Tracy Leaman's blog

NARAL Pro-Choice Amererica has produced this video on U.S. Sen. John McCain's position on the fairness of insurance companies covering Viagra but not birth control.

Katie Couric sits down with both Vice Presidential nominees and discusses their views on the Supreme Court decision of Roe v Wade.

Ann Coulter always has the special ability to infuriate me, yet somehow her post on Townhall.com last week still managed to surprise me. She blamed the morgage crisis and failing ecomony on affirmative action, stating that it took a Democratic Congress with a Democratic President for political correctness to ruin the financial industry. So to be fair, she really blames the Clinton administration and minorities.

The Obama Campaign released a new ad Friday featuring Lilly Ledbetter, the Alabama woman whose fight for equal pay led her to the United States Supreme Court and inspired the 2007 fair pay legislation that bears her name. Women supporters and leaders, including women Members of Congress and Governors joined together to hold events in all 50 states this past weekend as part of the Women’s Weekend for the Change We Need. Women spoke to other women about what’s at stake for women and families in this election, register voters, and to sign up new volunteers.

NARAL Pro-Choice America produced the following video on U.S. Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin's very adamant feelings on a women's right to choose.

Sexism at work. The BBC put out this video displaying the new Sarah Palin action figures you can now get in several outfits - business suit, super hero or school girl. Gross!

Donny Deutsch, host of CNBC's Big Idea calls the "new feminist ideal" a woman who women want to be and men want to mate with! I'm going to be a feminist who begs to disagree.

This week NDN was a sponsor of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's (CHCI) 2008 Public Policy Conference - The Power to Make the Difference. NDN sponsored yesterday's closing plenary - The Power of the Latino Vote: Electing the Next President with Rep. Charles Gonzalez. Sergio Bendixen, President of Bendixen & Associates and long-time collaborator and pollster represented NDN on the panel and presented data from four new polls conducted in battleground states regarding the issue of immigration.

Last month, in Denver for the Democratic National Convention, NDN was a sponsor of The Big Tent through Alliance for Sustainable Colorado. The Big Tent was the place during the DNC for new media journalists, bloggers, reporters and non-profit leaders to gather. NDN held three events on the Big Tent campus at the Alliance Building during the DNC.

In July, was in Austin, TX for Netroots Nation. NDN was a premiere sponsor of Netroots Nation and had two panels at the conference this year. Netroots Nation amplifies progressive voices by providing an online and in-person campus for exchanging ideas and learning how to be more effective in using technology to influence the public debate. Watch NDN President Simon Rosenberg speaking with Andrei Cherny, author of The Candy Bombers and co-founder of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and NDN Fellow and Director of our Green Project Michael Moynihan at NDN’s panel on a New Era of Possibility: Looking at America's Role in the World after the Bush Presidency. Simon also presented his "Dawn of a New Politics" PowerPoint to a standing only room.

We were also proud to once again sponsor our friends at the Roosevelt Institution again in July. NDN was sponsors of their 2008 National Expo. The Roosevelt Institution is a non-profit, non-partisan national network of campus-based student think tanks. Its members conduct policy research on the pressing political issues facing our world, from environmental protection to equality under the law to trade and taxes.

In June NDN was very excited to be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) 2008 Conference - Rebooting the System, which took place in New York City. Speaking at PDF were some of NDN's close friends including Morley Winograd, co-author of Millennial Makover. Morley and his co-author Mike Hais recently spoke at an NDN event in NY on the rise of the Millennial generation. NDN's good friend, Gina Cooper, executive director of Netroots Nation, another powerful annual conference where NDN was proud to be a sponsor, spoke at the closing plenary session.

NDN has also been active this year through our affiliated (c)(3) organization The New Policy Institute through which earlier this year we became a sponsor of the Democracy Journal.

Also earlier this spring the New Policy Institute sponsored the Roosevelt Institution's A New Deal for the 21st Century Conference where Simon Rosenberg spoke.

In August The New Policy Institute began sponsoring The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN). The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) is a non-profit organization formed in 1994 to bring people and organizations together to build a better Nevada. Their member groups include anti-poverty activists, people of color, children’s advocates, disabled persons, environmentalists, lesbians and gay men, and labor unions.

Also in August, The New Policy Institute sponsored Democracia USA, a national nonpartisan Hispanic civic engagement, voter empowerment, community organizing, and leadership development organization, was founded in Florida in 2004. That year, D-USA registered 72,000 new Hispanic voters in that state.

Please watch for more exciting collaborations coming from NDN and the New Policy Institute.

This is finally it for me, the straw that has broken the proverbial moose’s back! I thought maybe it would be her membership in "Feminists for Life", the staggering amount of hypocrisy coming from her camp, her daughter being the poster child for what happens when we teach our children that birth control is dangerous, the stance on how her daughter's pregnancy is a "family matter" we should all stay out of, but my private medical decisions should be made by politicians, because they are not "family matters"?

But no, none of that has enraged me as much as the most recent discovery that while Sarah Palin was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she charged rape survivors for their rape kits. A rape kit is a sexual assault forensic evidence kit, used to collect DNA that can be used in criminal proceedings to assist in the conviction of those who commit sex crimes. The kit is performed as soon as possible after a sexual assault or attack has been committed. As a general rule, rape survivors (nor victims of any other crime) are never charged for collection of evidence.

While Palin was Mayor, survivors were charged between $300 - $1200 for rape kits. As someone who has been a long time volunteer at my local rape crisis center, I have seen way too many rape kits administered over the years. It is not a pleasant process for survivors, but more of a re-victimization. And to be charged in order for the police department to collect the evidence, is yet another re-victimization!

And to add insult to injury, once you have been through this traumatic ordeal, then been charged for the police to collect the evidence, Sarah Palin will have 1. blocked the ER from allowing you to receive emergency contraception before you leave so that you can make sure you are not impregnated by your rapist and 2. if you do become pregnant by your rapist, she does not support your right to an abortion in the case of such violence.

NOTE: Gov. Tony Knowles signed a sexual assault bill to change this horrible policy in 2000.

The New York Times recently reported that the Bush Administration is proposing a new regulation that could potentionally (presumably the intention) discourage clinics and hospitals from providing birth control to women in need.

The legislation purposely confuses the definition of abortion and contraception, calling abortion "any of the following procedures - including prescription, dispension and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action - that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation."

Senator Hillary Clinton blogged on Huffington Post stating that the Bush Administration "could prevent providers of federally-funded family planning services, like Medicaid and Title X, from guaranteeing their patients access to the full range of comprehensive family planning services. They'll also build significant barriers to counseling, education, contraception and preventive health services for those who need it most: low-income and uninsured women and men."

This is exactly why we must elect pro-choice candidates. Sen. John McCain has repeatedly voted against allowing women to obtain birth control and he has made it clear he intends to carry on Bush's anti-choice legacy should he reach the White House.

This week NDN will be in Austin, TX for Netroots Nation. NDN is a premiere sponsor of Netroots Nation and will have two panels at the conference this year. Netroots Nation amplifies progressive voices by providing an online and in-person campus for exchanging ideas and learning how to be more effective in using technology to influence the public debate. Both of NDN's panels will be on Saturday, July 19, where NDN President Simon Rosenberg will be speaking with Andrei Cherny, author of The Candy Bombers and co-founder of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and NDN Fellow and Director of our Green Project Michael Moynihan on a New Era of Possibility: Looking at America's Role in the World after the Bush Presidency at 3 p.m. Simon will then present his "Dawn of a New Politics" PowerPoint at 4:30 p.m. For the entire agenda for the conference, here. Other NDN staff will be at the conference and we are anxious to meet you so please come out and say hi.

On Monday, July 21st, Simon moves on to New York to discuss the current political environment and what is going on in Washington. Simon will be joined once again by NDN Green Project Director Michael Moynihan who will discuss climate change and the state of the American economy. The breakfast will take place at 8:00 a.m. in the Regency Room of the Regency Hotel at 540 Park Avenue. Please feel free to invite other you feel might be interested in hearing what Simon and Michael have to say about the state of the nation. Click here to RSVP.

Finally, NDN will be at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, at the end of August. We have a full line-up of public and private events, briefings and forums scheduled to showcase our work and celebrate our community. If you would like more information on NDN's convention events, please contact Tracy Leaman at 202-842-7213 or tleaman@ndn.org. NDN also has rooms and entire convention packages. If you are interested in buying into NDN's convention packages, please contact Chris McCleary at 202-842-7207 or cmccleary@ndn.org.

And don't forget that NDN is still at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) conference this week and our team is blogging from there still, so please check back to read live coverage of what is happening at NCLR as it happens.