This is a post of utter joy.

Vermont, where I lived for many years, has become the first state to legalize gay marriage without the prompting of a court order.  It’s the fourth state overall.

Although it has obviously gotten a lot of national press, I suggest following the coverage in the Rutland Herald, Vermont’s family-owned, independent newspaper, which won the Pulitzer Prize for its editorials in favor of civil unions, which Vermont legalized back in 2000.

I was proudly active in that fight — and this new victory is a great testimony to the compassion and idealism of Vermonters.

It also should be a reminder that this isn’t just about rights – which a court can give and a referendum can take away.

It’s about fostering community. 

It’s about happiness.

All of which brings to mind the poem “When I heard at the close of the day” from Walt Whitman — that great American poet (who happened to be gay).  Even though he was writing back in the middle of the 19th Century, his long, luxurious lines put this moment in just the right context:

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy.

Following Deanna today, we learned of the newly launched Hurricane Gustav Wiki, a centralized site for links to information everywhere else on the web.

There’s also the Gustav Information Center, an online community for coordinating volunteer knowledge-sharing related to Hurricane Gustav.

Our hero Anne Elizabeth Moore is blogging from the Republican National Convention at the Feministing Community and Code Pink. You can also follow her on Twitter.

“So what does it take to have an entire city — a traditionally progressive blue collar one, but drifting toward the conservative of late — and the majority its intellectuals, activists, attorneys, youth, and educators up in arms? Excessive, illegal police brutality, clearly intended to scare the masses away from their first amendment-guaranteed right to freedom of speech,” Anne writes in this first dispatch on the arrests of activisits.

Whether or not one agrees with Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s strategy of introducing thirty-five articles of impeachment (pdf) against President Bush on the floor of the House last night — I don’t know how anyone could deny that Kucinich’s list provides a devastating indictment of the Bush administration’s misuse and abuse of power over the past eight years:

See the second part of his floor speech here.

If what the Bush administration has done to our global credibility, our legal foundations, our promise to safeguard all of our citizens is not impeachable, what is? And, from all accounts (including now from inside Bush’s own inner circle), this recklessness and neglect was and is the extension of a premeditated, systematic agenda. A Reagan-like ignorance or faulty memory can never be an excuse here.

What’s most interesting about these articles of impeachment from a cultural standpoint is how they barely register in the mainstream media — the same media that failed to report on most of the offenses that they now begrudgingly admit are true.

Admitting the gravity of these offenses, of course, would make a mockery of all the vacuous pundit-driven shows that have come to dominate the media landscape. True investigative reporting has been replaced by off-the-top-of-the-head reactions to packaged political events.

This has all been said before, I know. But when Rep. Kucinich exposes the mechanisms of power so blatantly, I feel it’s independent media’s obligation to spread the word.

Neil Young doesn’t think music can change the world. Oh, and Bush is a fine physical specimen.

A Virtual Moral and Spiritual Crisis: Mitt Romney’s latest campaign ad identifies video games as part of “a cesspool of violence and sex and drugs and indolence and perversions” in which “our children now swim.” Matt Peckham of PC World (yes, PC World) correctly tags Romney as just the latest in a long line of politicians that have fomented a “climate of fear” to create a more malleable populus.

By the way, is gambling “indolence” or a “perversion”? In either case, Romney will probably be happy to know that the producers of Second Life have outlawed gambling in their virtual world — which is beginning to feel like a “ghost town,” according to ValleyWag.

On the other hand, evangelizing is making a much smoother move into that same world — at least for the Jesuits. Father Antonio Spadaro tells the Financial Times: “This virtual Second Life is becoming populated with churches, mosques, temples, cathedrals. synagogues, places of prayer of all kinds. And behind an avatar there is a man or a woman, perhaps searching for God and faith, perhaps with very strong spiritual needs.” (Thanks, Lede, for the lead)

And whether it’s Second Life, MySpace or Facebook, Henry Jenkins, building off of Danah Boyd’s research, wants us to consider the “participation gap” among online users.

Drawing Well: Tim Cavanaugh of the Los Angeles Times is surprised to learn that sales of comic books have been increasingly steadily for the last five years. He’s been used to hearing only of the impending death of the genre:

If it’s striking how many movies are based on comic book properties these days, it’s even more striking how few of those properties were minted within the last decade or so … A favorite sport of industry watchers is figuring out just how the form went from being something youthful and dynamic to becoming something fearful, risk-averse and cramped.

He sees some hope in — you guessed it — the web, where sites like PvP and Modern Tales are pushing the envelope and turning a profit.

Comic books, of course, have always been a strange mixture of regressive and forward-looking ideologies. Lyle Masaki at AfterElton is sure to spark a conversation with his list of “ten of the coolest gay superheroes you (probably) haven’t heard of.”

Adhir Kalyan as Raja in “Aliens in America”

Aliens in Hollywood: Lisa de Moreas, whose laugh-out-loud columns make me feel like she’s a stand-up comedian in a television critic’s body, is having her usual fun at the summer press tour in Beverly Hills. But the story she tells in the second part of this column is both funny and revealing.

De Moreas loves the upcoming CW sitcom “Aliens in America” — in which a Pakistani exchange student finds both friendship and prejudice in America. She sees it as the next coming of “Freaks and Geeks” (and from the hilarious trailer, I’m probably going to agree).

Other critics, though, took great offense at its portrayal of a bigoted Middle America. De Moreas’ transcription of the critics’ confrontation with “Aliens in America” producers could be the basis for a sitcom itself.

Black is Intellectual: African American public intellectuals are not a rare breed — the incestuous mainstream media just make it feel that way, according to David A. Love’s insightful analysis in The Black Commentator.

Mark Anthony Neal’s defense of Michael Eric Dyson in PopMatters makes a similar point from another direction. Dyson, according to Neal, has been the source of scorn both for his popularity and for presenting too reductive and celebratory a picture black life: “This widely circulated and decidedly worn ‘poverty pimp’ thesis has been applied to figures as diverse as Reverend Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, and the current cadre of hip-hop generation intellectuals, who supposedly, as the critique goes, wallow in victimization and refuse to hold the black rank-and-file, particularly black youth, accountable for bad behavior.”

But Neal says we should show praise Dyson and others who have “leveraged the appeal of popular culture” — whether that’s television, hip hop, etc — to fight the good fight. Neal brings up BlackProf.com and Professor Kim’s News Notes — which we have been long fans of here at PopPolitics — as examples of how black intellectuals have harnessed the blogosphere.

Finally, Cornel West himself reinforces both Love’s and Neal’s perspective in a recent interview with the Washington Post, where he defends Dyson and his own forays into music and other modes of cultural expression.

I Want My Culture Back: David Browne and Alan Riding, from two very different perspectives, are lamenting the demise of serious culture — art that challenges us, both intellectually and politically.

Browne, in his “Anti-Cheese Manifesto” for the Huffington Post, admits his own obsessions with low-brow pop culture but refuses to celebrate them: “The danger in perpetually embracing the awful is the way it trivializes sincerity and makes earnestness seem mawkish and old-fashioned. It says: Don’t take it all so seriously, since nothing matters … Perhaps it is simpler to chuckle than invest genuine feeling in anything, since that can be too chancy, too uncool, and too emotionally risky.”

And Riding, in a column for the International Herald Tribune, writes from a more nostalgic perspective, recalling the way the arts in the past have directly challenged corrupt and repressive governments. He sees recent spectacles like Live Earth as symptomatic of a culture that values performance over action.

Viva Ruth Frankenburg: Speaking of intellectuals, culture and political engagement, it’s worth reading some of the homages to the recently deceased Ruth Frankenberg, a ground-breaking British-born sociologist. Donna Haraway, an exemplary intellectual in her own right, wrote the obituary for the Guardian, in which she praised her feminism and anti-racism — and her nuanced exploration of the complicated intersection between the two. Dana Goldstein has a more personal response to Frankenburg’s work on her blog, Une flâneuse.

We are featuring a new article in our online magazine: “Tell Me What Democracy Looks Like: John Mellencamp Negotiates an All-American Voice” by David Masciotra.

Using John Mellencamp’s recent interview with Dan Rather and his critically-acclaimed new album “Freedom Road” as inspiration, Masciotra reflects on what it takes to be a liberal voice that can appeal to conservative mainstream America. The lessons for our democracy — and Democrats who plan on winning their first general election in awhile — are plentiful.

Read the full article here.

Hey, Chloe, Upload the Schematics of This Post to My PDA: What is an action hero’s most important skill? Literacy. According to University of Louisville professor Bronwyn T. Williams, “the typically-male action hero is capable of reading and writing effortlessly, even under duress. His superior literacy practices give him an edge over supervisors, bureaucrats, and scientists, whose literacy skills may render them incorrect or narrow-minded, and allow him to outmaneuver the villain.” Unfortunately, literacy is simultaneously and somewhat paradoxically considered feminine and unnecessary at critical moments — and it’s left up to “literacy surrogates,” who can often be women, such as Chloe from 24.

The Little Red Empowering Machine: Speaking of male action heroes, they always seem to get the coolest cars. But Joanne Sasvari notes that for women in popular culture, cars are an escape and a symbol of freedom, even if “a woman’s car almost always means she’s fast — in more ways than one.”

Sex Surprises: Using a “high-tech eye-tracking gizmo,” an Emory University study reveals that men are more likely to look at a women’s face before moving to other body parts and that women (who were less interested in looking at faces) will look at pictures of heterosexual sex longer than men. The authors of the study offer a biological rationale: “Women can tell by looking at naked men whether the guys are in the mood [...] but women’s bodies don’t reveal much. Which is why men home in on their faces.”

“Style Your Hijab!”: So, the new teen magazine Muslim Girl is attempting to appeal to an underserved market but with more tack and taste than, say, Seventeen. While the magazine’s seriousness of purpose is certainly laudable, I wonder if simply toning down the sex and the sassiness makes the advice columns, celebrity profiles, and fashion dos-and-don’ts more palatable.

“I was drunk and bald way before Britney”: The obsession with celebrity and scandal in pop culture and politics has been — I guess it’s not such a surprise here — a big boon to the t-shirt industry.

Off the Mark: Iraqi performance artist Wafaa Bilal got a lot of press earlier this year for confining himself to a room with a paintball gun and allowing people around the world to shoot him by manipulating the gun through his website — all in protest of America’s approach to the war in Iraq: “To the Western media it?s a virtual war going on in Iraq — we?re far removed in the comfort zone. We?re allowed to disengage from the consequences of war. We don?t see mutilated bodies, we don?t see the toll on human beings.? Well, in the end, he got quite a reaction (over 40,000 shots were fired over 42 days), but it’s not clear whether the web visitors understood the political context or were just looking for a little shoot-’em-up fun. You might want to work your way back through Bilal’s unsettling video blog.

Twist and Shout: Last week marked the 21st anniversary of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Well, Erin Dionne was celebrating it — why weren’t you?

A Pundit Primer: In a possible lesson for the 21st Century, YouTube ended up giving James Kotecki a lot more than 15 minutes of fame. It got him a potential career. Kotecki, if you recall, was the Georgetown student who dispensed advice about presidential candidates’ online videos — from his dorm room, on YouTube. Two of those candidates, Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Mike Gravel, actually ended up visiting his dorm room — and most of the other candidates made it clear they were paying attention. Since he’s graduated, Democrat Dennis J. Kucinich and Republican Mike Huckabee have met him at more traditional locales around Washington — and CNN, NPR and others have come calling.

I Forgot About the Kids - D’oh!: A Marymount Manhattan College study reveals that, among the college students surveyed, fictional television fathers — think Homer, Raymond, etc — rated higher than the students’ real fathers. The reason, researchers and cultural critics agreed, was that the work demands on fathers are increasing — and they have much less quality family time.

Studs Terkel turns 95 today — and you should be celebrating.

Terkel has chronicled the past century like no one else, winning a Pulitzer Prize and other awards for his countless books, many of which simply and profoundly give us access to the forgotten voices of America, working men and women caught in the web of history. Since he’s always been based in Chicago, I have access to his frequent public appearances — and there’s nothing like listening to America’s greatest oral historian in person.

You can get a taste of that unique Studsian style in his recent interview with Laura Washington of In These Times (another Chicago-based icon). As with any conversation with Terkel, it jumps around. But where it lands is always a wonder.

Take, for example, his response to the following question: “You?re an old radio guy: Don Imus?”:

Ann Coulter, Bill O?Reilly. Don Imus is just one of them. He happens to be stupid. They all are! That’s one of the things I have in the book — the lack of yesterday, of memory. The big thing that bothers me is the lack of history. Gore Vidal used the phrase, “United States of Amnesia.” I call it the United States of Alzheimer’s. We forget what happened yesterday.

Take this story. You know I walk to the bus. Bus number 146. They know me in the neighborhood. They know I’m a writer. They know me as the old guy who’s garrulous. I talk to myself. [Laughs.]

So one day there’s this one couple, they ignore me completely. So my ego is hurt. And I say, “The bus is late.” And I say, to make conversation, “Labor Day?s coming up.” And the man just turns and looks at me — Brooks Brothers, under his arm, the latest Wall Street Journal. And she?s a beauty. Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale?s. She?s got Vanity Fair in her hand. And he turns, looks at me, and says, “We despise unions.” And then he turns away.

And I said, “You what?” And the bus hasn?t come yet. “Do you know that in 1886, ?87, four guys got hanged? How many hours a day do you work?”

He says, “Eight,” reflexively. I said, “How come you don?t work 18 hours a day? Four guys got hanged for you. Did you know that?”

They think I’m crazy. They’re scared. (Laughs.)

Now I’ve got him pinned against the mailbox. He can?t get away. “So how many weeks do you work?” No bus yet.

So finally they get onto the bus, and she looks out the window, and he says, “Is that guy nuts?” And that was the last I saw of them. This is Uptown — the haves and have-nots. I?ll bet they live in a condominium. Maybe the 15th floor.

The detail about keeping the guy pinned against the mailbox is what makes the story. Amazingly, the politics — which are always out in the open in Terkel’s storytelling — never overwhelm the details of the people and the moment. The story above is about the uncomfortable juxtaposition of cultures in a diverse, gentrifying neighborhood as much as it is about our collective lack of memory or the accomplishments of the labor movement.

His style has inspired, among others, playwright and actress Anna Deavere-Smith — who frequently returns the favor by doing a dead-on impersonation of Terkel.

Bonus: Chicago Public Radio is celebrating Studs’ birthday in their own way by going into the vault and bringing out a “choice moment” between Terkel and his good friend and fellow storyteller, Garrison Keillor, which was recorded in 2001.

Disagreeing with Russell Simmons’ comment that “comparing Don Imus’ language with hip hop artists’ artistic expression is misguided and inaccurate,” Maya Angelou on the CBS Evening News just said:

It’s all the same. All vulgarity is vulgarity. If you mean to demean a person, to make her or him less than whole — anyone could say it, you could say it from a robot — it means that this person is not worthy of my concern. But at last we’re going to have a dialogue, I’m telling you. Nelly, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg — all of those men, who are very intelligent — and I include Dave Chappelle — for the first time we are going to sit down and see how have we come so late and lonely to this place. I would ask the hip hoppers, if you wanted to say something and see how powerful you are, use Ms. Laura Bush and call her one of those “b-” words — and see how long you will live. There wouldn’t be enough rope to hang your butts. No. But black women, because we are last on the totem pole, everyone has a chance to take a chance on us. Well, not now.

Part of me wants to praise Angelou for asserting, as so few commentators have this past week, that race and gender cannot be separated in our discussion of Imus or hip hop lyrics — and that the whole controversy is really about cultural power, not about simply giving offense or being racially insensitive.

But part of me want to take issue with Angelou’s blanket characterization of “hip hoppers” — of her (and the mainstream media’s) lack of recognition of the diversity of hip hop. In the last week, I keep waiting to hear the voice of someone like Chuck D or Mos Def, public hip hop figures who defy the stereotypes and are not afraid to get political, to reclaim the genre and say that it’s not about hip hop — it’s about the popularizing of a very specific misogynistic, self-indulgent strain of hip hop. And that popularizing is something for which many people — not simply the artists themselves — should feel guilty. It’s about our collective silence about demeaning representations of women throughout our culture — not just in music but in everything from advertising to television.

I also want to point to someone like Boots Riley of The Coup who isn’t afraid of describing the Bushes in an unsavory light (check out the opening line of “Head (Of State)“). He and other hip hop artists are continually taking political risks in their music — and know the consequences.

In the end, though, I think Angelou leaves room in her comments for a truer hip hop. In fact, I believe, in her own way, she is calling for it.

“Help Save the Youth of America,” an early Billy Bragg song, begins with a young Englishman’s lament about his counterparts overseas:

Help save the youth of America
Help save them from themselves
Help save the sun-tanned surfer boys
And the Californian girls

A nation with their freezers full
Are dancing in their seats
While outside another nation
Is sleeping in the streets

This just goes to show that progressives — just as much as conservatives — have participated in the stereotyping of American youth. Whether its dangerous apathy or dangerous libidos, their self-serving nature always signals some type of apocalypse.

Well, the signs have been exaggerated, I guess — at least for college students. The statistics that come out of a new national study from Tufts University speak for themselves:

Half of the college students and 40 percent of the non-college students could name their respective members of Congress. Nearly two-thirds of college students and more than half of the non-college students could name at least one of their two U.S. senators. In contrast, only about 15 percent of the young people knew the name of the most recent winner of “American Idol” and about 10 percent knew the winner of “Dancing with the Stars.”

Approximately 79 percent of college students and more than 73 percent of non-college students said they had voted in the November 2006 elections, but only 10 to 12 percent of respondents reported ever voting in “American Idol” and significantly fewer had voted in “Dancing with the Stars.”

And the very tools that are supposed to be the bane of this present generation of youth have become the avenues for activism:

Facebook was a popular channel for advocacy activity. On average, both college and noncollege students belonged to almost four Facebook advocacy groups …. Facebook tends to be used more for advocacy of Democratic political candidates and liberal or Democratic causes than for Republican candidates or conservative or Republican causes. While about one in four young people read blogs on political issues, many fewer said they read candidates’ blogs.

More than 61 percent of college students had participated in online political discussions or visited a politically oriented website and more than 48 percent of non-college students had done so.

At least one old guy never gave up hope. Norman Lear, ground-breaking writer and producer of “Archie Bunker” and other revolutionary TV sitcoms, actually sees the promise, rather than the doom, in the proliferation of social networking on the web. He has partnered with seemingly every big online entity out there in his Declare Yourself project that intends to register every 18 year-old to vote by the 2008 election.

Who are we to resist America Ferrara of “Ugly Betty” fame? She and Hayden Panettiere of “Heroes” are the project’s spokespeople.

It is always sad to learn about great people through their obituaries. Such was the case on Friday when Michele Kort, Ms. senior editor, e-mailed about the death of Kayo Hatta, an award-winning filmmaker whose films about Asian culture have been praised for their authenticity and insight.

Hatta was 47. She drowned at the home of a friend. The Los Angeles Times published a lengthy obituary that discusses Hatta’s films, including Picture Bride, which she co-wrote and directed. It won the Audience Award for best drama at Sundance in 1995. A new film, Fishbowl, will be broadcast on PBS next year. Based on a novel by Lois-Ann Yamanaka, it is described as “a dramatic short film full of angst and comic twists about the coming of age of a rebellious granddaughter of immigrant sugarcane workers.” Elaine Woo writes:

In “Picture Bride,” she resisted studios’ suggestions that she give a white male with box-office draw a romantic lead. Not only did she cast Asian actors in the leading roles, but Asian American women filled the top production posts, unprecedented for an American dramatic feature film.

“Her spirit was pretty infectious,” Tamlyn Tomita, one of the stars of “The Joy Luck Club” as well as “Picture Bride,” told The Times this week. “She wanted to make sure this film had as much credibility as it could.” [...]

Her first movie was a short completed in 1988 called “Otemba” (”Tomboy”), about the conflicts felt by an 8-year-old girl whose father is obsessed with having a son. It was chosen by the Pan-Asian Filmmakers Foundation as one of three “Defining Moments in Asian American Cinema.”

“Picture Bride” began as Hatta’s thesis project at UCLA. During the early 1900s, nearly 20,000 Japanese, Korean and Okinawan women crossed the Pacific to Hawaii to marry Japanese plantation workers after an exchange of photographs.

After their long journeys, many of the brides were crushed to learn that their husbands were not the rich and handsome men that their pictures suggested and that a life of backbreaking labor awaited them.

Hatta and her sister, Mari, interviewed 20 former picture brides who were in their 80s and 90s and wrote a script that aimed for a historically accurate depiction of the marriage system and its impact on Hawaiian culture. [...]

“Too often Asian women are portrayed as geishas or some other exotic types,” Hatta told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1995. “I wanted to get away from that … to show them as real human beings who had fears and dreams, sexual desires.”

Michele also came across this obituary in The New York Times: “Mary T. Washington, a bookkeeper who in the 1920’s began methodically surmounting racial barriers in business to become the first African-American woman to be a certified public accountant and the head of one of the largest black-owned accounting firms in the nation, died on July 2 at a nursing home in Chicago. She was 99.”

The obituary, written by Lily Koppel, includes this great bit about Washington’s husband:

Her husband, Donald Melvin Wylie, a mechanic for Yellow Cab, would cook late-night dinners for the group of ambitious young black men who worked for her during the tax season.

Her first business partner, Hiram Pittman, once described it as an “Underground Railroad” for aspiring black C.P.A.’s, who came from across the country to work there because they needed the experience to earn the accounting credential.

I also learned this week about Catherine Woolley, who wrote 87 children’s books, often under the name of Jane Thayer. She died at the age of 100 at her home in Truro on Cape Cod. From the Associated Press:

Her first book, I Like Trains, was published in 1944, and her last, Writing for Children, in 1989.

Ms. Woolley, who did not marry or have children, often drew on her own experience and world travels in her writings. She wrote on a Remington typewriter and never used a computer.

“After her 100th birthday last summer, her goal was to live long enough to vote in the 2004 election, and she did,” [Betsy] Drinkwater said of her aunt, a lifelong Democrat.

And, from the Salt Lake Tribune, news of the death of Gayle Peters Melich, who died from cancer at age 67, at her home in Niceville, Fla. Melich was a former president of the National Women’s Education Fund and executive director of the National Women’s Political Caucus. Matt Burckhalter writes:

Close friend Irene Natividad, who also is a former president of the National Women’s Political Caucus, said the training materials Melich developed have become “the bible” for women candidates.

While Natividad was the chair of the National Commission of Working Women, Melich served as her consultant and advisor. During her time as an activist, Melich is said to have secretly written many important speeches for feminist leaders.

“She was a quiet activist. You wouldn’t have read about her in the newspapers every day, but she was important,” Natividad said. “It’s an amazing thing in this time when all anyone wants is credit, credit, credit. Not Gayle.”

Melich’s driving passions, Natividad said, were to get women into public office and to produce bipartisanship among women in both parties.

She spent her life fighting for women’s rights and promoting female candidates for political office, developing campaign-training programs that women of both political parties used in the 1980s.

During her career in Washington, D.C., Melich helped campaign for the first President Bush and helped push Sandra Day O’Connor through President Reagan’s selection process.

Natividad recalled one thing she and Melich never learned how to do: “We neither one knew how to drive, quite a thing for independent feminist.”

Those looking for more clues into Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts’ views on Roe v. Wade may want to consider more closely Jane Sullivan Robert’s involvement with Feminists for Life.

Sherry F. Colb, a professor at Rutgers Law School and columnist for FindLaw, has penned a lengthy piece, “John Roberts’s Pro-Life Spouse: The Relevance of Jane Roberts’s Politics.”

It begins by discussing whether feminism can ever be consistent with opposition to abortion — “If the workplace and our social safety networks were more supportive of women with children, fewer — maybe many fewer — women would even want an abortion,” writes Colb. “And for those who would not, abortion ‘choice’ may truly sound like a cruel joke: a decision that they feel forced to make because the other options are even worse.”

Colb then describes in detail FFL’s advertising campaign aimed at college students that focuses on “abortion guilt.”

“Interestingly, few of the FFL posters address feasible alternatives for women at risk for an undesired abortion,” writes Colb. “And crucially, not one poster refers to the dearth of safe, effective, and affordable contraception, a glaring omission if women are to be allowed to have sex even when they do not want to have a child.”

Colb also deconstructs the flaws in FFL’s anti-abortion rhetoric and notes that FFL omits any mention of criminalization of abortion, though it seems clear that this is what the group advocates.

And indeed, the President of FFL, Serrin Foster, acknowledged in an interview with the New York Times that “[r]eversing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion, is a goal.”

If so, then why would the group be coy or evasive about saying explicitly in its college outreach materials or mission statement that it supports criminal laws banning all abortion?

Given the attention to detail evident on the website, it is hard to imagine that such a statement was left out by accident. The omission instead seems calculated to mislead — to give the impression that FFL is a moderate and mainstream group on the issue of abortion, though the organization in fact supports laws that would force rape victims to undergo nine months of pregnancy and the pain of labor, no matter what their wishes might be.

In calling itself a “feminist” group, FFL is therefore misleading as well, suggesting as the name does that the group’s priority is improving the lives of women, rather than curtailing an option, whatever the circumstances.

So what does this have to do with Roberts, the nominee? The connections aren’t as laid out as neatly as the analysis of FFL, but based on everything else we know about Roberts, it’s easy to come to the same conclusion as Colb:

Of course, in general, one spouse may do what she pleases, without necessarily reflecting on the views of the other spouse. There are even rare cases of couples (such as Mary Matalin and James Carville) holding high-profile jobs at political cross-purposes.

Jane Sullivan Roberts’s leadership role in an anti-abortion group, however, sheds light on John Roberts’s participation in writing briefs and arguing orally for the Supreme Court that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

A picture emerges of a family that does not consider abortion — either the procedure itself (however early in pregnancy or even when conception results from rape or incest) or the political issue — a private, personal matter. It is instead a political matter on which advocacy at the highest levels is appropriate.

Meanwhile, on the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times Thusday, Crispin Sartwell, a political science professor at Dickinson College, invited readers to listen in on a family dispute:

Over breakfast, I mentioned that Ms. Roberts has been active in a group called Feminists for Life.

“I don’t think you can be a feminist and try to force women to have babies they don’t want,” my wife, Marion Winik, said.

That claim succinctly expresses why many believe that abortion rights are central to feminism: Freedom entails control over one’s own body. The idea that the state ought to control female reproduction is therefore an odious violation of the autonomy feminism seeks to uphold.

That’s what Marion thinks. But for me, the matter is considerably more complicated.

I hope Marion at least enjoys her coffee in the morning.

Also from the L.A. Times, read Margaret Carlson’s op-ed on good vs. bad Catholics. Though I pretty much avoid the Church entirely these days, I just might join Carlson in prayer.

Plus: Seven female Democratic senators have launched a new website, Ask John Roberts, that seeks public input for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Read more in the Feminist Wire.

Apologies for technical difficulties yesterday. Plenty to catch up with, but first: Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who on Monday vetoed a bill expanding access to emergency contraception, comes out today on the op-ed page of the Boston Globe — not only as a “prolife” presidential contender seeking right-wing approval, but as nitwit who doesn’t understand medical science.

Yesterday I vetoed a bill that the Legislature forwarded to my desk. Though described by its sponsors as a measure relating to contraception, there is more to it than that. The bill does not involve only the prevention of conception: The drug it authorizes would also terminate life after conception.

Signing such a measure into law would violate the promise I made to the citizens of Massachusetts when I ran for governor. I pledged that I would not change our abortion laws either to restrict abortion or to facilitate it. What’s more, this particular bill does not require parental consent even for young teenagers. It disregards not only the seriousness of abortion but the importance of parental involvement and so would weaken a protection I am committed to uphold.

I have spoken with medical professionals to determine whether the drug contemplated under the bill would simply prevent conception or whether it would also terminate a living embryo after conception. Once it became clear that the latter was the case, my decision was straightforward.

Oy. So now Romney’s getting medical advice from the likes of Dr. W. David Hager.

This part is just as irksome:

You can’t be a prolife governor in a prochoice state without understanding that there are heartfelt and thoughtful arguments on both sides of the question. Many women considering abortions face terrible pressures, hurts, and fears; we should come to their aid with all the resourcefulness and empathy we can offer. At the same time, the starting point should be the innocence and vulnerability of the child waiting to be born.

Too bad Romney doesn’t want to apply “all that resourcefulness” toward preventing pregnancy in the first place.

For the record, the most recent research published by the Population Council’s International Committee for Contraception Research and other scientists “shows that the most popular method of emergency contraception [Plan B] appears to work by interfering with ovulation, thus preventing fertilization, and not by disrupting events that occur after fertilization.” You can read the report here (pdf), and find more facts here.

The good news is that the Massachusetts Legislature will almost certainly override the veto. Scott S. Greenberger of the Globe writes:

The bill that Romney vetoed would allow trained pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill without a prescription and would require hospitals to offer it to rape victims. It almost certainly will become law despite Romney’s rejection; both the House and Senate approved it by veto-proof margins, and legislative leaders said they plan to override his veto.

The governor interrupted a New Hampshire vacation to return to Boston to veto the bill, and he publicized his action with one-on-one interviews with television reporters, a sit-down session with newspaper reporters in his State House office, and the Globe op-ed article. Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, who has said she supports expanded access to emergency contraception, was not available for interviews yesterday.

Well, of course not. The governor’s office believes it’s best to let a man with lofty ambitions speak for women.

New York Gov. George Pataki, as mentioned earlier, is in a pickle over whether to sign a bill expanding access to emergency contraception in his state. The New York Times last week gave an update on the governor’s “dilemma”:

For weeks, those on both sides of the issue have been saying that what the governor does on this bill will be an indication of whether he will run for the White House.

A simple veto could indicate that he was trying to win support among Republican voters nationwide who are opposed to abortion, they said, and simply signing it could show that Mr. Pataki was thinking of New York voters and of seeking a fourth term as governor.

One possibility for a compromise is that he might veto the bill - since it contains no age limits to keep the pill away from young teenagers - but at the same time call for a revised bill including such age restrictions.

But seeking a compromise could pose its own perils for the governor as he seeks to navigate his political future, weighing two markedly different constituencies.

On the one hand, a compromise could make Mr. Pataki - who supports abortion rights and has just returned from a trip to Iowa to gauge the presidential terrain for 2008 - open to scrutiny by conservative critics already wary of him.

On the other hand, pushing for changes in the legislation could alienate some longtime allies who believe the so-called morning-after pill should be widely available.

In short, Mr. Pataki’s dilemma of what to do about the legislation, which is set to land on his desk by Aug. 6, defines the delicacy of his present balancing act.

The real “dilemma” in this situation is the one a woman confronts when she’s been raped and the hospital doesn’t mention — much less provide — emergency contraception. Or the woman whose local pharmacy refuses to stock it, or provide it without a prescription, and it’s a Saturday and she can’t reach her doctor.

But if Pataki really is all stressed out about what to do, then I propose we make it easy for him — and for all the governors who fancy themselves riding on Air Force I: they should be forced to recuse themselves from any decision that tinkers with women’s reproductive health. Politicians on the Road to the White House should not be trading on the lives of women as they undergo extreme conservative makeovers.

I don’t recall a spouse of a Supreme Court nominee receiving so much press this early on, but a closer look at the life of a feminist who’s anti-choice is hard to pass up.

The front page of the Washington Post Style section has a story that’s all about Jane Sullivan Roberts — from her childhood in an Irish-Italian Bronx neighborhood to entering Holy Cross as part of the first freshman class to allow women, to the advanced degrees she received in education and math, and the law degree from Georgetown, to her work as a litigator and specialist dealing with satellite procurement. She comes across as a rather terrific and inspiring person.

Along the way readers also learn that Roberts is a devout Catholic, and her religion informs her decisions, including, apparently, the decision to adopt rather than start fertility treatments when she marries at the age of 42.

And, of course, joining the board of Feminists for Life.

“In her politics and her faith she has an enviable clarity, and she always has,” Tina Kearns, a fellow partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, said of Roberts. “But she is not a pro-life caricature. She would be more defined by how highly intelligent she is and how interested she is in other views.”

Writer Hanna Rosin cautions that those “scouring the writings of John G. Roberts to assess how he would vote on future Supreme Court cases involving abortion will not find much clarity from his wife’s record. Like him, she seems unequivocally antiabortion in her personal views, but from there she does not follow the usual path.”

Yet isn’t the point of profiling Roberts and her devout religious views and involvement with Feminists for Life asking readers to come to certain conclusions? I’m sure conservatives who may be a little uncertain of Judge Roberts’ commitment to dismantling Roe v. Wade are heartened by his wife’s views on abortion, just as pro-choice are activists are concerned.