why i hate reading the news

Get home from work, check out the news, and the first thing I read is, "The Supreme Court has ruled that family owned and other closely held companies can opt out of the Affordable Care Act's provisions for no-cost prescription contraception in most health insurance if they have religious objections" (NPR).

So certain employers can now dictate whether their employees' healthcare covers certain forms of contraception based on religious objections despite the actual healthcare needs of the employees in question or facts, like the fact that contraception helps prevent unwanted pregnancies and abortion, or that emergency contraception like Plan B and ella aren't abortifacients and Plan B doesn't prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in a woman's uterus but prevents ovulation, and therefore, fertilization? The fuck?

Remind me why we still allow nine ruling-class elites to have the ultimate power to interpret our constitution and make decisions that affect 314 million people?

The Supreme Court has further solidified the longstanding precedent that corporations have the same constitutional rights as persons, and in some cases, more so. I couldn't prevent my employer from contributing money to groups that I oppose for religious or ethical reasons, but they can now dictate what my healthcare covers based on religious objections. And as narrow as this ruling is, it can easily be expanded now that the precedent is set. The employer wanted the freedom to meddle in their employees' healthcare and they won it.

Now anyone who works for them, even though they're not a religious organisation, is subject to their religious beliefs. And those who believe otherwise have the freedom to find a less bigoted employer in what's still a rather weak labour market. Yay, liberty!

In other news, according to a recent New York Times article, in 2007, Blackwater's top manager in Iraq threatened to kill the head of a State Department probe looking into the company's operations just weeks prior to the Nisour Square massacre. The short version:

Federal investigators were taking a critical look at Blackwater's activities in Iraq. But just after the lead auditor was threatened and told that "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq," the US embassy sided with Blackwater and sent the investigators home because they'd "disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor." (Oh, no!)

Back in the US, the lead investigator "wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created 'an environment full of liability and negligence.'" Of course, nothing was done; and only a few weeks later, Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20 more (and god only knows what else they did that wasn't documented).

So we invaded a country on completely bullshit grounds, reduced it to rubble, hired a bunch of private mercenaries who terrorized and murdered local inhabitants, then buried the fact that we knew about their misconduct and "a long list of contract violations" and did shit about it? I mean, is it any wonder they wanted us to GTFO?

And if that wasn't messed up enough, the author of the article is in danger of going to jail for refusing to reveal a source for information revealed about a failed CIA plan to sabotage Iranian nuclear research in his 2006 book, State of War. Because we all know imperialism is good, whistleblowing and journalism are bad. /sarcasm