Change.org helps you tell the state of Ohio to make non-fatal strangulation a felony. Why? Well, partly because it could have saved Monica Weber Jeter's life, since her husband strangled her damn near to death almost a year ago, but since he only got a misdemeanor conviction, he was around to kill her for good nine months later -- all in the presence of their children, I feel compelled to add. Also, more than half of America's states already make non-fatal strangulation a felony, so Ohio's running behind the curve here. And I'm not sure what logical contortions one could possibly invent to suggest that someone trying to strangle a person isn't also trying to kill them. It sure does seem to me that we, as a culture, are too hard on some crimes and not hard enough on others -- we treat first-time drug users like they're the spawn of Satan, but domestic violence abusers, who more closely resemble the spawn of Satan, hardly see the inside of a prison cell. Perhaps the prison industry simply prefers the "repeat business" of folks addicted to drugs. But they don't run things around here; we do. If we act, of course.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to force cable providers to offer their channels to consumers a la carte, then both the Parents Television Council and Free Press still helps you do that. With the influx of new far-right Republicans in both houses, can we trust that an a la carte bill would advance, given that a la carte has historically been a PTC project? Wow, I actually got that question out without spritzing tea all over my laptop. Far-right Republicans have no taste for actually letting religious folks not pay for the channels that offend them, because far-right Republicans mostly care about their corporate paymasters (which include the cable channels, all immovably against offering channels a la carte). And they only care about their furthest-right constituents to the degree they can stoke their rage -- force Republicans to choose between mammon and values, they'll choose mammon every time. But let's make them make that choice. If nothing else, it'll build character for them, and being fishers of souls, we are always interested in helping people build character.
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