If you’ve been following the saga, this news is particularly welcome. From the Daily Kos:

… there was an even bigger loser last night — the anti-choice extremists who couldn’t even support a radical anti-abortion law in South Dakota. This wasn’t California or Massachusetts or New Jersey or New York or Illinois voting. It was one of the most conservative states in the nation.
Yet the voters in South Dakota, by a double-digit margin 55-45, declared that government should not stick its nose in doctors’ offices.
It cost our side about $2 million to wage the battle, but that may been the best $2 million it has spent since Roe v. Wade was fought. Unlike Roe, this was a decision by the people, in a referendum, and the results were loud and clear. They are unambiguous.
The people of this nation believe in choice. And those who would strip those rights away?
They are out-of-touch extremists.

If you, like me, are crossing your fingers for a Democratic victory tonight, this list of when polls in key states close might be useful (courtesy of the BBC):

0000 GMT: Virginia and Indiana
0030 GMT: Ohio
0100 GMT: Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Missouri, Maryland, Illinois, Florida, Connecticut
0200 GMT: Texas, South Dakota, Rhode Island, New York, Minnesota, Colorado
0300 GMT: Montana
0400 GMT: California

So, as I haven’t got tomorrow off work (an oversight on my part!) I reckon it’ll be the Virginia exit polls before I go to sleep, then up at 5 or 6ish. BBC News 24 doesn’t go live to the US until 3am, but for the first time, I reckon this election will be one where it’s better to be sat in front of a computer than trying to stay up-to-date on telly.

I particularly want to see Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania ground into the dust tonight, even if the Democrat challenger isn’t all we could have hoped for. More detail about my attachment to Pennsylvania here.

Update: News 24 is live already, and by the backdrop, Matt Frei who’s anchoring it is stood on a balcony overlooking Benjamin Franklin Parkway in central Philadelphia - not far from where I was working two years ago, on an unhappy night…

Update 2, 23.55: I’m finding it really odd sat at home watching TV on an election night - it’s been years since I last did this. Okay, so as I’m sat hitting refresh on the variety of US blogs I read, I’m glad that some people can be spared to write blog posts, otherwise it would just be the shouty TV pundits to keep me occupied. What I don’t understand is why there are people commenting on those blog posts whilst polls are still open in the US… don’t they realise that that’s not how you win elections?!

A few days ago, I got an email from my friends in Philadelphia, Naomi and Rie, asking if I wanted to come and stay in their spare room and join the campaign to get a Democrat elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania. Even though the Democrat in question, Bob Casey Jr, is a lacklustre centrist anti-choice candidate, it was still a tempting offer, as he’s running against one of those gods and guns Republicans, and I’d love a change of pace right now… But I can’t take time off work at the moment, so I’m spending time with the political ads database (”I’m Josephine Bloggs, and I approve this message” - they really do say it! Just like on the West Wing!) and with the revamped electoral-vote.com.

This is unbelieveable - and makes me glad that the rightwing UK blogosphere does fluffy things like compiling charts of bloggers.

Bill Clinton meets a selection of leftwing bloggers to discuss issues and organising online. He has particular reason to be grateful to them, following the cutting of sections of a docu-drama about the terrorist threat before 9/11 which, had it been broadcast uncut, would have severely libelled him and his handling of Al-Qaida as president. Following reports of the meeting online and in the press, what do the rightwing blogosphere in the US focus on? The physical attributes of one of the bloggers in a photo of the event. The breasts in question belong to Jessica Valenti…

I was in hospital watching daytime telly, as you do, when they stopped broadcasting whatever antiques show it was, and started to run a live feed from New York. Not two days before I’d had a biopsy for suspected bone cancer, and was fresh with the relief that it was only a bone infection. All day, the nurses and orderlies kept stopping by, hovering in the centre of the four-bed ward to watch the news. At one point I was taken away and given gas and air while they inserted a line into my chest for intravenous antibiotics, having exhausted all the veins in my hands and arms. Coming back, I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating or not - I’ve never had a particularly good reaction to anaesthetic.

I don’t remember any of the newspaper headlines from the next day, although I’ve seen them on the internet since, as by the time the newspaper man pushed his trolley into my ward, everything had been bought apart from the books of crossword puzzles.

An extended recovery period at home, visited daily by the district nurse, gave me plenty of time to watch the coverage as shock gave way to human tragedy, and human tragedy to the hunt for those responsible.

An acquaintance of mine, now a civil servant at DfES, wrote to the Guardian about how it had become fashionable to speak of solidarity again following the attacks.

I didn’t grow up in a political family. I barely remember the Berlin Wall coming down, and had no idea of its significance. I didn’t see Nelson Mandela walk free. But I was 21, and 9/11 happened in real time in front of me. I don’t really remember what politics was like before it.

Good to see that the UK Life League’s nasty tactics against anyone who advocates access to SRE and abortion services have been exposed in the Guardian.

In other abortion related news, via Dragonballyee, the president of the Oglala Sioux tribe, Cecilia Fire Thunder, a former nurse, has announced:

To me, it is now a question of sovereignty… I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.

So, that law to ban abortion that the South Dakota legislature were considering? They’ve passed it.

What happens next? My understanding is this: Planned Parenthood challenge it, so a federal appeal court judge suspends the affect of the law until her judgement is made. Whoever loses at that stage (Planned Parenthood or the State of South Dakota) is likely to take it to the Supreme Court, which is where Bush’s recent appointees get their say. If they rule that South Daokota has the right to determine its own laws about abortion, that’s when the fun begins, as they have said that the federal government does not have competence to set national abortion law. It doesn’t result in an outright ban: it results in battles in every state legislature in the country. Some states will keep their abortion rights, and some won’t.

Terrible news for the day before International Women’s Day.

From the Washington Post, on laws about emergency contraception:

More than 60 bills have been filed in state legislatures already this year, and that follows an already busy 2005 session on emergency contraception. The resulting tug of war is creating an availability map for the pill that looks increasingly similar to the map of “red states” and “blue states” in the past two presidential elections — with increased access in the blue states and greater restrictions in the red ones.
… some bills would make it more difficult for many women to get emergency contraception, which is effective for only 72 hours after a woman experiences a contraceptive failure or unprotected sex. Legislation in New Hampshire, for instance, would require parental notification before the drug is dispensed.

Could there be a clearer demonstration that the radical right aren’t concerned with “parents’ rights” or any of that nonsense, but about stopping women getting emergency contraception?

From the BBC:

A US state legislature has approved a bill to ban most abortions, in a move aimed to force the US Supreme Court to reconsider its key ruling on the issue.
The South Dakota draft law - which needs approval by the governor, known to be against abortion - seeks jail for doctors who perform terminations.
Exceptions will be made if a woman’s life is at risk, but not for rape.

Got to be the first of many, I would have thought. Here’s what happens next: Planned Parenthood or NARAL pro-choice America or someone challenges the validity of this law at the State Supreme Court. No matter their decision, it will go to the federal circuit court of appeals, and probably to the Supreme Court. So the tax dollars of the good people of South Dakota will be spent funding a politically-motivated challenge to established law in a bid to close the ONE clinic that performs abortions in the entire state. I hope they’re happy with that.

So, this is now the book review blog. I spent some time in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in autumn 2004, as part of a Labour team working for Kerry Edwards. Since then I’ve kept an interested eye on goings-on in the city and the state, with the hope of returning there soon. I even occasionally cast a wistful eye at the masters programmes at the University of Pennsylvania, and sigh as I accept it’s not going to happen - responsibilities and ambitions here, and no chance of getting the sort of overdraft any sort of degree at an Ivy League demands. So I content myself with reading some Philly-based blogs (such as Albert’s) and hoping to return for a holiday, even if it’s just another working holiday. Recently I saw on the Oxblog a post about a young reporter for the Philadelphia Enquirer who had taken a year off journalism to teach twelve-year-olds at the bottom-ranked school in the city. She’d written her experiences up in The Emergency Teacher; my copy arrived on Thursday from Amazon.

As Christina Asquith herself says:

I had never taught before. At 25, I had just finished a two-year internship as a newspaper reporter with The Philadelphia Inquirer, and was considering my next step when this article appeared: “The city still short 1,200 new teachers.” I applied, and six weeks later found myself in a classroom at Julia de Burgos Bilingual Middle Magnet School, facing 33 students—without a clue what to do.

“The Emergency Teacher” is the true story of the ten months that followed. It is my personal journey, from a privileged upbringing to the concrete ghettos of the heroin ravaged “Badlands” of North Philly. It tells the story of a year inside the Philadelphia School System, a $1.6 billion effort that fails to give thousands of students even a teacher, program or single lesson, and then churns them on to the next grade. It is the lessons I learn, as I reach out to students like Ronny, who struggles on the cusp between learning to read or dropping out forever; Vanessa, a class queen whose beauty offers her an easy route to money that threatens her dreams of being a writer; Big Bird, a resilient 13 year old who must leap over endless obstacles to get into high school, and Jovani, a mentally troubled 13-year old, so mishandled by the school system that he has turned against it. These are students most consider too tough to teach. [...]

From the first day of school, I find the hopes and dreams that inspired me into the classroom are challenged by these realities of the job, and the unwillingness of the administration to stand up for what is right if it means risking their jobs. Mine is the challenge of all new teachers, of which there are tens of thousands each year. I study the rising phenomenon of untrained teachers; and explore the quintessential question of my generation: Can one person truly make a difference against a system as poisoned by politics, bureaucracy and societal ills as our nation’s inner city public schools? What does it even mean to make a difference?

Whilst I’m not sure this book was as tightly-written as it could perhaps have been, the story of Christina’s year in a dilapidated building, thrown into teaching without training, curriculum, teaching schedule or peer support, was gripping. I was incredulous at the administrative failure of the city’s education system and the school management, where any progress was thwarted by a lack of funding produced when education is the sole responsibility of local taxpayers in the ninth poorest city in the US, and antiquated and communalist employment practices that even I, trade unionist and daughter of an NUT member, could see preserved the careers of appalling teachers.

Raised in the tradition of the Hollywood movie where the teacher enters a scene of poverty and deprivation, whether of the body or the spirit - you know the archetype: new teacher on the block; opening misunderstandings or stumble; minor stumble resolved; trust is built; major misunderstanding or stumble; great effort but for the moment it appears that all is lost; determination and mutual trust unite to produce achievement and happy endings all round - I thought this book would be Dangerous Minds, taken out of wherever-it-was-set, with no Coolio soundtrack, but the same trumphant end. Instead (and I’m sorry to give away the ending), Christina is defeated by the system and whilst some of the children, two years later at 14, move on to high school, others have dropped out to work for their families or to start families of their own.