Of late ...

I have been doing a very bad job of keeping this blog updated (but obsessively tweet). I have a difficult time forming cohesive enough thoughts to blog about (or so I feel). I've also been doing quite a bit.

This week, I attended Scott Roeder's preliminary hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to go to trial. The answer was "yes," and he plead not guilty. I wrote a rather lengthy entry about it at Feminists for Choice. Also Jezebel.com picked up on a story at Feministe.us who picked up on a comment I made on Reproductive Health Reality Check (a site I read on a regular basis).

And for some reason, a couple of Tweeps active in Northeast Kansas managed to talk me into starting a 4th district Young Democrats chapter. So, umm, yea. I have too much life (and, yet, not a date in sight!).

On Facebook, a friend mentioned how he met Paul Hill during Shelley Shannon's trial here in Wichita. Rather frightening. As such, I'm trying to keep track of stuff and follow the trial (and the endless motions) from start until jail time (and possibly beyond). Since the last assassinations in the mid-90s, many states have been pushing various "personhood" laws, not only to define a fetus as a person under the law but also in laws regarding pregnant women (such as Kansas' Alexa's law). I'm really curious how those play out in "defense of a third person" defense for Roeder and others like him.

I honestly fear more violence, as I'm sure many of us do. Not only against abortion providers but, as we have seen, against anyone with a centrist or liberal point of view (because the Holocaust? Not a liberal "idea"!). I really hope the internet can be used to coordinate efforts by citizens to be aware of these groups and loosely affiliated individuals that go into churches and museums and commit heinous crimes.

As much as we would like to think anti-abortion violence (Dr. Tiller) and racially-motivated (militia members slaughtering a Hispanic family) and religiously-motivated violence (Holocaust museum) are not connected, are caused by different motivations, the reality is the base is the same. What compels someone to shoot a health care provider or open fire on a church congregation or kill a family in Texas varies, of course, that impetus for that particular crime. But it's all connected. I know that part of it comes from a great sense of helplessness (that's what motivates the act of violence), but there's a great deal more to it. What have we, as a society, done or not done to make so many people feel helpless?

(Another reason I don't blog much? I drift all over the place!)

So be watching for more Roeder news. And, of course, other progressive updates!