“When it was over, we broke 2016 into split-second fragments. They would be ammunition against hostile aliens who lacked our native immunity.”
-QuietPineTrees
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Texas on Saturday issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of Obama administration protections for transgender and abortion-related healthcare services just one day before they were due to go into effect.
The Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation “forbids discriminating on the basis of ‘gender identity’ and ‘termination of pregnancy’” under Obamacare, as US District Court Judge Reed O’Connor wrote in his opinion halting enforcement of those provisions in the rule.
Explaining the lawsuit, O’Connor wrote, “Plaintiffs claim the Rule’s interpretation of sex discrimination pressures doctors to deliver healthcare in a manner that violates their religious freedom and thwarts their independent medical judgment and will require burdensome changes to their health insurance plans on January 1, 2017.”
The states and nonprofits in the healthcare lawsuit allege that the regulation violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) — which sets the rules for federal government rule-making — and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
O’Connor found that the plaintiffs had standing to bring the lawsuit because they “have presented concrete evidence to support their fears that they will be subject to enforcement under the Rule.”
Spokespersons from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The next steps from the administration could include seeking to appeal the injunction or asking O’Connor to limit his order to the plaintiffs in the case, although it was not clear — with 20 days left in the Obama administration — what the government would choose to do.
White House officials also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
O’Connor is the same trial court judge assigned to a lawsuit brought by several states, again led by Texas, challenging the Obama administration’s transgender protections in schools provided under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
In August, O’Connor issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the Obama administration’s schools guidance because he found it was not permitted under Title IX. (The administration is challenging the nationwide scope of the injunction at the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.)
Because Title IX is referenced as providing the basis for the ACA’s sex discrimination ban, O’Connor found, accordingly, that “HHS’s expanded definition of sex discrimination exceeds the [Title IX] grounds” provided for in the ACA, making that provision contrary to law and a violation of the APA.
O’Connor similarly found that the rule’s failure to include the religious exemptions found in Title IX similarly “renders it contrary to law.”
The judge also found a “substantial likelihood” that the states and nonprofits would succeed in their RFRA claim.
O’Connor found that because “numerous” other options were available to the government for “expand[ing] access to transition and abortion procedures,” the rule is not the “least restrictive means” of advancing that interest — as required by RFRA.
Notably, O’Connor also questioned strongly whether the government even showed that the rule “advances a compelling interest,” as required by RFRA, but assumed that it did so because he had found the rule had not met the “least restrictive means” prong of RFRA either.
Because the rule affects “almost all licensed physicians” and one of the nonprofit groups — the Christian Medical and Dental Associations — has members across the country, O’Connor found that a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the transgender and abortion-related provisions in the rule was appropriate.
In the dog world, humans are elves that routinely live to be 500+ years old.
“They live so long…but the good ones still bond with us for our entire lives.”
“These immortals are so kind we must be good friends to them”
My heart wtf
Not gonna lie, this fucked me up a bit.
POV Fantasy slice of life book when?
“Now I am old. The fur around my muzzle is grey and my joints ache when we walk together. Yet she remains unchanged, her hair still glossy, her skin still fresh, her step still sprightly. Time doesn’t touch her and yet I love her still.”
“For generations, he has guarded over my family. Since the days of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather he has kept us safe. For so long we thought him immortal. But now I see differently, for just as my fur grows gray and my joints grow stiff, so too do his. He did not take in my children, but gave them away to his. I will be the last that he cares for. My only hope is that I am able to last until his final moments. The death of one of his kind is so rare. The ending of a life so long is such a tragedy. He has seen so much, he knows so much. I know he takes comfort in my presence. I only wish that I will be able to give him this comfort until the end.”
Hypnotizing Monochromatic Animated GIFs, Carl Burton
NYC-based artist Carl Burton atmospheric animated GIFs exist in a category of their own. Working primarily with Cinema 4D, Photoshop, and After Effects, Burton spends days at a time perfecting these enigmatic animations that blur the lines between surreal and science fiction.
My apartment has windows facing the street, meaning I can hear pretty much everything that happens on the sidewalk beneath them. And this morning, just as my side of the street was getting the cars cleared for street cleaning, I heard some dude outside go, “C’mon, I just want your number, is that so much to ask? You’re so pretty, you know?”
Well, in light of recent conversations, I was like RED ALERT, and bustled my nosy butt outside to see what was up. Sure enough, a guy in his mid-to-late thirties had stopped his car, gotten out, and was now following a girl down the street. And when I say a girl, I mean a teenager.
Now, I’m brave and stuff, but this guy had shown himself willing to go so far outside the socially acceptable boundaries of behavior that I was pretty sure if I called him on this he wouldn’t take it well, and I was weighing my options when, like an angel of mercy and goodness, a parking enforcement officer came rolling up and she got out. First she saw me and was like, “Is this your car?”
And I was like, “It belongs to that guy down the street hassling that girl.”
And bless this woman’s heart, she gave this great eyebrow and was like, “EXCUSE ME SIR, UNLESS YOU WANT A $75 TICKET I SUGGEST YOU MOVE.”
I will give him credit for balls of steel, because he actually said, “Hold on one minute, I’m talking to my friend,” which, NOPE.
Fortunately the officer is like, “Sure, I’ll wait a minute, and in the meantime I’ll be writing you this ticket.”
So the dude goes grumbling back to his car, and of course he can’t park it anywhere nearby, so he drives off. In the meantime, I ask the girl if she wants to come inside for a minute to make sure the dude left, which she did, and sure enough DUDE CIRCLED AROUND THE BLOCK LOOKING FOR HER (I watched him while the girl was inside getting acquainted with my dog) before taking off. The girl is 18, she didn’t know the guy, and the whole time I was driving her to her brother’s house she kept trying to figure out what she’d done wrong.
Not all men harass women. But all women – and girls – are harassed by men.
thank god it ended ok
Good wishes to you and the parking enforcement officer.
Parking enforcement is for once not the villain. You go, parking enforcement officer! You go, OP! Four for y’all.
Michael was found dead in his home on Christmas Day, and it was later confirmed that he suffered heart failure.
But many have now opened up about donations the star secretly made to countless good causes while insisting that he remained anonymous.
Dame Esther Rantzen said Michael “gave millions” to Childline, of which she is the founder a president, but that he donated the money on the condition of anonymity while he was alive.
“For years now he has been the most extraordinarily generous philanthropist, giving money to Childline, but he was determined not to make his generosity public so no-one outside the charity knew how much he gave to the nation’s most vulnerable children,” sad Dame Esther.
Richard Osman, who co-hosts Pointless, also opened up saying he had given £15,000 to a contestant on Deal or No Deal who needed the money for IVF.
Others included the Terrence Higgins Trust, which said Michael had given “experiences and gifts” to the charity over the years.
““His donations contributed to a vision of a world where people living with HIV live healthy lives free from prejudice and discrimination,” said Jane Barron of THT.
“Thanks to George’s legacy, we are a step closer to that world and we are so grateful for his support and friendship over the years.”
Other stories included that Michael had given a £25,000 cheque to a woman who he heard crying over debt in a cafe, asking the waitress to hand it over once he had left.
Another came from radio DJ Mick Brown, who opened up about an annual £100,000 donation made by Michael to Capital FM’s Christmas charity drive.
Journalist Sali Hughes took to Twitter to say she had written a story about a celebrity who had given £5,000 to a barmaid who was a student nurse in debt, revealing that it was Michael.
Many more stories including offering a free concert to NHS nurses who cared for his late mother, and volunteering at a homeless shelter, poured out as thousands mourned the death of the Wham! star.
This is in addition to his performances on charity singles like ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, donating royalties from his Elton John duet ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me’ to an AIDS hospice, and much other public charity work.
That scattered green on the wave was a bit more olive than I liked, but overall a success. The one on the right was all kinds of fun. The first layer of glass on the bottom was “french vanilla,” which reacts with chemicals in other glass and with silver to produce the effects you see in this piece. The circles you see there are fine silver rings that I simply set atop the french vanilla glass and sprinkled with the same aqua and light green frit what was used in the wave on the left. Then you just pop it in the kiln and see what is going to react with what.
And finally was able drop by the studio and pick up some stuff that had been fired recently. Mainly a set of six of the ramekins below, as well as a bunch of glaze tests which weren’t nearly as exciting. (Tom Coleman’s porcelain. Non-iron blue celadon glaze. Cone 10 reduction.)
Also went to a week long pottery workshop taught by Birdie Boone at Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, TN (the week before they lost two of their dorm buildings to the fire there). Made a few mugs. Cone 6 red clay. Three firings. One to fire the pot to bisque. Another to bisque the white crackle bisque slip over it. A final firing to add the transparent glaze.
Took a test tile with the crackle bisque slip home and tried it with a cone 05 crackle glaze. Am pleased.
Hearseeno 