• Police believe Joshua Woodward, a restaurateur from L.A., gave his 13-weeks pregnant girlfriend an abortion inducing drug without her consent. She claims just hours before she miscarried, Woodward touched her sexually, leaving white powder in her underwear. • Conseulo Carreto Valencia, 61, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison - the maximum sentence - for forcing girls to work as prostitutes. In this rather tasteless article, the NY Daily News refers to her as a "mini-madam," due to her short stature. •  A Danish political party has fessed up to pasting yellow penis stickers all over the posters for opposing parties. "We admit we did it," said party Vice President Niels Andreasen. But it seems like their hilarious efforts paid off: "At first we figured we'd get around 200 votes. But now we've had 10,000 visitors to our Web site and we have 500 new Facebook friends." • Two cities in California have voted to outlaw the declawing of cats. Beverly Hills City Council and the Los Angeles City Council joined Santa Monica and San Francisco in the recent ban. •  A 20-year-old Somali woman was stoned to death for adultery in front of a crowd of 200 on Tuesday afternoon. She had recently been divorced, and was reportedly dating a 29-year-old man. He received 100 lashes for his part in the affair. • A research team from the UK found that almost 50% of women have a genetic variation which reduces their ability to produce vitamin A from beta-carotene. This may mean that up to half the women in England could be at risk for vitamin A deficiency. • Doctors believe that they may be able to use eggs donated by younger women to increase the chances of conception among older women. A team from Japan removed the nuclei from eggs of women undergoing IVF and injected them into eggs donated by women under 35. • The city of Sacramento, California has presented 18-year-old Margarita Vargas with an official proclamation, calling her decision to call the police after hearing about the brutal gang rape of a teen girl "a bold act of humanity." • Olivia Thomas, the oldest person in the U.S., died this week at the age of 114. Thomas was believed to be the third oldest person in the world at the time of her death. •  A police officer in Arkansas recently tasered a 10-year-old girl when she refused to get into his police car. The report says the stun was "very, very brief" and only used to bring the girl to a youth shelter. • It seems Brian Adams, the photographer who shot the picture of Sarah Palin in shorts for Runner's World violated his contract by reselling the photo to Newsweek. A spokeswoman for Runner's World said the picture was supposed to be under embargo until August 2010, and "Runner's World did not provide Newsweek with its cover image... It was provided to Newsweek by the photographer's stock agency, without Runner's World's knowledge or permission." A Newsweek spokesman responded, "We purchased the photo from an agency and were not aware of any issues with it." • Police say they're not filing any more charges in the murder of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis until it's decided which North Carolina county will handle the case. Her mother, Antoinette Davis, and Mario McNeill have already been arrested and charged with kidnapping and child abuse involving prostitution. • Katherine Sebelius addressed the confusion over new breast cancer screening recommendations saying, "The U.S. Preventive Task Force is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations... They do not set federal policy, and they don't determine what services are covered by the federal government... The Task Force has presented some new evidence for consideration but our policies remain unchanged. Indeed, I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action." • A 13-year-old boy in Alabama was arrested after he asked an undercover officer posing as a prostitute for sex. The officer says she tried to run him off more than once, but he insisted, so she had to arrest him. He was charged with a misdemeanor count of loitering while looking for a prostitute. • In its 2009 state of the world population report, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says the world's poor are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and most of the 1.5 billion people living on less than $1 a day are women. "Poor women in poor countries are among the hardest hit by climate change, even though they contributed the least to it," said UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. • Last month the U.K.'s Law Commission proposed that unmarried couples who live together for two years should be able to claim half of their partner's estate if they die without a will. Baroness Deech, chairman of the Bar Standards Board says, "Cohabitation law retards the emancipation of women, degrades the relationship, takes away choice, is too expensive and would extend an already unsatisfactory maintenance law for married couples to another large category," adding, "Women do not need and ought not to require to be kept by men after their relationship has come to an end." • British hedge fund manager Mark Lowe is being sued for sexual discrimination by female executive Jordan Wimmer because he repeatedly forwarded the office sexist emails. She confronted him when he sent around a dumb blonde joke. He said in court: "I didn't for a moment suppose anyone would take exception to a feeble joke of this sort. It was not directed against [Ms Wimmer]. The thought never occurred to me that she'd be offended." •

The final photo in the 7-image slide show features Palin posing jauntily in vaguely ill-fitting shorts and a red zip-up with one elbow resting carelessly on the flag, which has been draped over the back of a chair. Palin has clearly mastered the standard celebrity red carpet pose (one leg bent slightly, body tilted, hand on the hip, face at a slight angle), but for once, people are not talking about her short shorts or slight body. All attention is now on the colorful cloth prop, with the question: Is it wrong to treat the symbol of America is such a manner?


The left-leaning website Daily Kos weighs in on the possible flag controversy:

The moment I noticed the manner in which the flag had been positioned for the shoot, I had a moment of cognitive dissonance: here was a GOP governor who goes out of her way to make her patriotism an important part of her public appeal, engaging in treatment of the flag that is blatantly a faux pas, especially (but certainly not only) in many circles within the culture of the GOP base in which Palin's politics are rooted.

In order to prove the point, the Daily Kos writer looks up the official code of conduct with regards to the American flag. They most likely found this Wikipedia page, which specifies that the flag must never be "drawn back or bunched up in any way." Also, the flag should never "be used as 'wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery', or for covering a speaker's desk, draping a platform, or for any decoration in general (exception for coffins)," another rule that Palin has violated.

Andrew Sullivan from The Atlantic recently posted this picture, from the Palin Calendar for 2008, which was sent to him by a reader. The tipster writes:

In the summer of 1998, Monica Lewinsky did a photo shoot for Vanity Fair which had her pose provocatively with the American flag. Maureen Dowd was livid at the time ("There's something sickening about a young woman who vamps with the American flag, mocking her role as the silent center of a case that could bring down a president") and Walter Shapiro was still steaming about it months later ("She displayed execrable judgment in posing on a beach with an American flag for Vanity Fair. Her vanity duly engaged—as whose would not be?—Monica lacked the maturity to balk at the magazine's tasteless choice of props.")

Unsurprisingly, this is the sort of thing that is given a pass when it is done by members of the appropriate party, but treated as a capital offense when the other side tries it.

However, this sort of selective patriotism and outrage seems like it goes hand-and-hand with flag waving in general. Yesterday, Timothy Egan's New York Times blog delved into the politics of the flag, which has been recently embraced in blue states like California and New York, states that had been shying away from "overt displays of patriotism" in previous years. Now that Obama is president, Timothy Egan argues, the flag is making a comeback among the liberals, including the President himself, who has started wearing his flag pin on his lapel once more. Egan criticizes the "situational flag waving" that many seem to engage in, and mentions several instances of republican sore losers turning their backs on the red, white, and blue:

At the same time, in deep red states like Texas, where secession talk heated up in the first months of the Obama presidency, there has been a passionate public embrace of the vaunted Lone Star flag, symbol of independence dating to the days of the Republic of Texas. Incidentally, the blue in that flag stands for loyalty, as defined by state code.

In this cooling of nationalistic ardor, Texans are little different from those who felt left out during the previous eight years, including Obama. After George W. Bush won his second term, a Web retailer started selling "the official flag of the United Blue States of America," which had 20 stars – one for each of the 19 states, and the District of Columbia, that went Democratic in 2004.

According to this analysis, Palin should probably start posing with the Alaskan flag soon, else she falls behind red state trends.

Although the issue of the flag-used-as-prop has probably become the most interesting thing about Palin's Runner's World interview, there are a few other choice quotes included in the piece. Palin describes an embarrassing fall she suffered when running with the Secret Service on John McCain's ranch, shares her tips for running in the cold (layering), mentions briefly the origin of her son's name ("I named him Track for running"), and laughs at McCain's favorite form of exercise ("he said, 'I go wading,' Wading... That cracked me up"). Palin also issues a challenge to President Obama to come to Alaska and run against her. Even though she would never play him in basketball, since she doesn't want to lose to him again—"he towers over me and I wouldn't be complaining about an unfair advantage there, but..."—Palin admits she would like to run against Obama. "I betcha I'd have more endurance," she said.

I'm A Runner: Sarah Palin [Runner's World]
Palin Treats The American Flag Disrespectfully [Daily Kos]
United States Flag Code [Wikipedia]
The Flag And Palin [The Daily Dish]
The Other Palin Profile [Politico]
Palin: I'd Come Out Ahead In Run Against Obama [Brattleboro Reformer]
Capture The Flag [NYT]

Now there's nothing wrong with Disney sponsoring a race per se. But there is something creepy about rebranding athletic success as "a fairytale" that requires looking in the mirror. And about the phrase "Every woman is a princess, which princess are you?" — as though women have only a set number of identities to choose from. Most annoying of all, Disney appears to be trying to expand the definition of "princess" to include any girl or woman doing something awesome, which is not really a concept Disney should own. Stick with Snow White, Disney execs — stay away from the Marathon.

Princess Half Marathon [Official Site]
Runner's World [Official Site]

The skirts are now popular enough that they outsell women's capris, shorts, and pants at New Balance, and they have their own seven-city race, called the SkirtChaser. Even men get into the act.

Armstrong writes that "one of the best things about being a woman today is that we have so many options. Whether we are in the boardroom, on the home front, or on the starting line, we can bring it on like a man, but it doesn't mean we have to look like one." To my mind, however, the skirt option sucks. It doesn't help that Armstrong never mentions any real comfort advantage, or that she felt self-conscious the first time she put one on. It certainly doesn't help that Runner's World includes a skirt guide that looks pretty much like any ladymag's tips for hiding your figure flaws, including the "very slimming" New Balance Flare Skirt and the prAna Sugar Mini Skirt, whose name looks suspiciously similar to the phrase "pro-ana".

But my main objection to running skirts is best expressed in the sidebar "A Dissenting View," by Ginny Graves:

I couldn't quit thinking about The Skirt. It looks better than I usually do when I go running, but that was part of the problem; my "nice outfit" meaning more aware of my appearance — the last thing I want to be distracted by when running.

I don't want to look cute while kicking butt. I would like kicking butt (or "slowly flailing," which is what I actually do in the pool), to be one of the few activities in life when I'm exempted from looking cute. Then again, I'm not a runner. Those of you who do run, would you try a running skirt? Better yet, has anyone done so already?

The Rise of Skirt Culture: Skirt Reviews And Fit Tips [Runner's World]