Sen. Rand “Aqua Buddha” Paul is threatening to put a hold on Janet Yellen’s confirmation for chair of the Federal Reserve. His intention is to hold the nomination hostage in exchange for allowing his “audit the fed” bill to come to a vote. Whether he has the support among other Republicans to pull this off is an open question.

Surprise! Texas taxpayers are funding charter schools teaching nonsense, like Darwin causing the Holocaust. No one could have imagined such a thing, huh?

Charles Pierce writes about a pregnant Wisconsi woman who was jailed on suspicion of taking drugs that would harm the fetus, even though drug tests showed no trace of those drugs. At one point she was denied access to a lawyer. However, the Court helpfully appointed a lawyer for the fetus. See also Pregnant? That Might Get You Arrested about similar cases.

See also In many states, “fetal rights” laws are putting pregnant women in jail.

Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, told the Times her organization has documented hundreds of cases in which women like Beltran were arrested or detained in the name of “fetal rights.”

“This is what happens when laws give officials the authority to treat fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses as if they are already completely separate from the pregnant woman,” she said.

In El Salvador, and elsewhere in Latin America, women are serving prison sentences for having miscarriages, because they can’t prove they hadn’t had abortions. Yes, it can happen here.

Jaclyn Friedman’s piece on the Men’s Rights Movement is a must read. Friedman thinks men have legitimate grievances, but the Men’s Rights Movement is actually making it harder to address those grievances. That’s because the MRA amounts to the new He-Man Women Haters Club, a bunch of misogynist weenies who think women are manipulative bitches who make up stories about being raped and abused to oppress innocent men.

See above about women being jailed for being pregnant.