Four quick hits, thanks to Rebekah over at the Women’s Media Center, below. To subscribe to the WMC’s daily newsfeed–which I highly recommend for those looking for a way to keep up with women-focused news headlines–click here. (And next roundup I post, I promise to include links!)

Woman Gains Silver Star — And Removal From Combat
Washington Post: In Afghanistan as well as Iraq, female soldiers are often tasked to work in all-male combat units — not only for their skills but also for the culturally sensitive role of providing medical treatment for local women, as well as searching them and otherwise interacting with them. Such war-zone pragmatism is at odds with Army rules intended to bar women from units that engage in direct combat or collocate with combat forces.

Women As Catalysts For Change: New Organization Starts Micro-Lending Fund
Fairfield University Mirror: Nine students and their professor have direct micro-lending to women entrepreneurs a reality by creating the Sustainable Equity for Women (SEW) Fund. The SEW Fund lends money to female entrepreneurs in developing countries to aid their business ventures.

Iranian Feminist Faces Lashings, Jail
Australian News: Iran has handed a feminist a suspended sentence of 10 lashes and six months in prison, the Kargozaran newspaper has reported, in the fourth such punishment for a women’s rights activist in Iran within weeks.

The Folly of McCain-Care
The New Republic: In just the last few weeks, this issue has started to become a political liability for McCain, thanks mostly to Elizabeth Edwards, who–in addition to being a well-known cancer patient–is also a well-known policy wonk.

(Image cred)

As MOMocrats aptly notes, the most recent debate between the Democratic candidates was disappointing to most of us, with questions again directed more towards mud slinging between the candidates rather than substantive issues about domestic and foreign policy. So the MOMocrats and their readers came up with a list of “Questions We Wish ABC Had Asked.” Then they submitted them to the candidates.

In a MOMocrats exclusive, Barack Obama answers the questions that should have been asked during the last debate. Click here to read the interview, in which “he finally gets to discuss the issues, not his apparel or acquaintances.”

Did HRC respond, does anyone know?

I may be late to the party on this one, but I just came across a blog called The Frisky, a sexy site–or, in their words, a “Venuszine”–for women highlighting women in music, art, film fashion, and DIY culture. The Frisky sent me an email (target marketing to feminist bloggers, and hey, it worked!) with links to some awfully misogynistic and creepy sexist ads, with their critique attached: “First we seriously question the Disney Push Bra. Does this fall under “soft” kiddie porn? And well we are speechless about this one.”

Do check em out–The Frisky.

Lots of people have been asking me about last weekend’s Council on Contemporary Families conference, which I blogged about here. For more coverage, check out the Chicago Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor. Veronica blogged a bit about our blogging workshop here. And if other GWP readers who attended happened to blog about the conference, please do post your links in comments, to share!

Veronica Arreola, blogger and blog mentor, alerts us over at Viva la Feminista to the way NARAL Pro-Choice America successfully launched a blog with integration on Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. For all your orgs out there, do check out the way they’ve navigated all three. It’s IMPRESSIVE! And inspiring too, for all of us still trying to figure out the ins and outs of Web 2.0. In Veronica’s words, “[G]o check out how NARAL Pro-Choice America is using blogging + social networking to = one kick ass feminist network.” What she said.

A hearty welcome to the blogosphere to Dr. Television, aka Elana Levine, a supersmart colleague of mine from my graduate school days at the University of Wisconsin. I blogged here earlier about Elana’s book, and I’m THRILLED that she’s thrown her voice into the blogpool, because this gal has got it going on.

Three random quick hits plus one titilating picture–under the general rubric of “women and popular culture”–before I head out for a morning jaunt this sunny Thursday morning:

Over at feministing, Courtney thanks Madonna (left). The queen of self-reinvention launches another album today, as covered in the NYTimes. At Salon, James Hannaham asks “Does Madonna Still Matter?” The article’s tagline reads: “On Hard Candy, the 49-year-old disco queen gracefully walks a tightrope between sex, motherhood and aging.” Um, that matters, to me anyway!

At Purse Pundit, Jacki Zehner muses on teachings from the First Lady of American Magazines, Cathie Black.

And Broadsheet sounds off on “The Hannah Montana Virginity Debate.”

Enjoy!

A shout out to Kathy LeMay, the genius behind Raising Change, for forwarding info about a great blogging opportunity for social change bloggers (or folks who want to be). Here’s the deal:

Apply to be a Blogger for Change.org!

Want to blog on an issue you are passionate about for an audience of hundreds of thousands of activists and nonprofit leaders?

Want to create the premier online space for your issue and become a leading voice for social action?

Change.org is launching a social action blog network this summer and is currently hiring a team of part-time bloggers/editors to help create a movement for change around the major causes of our time.

Each blogger will lead an online community focusing on a different social, political, or environmental issue, maintain a daily blog covering news and offering commentary, convene leading nonprofits and activists working on the issue, and help people translate their interests and passions into concrete action.

For more info, click here.

The image to the left comes courtesy of Catherine Morgan, who published a great list of 375 political women bloggers back in March. For more on that, check out Catherine’s The Political Voices of Women Blog.

So I didn’t know this til just now (whoops, bad Jew!), but May is Jewish American Heritage Month. And for this third annual celebration, the Jewish Women’s Archive is partnering with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) to launch This Day of Jewish American Heritage, a daily online feature that connects every day in May to significant moments in American Jewish history.

Not surprisingly, the month of May encompasses a broad range of achievements of American Jewish women including: 19th century stage performer Adah Isaacs Menken, Beverly Sills, Ayn Rand, Susan Sontag, labor activist Bessie Abramowitz Hillman, pioneering political advisor Belle Moskowitz, and comedian Gilda Radner. And, yes, the birth of The Settlement Cookbook–a book my mother gave me, if I recall, when she packed me off to college.

The Jewish Women’s Archive and JTA will be featuring This Day of Jewish American Heritage on their websites and are also offering its content as a badge (pictured left) that features each day’s historical event. This badge can be placed on your personal or organizational website/blog and will link back to the Jewish Women’s Archive’s website for a full description of each date’s event. Cool, huh? I had the chance to meet Judith Rosenbaum, Director of Education at the JWA, when I spoke in Cambridge earlier this month and she’s, as the kids say, the bomb. Love what they’re doing over there.

To find out more, contact Ari Davidow: adavidow@jwa.org, 617-383-6766.

Just wanted to share this pic of Mariam Chamberlain at her 90th birthday party with the young folk who worked with her over the years at the National Council for Research on Women. Amazing woman, I swear. (Thanks, Gwen, for taking pix!)