Protests in Turkey may have disappared from "liberal" media news coverage, but the crackdowns have, er, not disappeared from the lives of good Turkish citizens -- lawyers get arrested just as they're about to read statements condemning the violence, doctors get detained as they're about to treat folks injured by tear gas or water cannons, good folks get hurt or sent to prison for no damn good reason other than opposing their government's actions. You have to wonder what the government is so afraid of. So Amnesty International helps you tell the Turkish government to stop beating up on its people just for disagreeing with them. As I mentioned before, the current government of Turkey has been in power for over 11 years, never coming close to losing its huge parliamentary majorities despite never getting more than 50% of the vote in an election. (Parliamentary elections can be weird, to folks used to observing U.S. elections.) Maybe the U.S. official response has been so muted because they're Our Bastards. But I'm such a sanctimonious purist that I hate all bastards.

Speaking of bastards, check out the pathetic wife-beater who went to the school where his wife taught and put it in lockdown -- and also the pathetic school system that promptly fired her because of the pathetic crap her pathetic husband pulled. You may be surprised to learn, however, that only six states -- six! -- prevent a school from firing someone because of the consequences of their domestic abuse. This is most emphatically not a matter of "excusing wrong-doing" -- it's a matter of making sure we punish the right people for their wrong-doing. The pathetic loser who pursued his wife into school got jail time, but what did his wife do wrong? "She married the loser" is not a good answer, since most of us have gone out with folks who turned out to be bad for us and most of us let that go on longer than we should have. Thankfully, H.R. 1229, the Security and Financial Empowerment Act, would correct the workplace discrimination problem, among others; you can read about it here, and phone your Reps and Senators afterward if you like. They'll never see it coming.