This is absolutely crazy. These sex-obsessed busybodies need to get their noses out of everyone else's sex lives and just do their jobs - instead of trying to obstruct access to contraception and punish them with unwanted pregnancy. From Think Progress:

A Texas man has enlisted the ACLU to help him sue CVS for gender discrimination after a pharmacist refused to sell him emergency contraception.

Jason Melbourne had already visited four pharmacies in search of Plan B for his wife when he was referred to a CVS in Mesquite, Texas, some 15 miles away from his home. They had one box left:

But when he finally got there, the overnight pharmacist, Minni Matthew, told Melbourne she wasn’t going to sell it to him.In order for him to buy the meds, the pharmacist said, she’d need to talk to and see the ID of his wife, who was at home with their two young children. He asked why, and she pointed to the fine print on the medication’s box, which says it can only be sold to someone age 17 or older. Melbourne pointed out that he was well over 17.

“I’ve bought this plenty of times in my life, and it’s never been a problem,” he said. “Are you telling me every other place I’ve bought it from has been wrong?”Didn’t matter, Matthew said, since the medicine obviously wasn’t for him.“Why don’t you show me the law that says you can’t sell this to a man?” Melbourne replied.

The situation got worse from there. Melbourne put his wife on the phone and even Googled the medication to show the pharmacist there was no law against selling it to a man. But “she didn’t want to see it,” he said.

That’s when a male pharmacy technician informed Melbourne that they didn’t want to sell emergency contraception to men because they might be giving it to “rape victims.”

Jezebel notes that Melbourne’s ordeal happened around the same time that a Houston CVS store refused to sell another man Plan B. CVS apologized for that last month, calling it an “isolated incident.” It wasn’t.

In fact, in 2010 ACLU received reports that Walgreens stores in Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma were refusing to sell emergency contraception to men. Walgreens relented when the ACLU confronted them publicly.

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Comedy Central's Jon Stewart slammed Republicans for their feigned outrage over the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If President Obama was going to take up a legal challenge as to whether the Senate is actually in recess or not, or just blocking his right to make appointments if they're not, my only comment on this would be, why didn't you do it earlier? Better late than never I guess and I sincerely hope the GOP loses the legal battle on this one.

Stewart turned to Daily Show regular John Oliver for some feedback on why with the Democrats who are in charge of the majority in the Senate are allowing the pro forma session to be allowed to be graveled in, and after some initial “outrage”, Oliver explained that if they had tried to actually go home and go into recess, the House could have forced them back in there over the holidays and to have stayed in session.

Oliver's segment which has quite a few priceless moments below the fold where he explained our "do nothing" Congress to Jon Stewart.

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Maybe I'm missing something, but if the place is too contaminated by radiation for humans to live there, why would anyone want food grown there? Why would the government encourage people to eat crops grown in radioactive soil?

Japan is planning a futuristic farm where robots do the lifting in an experimental project on land swamped by the March tsunami, the government said Thursday.

Under an agriculture ministry plan, unmanned tractors will work fields where pesticides will have been replaced by LEDs keeping rice, wheat, soybeans, fruit and vegetables safe until robots can put them in boxes.

Carbon dioxide produced by machinery working on the up to 250-hectare (600 acre) site will be channeled back to crops to boost their growth and reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers, the Nikkei newspaper said.

The agricultural ministry will begin on-site research later this year with a plan to spend around four billion yen ($52 million) over the next six years, a ministry official said.

Land in Miyagi prefecture, some 300 kilometres (200 miles) north of Tokyo, which was flooded by seawater on March 11, has been earmarked for the so-called "Dream Project".

The tsunami, sparked by a 9.0-magnitude quake, inundated the country's northeast, killing more than 19,000 people, according to the latest figures.

It also badly polluted the land, leaving it laden with salt and depositing oil on fields, with around 24,000 hectares of once-fertile farmland damaged by the tsunami, earthquake and fallout from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.

Meltdowns at reactors at the plant sent radiation into the air, sea and food chain, badly denting public trust in local produce.

The atomic disaster and the ravaging of farmland were the latest blows to a struggling and ageing farm industry that is also facing the threat of renewed competition from abroad as Tokyo eyes a Pacific-wide free trade pact.

The Communications Workers of America created a parody video as a response to a propaganda piece Verizon sent out to 45,000 unionized employees in an attempt to get workers to stop fighting proposed cuts to worker benefits. In the Verizon video, company executives try to make the case that union workers should cave to demands from Verizon:

The video details company demands such as concessions on health care and the expectation that workers learn to do multiple jobs, with sales reps handling some tech functions and tech support workers handling some sales.

As we previously reported, there is no need for Verizon to demand the cuts:

There is no need for Verizon to pursue the level of cuts to compensation for their workers that they are after. Verizon had a $6 billion profit last year (on revenues of $108 billion) and just paid a $10 billion dividend. Over the last four years, the company has a total of more than $19 billion in profits. Verizon's profits not only make them one of the richest and most successful companies in the country, they are outperforming the overall communications industry. The company's chair, Ivan Seidenberg makes more than 300 times what the average Verizon worker makes. The top five executives have been paid more than $250 million in the past four years.

These demands are being presented during a time when Verizon has paid a -2.9 percent tax rate in recent years.

The video from Verizon:

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At least this is a step in the right direction:

Freddie Mac announced Friday that it was giving mortgage servicers the authority to offer up to 1 year of mortgage forbearance to unemployed homeowners who have Freddie Mac-backed mortgages.

The change takes effect Feb. 1, means loan servicers can offer six months of forbearance to jobless borrowers without Freddie's approval and another six months with approval. Currently, servicers can grant up to three months of no mortgage payments without prior agency approval, or six months of reduced payments with approval .

But don't think that Freddie suddenly had a twinge of social consciousness that led to move, they were ordered to do so by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Home foreclosures jumped just over 21 percent in the third quarter of last year - for a total of 347,726 homes - almost exactly the number of foreclosures in the third quarter of 2010.

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GOP hopeful Rick Santorum found a way on Friday to give Republicans credit for the lowest unemployment rate in three years.

Speaking to a crowd at a town hall event in Keene, New Hampshire, the Republican presidential candidate said that the economy added 200,000 nonfarm jobs last month because people were hopeful President Barack Obama was not going to be re-elected in 2012.

"I'm very gratified to see that in spite of President Obama's policies, the job market is beginning to pick up a little bit," the candidate opined.

"I think there might just be some optimism that maybe Republicans are going to take the White House," Santorum added with a smile. "Maybe that's spurring people to start taking some risks. I'll take that as a reason."

The Labor Department said earlier Friday that the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5 percent, the lowest since February 2009. Most analysts had expected unemployment to rise to 8.7 percent.

Charleton Heston campaigning for right-to-work laws in Idaho and comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson

A federal judge struck down two Idaho laws designed to undercut workers rights Thursday, re-establish the right of construction workers to use project labor agreements and to use union dues to subsidize member wages in order to make competitive bids for contracts. Two separate laws that banned the practices were ruled illegal by U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill. The rulings were a big victory for construction workers in the state:

The state’s construction unions were outraged when anti-union legislators took aim at Project Labor Agreements, the pre-hire construction contracts that aim to set wage, benefit and safety standards as well as minority, female and veteran hiring goals.

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Crooked Timber: Jazz Bumpa and the Conservative Mind.

Jacobin: Class War Graphed

Corey Robin: Ron Paul has two problems

And on the topic of Ron Paul don't miss this one by Bouphonia. Hilarious.

Round up by Blue Gal of The Professional Left Podcast. Send tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com

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The comic genius behind "Get Your War On" is back with "Get Your Censor On," with links to writing Congress against SOPA. Open thread below....