"I think the physician's perspective is extremely important, and one that we don't hear too often in the media," actress and A Is For co-founder Martha Plimpton told Raw Story last night, as she surveyed a room of more than 30 abortion providers and their supporters. They had all gathered in a private location as part of the Physicians For Reproductive Choice And Health (PRCH) awards to honor two of their own.

GOOD Magazine, a quarterly journal and website dedicated to "pushing the world forward," has abruptly laid off almost its entire editorial staff.

At a House hearing on Thursday, members of Congress and representatives of two leading privacy rights groups concluded that they still know virtually nothing about a secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), originally intended to prevent the worst abuses of the Nixon administration from ever occurring again.

A gay Hispanic man and his partner in Gilbert, Arizona say that their family, which includes a disabled daughter, has been targeted with a series of hate crimes that amount to "terrorism" -- and they worry that the police are not taking their case seriously.

The campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has scrubbed its website of all mentions of its former top labor adviser, Peter Schaumber, following the resignation of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Terence Flynn, who is accused of leaking internal government documents to Schaumber in violation of federal law.

A group of atheists is suing Bradford County, Florida because they say a 6-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments has no place on the courthouse lawn.

Memorial Day -- first called Decoration Day -- got its start as holiday commemorating fallen soldiers at the end of the Civil War, according to Yale historian David Blight. In 1865, former slaves exhumed Union soldiers from a mass grave in Charleston, South Carolina on the site of that city's racetrack and buried them in individual graves. It was a ten-day project that ended in a day of celebration of the newly united nation, peace and freedom in which thousands of Charleston's African-American families gathered to decorate graves, pray, play games and picnic.

Frances Herbert and her Japanese spouse, Takako Ueda, got a welcome development this week in their efforts to force the United States to recognize their marriage and end efforts to deport Ueda this when the Citizenship and Immigration Service informed them that Ueda had been granted a "period of deferred action" for two years. Effectively, the government assured the couple that, barring any criminal activity by Ueda, they would end its efforts to deport her, and allow her to seek a driver's license and a work permit in the mean time.

Speaking to the seventh annual "International Conference on Climate Change" (ICCC) in Chicago on Wednesday, Heartland Institute CEO Joseph Bast revealed that "under 300" people attended this year, then begged those attendees for donations from their "rich uncle," admitting he's "not a good fundraiser" and that the group has struggled to meet its payroll.

The HMCS Iroquois sailed up the Hudson River and back against yesterday as part of New York's annual Fleet Week, and Raw Story was along for the ride. Click below to view the slideshow, with facts about the Iroquois, the reasons for its participation and the other ships that participated in the parade.

Cantankerous former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson (R) lashed out once again at another notable senior organization recently, calling their criticism of his recommendation for massive cuts to Social Security "bullshit."

Residents in Reidsville, North Carolina have begun receiving fliers inviting them to a May 26 Ku Klux Klan cross burning intended for "white people only."

A New Jersey General Assembly panel approved on Monday a bill that would lower the penalty for possessing a small amount of marijuana to a mere $150 fine for first-time offenders, essentially decriminalizing the drug by making possession a non-arrest offense.