Election news!!

As everyone in the US knows, election day was yesterday. Most of the votes have been counted.

The good news: the Democrats have gained control of the House. There is a chance they may gain control of the Senate; at the very least, the Republican majority there will now be either very slim, or very very slim. Even if they don't gain the Senate, the Democrats now have the power to block a lot of the excesses that this administration has started, and that the Republicans have developed with 12 years in power. Democrats have also won a large number of governorships.

Proposal 2, a vote to ban affirmative action succeeded in Michigan, my temporarily-adopted state. It was as bad as the last Proposal 2, which banned same-sex marriage and civil unions, and which may be used against domestic partnerships (Michael Cox, our idiot AG, filed suit against some DP programs). In California, minority enrollment has declined across the board. Scholarships that use state money to target women and minorities have been shut down. Suits have been filed against a women's shelter because they would not admit a male victim of violence. You can't usually trust the courts to do the right thing; you can entrust them to interpret the law, and who knows how that will turn out. Anytime someone writes a law, there can be unintended consequences. Ask opponents of the last Proposal 2 if you don't believe me (http://www.coalitionforafairmichigan.org/)

More good news: a proposal that would ban same-sex marriage and civil unions FAILED by two percent points in Arizona, which is not exactly a renowned bastion of liberalism. AZ voters ignored the fact that their state was illegally acquired by conquest from Mexico, when they endorsed a proposal to make English the official language of the state.

Minnesota has sent Keith Ellison, a Muslim, to Congress. Keith opposed MN's marriage amendment, and fought to decriminalize homelessness and fund outreach programs to the homeless. More info here: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161726632685&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist1053514084392

Update: South Dakota voters have rejected the state's total ban on abortion, which offered no exceptions for rape, incest, or poor maternal health; if it came to a mother-or-fetus decision (which admittedly is rare) it would have required the doctor to try to save the fetus as well.

From a CNN.com article,

Marianne Larsen, 65, a Sioux Falls retired business owner who voted to repeal the law, cast the issue differently.

"Women must have the right to make choices for themselves, not have a bunch of male legislators make the decision for them," Larsen said. "It's very much about women's rights."

She is right. This whole fiasco started as a bunch of almost exclusively male legislators playing games with people's lives. With women's lives.

For fundamentalists, human personhood begins at conception, and abortion is therefore equal to murder. They have forgotten to consider that aroung 50% of pregnancies are spontaneously aborted at early stages, possibly due to genetic defects. We don't know why. But if 'ensoulment' begins at conception, then we have a problem.

If you ban abortions completely, and continue a puritanical system of abstinence-only sex education, then people will still have sex. Unfortunately, they will have sex without knowing about contraception, and they will have unwanted pregnancies. Because of shame and fear of parental reprisal, they may resort to dangerous methods to obtain an abortion, as women through the ages have done.

If we genuinely want to cut down the number of abortions, we should use comprehensive sex education, make contraceptives freely available, and make it easier for women to give babies they cannot raise up for adoption. For the fundamentalists, the thought of people having sex outside of marriage is almost as bad as abortion, so I doubt they will be willing to go for this.

Night-time update: the Dems have one additional Senate seat confirmed, which gives them a tie in the Senate with the Republicans; the VP would cast the deciding vote, leaving the Repubs in the majority. However, it's being reported that the Dems did in fact win the last Senate seat, although there will almost certainly be a recount.

Also, I hate to gloat ... but Rumsfeld has stepped down as defense secretary. I better stop typing before I say anything nasty about Rummy.