An amendment is not law until the Secretary of State says so, upon receiving and approving the last requisite ratification document.  And those documents can be in error; for example, the one from Illinois was rejected, or it would have been the first state to ratify, as it voted an hour sooner than the next state to ratify the same day (June 10, 1919, six days after passage by the Senate, the second time around, after the House had rejected it again in 1918 -- and a harrowing vote it was in 1919, won by only a handful of votes including a Senator sent by his wife on her deathbed; he returned home in time for her funeral).

So the state that voted an hour later, on a document carefully drafted by women to be correct, won the honor of first official ratification: Wisconsin.

And then the long, agonizing struggle began for the rest of the required ratifications -- down to the wire, yes, in Tennessee . . . where the antis waged a terribly devious and corrupt campaign.  So it won by only one vote, cast by a young new legislator, because he got a note from his mother that morning begging him to switch to support suffrage so that she could vote before she died.

We know that the right likes to rewrite history, and so do the media, but this is just ridiculous.

How is the New York Times going to handle the annual news release from the White House next week, when the President declares August 26 as Women's Equality Day yet again to honor the 19th Amendment?  Will the New York Times report that Obama must be wrong?

It was not.

It was the anniversary of the last requisite ratification.

That is not the same as an amendment becoming law.  Not until the Secretary of State receives and certifies the ratification . . . which was on August 26.

This is a generation that has not been taught deferred gratification.  This is a generation that has been taught by teevee shows that take only 22 minutes (minus commercials) and by teevee news soundbytes that change can come overnight.

Heck, this is the generation that believed the current president could create change overnight.

This generation, then, needs to learn from the reformers of the past that change is incremental -- and that to win it, every excruciating step must be anticipated.  Or, like reformers in past who failed, they will get snookered by those who know how to pervert the process and win, instead.

Your self serving "collective" eye is nothing but a lynch mob composed of bigots and racists.

It's also a lot easier/faster to get certain types of aid to Haiti.  Pakistan is much further away, I think it's not on the forefront of people's minds.

And yes, the fact that not only are we actively bombing them but frankly, a lot of them are actively bombing us.  So there will probably be some amount of hesitation in handing over money.

Personally, I think now is the time we should be handing out money.  If they see us as a force for good in a time of crisis it could go a long way.

Ironically the admin agrees with me.  I guess they just think they can do it for less.

Also from the article, just as an fyi for anyone who's interested, similar to the Haiti event:

"Americans can donate $10 by texting the word "SWAT" to 50555, with the donations going to a United Nations organization that is providing tents and emergency aid to displaced families."