National

Alabama misses out on list of worst places in America to have a vagina →

Jezebel.com has released their “Ten Scariest Places to Have Ladyparts in America,” a list of the places you don’t want to be if your body includes a vagina.

What do we have to do to make this list, Jezebel?

And Alabama wasn’t on it.

And the entire state of Mississippi was!

Hey Jezebel, what do we have to do to get recognized for the way we treat women? Our clinic gets bombed, and then, 14 years later, we try and close it. We’re almost fine with shoving probes in women against their will, and our Republican leadership calls concerns about that bill “silly.” One state senator thinks abortion is more important than, you know, the budget (if you don’t agree, then you’re ‘less educated’) even when his constituents clearly aren’t of the same opinion.

Much of that in just the last year. Hell, most of that in just this legislative session.

Is the rest of the country so messed up on women’s reproductive rights that Alabama doesn’t make the list?

Really?

Let’s say it all together now:

THANK GOD FOR MISSISSIPPI!

Unauthorized Mexican immigration to the U.S. slows to neutral →

Mexicans are not crossing into the United States illegally nearly as much as they once did, and many Mexicans who were in the U.S. illegally have returned home, according to a Pew Hispanic Center study released on Monday.

Pew’s study found that there were 900,000 fewer unauthorized Mexican immigrants in the U.S. in 2011 than there were in 2007. The Christian Science Monitor, which reported on the study, attributed the drop primarily to a struggling economy in the U.S., increased deportations under President Barack Obama’s administration, border violence and Mexico’s shifting demographics.

“About 1.4 million Mexicans left the U.S. between 2005 and 2010, double the number who did so a decade earlier,” CSM reported. “In the meantime, the number of Mexicans who entered the U.S. sharply fell to about 1.4 million, putting net migration from Mexico at a standstill.”

Read much more at the Christian Science Monitor.

Feds file criminal charges in BP oil spill →

Well, happy belated anniversary, Deepwater Horizon disaster!

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig on fire in 2010. The rig's explosion caused the death of 11 people.

Just four days after the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, the U.S. Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against a former BP engineer, Kurt Mix, for obstruction of justice.

USA Today reports that Mix is accused of deleting hundreds of text messages with a supervisor regarding failure in BP’s early attempts to cap the blown-out oil well on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.

Mix’s messages indicated that BP’s early, public estimate of the oil flow — 5,000 barrels a day — was short by about 10,000 barrels per day. He faces 20 years in prison.

BP is cooperating with the investigation.

Read much, much more at USA Today.