Jody Allard

After sorting through all of the reasons why people claim that dress codes are needed, I can't find a single one that holds any weight or that isn't founded in strangely Victorian ideals about girl's bodies.

Former President Jimmy Carter announced that his most recent scans showed no evidence of cancer, and he may owe his rapid response to science.

It took five years for my daughter to be diagnosed with autism. There were dozens of red flags, beginning from the time she was about 10 months old, but her pediatrician always told me that she was fine. "She made eye contact with me," she reassured me. "She can't be on the spectrum." Besides, most children with autism, she reminded me, are boys.

". . . it is illegal to sell fetal tissue, but it is perfectly legal to receive compensation for the time and expense involved in collecting, preparing, storing, and transporting tissue for research purposes. This is well-established in the rules and regulations surrounding organ and tissue donation. Similar regulations also make it illegal to sell children, but legal to compensate parents for medical care and expenses incurred during an adoption."

Amber Scorah's son Karl was three months old when she dropped him off at his first day of daycare. When she returned two and a half hours later to breastfeed him on her lunch break, he was dead.

Once upon a time, a band of heavily-armed men decided to take over an Oregon federal building. Because they were white, the Feds didn't shoot them in 12 seconds, and nobody even really did anything about it. (Possibly also because these intrepid defenders of our Constitution decided to seize a bird sanctuary.)

"However, if you've ever met a teenager, you know that roughly 75% of them will never willingly walk into the school nurse's office and ask about birth control. But, even if they do, they still won't necessarily know which form is best for them, and they certainly won't be given the advice they need to dump that player and move on already. That's where us parents come in. Except, of course, that half of our kids won't talk to us about the ins and outs of sex and relationships."

I know what autism looks like, and I understand why people are afraid of it because, at its worst moments, it is desperately, terribly ugly — it is children who can’t communicate, who become adults who are unable to live independently, and who simply cannot cope with the onslaught of sensory input that we barely notice. It is meltdowns that are triggered by nothing and everything, learning difficulties, and services that cost our healthcare system billions of dollars every year.

Former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole endorsed Jeb Bush for president today, leaving the world scratching their heads and expressing their surprise that Dole is actually still alive.

I wish that we inhabited the world Williams’ image depicts, where women can wear bodysuits and high heels and be considered powerful. But if I ventured into the comments I know what I would find: men saying they want to fuck her, women telling her to put some clothes on, and at least one thinly-veiled rape threat. She wants to be fucked, they will say, with her legs open and waiting. Her power and poise will become an invitation to overpower her.