With domestic and global attention turned to the financial crisis and the last four weeks of the race for the White House, the Bush administration is taking the opportunity to quietly check off some nefarious boxes in its efforts to spread the American culture wars beyond our shores.

Last week, the UK-based Marie Stopes International, which fairly calls itself "one of the world's leading family planning institutions", received a letter leaders of the organisation had been both dreading and expecting since June. Penned by Kent Hill, assistant administrator at USAID's bureau for global health, it dropped an anvil.

In light of the restrictions on USAID assistance and MSI's work as the major implementing partner of [the UN Population Fund]'s programme in China, which supports China's family planning programme, USAID has concluded that it is not appropriate for MSI to receive USAID funded contraceptives and/or condoms from host country governments.

The reason? The Kemp-Kasten Amendment. The so-called global gag rule that restricts any family planning organisation that even mentions abortion. Since 2002, the Bush administration has cited Kemp-Kasten in its annual decision to withhold our $39.7m in yearly dues from the UN Population Fund.

The impact? In his letter USAID's Hill went on to say that countries working with Marie Stopes International (MSI) had been instructed, effective immediately, to no longer work with MSI. At least six African countries will lose MSI's distribution of crucial USAID-supplied contraceptives and condoms in rural and remote areas and urban slums. The nations affected include Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, countries for whom MSI currently covers some 25% of contraceptive distribution.

...Read full article

Sue Nace thought election volunteers were joking when they told her she would have to remove her T-shirt to vote in the US presidential primary last spring.

But it was no laughing matter to the poll workers-turned-fashion police, who said Nace's Barack Obama shirt was inappropriate electioneering and made her cover the writing.

Now, a political fight over what voters can wear to the polls is headed to court in Pennsylvania, the Republican Party favouring a dress code, the Democrats opposed.

The political showdown was triggered by a Pennsylvania Department of State memo advising counties last month that voters' attire doesn't matter as long as the voter takes no additional action to attempt to influence other voters. Because the memo is not legally binding, some counties have kept past restrictions on clothing and political buttons.

But two Pittsburgh elections officials brought a court action to have the memo rescinded. Their lawsuit warned that if the memo stands, nothing would prevent a partisan group from synchronising a battalion of like-minded individuals... to descend on a polling place, presenting a domineering, united front, certain to dissuade the average citizen who may privately hold different beliefs.

The Denver police union is selling T-shirts that poke fun at protesters at last month's Democratic National Convention, but the main target isn't laughing.

The back of the shirts reads, We get up early to beat the crowds and 2008 DNC, and has a caricature of a police officer holding a baton.

The front has the number 68 with a slash through it, a reference to the Recreate 68 Coalition, which organized several demonstrations during the convention.

Recreate 68 organizer Glenn Spagnuolo called the shirt appalling and tasteless.

Detective Nick Rogers, a member of the Police Protective Association board, said police often issue T-shirts to commemorate big events. Rogers said each Denver officer was given one of the shirts free and others are on sale for $10 each at police union offices. He said the union expects to sell about 2,000 of them. Rogers said he hadn't received any previous complaints about the shirts.

Police arrested 154 people before and during the Democratic convention. There were few reports of violence. In once incident, an officer was videotaped pushing a protester to the ground with his baton and telling her, Back up, bitch.

The district attorney declined to prosecute the officer, saying the woman had disobeyed warnings to back away and had grabbed the officer's baton.

A kindergarten teacher, James Perry, accused of raping two young boys is a free man after prosecutors dropped the case against him citing numerous inconsistencies and other factors.

The case against Perry was shaky from the start and juries through a series of trials and retrials didn't find it sufficiently convincing. So prosecutors got a little constructive with the evidence:

At one point, Assistant Prosecutor Andrea Dean tried to argue that movies found in Perry’s home, like Star Wars, the Harry Potter films and Little House on the Prairie, constituted non-erotic pornography.

The judge thankfully ruled the videos irrelevant and refused to let the jury hear that argument.