Another reason to love the new government

Peter Dunne is associate minister of privitising the health system, which obviously fills joy in the heart of all right thinking people.

That makes him associate minister in charge of women's bodies, which is almost as scary. I guess if Bill English was unsuccessful in using his position as minister of health to punish the evil sex having women, then Peter Dunne probably won't do much better - but it's a bit of a worry.

I've heard mumblings that there's an unwritten clause in Peter Dunne's deals - so Labour won't be making New Zealand's abortion law less ridiculous and hypocrtical (for those who don't know New Zealand's abortion laws were considered the most restrictive in the Western world when they were passed in 1977; they don't quite work as intended). If either side in parliament wanted a full on abortion debate we would have had one by now, but America has shown how many different ways you can fuck with women's reproductive rights without directly changing the law, so I'm nervous.

I've been vaguely folowing the supreme court stuff in America. To the surprise of no-one Harriet Miers, Bush's latest supreme court nominee, is anti-abortion and about as close to corporate America as NZCTU is to the Labour party. I'll just curl up and die from not surprisedness.

The religious right in America were opposing Harriet Miers, for reasons that seemed to amount to 'you can't trust those uppity women'. They really are batshit crazy, they can't keep their misogyny damped down long enough to get exactly what they want.