Posts tagged texas

qbits:

Posted on March 14, 2012 by John Wright

Dallas police are investigating an anti-gay hate crime in which the two victims were beaten with baseball bats by five attackers in northeast Dallas early Tuesday. Here’s the official press release from DPD:

Dallas Police Seek Assistance in Locating Hate Crime Suspects

On March 13, 2012, at about 2:00 a.m. two citizens were walking near the corner of Audelia Road and Forest Lane. A dark colored 4 door vehicle (possibly a Buick) with tinted windows and 24 inch rims approached the two individuals and suspects from within the vehicle began to shout slurs that were disparaging and derogatory toward sexual orientation.

There were believed to be 5 black male suspects in their 20’s inside the vehicle. Some of the suspects exited the vehicle, and two of them were brandishing baseball bats. The suspects attacked the two victims causing multiple injuries requiring medical treatment. This violent act constituted a hate crime and is being investigated accordingly.

The Dallas Police Department requests that anyone having knowledge of, or having observed, this incident to please contact Detective Chris Anderson at (214) 671-3616.

According to a police report, the suspects called the victims, both black males, “fags and sissy” before exiting the vehicle and assaulting them. One of the victims said he was struck at least four times in the head with a bat and lost consciousness until after the suspects left. The other victim attempted to fight back and got caught in the passenger side of the suspects’ vehicle. The suspects dragged the victim an unknown distance before he could free himself.

The victims then transported themselves to Medical City Hospital, according to reports. Officers who responded to the hospital described the victims’ injuries as cuts to the head and nose, bruising and swelling to the cheek and eye socket, chipped upper teeth, and abrasions to the toe, finger, shoulder and stomach.

Laura Martin, LGBT liaison officer for the Dallas Police Department, said the victims’ injuries aren’t life-threatening. Martin said the victims didn’t know the suspects. She declined to say whether the victims are in fact gay, but noted that hate crimes can be based on actual or perceived sexual orientation.

“Crimes against persons is investigating the offense, and we have very vague suspect information,” Martin told Instant Tea. “I’m not going to discuss the sexual orientation of the victims to respect their privacy, but it is being treated as a hate crime, and the civil rights division of the FBI is going to be following it to see if any help is needed as well. We’re on top of it, basically.”

(via brashblacknonbeliever)

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

While Texas is only state currently forcing people to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, AND VIRGINIA all have forced ultrasounds before an abortion. 

Oklahoma and North Carolina have passed similar laws to the one in Texas but they are not being enforced due to pending court decisions.

Guttmacher’s updated .pdf of what ultrasound laws are passed and in effect in which states.

________________________________________

And today, I want to thank Andrea Grimes for a KYBOOMU shout out at RH Reality Check. You should read her entire piece about the TX reproductive health crisis, but I’ll just highlight this one part:

But just because the CRR has run up against a judicial roadblock in Texas doesn’t mean that Texans are giving up. Especially online, the fight continues with activists taking to social media, wherein the popular and cheeky Keep Your Boehner Out Of My Uterus Tumblr has been posting an ongoing day-by-day reminder that Texas’ ultrasound law isn’t going away, and the #TXreprohealth hashtag continues to gain in popularity.

(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

[via]

[NB: This denial of federal funds will hurt more people than just cis women]

I will be here on Tuesday night —————->

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

6:00pm until 7:30pm

In front of the Texas State Capitol at 11th and Congress

Women’s Health Express Bus is coming to the Texas Capitol with Cecile Richards! 

Texas Governor Rick Perry and his conservative allies have once again chosen politics over Texas women. To Governor Perry, women’s health is just a political game. 

Governor Perry would rather throw health care for an additional 130,000 women overboard than allow Planned Parenthood to provide health care like breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, and STD prevention through public health programs.

Join Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and other special guests in sending a message to Governor Perry— you’ve done enough damage. Don’t take away women’s access to health care!

………………………………………………….

Are you a WHP recipient? Share your story here! http://tinyurl.com/6vbur6j

Want to share your story at the rally? Call Dru at (512) 276-8076 or e-mail drucilla.tigner@ppaustin.org

See you at the bus!

(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)

climateadaptation:

“Texas could be in the midst of a drought the history books have never seen, meaning water planners need to prepare for worse than what they’ve seen, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said Thursday.

The current drought could last until 2020, because the region’s climate is in the middle of a 20- to 40-year dry phase, Nielsen-Gammon said.

Water planners, including state agencies and river authorities, have long since made water plans based on the drought of record, a nearly 10-year dry spell in the 1940s and 1950s.

“Sooner or later there will be a drought that’s worse” (than the drought of record), Nielsen-Gammon said. “The planning needs to be able to cover the bases not just for the worst that we’ve seen but also have a plan going forward in case conditions become worse than that.”

The state’s water development board, which conducts long-term water planning, declined to comment on whether the benchmark should be raised to accommodate worse droughts than the drought of record.”

Source: Statesman

Oh, but keep praying for rain, Rick.  It’s working just about as well as your abstinence program, isn’t it?

(via theowlintheolivetree-deactivate)

abaldwin360:

A ‘War On Birth Control’

These cuts are less about saving money and more about abortion and contraception. Evangelicals and Tea Party supporters are ascendant in Texas and Gov. Perry is their champion. These cuts are evidence of their political power as well.

The goal is to get government money out of the abortion process and if contraceptive services have to suffer a bit of collateral damage in the process, so be it. When The Texas Tribune asked state Rep. Wayne Christian (R-Nacogdoches), a supporter of the family planning cuts, if this was a war on birth control, he said “yes.”

“Well of course this is a war on birth control and abortions and everything, that’s what family planning is supposed to be about,” Christian said.

Family planning clinics are routinely referred to by many Texas Republican legislators as “abortion clinics” even though none of the 71 family planning clinics in the state that receive government funding provide abortions. Texas and federal law prohibits that, but most women’s health clinics will refer women or teens who want an abortion to a provider.

“They’re sitting here, referring women out to receive abortions,” Christian said in an interview with NPR. “Those are the clinics, including Planned Parenthood, we were targeting.”

[FULL STORY]

Yeah, so basically, fuck everyone because we think we have the right to tell you what to do with your body.

These ignorant sexist self-righteous fucksticks make me wanna punch a wall.

Because I would pretend that the wall was all of their faces.

And I would punch it.

I really just can’t.  I can’t.  It’s gotten to the point where I just can’t with these willfully ignorant wastes of human flesh WHO DON’T EVEN HAVE UTERUSES.

motherjones:

Texas’ Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice, Don Clemmer, later testified that his office didn’t have the resources to investigate allegations of sexual abuse at a TYC facility in Ward County because at the time the local agent was busy investigating charges of voter fraud by a 68-year-old Hispanic woman.

Your morning must-read: Why did Rick Perry wait six years to clean up the culture of child rape at Texas youth detention and rehabilitation centers?

I… wow.

Just wow.