I started there week off here at home, trying to get my head around new regs that force religious universities to add contraception coverage to their employee and student health plans. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea at first, but when smart readers reminded me about the amount of federal funding schools get, I started to rethink my position.

I weighed in on the Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy at The Broad Side. Based on my personal experience with Komen’s staff,  I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that the decision had to do with institutional needs and not political agendas. Given that they reversed the decision today under public pressure, I suspect I was wrong and they were trying to make a political statement, one that backfired on them.

I did a profile of a DC area mom-preneur who’s got a great new line of accessories for kids at The DC Moms. Bonus: there’s a giveaway!

Finally, I got all kinds of prolific at Being Pregnant at Babble. I wrote about my pregnant celebrity BFF, new evidence of smoking risks when pregnant, a boob truck in Pittsburgh for breastfeeding awareness, high fiber foods, and onsies with some really whack slogans.

Now, while you catch up an everything I’ve done, I’m going t collapse from literary exhaustion. Have a great weekend!

Let me back up. My friend Lydia at Rants From Mommyland introduced me to Michelle Barce who is about to strike gold with adorable button covers for kids called Snazzits. Her story is amazing and I’m sharing at The DC Moms. You need to hop over there right now and read about her, her jounrey to brin Snazzits to market and enter to win sme of her cute stuff. Please? I mean look how cute this is!

And this!

So, go read my post, enter to win a headband and Snazzits, and have a great day! Kthaxbai!

I’ve been all excited about Kourtney’s second pregnancy since she and boyfriend Scott Disick announced it. She is about as many weeks along as I am! She also has a little boy already! I watch her on TV every week! That makes us totally besties, right? We can text each other and compare weight gain and bitch about maternity clothes! Yay! I have a pregnant friend!

Except for the part where I don’t know Kourtney Kardashian at all and she’d hire a lawyer to serve me with scary papers if I tried sending her pregnancy comparison messages.

Read the rest at Babble!

Those of you who follow such things may have heard that a few months ago, acting on the advice of non-partisan medical experts, the Obama administration ruled the prescription contraceptives for women count as preventative medicine and therefore must be covered by insurance, with no co-pay, under provisions of the Affordable Care Act. My feeling on that was an unequivocal “Boo-yah!”.  Finally, your Nuva-ring has the same medical standing as Cialis and you can afford not to get pregnant by the boner that insurance-covered erectile dyfunction medication built. This is a win for women, for sure. Removing barriers to access to contraception is a BIG thing for me and I’m prepared to hug HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebiliius for saying “Make it so” on this one.

Predictably, there are religious factions that don’t approve of mandated coverage of birth control. Most of them are the same flap-your-gums-every-time-a-woman-has-an-orgasm-for-fun reactionaries who are behind the execrable “conscience clauses” that allow snoopy pharmacists to  tell women they can’t have their birth control because they think it’s wrong. My head explodes whenever I think of those laws because, well, yeah. The religious right has no place in my pants and I have no place in theirs. Better that we should all have access to contraceptives and those who object to them can abstain. But as a nod to religious organizations, there are some exemptions to the mandated contraceptive coverage rules. I believe that organizations that are religiously based and employ a majority of members of that faith do not have to offer contraception coverage as part of a group insurance plan if it violates their faith. That seems cool to me because everyone involved is clear on the situation and is signed on to the morality they espouse.

However, religious colleges and universities are NOT exempt. Schools like Fordham, and Georgetown, and Catholic University will not have to include coverage of contraceptives to their employees and students for the first time.

That’s the part where I’m not sure how I feel.

On the one hand, I think the conservative religious take on sexuality and contraception is  regressive, anti-feminist and doesn’t take into consideration modern realities, I also think – and think it passionately – that they have every right to believe as they do. Every right to conduct themselves as they please with regard to personal sexuality and contraception. I’m not interested in partaking on a crusade to change the views of any church on sexuality and contraception. For that reason, I’m not celebrating religious universities being forced into covering contraception. I’m actually leaning toward thinking that they should have an exemption.

Now, I think that if a university is granted an exemption to contraception coverage mandates, that should be made plain as day on their website and in enrollment and employment materials. There should be no surprises for a student who goes to the health center looking for a refill on birth control pills or the professor seeking an IUD. But a Catholic school is a Catholic school. If it is part of the Church, it should be allowed certain concessions.

However, I wasn’t consulted and I’m wondering what I’m missing in this larger picture that I’m siding with the more restrictive side of this argument in which I am generally Team Permissive. I know that as little as I want to be forced to comply by the rules of a religion to which I do not subscribe, religious leaders have an equally strong wish not to be forced to conformed to my more secular stance. Like I said, I’m not willing to partake in a crusade to undermine religion or religious institutions and I’m pretty sure religious schools should count as religious institutions.

One thing I can say for sure is that I hope that any school that flouts the ruling gets slammed for violating the law. The Catholic Church and adherence to US legal code are not synonymous in my mind ever since that whole thing where priests who were accused of child abuse were sent to another city instead of to questioning by a DA. Religious organizations are entitled to their own beliefs but they are not exempt from civil or criminal law.

I may come to a giant epiphany about this at any moment and I’ll alert you if I do. Meanwhile, it’s a lot to ponder.

I’m particularly excited about this because I’m hesitant to write about my pregnancy here. I assume most of you come here for a dose heavy-handed criticism of politicians and celebrities, liberally laced with profanity. You’re not expecting to read about my musings on whether or not to buy a fancy diaper bag. I also know that, in any crowd of women, at least one of them is likely NOT to be pregnant and wishing she was.  For that woman, hearing blithe discussion of a pregnancy feels like a stab in the heart. I don’t want to be delivering that stab to a woman who came here to see what I have to say about Newt Gingrich’s ideas for a lunar colony.

By the way, I find Newt’s long-time obsession with space travel kind of endearing. It makes me think he was a kid who wanted to be an astronaut and loved reading 60′s-era sci-fi. That’s kind of cute. It’s a terrible basis for national policy-making but cute nonetheless.

Anyway, my new writing project at Babble will give me a chance to go on at length about pregnancy while leaving this space unchanged. I’ll also be picking up the pace and posting more frequently at The Broad Side and The DC Moms this year. I’ll keep you all posted on where on the web you can find me on any given day and I’ll post a round-up once a week in case you want to play catch up.

So, enjoy your weekend and, if you’re in Florida, try to avoid Newt lest he recruit you for his lunar colony, where I suspect all marriages will be open ones and Newt will be President for Life.

All of which is to say, I may be watching House Hunters at 9 tonight. So, instead of my commentary on the speech, here is some text I took the liberty of writing for the President. JUst in case he feels like getting real.

My fellow Americans. I’ll keep this short.

Here’s the deal. I’m sick to death of being called unAmerican. Stop it ok? It’s dumb, deliberately imflamatory thing to say and it’s not fucking true. You know who’s unAmerican? President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a country that’s such a tremendous shitshow right now that we’re about to shut down out embassy there. Betcha didn’t know that did you? Of course not. That’s the stuff Secretary Clinton and the intelligence community and I are dealing with while you all flail around about Mitt’s taxes and Newt’s wives. So, let’s think about whose eye is on the ball and whose eye is on the gossip sheets, shall we?

Every single one of us in this room has the same goals. No, not raising enough money to get re-elected in the fall. Although, yeah, we all pay too much attention to that. But the goal I mean is a prosperous nation where everyone who needs one has a job that pays for a roof, three meals, healthcare, transportation and education for their family. We ALL want that. Not one person in this room can look me in the eye and say “No, that goal sucks”. We all want that and it’s what makes us quintessentially Americans: wanting the best for America.

Where we differ – often wildly – is on how to operationalize that goal. I’ve got some ideas for how to get us there. You have different ideas. We all have some good ideas and some bad ideas. BUT NONE OF US HAVE IDEAS THAT ARE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO UNDERMINE THE GOAL I STATED EARLIER. Anyone who is out there trying to make people believe that someone actually wants to destroy American prosperity is a shithead. A fearmongering shithead who’s forgotten the importance of a prosperous America in all the fuss about getting elected.

Let’s all agree to start talking like grown-ups and discussing real, actual, proposed solutions and their merits rather than this endless game of assigning fictitious motives to our opponents. Ok? Ok.

Now, I would like everyone to get on the phone to their favorite economist and start talking turkey. Don’t go yapping to reporters. We have too much work to do to take time off for grandstanding. That means me, too. Start coming up with workable plans for restoring American prosperity – plans, not soundbytes – and we’ll get together at 14:00 tomorrow to discuss.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a briefing on a shitshow in Syria to attend.

Peace out, America.

The other fact that should be upsetting is the inherent unfairness of the staggered primary system. Not to the candidates. It’s arguable that being able to focus on one state at a time is better for candidates. But the practical result of the staggered primary system is one in which each successive state to vote gets a less robust slate of choices. Iowa and New Hampshire got to choose from the entire field. But even South Carolina, with the third primary of the season, faced a diminished ballot and I don’t doubt that Floridians will have fewer choices yet.

Check out the whole thing at The Broad Side!

I’m going to start by saying I don’t like SOPA or PIPA. They’re laws designed to expand enforcement authorizations of existing laws and they do it by essentially swinging a sledgehammer at a swarm of gnats. From what I understand, these laws allow the Justice Department to deal with acts of online piracy – the stealing of copyrighted work – by prosecuting all offenders as felons and potentially being able to shut down any site that engages in or facilitates the act of pirating licensed materials.

What does that mean practically? Well, if you upload a music video to YouTube without proper permissions from the copyright holder, you can be charged with a felony and fined or jailed and YouTube can be shut down. And if someone else links to the video on Facebook, THEY can be fined or jailed and Facebook could be shut down.

Extreme much?

But…and here’s the thing…that upload? Was illegal distribution of copyrighted work. You shouldn’t have done it. Someone else made that video. It’s their creative work. There are laws in place to give them control over how it’s shared and used and you broke them.

The purpose of copyright is to protect individual creative works and their creators. It’s an incentive to create; making and sharing a creative work becomes a lot less appealing if the first person who sees it is allowed to copy it, share it and call it their own. That’s true whether you get paid for the work or not. I’d be pissed as hell if someone took my writing on this blog and passed it off as their own work even though I don’t get paid for it. This is MINE. I MADE IT. I’m sharing it with you, not giving it to you. And the law supports me on this.

Under the law, no one else is allowed to reproduce my work or distribute my work (for payment or otherwise) without my permission. There are exceptions of course. Lots of them. Complicated ones. For example, a teacher could print out, copy and distribute my blog post for a class under the education exemption. And people can quote portions of my blog without my permission as long as they use proper attribution (that means all the footnote-y type stuff we learned to do in 5th grade). And a person could print out a copy of a post to read later under the personal use exemption. But if they give the printed copy to a friend? That becomes illegal distribution. If I made a book of my blog and you bought a copy, you could copy pages of it for personal use but giving away those pages would be illegal distribution. However, you could do whatever you want with the book itself once you’ve legally acquired it: you can keep it, gift it, sell it, or use it as a doorstop. You cannot, however, read it aloud to an audience without my permission. Which I have to give you, I think, under the compulsory performance license clause in copyright law. I can make you pay me for the permission, though. (That’s why you see such atrocities as Cee-Lo Green being allowed to perform and mangle John Lennon’s “Imagine”. Lennon’s estate is required to allow performances of the song as long as the performer pays the price they set.) If I held a staged reading of my book, you could come hear it, talk about it, write about it, quote it with attribution or review it but you cannot make a video or audio recording of the performance without my permission. However, if the performance is on tv, you can record it to watch again by yourself or with your household. But inviting a bunch of people over to watch the recording with you is illegal distribution. As is posting it online. But that teacher I mentioned earlier can show the video in class under the education exemption. But if my readings are going to become a series, I can sell you a license to show it in public, say in  a bar the way the NFL or music distributors do.

Head spinning yet? I know. It’s dizzying. And I haven’t even gotten into all the definitional questions of what constitutes a copyrightable work.  Not will I. Because I want you to keep liking me.

As I see it (and this is strictly a layman’s observations and not a legal observation), there are two kids of piracy online. There are the people who are stealing lisenced content and selling copies and making money off their theft and in so doing, cutting into the market for the legitimate sale of the materials, be they music, movies, tv shows or what have you. Then there are the thoughtless linker-uppers who are just trying to share a funny clip or great song with their friends. SOPA and PIPA don’t separate the two and that’s the problem.

The guy who’s running a black market and making a living under-cutting the legit market is a problem and needs to be dealt with. The kid who copies a portion of a DVD he bought to YouTube and all the people who click “share” on the video to Tweet it are not a problem. They’re breaking the law, yes, and they shouldn’t be doing it but they’re not market disruptors. They’re the contemporary equivalent of the guy who made you a mix tape in 10th grade. However, their offense is ubiquitous and visible in a way that mix tapes weren’t, so the authorities see the scope of the activity. And small time infingement is no longer the province of teens with a dual-deck cassette recorder and too much time one their hands; many more people are doing it now because it’s easy and takes no time.

But it’s illegal. And I think it’s immoral. I don’t think you should be jailed for it. But I think you should stop doing it. Someone made that video you’re linking to. It’s their’s. If they didn’t say you could put it on your Facebook page for free, you shouldn’t do it. Some artists do give permission. They put up free content on their official sites or YouTube channels and put a “share” button on it. That you can share. Anything else is probably illegal distribution. So don’t do it.

Some of you are having a “fight the man” knee-jerk and thinking that it’s cool to protect the independent artist but why take the trouble to protect the big studios when they’re raking in piles of money already? Because you can’t separate the two. All creators and their support networks have to be equal in the eyes of the law. A successful artist is entitled to all the same protections as a struggling artist. The protections help foster success.

The future of SOPA and PIPA remains unknowable. I’ll be writing to my legislators asking that they be rejected. But I’m also going to remember to be more mindful of the content I access and share online and I’m going to try and stay with the legitimate, not the pirated.

Anyway, I’ve been immersed in the super world of superheroes for a few weeks now and something has really struck me: there are not enough female superheroes. As I read about Aquaman and Iron Man and Batman and so on I keep thinking “Girls can be super too! And you know what? I bet they can be super and wear pants at the same time. Yeah, I’m lookin’ at you Wonder Woman.”

Check out the whole thing at the Washington Times Communities!

I think the root of the problem is the disappearance of Mimi Maternity. Mimi was the midprice store in the Motherhood-Mimi-Pea-in-a-Pod triumverate, which are all owned by the same corporate maternity overlord. Motherhood sold t-shirts and jeans, Mimi sold trendy work stuff with a higher price tag and Pea-in-a-Pod sold laughably overpriced high-fashion clothing for people who think pregnancy is fancy. But Mimi is no more and Motherhood has stepped up to the trendy maternity plate. Gone are the basics I so loved in my first pregnancy, replaced instead with bump-accommodating versions of regular clothes, complete with every on-trend element found in boutique wear. And the other low- to mid-price maternity lines have followed Motherhood’s suit and have turned out clothes that are more Kardashian than Claire Dunphy.

Check out the whole post and pics of truly fugly clothes at The DC Moms!