Alice Paul and Lucy Burns

I recently got around to watching the HBO production of "Iron Jawed Angels." The movie focused on the woman's suffrage movement from 1913 to the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920 finally giving women the right to vote.

Two women highlighted in the movie were Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, true American heroes that most Americans have probably never even heard of. Both of these women, along with 216 other women suffragists, were thrown in jail in 1917 for "obstruction of traffic" and brutalized - some force-fed - while in jail.

What was that idiot Sara Palin saying on the campaign trail? Something to the effect that there has never been even ONE moment that she (and her supporters) has not been proud of America. If there truly is not even one moment that they have not been proud, and she isn't just LYING for political gain (ha!) then she is either ignorant or a sadist.

You can certainly be proud of individuals like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, but anyone who looks at the period will not be proud of the way that they were treated, and why it took so long for women to get the right to vote.

We have come so far America. We have seen so much. But we still have a long, long way to go.