BlogHer - life - Comments

Ads - for Crystal :)

j.lynn68 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:16:44 -0500

Hi Crystal!

Thanks for joining my blog. :)

The ads are real easy to add. You need to sign up for Google Adsense.

You can make a little or a LOT Of extra cash by placing the ads on your site. You get paid per click!

Here is the link: https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/

Once you do that, just follow the instructions. In your blog you can add the HTML Gadget to insert the HTML code into your blog. Hope this helps!

Jamie

Question

cmason0708 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:35:44 -0500

How did you get the Sam's ad on there? Advertisers and such? Just curious!

Crystal

MarvelousMason's

Great Post

theprisonerswife — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:28:43 -0500

i remember watching a documentary about Riker's Island (in NY) sometime back and they mentioned they had a unit where babies could stay with their mothers for a year. i remember feeling some kind of way about that. you know, the uneasyness of a child being behind bars, but also happy that the mother/child had time to bond. it's a tough call, but ultimately, the connection a mother/child can build, i think, outweighs the negatives, espcially if that connection will propell the mother to change her life.

as Babz mentioned, these women aren't in jail for being bad mothers. the problems they face at home--the lack of social services, and an unequal educational system--all lead many of our women/men/children to make bad choices, which throws them into the system.

America isn't moving toward spending more on prisons than education, they ARE doing it. my home state, California, is cutting MILLIONS from the education & social services budget, while continuing to spend on prisons & prison construction. what does that tell you? where are our values? continuing to disregard preventative spending & measures will just lead more people intro prisons and jails, leaving more kids behind to fend for themselves. it's a vicious cycle that needs to e broken.

~~
Gimme Love: http://theprisonerswife.blogspot.com

wow, thanks! :)

LiaMack — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:25:01 -0500

I'm new to BlogHer and I wasn't sure I 'posted' correctly...glad to see it went through! I'll have to check out that book you mentioned. Thanks!

www.LiaMack.com

www.TheGreenMamas.com

Wealth is the harvest of your love

Wilma Ham — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:03:11 -0500

Funny how being civilized works against us. We civilized indigenous people, so instead of getting their for us incomprehensible wisdom and faith, we converted them to our civilized way of posession and seperation.

However don't you think we are coming around, even the ones that don't want to are now forced to come around from having to being.

Lia, have you ever read Love Without End by Glenda Green. That is such a lovely book that explains a lot how our posessions are dominating us and shackle us.

Instead we could make our posessions work for us AND for others by realizing we are all one and as you say the big web of the Universe is our bank, our favor bank.
It is not the revenue of our money and assets that we are harvesting during our lives, but our love and the results of actions coming from the heart and our love.

As you can see, I loved your post.

Wilma Ham

www.wilmasblog.com

hello suzanne

in your boat — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:30:44 -0500

I wonder how we got to the put in life that our homes are being taken away from us. We recieved our foreclosure papers Friday. Our dream, a simple dream, to provide a safe, happy HOME for our 4 children. A place in the world that they may someday want to call their own. A FAMILY FARM. I ask where does america think thieir food comes from (the local grocery store) wrong.It comes from my husbands back breaking work, the times with his own broken bones that he still continued to work, to make a HOME. To feed america. What hope is there if one by one the farms disappear? I don't write this for pity, I want everyone to know that we did not get here alone, our bank unwilling to help, for the only reason greed helped us get here today. You see that are farm is much more valueable to them $$$$$$, then us ( you tell that to the little kids am about to lay down to sleep, on a pillow that will be in a new place within the next few weeks) If we find a place to lay it.

My sympathy

mashadutoit — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:43:31 -0500

And yes - the story of your grief never seems to come to an end.

My mother died about four years ago and I still have so many painful thoughts, and moments when I feel as though I'm not healing. Does one heal?

My mother was also very sick, and I think no one who has not experienced it, can know how complicated and mixed up things can be. Its tough to look after a sick person. It goes on and on and on. I feel a lot of guilt because I did not measure up to the person I thought I could be in that situation. I learnt a lot about myself, and a lot of it was not good. Its difficult to get past the guilt.

You learn about your siblings, too. I also experienced a similar drama with people fighting when you would have thought they would pull together and be supportive.

One big lesson I learnt was that you cannot control how things happen. And you should not feel guilty because of that. You just have to accept what actually happened and be kind to yourself and those around you. You cannot afford to take on responsibility for what happened. In the end, you were with her, and gave her your love and that is the most important thing.

When I'm feeling at my worst, and beating myself up - I always try to think what my mother would have told me. Would she have blamed me, or criticized me for the way things went? No way! She would just give me love. So why punish myself, when she would forgive me?

It sounds perfect

mkdsmall — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:44:53 -0500

This type of wedding and reception brunch sounds grand! I love the idea. I love dmy wedding day and it was a big-ish wedding - 125 people - but if I could do it all over again I would totally elope and save the money.

I am a cancer survivor and I know you can kick this tumor too! Good luck with your appt next week.

I don't think it's an

ebyrdstarr — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:07:56 -0500

I don't think it's an accident that this court made this opinion "cert proof". For those of us who ultimately want to see same-sex marriage bans be declared unconstitutional, it's actually to our benefit to have lots of individual states reaching that conclusion long before it gets up to the US Supremes.

I wholeheartedly agree that DOMA is a full faith problem and that gay marriage bans violate the equal protection clause, but SCOTUS will not want to touch the issue until lots more state courts have addressed it.

Preaching to the Choir

Many thanks. I expected

Erin Solaro — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:25:58 -0500

Many thanks. I expected your response would be along these lines, which are very clear, unlike so much legal writing. And I suspect the court deliberately chose to make this opinion "cert proof" (opponents unable to request writ of certiorari?) because the DEfense of Marriage ACt clearly violates the Full Faith and Credit and Equal Protection clauses of the US Constitution, as do amendments to state constitutions defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Erin Solaro

The federal courts would get

ebyrdstarr — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:50:05 -0500

The federal courts would get to review a decision like this if it rested on federal law, usually the US Constitution. State courts can decide cases on federal law, but if they do, federal courts have the final say. When state courts make decisions based on state law, though, federal courts have no say (unless that ruling violates federal law, like the US Constitution).

This decision is based on the Iowa Constitution. Most state constitutions include a bill of rights that mirrors the federal bill of rights. A lot of state courts say that they interpret the state provisions directly in line with the federal constitution. In that case, the federal courts would be able to have a say. But this court didn't do that. They didn't invokve the federal constitution at all. Since they didn't invoke the federal equal protection clause and since they discussed the tradition of Iowa's constitution, the decision is not reviewable by a federal court.

I hope that is a clear enough explanation.

Preaching to the Choir

Can you tell me, as a

Erin Solaro — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:09:59 -0500

Can you tell me, as a non-lawyer, at which point state decisions like this cross into the federal realm, becoming grounds for judgement in the federal system? Perhaps our readers might like to know this too?

Best regards,

Erin Solaro

I am neither a legal scholar

Erin Solaro — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:00:07 -0500

I am neither a legal scholar nor an attorney, but I've read a fair bit of legal writing, mostly to do with US servicewomen, and I was utterly struck by how cold and merciless is the tone of this opinion, the more so that it was unanimous. Also by the careful crafting of the meat of the opinion, which is that either the equal protection clause applies to everyone, including gay people, or it does not, and either separation of church and state applies or not, in such a way that that meat is applicable virtually verbatim to the US Constitution and Supreme Court. I do not believe this opinion can be overturned without overtuning the equal protection clause of the Iowa constitution.

My belief, based on no interviews whatsoever, is that the Iowa SC justices felt that this issue was ripe for decision. I do not know how the case presented to them was crafted, but I suspect that this case may have been crafted to pursue not the privacy doctrine, which I always thought was wrong-headed (and not because I don't think privacy unimportant, but because I think it is not the issue, including in the issues of abortion, and let's be honest about this, birth control) but the equal protection clause. This is a brave decision in which the Supreme Court faced up to the logic of the law and did their duty, probably expecting their decision would become a model.

Don't ask, Don't tell. One word for it, and the combat exclusion of servicewomen, about which I have written extensively in my book Women in the Line of Fire: evil. I say this as a woman with a strong grounding in military history, and a deep appreciation for the infantry.

Are you familiar with the legal writings of Diana H. Mazur?

Erin Solaro

I agree

ebyrdstarr — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:18:45 -0500

From the perspective of an appellate attorney, this opinion is as near to flawless as any I have ever read. It was thorough, leaving no possible complaint against it unaddressed. And I agree with you that the court demonstrates almost a level of fatigue and irritation with the willingness of so many courts and legislators and citizens who have refused to be honest about this issue. I hope it is the turning point on this issue. (And I hope don't ask don't tell is on its way out, too!)

This opinion is cert-proof, meaning no one can appeal it to the US Supreme Court because it rests entirely on state law grounds. I agree with your assessment that the people of Iowa are going to have to amend their state constitution if they don't like this ruling. Here's hoping the people of Iowa will follow the lead of their supreme court.

Preaching to the Choir

Good post! Thank you for

Josanne — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:36:11 -0600

Good post! Thank you for sharing! I'm not sure why, but with age, we seem to lose our courage, or motivation. Is it because we haven't seen results already? Your post reminds me of one I just posted on my Bathrobe Therapy blog- http://bathrobetherapy.blogspot.com/2009/02/someday-will-never-come.html

This year I think I have the necessary mindset--I determined in my mind to reach a goal that I desperately want to reach. I am praying, and working toward this goal.

Josanne