The First Woman to Run for President

The First Woman to Run for President:

Very interesting account.  I had not known of her and will have to learn more.

With the election looming and "the women's vote" more courted then ever, there's no better time to share the story of Victoria Woodhull, one of history's most daring and audacious women.

The story of Victoria Woodhull is the story of the first woman to run for president. And the story of the first female stockbroker, the first female publisher, and the most controversial and popular advocate of free love. Hers is the story of a woman who injected much-needed spark into the suffrage movement when it was losing its fire. It's the story of a woman in late-1800s America the scandalizing the nation with a life that was in her own words "ahead of its time."

"Ballot design: America’s elections depend on confusing, badly designed ballots. How to fix them."

Ballot design: America’s elections depend on confusing, badly designed ballots. How to fix them. - Slate Magazine:

a very nice article on Slate.com by Mark Vanhoenacker, that addresses this question: why can’t American ballots be simpler? His answer is a model of clarity. I encourage you to read it.

"Deficit Hawks Down"

Deficit Hawks Down - NYTimes.com:

"[T]he self-styled deficit hawks — better described as deficit scolds — are losing their hold over political discourse. And that’s a very good thing. ...  
What was it that finally pulled back the curtain here? Was it the way the election campaign revealed Representative Paul Ryan, who received a “fiscal responsibility” award from three leading deficit-scold organizations, as the con man he always was? ...  

Sad to say, G.O.P. control of the House means that we won’t do what we should be doing: spend more, not less, until the recovery is complete. But the fading of deficit hysteria means that the president can turn his focus to real problems. And that’s a move in the right direction."

Before Abortion Was Legal - NYTimes.com

Before Abortion Was Legal - NYTimes.com:

"Anti-abortionists, wanting to reverse Roe v. Wade, often use the argument that taxpayers should not pay for abortion. But taxpayers have always paid for abortion; in fact they paid much more for it when it was illegal.

If one worked in city hospitals in New York or Boston in the 1960s, as I did, not a week went by without the emergency admission of a young woman bleeding to death from an attempted abortion. Either she had gone to some self-appointed unskilled practitioner, or she had tried to produce the desired effect with a coat hanger, some other foreign body or one of the poisons Ms. Manning describes. Most often, the actual results were severe infection and death.

No one is “pro abortion”; it is the desperate act of a desperate person. When it was illegal and unfinanced, we paid for it through expensive hospitalization and frequent loss of life. Now that it is legal, we pay for it another way. But at least young women seeking to terminate pregnancy are not paying for it with their lives."

"Leeches, Lye and Spanish Fly"

Leeches, Lye and Spanish Fly - NYTimes.com:

"There is no law that will end the practice of abortion, only laws that can protect a woman’s right to choose it, or not, and to keep it the safe and private procedure still available to us in 2013, 40 years after the Supreme Court made it legal."