Category: Civil Rights

Insert South Carolina Joke Here

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No, this is not The Onion.

You have a Lt. Governor who thinks that nutritious lunches for poor children is like feeding strays, a governor who has forever ruined the idea of hiking the Appalachian trail, and is now asking for the stimulus money that he refused, and now the South Carolina lege has passed a law requiring that people who wish to overthrow the United States government pay a fee and get a license for the privilege:

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina’s Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” passed last year and now officially on the books, states that “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.”

There’s even a $5 filing fee.

By “subversive organization,” the law means “every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State.”

The interesting thing here is that it appears to me that this definition might very well apply to any number of the more rabid Confederate heritage groups.

The members of the South Carolina legislature had better find someone to cut their meat, because if we allow them to handle knives, it will get very ugly.

[on edit]
It appears that the definitive word on the state was made in 1860, following the vote for secession, by Congressman James Petigru, “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”

Obama Goes to “National Prayer Breakfast”

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So, he showed up to the little bit of Christian Dominionism run by “The Family”, though he did condemn the “kill the gays” bill in Uganda.

I have no word yet on whether the Ugandan genocidal manics David Bahati, author of the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill, and Ugandan Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, one of its chief supporters, were in attendance, though they had intended to until this entire thing blew up.

I also think that any politician who associates with “The Family” to any degree is doing this country a great harm.

Anti-Abortion Terrorist Convicted of Murder

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The Jury deliberated only 37 minutes before convicting him of 1st degree murder, which means that they basically voted to convict while waiting to get into the jury room:

In a trial that never became the referendum on abortion that some abortion foes wanted, Scott Roeder, a 51-year-old airport shuttle driver, was convicted today of murdering George Tiller, one the nation’s few physicians who performed late-term abortions.

The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for only 37 minutes. Roeder faces life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder.

Roeder also was convicted on two counts of aggravated assault for threatening to shoot church ushers Keith Martin and Gary Hoepner as he fled Reformation Lutheran Church after murdering Tiller.

This guy needs to be prosecuted under federal statutes too, and locked up under the most severe restrictions possible at the SuperMax until he breaks, and gives up his accomplices, because it’s clear that they wound him up, and pointed him at tiller.

OK, I Didn’t Live Blog the SOTU

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Though thankfully, because of my Eastern European Jewish heritage, I have no hangover.

That being said, I watched, and drank every time he cock-punched the DFH’s,* so most of my thoughts are probably not that valuable, or coherent.

That being said, he did call for the repeal of the Military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, and now Valerie Jarrett is saying that he is, “committed to getting it done.”

Now, let’s see what happens when Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman get all pissy about it.

See video (11:35, and the interview with Jarret starts at about 3:05, and the exchange on DADT is at about 10:45)

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.

I Can’t Believe That I am Saying This

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This is Cindy McCain In a Pro-Gay Marriage Ad

But, I offer my support and congratulations to Cindy McCain, yes, that Cindy McCain, John McCain’s wife:

Sen. John McCain’s wife Cindy McCain is the newest face of a pro-gay marriage campaign.

Posing with tape over her mouth and a “NOH8” logo on her face, Cindy McCain was photographed for the NOH8 Campaign, which protests Proposition 8, the California proposition passed in 2008 banning same-sex marriage. The proposition is currently being challenged in federal court.

McCain approached the campaign herself about her participation, the NOH8 Web site says. She has spoken out on behalf of gay rights before, though this is perhaps her most prominent show of support for the issue.

Now that she realizes that John McCain will never be President, she’s doing the right thing.

Better late than never.

(A big of meta: I am not using my “John Sidney McCain III” tag because Cindy is more than just an extension of her husband.)

Google Mans Up On China

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Google set up a Chinese search page, Google.cn, in 2006 to accommodate the censorship demands of the Chinese government.

At the time, it said that it would, “carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services.,” and thatif it determined that it was, “unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

Well, it’s reconsidered its approach, and it is telling the government of China to go Cheney itself.

The proximate cause appears to be sophisticated, and repeated efforts by the Chinese government to hack the Gmail accounts of Chinese democracy activists, as well as similar, and pervasive attempts to hack other businesses with similar goals.

The money phrase is this:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

They just gave the Chinese government 3 weeks to shut them down.

It is possible that this may be a game of chicken, as is the case with Google news and AP stories, but I am inclined to doubt this.

If they have any understanding of China at all, they must understand that this public statement, and the associated loss of face for the Chinese authorities should they accede to Google’s demands, will result in the shuttering of their site, and their operations, in China.

Full statement after the break:

A new approach to China
1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM
Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve’s blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

Kansas Judge Declares Open Season on Gynecologists

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Sedgwick County Judge Warren Wilbert has ruled that Scott Roeder may present to the jury a defense that his actions were “justifiable homicide”, which carries a 5 year sentence:

”This judge has basically announced a death sentence for all of us who help women,” said Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, Colo., a longtime friend of Tiller who also performs late-term abortions. ”That is the effect of the ruling.”

Dr. Hern is 100% correct

The facts of the case are not in dispute: On a balmy Sunday morning, Roeder got up from a pew at Wichita’s Reformation Lutheran Church at the start of services and walked to the foyer, where Tiller and a fellow usher were chatting around a table. Wordlessly, he pressed the barrel of a .22-caliber handgun to Tiller’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

Prosecutors charged Roeder with first-degree murder, and the 51-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., later admitted to reporters and in a court filing that he killed Tiller. The prosecution stands ready with more than 250 prospective witnesses to prove it.

But what had been expected to be a simple trial was altered Friday when Sedgwick County Judge Warren Wilbert decided he would allow Roeder to build a defense case calling for a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter because he sincerely believed the May 31 slaying would save unborn children.

This is bullsh#@, and my guess is that this is an artifact of one of two things:

  • The anti-abortion terrorists have one of their own on the bench in Sedgwick County, Kansas.
  • This judge thinks that he’s going to be able to clarify things properly to a jury, which would make them understand the Kansas statute’s concept of, “”an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force.”

In either case this is not a clusterf%$#, but we won’t see the Obama DoJ getting involved in the Civil Rights area, they have already, “declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation.”

Obama has always been lukewarm on abortion rights, and now we get to see just how lukewarm he is.

The underoos bomber was not being soft on terrorists, but if the DoJ stays out of this, it’s giving aid and comfort to terrorists.

Tobacco Regulations Largely Upheld By Court

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Big tobacco had a minor win, the judge said that the FDA could not the use of color and graphics in their advertisements, which is pretty much in line with the law as I understand it for “corporate free speech,” but allowed a ban on using merchandise and sponsorships to stand:

The judge struck down some modest restrictions on color and graphics in tobacco and on labels that tobacco companies said violated their free speech rights.

U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley approved bans on sponsorships of athletic, cultural and social events and the use of tobacco imagery on such things as caps and T-shirts, rejecting the companies’ argument that the ban was too broad and failed to differentiate between adults and children.

He also upheld a requirement that warning labels cover half of the front and back of the packaging of tobacco products.

So, their package will be dominated by warning labels, and they cannot sponsor events or hand out ball caps, but they can use pictures and color on the labels.

Pretty much a win for the government.

The Right to Blaspheme is the Core of Civil Rights in a Modern Democracy

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So, we now have the breaking news that a a man armed with knives and axes attempted to break into the home of Kurt Westergaard, one of the artists who created the Danish cartoons (see pic).

The response to such terrorism must be more speech that religious fundamentalists find blasphemous, hence my reposting the picture. If you allow the clergy to determine what can, or cannot, be said, you eventually create a theocracy, and history has shown that theocracies are amongst the worst forms of despotism.

Additionally, as I have said before, “If your God can’t take me calling him a pig felcher, then he ain’t much of a God.”

While I understand how backward 3rd nations, like, for example, Ireland might want to outlaw blasphemy, I think that modern nations must necessarily understand that as a condition for full access to the benefits of western economies and markets.

The free traders believe that open markets create open societies, but given the explosion of blasphemy laws, and blasphemy prosecutions, since the adoption of the GATT (Now WTO), I would argue that the opposite has occurred.

The reduction to costs involved in acceding to the demands of medieval fundamentalists, because the current model of “free trade” means that a country has full access to international markets unless their policies are nearly genocidal, has led mainstream politicians who are looking for allies and coalition partners, to sign off on demands that are contrary to modern civil rights.

FWIW, I believe that the same sanctions should be applied to laws that criminalize criticism of royalty (Thailand) or the nation (Turkey, etc.).

How Quaint

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The 9th Court of Appeals has ruled that the police do not have the right to torture citizens they find inconvenient with Tasers:

A federal appeals court on Monday issued one of the most comprehensive rulings yet limiting police use of Tasers against low-level offenders who seem to pose little threat and may be mentally ill.

In a case out of San Diego County, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals criticized an officer who, without warning, shot an emotionally troubled man with a Taser when he was unarmed, yards away, and neither fleeing nor advancing on the officer.

(emphasis mine)

I’m sure that some will find this an outrage. After all, aren’t police supposed to use potentially lethal force on people who don’t comply immediately, like the kid who did not obey orders to get up because he had a broken back?

Hoocoodanode?

Needless to say, this cop still has his job, because, after all, law enforcement investigates itself in such instances.

Positively Nixonian

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It’s Called Lying Like a Rug

In support the idea that he will put his name to anything marked healthcare reform, barack Obama gave an interview to the Washington Post, and he told a complete and utter lie:

Those elements are in the House and Senate versions of the legislation; their competing proposals will have to be reconciled in conference committee next year. The House bill includes a government-run insurance plan favored by progressive Democrats; the Senate version does not. “I didn’t campaign on the public option,” Obama said in the interview.

(emphasis mine)

It takes about 15 minutes on Google and Youtube to see that it’s a lie, see the video on the right.

It certainly wasn’t something that he pushed hard during the campaign, unlike, for example, his support for repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and family benefits for gay couples, where his administration is now aggressively fighting to prevent real progress.

With this level of hypocrisy, it’s no wonder that Drew Westen, a psychologist, neuroscientist, and political scientist whose book The Political Brain was widely considered to be the bible of the Obama campaign just wrote a scathing article condemning Obama’s unwillingness to lead:

As the president’s job performance numbers and ratings on his handling of virtually every domestic issue have fallen below 50 percent, the Democratic base has become demoralized, and Independents have gone from his source of strength to his Achilles Heel, it’s time to reflect on why. The conventional wisdom from the White House is those “pesky leftists” — those bloggers and Vermont Governors and Senators who keep wanting real health reform, real financial reform, immigration reform not preceded by a year or two of raids that leave children without parents, and all the other changes we were supposed to believe in.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn’t hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president’s leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress’s penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What’s costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn’t a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

………

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it’s uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can’t tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.

………

What’s they’re seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That’s a recipe for going nowhere fast — but getting there by November.

(emphasis mine)

As I’ve said before, the problem is that he believes that he is likable enough that he can bring people together even when there is no common ground, and the idea of people actually having honest differences of opinion, or of having legitimate political reasons for opposing his policies, appears to be completely beyond him.

Slavery is Legal in the United States Again

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The Supreme Court has refused to rule on an appellate case that not only declared that, “torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use,” but also ruled that anyone unilaterally declared an enemy combatant is not a “person” under the legal definition of the law.

This is quite literally the identical legal reasoning behind the Dredd Scott case:

“Another set of claims are dismissed because Guantanamo detainees are not ‘persons’ within the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – an argument that was too close to Dred Scott v. Sanford for one of the judges on the court of appeals to swallow,” he added.

The Dred Scott case was a decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1857. It ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants — whether or not they were slaves — were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States.

And still, Obama is appointing sane conservatives to the bench, only to see them filibustered and delayed by the ‘Phants, because sanity has a known liberal bias.

Not feeling hopey changey right now.

H/t naked capitalism.

Barack Obama: Hating te Gay Since 2007*

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Yes, the group most likely to be thrown under a bus by Barack Obama, the LGBT community, just got thrown under the bus again going through back-flips to defy a Federal Judge’s order on this:

Because she is a federal employee, Golinski’s benefits are overseen by the Office of Personnel Management, which effectively serves as the human resources department for about 1.9 million federal workers nationwide. Golinski’s insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, declined to provide health benefits for her legal spouse, Amy Cunninghis, but ninth circuit chief judge Alex Kozinski said that violated the court’s guarantee of equal employment opportunity and that same-sex spouses were entitled to benefits under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.

OPM attorneys consulted with the Department of Justice on this case, and the key to the case, according to the OPM official, was that Kozinski was presiding over an administrative proceeding that’s an internal employee grievance procedure — he was not serving in his official capacity as a ninth circuit judge.

I suppose that he’s better for Gays than the Christo-Fascist right, which was actively working for a death penalty for gays in Uganda until Rachael Maddow outed their murderous efforts, and that he figures that the LGBT community knows that it has no where else to go, but such a calculus is repugnant, immoral, and evil.

Let me quote Joseph Nye Welch:

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

I support Howard Dean for President in 2012…………………Hell I support anyone who opposes Barack Obama in the primaries† in 2012.

*The Donnie McClurkin episode.
†This offer does not apply to Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, or Paris Glendenning. Note that side effects of an endorsement from Matthew Saroff can include:

  • Losing elections
  • Voting irregularities
  • An extremely hostile press corps
  • Embarrassing Youtube clips

Do not operate a political campaign under the influence of a Matthew Saroff endorsement, and avoid heavy consumption of alcohol.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney Fly to Uruguay, Request Asylum

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No, it hasn’t happened yet, but we have a start.

You see, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive have found some 22 million missing White House emails from the Bush era.

Yes, I know, it still has to go through the National Archives, where it will take years* to catalogue then and screen for classified material:

Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush, according to two groups that are settling lawsuits they filed over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system.

The two groups made the announcement as they settled lawsuits that they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007.

But the public might not see any of the e-mails for quite some time because they will now go through the National Archives normal process for releasing presidential and agency records.

Of course, even if major revelations are present, that Barack Obama and Eric Holder will their do their level best to ensure that the rule of law is not enforced.

*My guess is that this will be finished a little bit after the 2012 elections.

The European Human Rights Court to Review Irish Abortion Ban

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It looks like the Irish ban on abortion will have to defend itself before 17 justices at the European HCR:

Ireland’s almost complete ban on abortion was challenged before 17 European judges yesterday as a violation of fundamental human rights.

Three women, named only as A, B and C, brought a landmark case before the European Human Rights court in Strasbourg, the outcome of which could force Ireland to weaken its strict laws against abortion for the first time in 17 years.

The three plaintiffs – two Irish women and a Lithuanian – say that their own rights to health and life were threatened by pregnancies which they could not terminate legally in Ireland the only EU state other than Malta, with a near outright ban on the procedure. Like an estimated 7,000 Irish women a year, the three women travelled to the UK to obtain legal abortions in Britain.

The case is, in theory, not a frontal assault on a ban which has been enshrined in Irish law for more than a hundred years and reinforced in the Irish constitution since 1983. It is an attempt to clarify and widen the exception, approved in 1992, which permits a pregnancy to be terminated when a woman’s life is threatened. Nonetheless, the Irish government fears, and pro-abortion campaigners hope, that a court ruling in the women’s favour could lead to a de facto unravelling of Irish abortion law.

The Irish law is particularly egregious, since, “If an abortion was later judged to be unnecessary, an Irish doctor could be struck off [have his license pulled] or imprisoned for life. As a result, she said, no statistics existed to say whether any ‘legal’ abortions had ever taken place in Ireland.”

One hopes that the Europeans look at the United States, and realize that pandering the Neanderthals only makes them ask for more.