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| Purge Overkill - John Oliver & Florida's Voter Registration Law | ||||
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In the wake of the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted 5-3 on Friday to examine whether “stand your ground” laws across the country have a racial bias.
Commissioner Michael Yaki, a former aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, proposed the special investigation, saying it could answer timely questions about stand your ground legislation, which allows individuals to use force without retreating when there is a reasonable belief they are threatened. All four commissioners appointed by Democrats as well as Abigail Thernstrom, a George W. Bush appointee, voted in support of the investigation.
Staffers of the small federal agency, created through the Civil Rights Act of 1957, will look into how racial bias “may affect the operation of these laws — in the perceptions and motivations of perpetrators, in law enforcement investigation, in prosecution decisions, and in judicial outcomes.”
“Ultimately we need to know whether or not, all other factors being equal, the race of the victim or the perpetrator plays a role in determining the application of these laws,” Yaki said.
The Commission is supposed to be evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, but two Republican commissioners on the panel changed their affiliation to independent during the Bush administration to stack the board. When it was controlled by Republicans, the commission investigated the Justice Department’s handling of a voter intimidation case by members of the New Black Panther Party. The board regained its bipartisan balance last spring.
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| Summitspear trade entrance. Bridges can trap enemies in a killing zone, while three ballistas (southeast corner) will fire down the road through fortifications in the wall. |
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| This image is misleading. Only male dwarves are bearded (though that includes infants). |
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| A Dwarf Fortress titan? |
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| Typical dwarf behavior. |
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| Summitspear magma forges, smelters, and kilns, 161 stories underground. Note the minecart tracks (still under construction) leading up ramps at the bottom of the screen, starting the long journey up to the main fortress. There are natural caverns on both sides, and a magma sea directly underneath. |
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| Dwarf Fortress in a nutshell. |
For people who claim skepticism about the efficacy of government, many conservative Republicans are strangely optimistic about the effects legislation can have on the real world.
Concerned about the effects of climate? North Carolina will put those liberal oceans in their place by requiring scientists to change the way they report sea level projections. Worried about the decaying moral fabric of civilization? Tennessee has the answer with its "don't say gay" initiative. There's almost no issue that can't be solved by aggressively ignoring it.
One of Florida's problems appears to be the stunning regularity with which innocent people are convicted of capital crimes. Since 1973, 23 death row inmates have been exonerated in the state. Governor Rick Scott has a novel solution: Eliminate the judicially imposed Innocence Commission that has been active since 2009.
The Commission costs $200,000 to operate, an appropriation that Scott recently vetoed…
It's a puzzling decision from the governor, a favorite among Tea Party activists and limited government advocates. In a state with a $70 billion budget, the commission's funding is minuscule. Even if Scott is unconcerned about his state's history of imprisoning innocent people, his veto could cost Florida taxpayers in the long run. A 2011 study of 85 wrongful convictions in Illinois found that convicting and imprisoning the wrong person cost taxpayers $214 million. The actual perpetrators of those crimes went on to commit dozens of additional felonies, including 14 murders. Assuming the costs are similar in Florida, if the commission prevents just one wrongful conviction, it would fund itself for 12.5 years.
Fresh off a successful campaign for a referendum that eliminated civil unions for straight and gay couples alike, the North Carolina Republican party convened to draft a special message for the most put-upon segment of the Tar Heel state.
The It Gets Better message is right there in the party's platform, adopted over the weekend…
Government should treat all citizens impartially, without regard to wealth, race, ethnicity, disability, religion, sex, political affiliation or national origin. We oppose all forms of invidious discrimination. Sexual orientation is not an appropriate category.
Congratulations, wealthy people. How long must you wait to throw off the shackles of North Carolina's mildly progressive state income tax? Not long! How long must you wait for an education funding formula that funnels funds to affluent districts? Since that's the way education money is already allocated — Not long!
What really scares me is political consequences of this recession. Republicans have perfected an electoral strategy in which they almost never seem to be blamed for obstructing the economy to achieve their party’s electoral goals. That is terrifying. With no discussion of their role (or lack of it) in returning the economy to normal employment, the American electorate seems to have conceded that they just don’t care if one party tries to damage the economy for their own electoral gain. ...
I’m a cynic, but even I am stunned by this possibility. But it probably says a lot about what national decline might look like. I’ve never subscribed to those notions of decline that have been tossed around since the beginning of the Great Recession, certainly not of economic decline. The United States is richer than ever, and has been growing fairly rapidly for an industrialized economy going through a fiscal crisis. What scares me, though, is the possibility that Republicans have figured out an electoral strategy in which they are never held accountable for the results of their economic policies. The American people just assume they are the craven dissolute son of the family and still rejoice when the prodigal returns (to power that is).
I am hoping that the widespread demographic shifts over the next fifteen years will make this electoral strategy extinct. But that’s still the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is an America dominated by the Republican party even when they’re in the minority, even when voters have picked the other team, as it were. This seems wildly out of line with what’s happened in American politics over the past century. I’m worried this is the real change brought about by the Great Recession.
You know enough political history to recall that Roosevelt generation of Democrats hung the name of Herbert Hoover around the necks of their political opponents for a generation after 1932. Reagan-era Republicans did the same, for a shorter period of time and less dramatically, with the name of Jimmy Carter after 1980. It’s not the Republicans’ fault — or the product of any Republican “strategy” — that the President who was more unpopular for longer than any President since the invention of modern opinion polling was allowed to vanish without a trace by January 22, 2009.
George W. Bush’s invisibility, and the profoundly Bush-like Mitt Romney’s lack of any public identity as a “Bush Republican,” were the product of Democratic choices. So was the inadequate stimulus package at the beginning of 2009 that ensured a crushing recession that began under a Republican administration would not draw an effective government response under a Democratic administration. So was the disappearance from memory of the politicized, demoralized Justice Department of Alberto Gonzales, and the inept, crony-laden FEMA leadership that had let New Orleans drown. ...
Choices made by Obama and his Democratic allies were what they were. It is perhaps evident that I regard most of them as mistakes with respect to policy substance, but for our purposes here what matters is that they were political mistakes. In the simplest English I know: the United States does not make a black man President of the United States unless Americans have decided a huge change from what they had before is necessary.
The story of Saul and the Amalekites is ... not a pretty story, and it is often used by people who don't intend to do pretty things. In the book of 1 Samuel (15:3), God said to Saul:
"Now go, attack the Amalekites, and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."
Saul dutifully exterminated the women, the children, the babies and all of the men – but then he spared the king. He also saved some of the tastier looking calves and lambs. God was furious with him for his failure to finish the job.
The story of the Amalekites has been used to justify genocide throughout the ages. According to Pennsylvania State University Professor Philip Jenkins, a contributing editor for the American Conservative, the Puritans used this passage when they wanted to get rid of the Native American tribes. Catholics used it against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics. "In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu preachers invoked King Saul's memory to justify the total slaughter of their Tutsi neighbors," writes Jenkins in his 2011 book, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses (HarperCollins).
This fall, more than 100,000 American public school children, ranging in age from four to 12, are scheduled to receive instruction in the lessons of Saul and the Amalekites in the comfort of their own public school classrooms. The instruction, which features in the second week of a weekly "Bible study" course, will come from the Good News Club, an after-school program sponsored by a group called the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). The aim of the CEF is to convert young children to a fundamentalist form of the Christian faith and recruit their peers to the club. ...
Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads:
"The Amalekites had heard about Israel's true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment."
The instruction manual goes on to champion obedience in all things. In fact, pretty much every lesson that the Good News Club gives involves reminding children that they must, at all costs, obey. If God tells you to kill nonbelievers, he really wants you to kill them all. No questions asked, no exceptions allowed.
The CEF wants to operate in the public schools, rather than in churches, because they know that young children associate the public schools with authority and are unable to distinguish between activities that take place in a school and those that are sponsored by the school.
In the majority opinion that opened the door to Good News Clubs, supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas reasoned that the activities of the CEF were not really religious, after all. He said that they could be characterized, for legal purposes, "as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint".
As Justices Souter and Stevens pointed out in their dissents, however, the claim is preposterous: the CEF plainly aims to teach religious doctrines and conduct services of worship. Thomas's claim is particularly ironic in view of the fact that the CEF makes quite clear its intent to teach that no amount of moral or ethical behavior (pdf) can spare a nonbeliever from an eternity in hell.
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| Marine general (from Republican Party training documents) |
Constantly looking for new ways to destroy all that is well and good with America, hippies have recently taken to disguising themselves as top ranking military brass. Out are Birkenstocks and hemp skirts, in are polished shoes and chestfuls of distinguished service medals.
But have no fear, Republican members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, and a few Democratic allies, are wise to these tricks. The conservative magazine Human Events explains…
The Senate markup of the 2013 National Defense Appropriations Act late last month dealt a grave blow to the liberal green agenda that has taken hold of the Defense Department.
Like the version of the bill that passed the Republican-controlled House, the Senate version censures military plans to invest heavily in costly biofuels to power ships and aircraft…The Democratic-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee voted 13-12 in late May to include two amendments sponsored by Inhofe and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would prohibit the military from purchasing alternative fuel in the next fiscal year if it cost more than traditional fuel sources.
It's the military-green energy industrial complex Dwight Eisenhower didn't warn us about!
I guess it's worth offering up the generals' and admirals' side of the story, since they're the "experts" on security policy, so here goes: The military isn't interested in renewable energy because they speak for the trees, they're invested in green technology because it helps them to blow shit up while reducing the risk of their own soldiers getting blown up.
The Army's investment in energy efficient tents and trailers? It has something to do with the reality that oil tankers have a nasty habit of coming under enemy fire as they traverse the scenic byways of Central Asia on their way to forward operating bases in Afghanistan. For those bad at math, fewer tanker trips = less American casualties.
The Marines' interest in solar panels? Has to do with the fact that Marines operate in small units, away from resupply points, and carrying pounds of batteries reduces the amount rations, weapons and ammunition that can brought to bear on the bad guys.
With this is mind, do we think that the Navy is invested in biofuels because a) diesel makes baby Al Gore cry, or b) because the ability to make algal biofuel while underway reduces the need for port visits where U.S. warships are especially vulnerable, a la the U.S.S. Cole?
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Sink or Swim | ||||
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| See? No evil! |
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| Exclusive - Norman J. Ornstein & Thomas E. Mann Extended Interview Pt. 2 | ||||
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There has been a prevalent view among scientists that skeptics of climate change and its ramifications would come around if they understood the facts, says Dan Kahan of Yale Law School. But studies by his group and others have shown that cultural factors can strongly influence what people accept as truth about certain technical issues. ...
The data show that on climate change issues, “cultural identity is what is disposing people to find evidence convincing or not,” Kahan says. And “the study shows this divide only gets bigger, for ordinary people, when they become better able to understand science.”
The findings point to the steep uphill challenge for advocates of climate science and policy to broadly communicate risks, says political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In fact, some of the most science-literate critics will listen to experts only to generate compelling counterarguments, he says.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Communist Central | ||||
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| Communist Central - Obama's Socialist Scheme | ||||
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