If you were expecting a story out of the misogynist medievalist swamp that is today’s fundamentalist Islam, look closer to home.

In what I will without peradventure attribute to our own local plague of Yahwists, a woman convicted of performing a legal act rendered illegal by the exchange of cash (uniquely among legal acts…), ended up with a death sentence.

Your attention is respectfully called to the leniency meted out to her murderers .

“Three of those disciplined were fired, two stepped down in place of being fired, 10 received suspensions ranging from 40 to 80 hours, and one was demoted. Two others will be disciplined after they return from medical leave.”

No one went to jail; no one was even fuckin’ fined.!

There has been an occasional flash of anti-feminist revanchism on this board. If you sex negative women haters are out there, argue my point that only once she was branded as “unclean” by a bunch of stinking Yahweh worshippers could she have been treated as described, and her tormentors so lightly punished.

I do not wish to deconstruct the Arizona penal system as an outlier—maybe it is (pace, Sherriff Joe…,) may be not. I ask what it says about us as a people that we regard women who (brazenly!) openly have sex as such damaged goods that thay can be brutalized with impunity.?

I don’t pretend to have wide acquaintance with women’s penal institutional practices, but until otherwise convinced I will argue that only a woman incarcerated(!) for prostitution could be so vilely treated, before and after her death!

Update: The original AP story has been expanded, to reference interest from the Maricopa County DA—“developing…”

Buried in a pro/con analysis of the intraparty tussle over reconciliation as the sled to carry Health Care Reform over the finish line is the answer to a question oft posed in varying tones of incredulity:

Why is the Budget & Finance Chair the Big Kahuna on Health Care Reform instead of the HELP Chair (for instance).?

Mark Schmitt, editor of The American Prospect, and a former Finance Committee staffer. is quoted saying:

“If reconciliation became a free-for-all, it’s not just the minority party that would be cut out, the institutional prerogatives of most of the committees other than Budget and Finance would be drastically reduced”

Thus, the insistance that the bill brought to the Senate floor originate in Budget & Finance is in deference to the rule that limits the reconciliation process to BUDGET bills.! (duh)

Which means ( Prez having been joined at the hip to Baucus) that Rahmbo has already decided it’s reconciliation time.

That, of course, has policy implications which militate towards a robust public option.

I do think this plan is coming together….

Since it appears impossible to extend Medicare to all (largely because 3/4 of the cost is charged to the fisc), why not a fallback public option.

Simply calculate the actuarial algorithms needed to render VA care self-sufficiently accessible via premium payment by non-vets. The facilities are in place—the economies of scale are already formidable and would become more so; the information technology is already cutting edge. You are way less likely to be the victim of Medical Murder at a VA hospital.

Open door, stand back, and get out of the way of the *stampede…

Best of all, per late arriving info, the influx of eager public patrons seeking single provider services will enable existing VA facilities to avoid redundancy.

*Those in the know rate VA care best in the country.based on outcomes.