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Exciting news via Operation Rescue: The 12-city "Filibuster Sotomayor" tour is coming soon to a town near you! Instead of rocking out at any number of this summer's hot music festivals, you can instead chant about the "murderous holocaust of children" alongside folks clutching graphic posters of aborted fetuses and artistic renderings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as the Angel of Death. Here's more (via Think Progress) from founder Randall Terry:

We must stop permitting this hypocrisy, cowardice, and treachery in our midst. Pro-life voters are calling on pro-life Senators to filibuster Sotomayor.

A Senator cannot say, ‘I want to overturn Roe,’ and then vote to confirm a Supreme Court Judge that will uphold Roe. A vote to confirm Sotomayor is a vote to uphold Roe.

Many senators use pro-life rhetoric to seduce us; they get our money, our volunteer labor, and our votes. But once an election is over, they discard us like an embarrassing mistress ... Whether they ‘have the votes’ to sustain a filibuster or not, they need to fight to stop her, for the sake of the babies who will die under her judicial reign.

Ever since resolving that women are, in fact, entitled to an education, scholars have debated whether classrooms should be coed or single-sex. So is it any wonder that, in the 21st century, schools are moving that discussion to the Internet? In Monday's Washington Post, Michael Birnbaum looks at the Online School for Girls, a project of four private girls' high schools. Set to launch this fall, the pilot program will offer classes that "range in subject from multivariable calculus and differential equations to women in art and literature" and utilize teaching strategies designed to appeal to girls, such as collaboration. While initial availability will be limited to the participating institutions, the Online School for Girls plans to widen its enrollment in time for the 2010-11 school year. "When the classes open to the public," writes Birnbaum, "the educators hope that students around the world -- including homeschoolers and girls at coed schools -- will be able to take part in a version of the girls' school experience."

Although single-sex education is nothing new for independent schools, Birnbaum cites statistics that show its growing popularity in public institutions: "In 2002, just 11 public schools across the country offered single-sex classrooms, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Now they number more than 500." As the market for online enrichment courses has also grown, the Online School for Girls seems like a potentially lucrative venture. According to Larry Goodman, director of strategic programming at Ohio's Laurel School, "There's no one out there who's thinking with a specifically feminine audience in mind."

But is there evidence that the Online School for Girls is anything more than a shrewd business move? Is there really any benefit to offering gender-specific Internet courses?

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"I have no idea why she quit," begins Good Morning America reporter and "Womenomics" co-author Claire Shipman, writing on True/Slant about Sarah Palin's resignation. But if Palin quit for "personal and family reasons," says Shipman, "she made a really bad choice. It's exactly the wrong lesson to teach her children. They may, may, get to see more of her now. But what have they learned? That when things get tough, you quit? That when you don't like the way something is going, you can just pull out?"

Bad mommy! And Shipman has the good mommy cred to prove it: "As a mother who struggles with kids who want to drop out of soccer camp after one day, or abandon mother-son piano camp because it's boring (it was, and I was dying to quit too), it's clear that kids learn enormously from our example." Y'all got that? If you made an obviously poor choice about how to spend your time, you may not subsequently choose to curtail the misery. Many long careers and marriages have been built on the simple principle that hating your life is no good reason to change it. This is an important lesson for children.

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In yet another recession-era "misery loves company" piece, the Associated Press reports that dating is on the rise in the wake of the stock market crash. Since last September, membership on eHarmony (a Christian values-backed, marriage-oriented dating site) has risen 20 percent, while OK Cupid (which resembles a social networking site and caters to a younger, more casual crowd) has attracted a whopping 50 percent more customers. Quirky singles events, such as Chicago's Nerds at Heart, which invites participants to throw down $25 for a night of drinking, trivia and board games, are also flourishing.

The AP argues that we can chalk these developments up to two major factors: The economic crisis has left people with less money and more anxiety. While paying up to $60 a month to maintain an eHarmony account may seem unwise as retirement savings evaporate and unemployment looms large, OK Cupid's founder and CEO Sam Yagan explains why this might actually be a reasonable expenditure:

The way he figures it, a man can spend $100 buying drinks at a bar trying to pick up a stranger and leave with little more than a cold shoulder. But, when he's in a relationship, a Saturday evening can be as simple as Thai noodle takeout, Netflix and some fun under the covers. All in all, Yagan said, that's "more bang for your buck."

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Have you heard? According to a recent article in The Guardian, there is a "new and very weird" genre of writing on the rise. This is called "female confessional journalism." To diagnose the troubling trend, writer Hadley Freeman marshals as evidence a Daily Mail article in which the author chronicles the vicissitudes of her fake breasts (the result of botched surgeries and several "encapsulations"), and another article, also from the Daily Mail (a publication Jezebel has cleverly dubbed the "Daily Fail") in which the author writes with commendable if discomfiting honesty about her pathological obsession with thinness. (Anna N. of Jezebel, in a post praising Freeman's "very smart piece," fills out the trend by adding playwright Zoe Lewis' recent lament at having chosen career over family, and Lori Gottlieb's now-infamous exhortation to settle for a less-than-perfect man.) "A female journalist describes his or her obsession with her weight/breast/ageing face/food or alcohol problems/inability to have a happy relationship," writes Freeman, "These are tales of daily woe. It concludes with the writer still sufficiently unhappy to be commissionable for another very similar piece."

In what universe is the phenomenon of women writing about themselves a new genre? Remember Kathryn Harrison's "The Kiss," her tale of her incestuous relationship with her father, or "At Home in the World," Joyce Maynard's painfully detailed account of cohabitating with JD Salinger, or "Prozac Nation," Elizabeth Wurtzel's seismographic charting of her depression? These memoirs were published more than a decade ago. While, in the realm of journalism, there are indeed numerous recent examples -- Emily Gould's ambivalent mea culpa for blogging her life, Sandra Tsing Loh's dissection of her divorce -- there is also plenty of precedent. Lauren Slater has written of her mental health, her ailing marriage, her tendency to prevaricate, her lack of desire. Katha Pollitt has admitted to "Google-stalking" her ex and her inability to drive a car. Way back in 1996, Daphne Merkin told of her predilection for spanking. Further back, in the 70s, there was Joan Didion, who, if she didn't pioneer the genre -- Bernarr McFadden founded True Story Magazine in 1919 -- she arguably perfected it, with her memorable rendering of her neuroses and her migraines, with lines like "We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce."

Of course, confessional writing has never been the exclusive province of women.

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Until yesterday, gays in India could receive a 10-year prison sentence as a result of their sexual activities. All that changed today as the New Delhi High Court decriminalized homosexuality. 2009 might seem rather late in the day for such a decision, but let’s not forget that the U.S. only repealed its own laws banning sodomy (in the Lawrence and Garner v. Texas case) in 2003; up to then sodomy remained a criminal act, astonishingly, in 13 states.

For a snapshot of pure joy, it's hard to beat this picture of men and women flooding New Delhi’s streets to celebrate. As Aditya Bandyopadhyay, a lawyer and gay rights activist told the BBC:

“We are elated. It's a path-breaking judgement. It's a historic judgement, it's India's Stonewall.”

 

Word is that "Deadgirl" is the hottest indie horror flick of the year. It's said by some to be one of the smartest and most original American thrillers in recent memory. So, when I heard that the extended trailer had been leaked to the Web, I eagerly took a peek and found that the ingenious concept being heaped with so much praise was ... zombie rape. As in, two high school losers find a girl zombie chained to a table in the basement of a deserted mental institution and decide to rape her repeatedly, mutilate her body and pimp her out as a sex slave. I guess the five-film Saw epic and two Hostel installments weren't enough to satisfy the demand for torture porn?

As much as I'm inclined to rant about the sickness and depravity of this stuff, I'm not sure I can write off this film outright. Horror films have always toyed with arousal and fear, those two easily-confused feelings. Increasingly, porn is following the same formula -- just consider the viral genre-merger of 2 Girls, 1 Cup. The goal in both porn and horror flicks is often to illicit an extreme, adrenaline response and force us to confront our baser, animal selves. Based on online reviews, that is very much part of the movie's storyline.

Broadsheet contributor Mary Elizabeth Williams e-mailed me to say that she's seen the movie and thinks it "says something at times powerful about masculinity." As she put it, "The boys are picked on, they're the bottom of the food chain. They have no future or power. So you get why they're drawn to this literally underground world where they're in control. It's very much about anger and helplessness, and taking it out on someone even more helpless" -- until she escapes and eats their braaains -- "and it's really not far off from stuff that does happen."

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Week two in the saga of "The Thornbirds of Argentina" is upon us, and the shambling, lovesick, undoubtedly soon-to-be-former governor of South Carolina has all the pundits shaking their heads. "What is he thinking?" asks Fox News, noting that the governor has "thrown out the manual" from the politician's school of adultery  management -- confess, repent, slut-shame -- and instead seems to be "trying to reveal so many details that there is no more muck left to rake." But it's high time we recognize our Christian troubadour for who he truly is: A political operative of the most canny sort.

From every corner of our nation, a chorus is rising as one to say: "To your lover -- go!" Just leave us the keys to the governor's mansion, OK? And remember to visit the kids. Now when was the last time you remember anyone giving a 49-year-old, married, Christian, Republican civil servant and father of four explicit permission to quit his stressful day job and follow his loins and his heart to a warm, sunny place?

Reviewing the now copious wealth of evidence, it's hard not to conclude that this was the wily governor's scheme all along. From every corner of our nation, a chorus is rising as one to say: "To your lover -- go!"

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Is there anything more humiliating than having your burgeoning secondary sex characteristics pointed out to your entire high school? Well, how about being punished for them? That's exactly what happened to 14-year-old Akaash Iqbal, a secondary school student at England's Manchester Academy. As a photo accompanying the Manchester Evening News story shows, the boy recently sprouted the first shadowy hint of a mustache. And for that, a faculty member sent him home. "They've embarrassed me and they've embarrassed my family," Iqbal told the newspaper. "I was walking down the corridor to registration and one of the teachers took me into a room. I was made to stay there for an hour." He was told to shave before returning to school -- but since Iqbal (with the support of his father, Asif Mahmood) refused, the academy has declined to readmit him.

At first glance, the story sounds silly: Many schools have dress codes prohibiting facial hair, and while we may not agree with them, isn't it simpler to comply than to cause trouble? Besides, as its name implies, Manchester Academy is a private school and has more freedom to set rules than a public institution.

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Last night, "Daily Show" senior women's correspondent Kristen Schaal made another hilarious, absurd appearance, this time to chime in on France's controversial proposed ban on the burqa.

"Is Sarkozy right?" asked Jon Stewart. "Does the burqa lower the status of women?"

"That's right, Jon," replied Schaal. "The guy who divorced his second wife and immediately shacked up with a supermodel is right. Women shouldn't be allowed to do things that don't empower them. If Carla Bruni had been wearing a burqa when she did all that nude modeling, the president of France would never have fallen in love with her."

When Stewart points out the fallacy here in Sarkozy's sweeping stance, that some women might actually choose to wear the burqa rather than being forced to do so, Schaal scoffs, going on a tangent about how that's like saying women in America actually want to torture themselves by wearing high heels.

"There's a difference between burqas and high heels," Stewart replies. "High heels are still a choice."

"Yeah, right, Jon, they're a 'choice.' And I don't have to throw up my food every time I eat cause I'm so fucking fat."

Cloaked in satire as it is, Schaal is bringing up interesting points about the absurdities women put themselves through in our culture and the narrow notion of what "empowering" clothes really are. If the burqa is a "prison," what are four-inch Jimmy Choos and nerve-pinching skinny jeans? Oh, right: Those are hot.

I don't want to give away all the punchlines, so please enjoy the video below. Spoiler alert: There's a mayonnaise joke.