Free Republic

A divorce lawyer for U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson’s wife says the congressman is trying to intimidate him. Attorney Mark Longwell said in a court filing Friday that Grayson had written him an email threatening litigation for comments Longwell made about the divorce proceedings earlier in the week. The email was an attempt to intimidate him and influence his counsel of Grayson’s wife, Lolita, Longwell said in the filing, which asks for a protective order prohibiting Grayson from “engaging in abusive behavior.” …

Texas Republicans are trying, yet again, to undermine women's access to reproductive health care in their state, but this time they are getting some pushback from within their own party. On Tuesday, Republican state Rep. Sarah Davis spoke out against the state legislature's attempts to restructure the breast and cervical cancer screening program in the state to exclude Planned Parenthood, as part of the Republicans' endless war on that organization. “I don’t think it is appropriate to continue to fund the women’s health program so that we can make some type of a political statement as Republicans that we care...

Draft legislation aimed at boosting a flagging birth rate threatens to reduce Iranian women to “baby-making machines” and set their rights back by decades, Amnesty International warned on Wednesday. The London-based human rights group said that a first bill, which has already been approved once by parliament, would restrict access to contraception, forcing women into unsafe backstreet abortions.It said the second draft law, which is to go before parliament next month, would close many jobs to women who choose not to or are unable to have children. …

A record 56,023,000 women, age 16 years and over, were not in the labor force in February. Not only was that a record high, but it’s also the first time the number has exceeded 56 million, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). To be counted as “not in the labor force,” according to the BLS, one must not have a job or have looked for one in the past four weeks. In January 2015, there were 55,756,000 women not in the labor force, which means that 267,000 women dropped out of the labor force since then....

I was so much hoping to get a Q&A lined up with Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano on the subject of Sharia Law in Texas. He’s got a bill that would prohibit family court rulings based on foreign legal codes if that violated our own constitutional protections. These kinds of bills and state constitutional amendments have popped in several states and have been adopted in a bunch. They’re widely accepted as trying to keep the Islamic legal code at bay. A story in the Houston Chronicle mentioned Leach’s bill in its coverage of the anti-Muslim furor at the Capitol last...

In case you missed it, during last night’s opening bit, Golden Globes hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler took the opportunity to make a few funnies about the rape allegations against Bill Cosby: VIDEO ON LINK Lena Dunham, for one, thought it was hilarious: TWITTER IMAGE ON LINK

I am well aware that Wendy Davis lost the Texas governor’s race by a wide margin. It’s salt in a very personal wound. Her campaign meant a lot to me, and to so many other Texas women — thousands of whom stood in line for hours to cast their ballots in support. Greg Abbott won anyway, and he won by a lot. But he didn’t win by a lot across the demographic landscape. I went to the Texas Tribune first for a dissection of the election results, and one piece of information struck me as particularly… wrong. The Tribune cited...

<p>If you haven’t already seen, Sarah Palin has endorsed Bill Walker and Byron Mallott’s Independent-Democrat “Unity” ticket in the Alaska gubernatorial race over Republican incumbent Sean Parnell. She endorses the Independent-Democrat ticket over the man who was her own lieutenant governor.</p> <p>Because of this, as far as Republican politics are concerned, I’m finished with Sarah Palin. I have nothing but respect for her has a wife, mother, and grandmother. I pray that, should I ever be faced with the prospect of having to raise a child with Down Syndrome or any other disability, I would have the wisdom to make the kind of decision she made with Trig and that I could bear that cross so gracefully. I must also add, in light of recent events, that I find the media’s treatment of the family brawl despicable, and unlike Carroll Costello, I find assault no laughing matter.</p>

Sarah Palin is fighting back after her daughter Bristol was mocked following a recent brawl involving her family. “Looking at the reports, it strikes me as bitterly ironic that the same people who tell us there is a ‘war on women’ have no problem laughing at the recording of my daughter crying as she tells police about being assaulted by a man,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday evening.

Video at link.

A record 55,553,000 women 16 years and older did not participate in the labor force in September, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This means that 55,553,000 women in the United States did not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks. The number of women not in the labor force increased from 55,345,000 in August to 55,553,000 in September, an increase of 208,000. …

Hillary Rodham Clinton says voters should turn pay inequity and women’s financial security into a political movement this fall. Clinton says issues like raising the minimum wage, equal pay and providing affordable child care need to be “in the lifeblood” of the upcoming elections. …

A survey of colleges and universities finds a lack of coordination between many campuses and local law enforcement in handling sexual assaults, and that many schools have gone years without investigating such cases. About 40 percent of colleges and universities reported not having conducted a sexual assault investigation in the past five years, including 6 percent of the nation’s largest public institutions. More than 20 percent of large, private schools conducted fewer investigations than the number of incidents reported to the Education Department. …

It appears that the barnyard theme in the U.S. Senate race will continue into the general election.  Braley found himself in hot water on Wednesday after releasing an ad that referred to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst as a “chick.” It actually got worse for Braley on Thursday when Democrat State Senator Steve Sodders said that the common practice of castrating hogs is equated to “mutilating animals” at a Braley press conference.Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey quickly released a statement on the issue. Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey today issued the following statement after Bruce Braley’s campaign...

A woman allegedly gang-raped in Indonesia's Aceh as a punishment for sleeping with a married man may still be caned for the affair under the province's laws, an fficial said Tuesday. A group of eight men allegedly carried out the sex assault last week on the 25-year-old widow at her house in Langsa in East Aceh district, and also beat up the man with whom she is accused of having an affair. After the attack, which also saw the couple doused with sewage, the pair were handed over to officials. Ibrahim Latif, head of Langsa's Islamic Sharia law office, said...

In what was first called "advice to my younger self," then later "advice from some of those women" to the average girl, the DNC released confusing and often contradictory "advice" to young Democrat women. The advice specifically comes from DNC Women's Caucus Members. Some of the advice is common sense, and probably should be followed by both men and women: "be brave," for example. Then some is a bit random. The DNC itself makes specific note that "we all need a good pair of stretchy pants sometimes." Again, the DNC calls this advice for women in the Democratic party. The...

State District Judge Jeanine Howard of Dallas has removed herself from a controversial rape case after questioning the victim's innocence and sentencing the admitted rapist to community service at a rape crisis center. Yes, really. Howard voluntary recused herself following an interview with the Dallas Morning News last week, in which she said the girl, 14 at the time, "wasn't the victim she claimed to be," and the attacker, then 18, "is not your typical sex offender." The judge, a Democrat running unopposed for reelection in the fall, cited medical records that showed the girl's past sexual activity and that...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., scheduled a Friday session that won't have any votes, rejecting Republican and Democratic requests that he allow a vote on a bill that would allow rape kits to be processed more quickly. “Debbie Smith is an extraordinary woman and an effective advocate," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told the Washington Examiner. "She's personally asked me, John Cornyn and others to pass this critically important legislation that bears her name, and it's deeply disappointing that the majority leader is blocking it from reaching the president's desk. I will fight to get this done for...

Ashley Madison, the world’s biggest online hookup site for married people, works only when monogamy is the rule on the surface but, deep inside, couples want to cheat. That’s why it is scoring big in Japan. The nation that prides itself on conformity and proper appearances reached a million users in eight and a half months, the fastest pace among any of the 37 countries where the adultery site operates. The previous record was Brazil at 10 months. The U.S., which has the biggest number of users at 13 million, took a year to achieve the one million mark. Spain...

Michigan mom and leukemia patient Julie Boonstra already had her run-in with the tolerant Left. Boonstra, who filmed an ad about her struggles with Obamacare for Americans for Prosperity, was targeted by Michigan Rep. Gary Peters, who threatened to sue her into silence. That wasn’t the end of the attacks, however. Slade O’Brien, southern regional director for AFP, shared this letter sent anonymously to Boostra. …