can also take Reid up on his offer to negotiate on the budget. House Speaker John Boehner has already learned that if he really wants to get something critical done, he has to do it with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's help. It's the same for McConnell. Reid's message: Give up the extremist, partisan maneuvering (which would be welcomed by embattled Republican incumbents running for re-election in swing states in 2016), give up the vendetta against Obama, and actually govern.
Not that Reid's entire missive to McConnell is meant to be helpful. Because it's also good to remind the Republicans, and the American people, what they've become. That's neatly handled when Reid just drops a mention of "Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner," into the mix.
It's what happens when you shave Poe's Law with Hanlon's razor, according to Clarke's third law.
“Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”
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A quote that won the Internet for me today. Especially considering its addendum: “But when analyzing a situation, never completely discount malice.” (via withasmoothroundstone)
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are now working from the same playbook: attack Jeb! At his first press conference since last week's debate, Donald Trump Tuesday hit Jeb! on everything from Iraq to negotiating with China to immigration, but his comments on women's health were perhaps most damning if for no other reason than the simplicity of them.
The uninsured rate has dropped by one third, or 15.8 million people since 2013, according to new information from the Obama administration.
Wondermark.
It's not that I'm surprised, but it's ugly nonetheless.
Democrats learned something in 2012 even if Republicans didn't—attacking Planned Parenthood is bad politics. Now Senate Democrats are targeting the vulnerable Senate Republicans who cast a vote to defund the organization: Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Jonathan Easley reports:
Harry Reid isn't running for re-election and is feeling just a little bit unleashed. A lot unleashed. So he's taken to the opinion page of The New York Times to point out that his successor in Senate leadership, Mitch McConnell, has pretty much sucked so far.