madness of the GOP is the central issue of our time

[boutons_deux]

Well, it IS what Lyndon Johnson said.

the blacks know the Repugs, esp not LA Repugs, will do all for his race.

[boutons_deux]

Repug Christian Taliban supremacist in, duh, KS

Kansas woman claims GOP secretary Kansas woman claims GOP secretary of state’s office fired her for not going to church




An employee of the Kansas’ Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office says she was fired from her job for not belonging to or attending a church.According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Courtney Canfield of Topeka filed suit against the secretary of state’s office naming her supervisor Eric Rucker as defendant.

Canfield claims that before she was fired in November of 2013, Rucker said “repeatedly and emphatically” that she was being terminated because “She just doesn’t go to a church.”

That November, Rucker paid a visit to Canfield’s grandmother Margie Canfield, WTF?, an official in the state Republican Party.

Rucker informed Margie Canfield that her daughter had to be fired because of her failure to attend worship services. When Margie said she would not fire her own granddaughter — who didn’t even work for her — Rucker said that he would.

https://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/kan...ing-to-church/

[boutons_deux]

Christian Taliban supremacist news

AZ School District Putting Anti-Abortion Stickers In Science Textbooks




An Arizona school district made students place stickers, which promote childbirth and adoption over abortion, inside their high school biology textbook.

New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Young, who lives in the district, told TPM in an interview on Thursday that she was stunned when her 14-year-old son showed her one of the stickers on his textbook.
"I read it, and just looked at him. Is this a joke?" Young told TPM.


Her son, a freshman at Gilbert High School in Gilbert, Arizona, told her that if students didn't put the abstinence-only education sticker in their textbooks, the student would have to speak with their grade-level administrator.
"They're teaching morality on an educational textbook," Young, a former high school teacher, said.

This language was taken almost verbatim from an Arizona law that states that schools can only provide support (financial or instruction) to a sexual education program that presents giving birth and adoption as preferred to abortion

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ar...+%28TPMNews%29

[boutons_deux]

Bobby Jindal’s latest bizarre stunt: Screening Planned Parenthood videos on his lawn

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/21/bobby_jindals_latest_bizarre_stunt_screening_plann ed_parenthood_videos_on_his_lawn/



Louisiana!

macaca Jindal!

[SpursforSix]

Bobby Jindal’s latest bizarre stunt: Screening Planned Parenthood videos on his lawn

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/21/bobby_jindals_latest_bizarre_stunt_screening_plann ed_parenthood_videos_on_his_lawn/



Louisiana!

macaca Jindal!

This seems like something a liberal would do.

[boutons_deux]

Repug Christian supremacist news

Arkansas Rejects Request for Hindu Statue at Capitol

The Arkansas secretary of state’s office has denied a request from the Universal Society of Hinduism to place a privately funded Hindu statue on Capitol grounds.

The Hindu society and a slew of other organizations have floated the possibility of putting their own monuments on the Capitol grounds since the Arkansas General Assembly passed a law this year to erect a Ten Commandments statue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/us...er=rss&emc=rss

[boutons_deux]

NJ FatBas really desperate, his 300+ pounds of greasiness flopping around for something to slander Obama with. Are all federal prosecutors this ing dumb?

Chris Christie lies to voters by blaming Obama for heroin epidemic

“Lawlessness in America and around the world under Barack Obama,” Christie said while looking straight into the camera, revealing an uncomfortable tight shot of his face. Christie then claimed that “drugs [are] running rampant and destroying lives” as images of drug addicts shooting up appear on the screen.


http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/chri...e+Raw+Story%29

[boutons_deux]

Repugs slimey bags at work at dirty tricks

Far right working on next big 'sting': an attempt to break federal campaign laws

It looks like the Breitbartian fever swamps are bubbling away on their next big thing, attempting to break multiple federal laws in an effort to get a really good story on why some random people they don't like are bad. This time, an O'Keefe-linked group affiliated with Students for a Conservative Voice have been approaching various members of the Clinton campaign attempting to illegally funnel money into the campaign, or as conservatives might know it "doing that thing conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza went to jail for."

In one scheme, described by Clinton staff, a woman attempted to pass a cash donation to Clinton volunteers and interns.

In another, a woman approached the campaign on Aug. 19 and said both her parents had donated to Clinton the legal maximum of $2700 each and wanted to funnel an additional donation through their daughter, a violation of federal law.

On Aug. 13, a woman claiming to be Canadian approached another Clinton fellow to ask how to falsify an address for a campaign donation. [...]

The women presented themselves as Allison Holmes, Jess Koski, and Jess Jones, according to the Clinton campaign, which collected names, email addresses, and phone numbers for the women. All gave the same phone number, which is listed on the website for the University of Minnesota-based Students for a Conservative Voice.

Messages left at the number by TIME requesting comment were not returned.

So the "sting" appears to be an attempt to find just one campaign intern anywhere in America who's not been briefed on the relevant laws and milk the resulting grainy footage until there ain't no milk in that cow left to give.

Time identifies one of the women as Laura Loomer, an O'Keefe-linked "investigator" already suspended from her university and facing potential criminal charges in Florida over a previous recording taken in apparent violation of state law.

I'm a bit fuzzy on how openly attempting to break federal law here isn't also prosecution-worthy, given that

(1) they know full well what they're doing is illegal, that being the whole point of it, and

(2) they seem to have been caught dead-to-rights in these attempts by Clinton campaign staffers,

but this may be part of an orchestrated effort on their parts to all end up in the same federal pen, where they can do arts and crafts and film themselves beating the stuffing out of one another with prison lunch trays while a narrator weepingly asks why none of the crooked guards are stepping in to stop this horrible violence.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/0...8Daily+Kos%29#

[boutons_deux]

BigCorp and Repug War on the Poor

H&R Block snuck language into a Senate bill to make taxes more confusing for poor people

H&R Block's entire business model is premised on taxes being confusing and hard to file. So, naturally, the tax preparation company has become — along with Intuit, the company behind TurboTax — one of the loudest voices on Capitol Hill arguing against measures that make it easier to pay taxes.

For example, the Obama administration has pushed for automatic tax filing, in which the IRS uses income information it already has to fill out your tax return for you. That would save millions of Americans considerable time and energy every year, but the idea has gone nowhere. The main reason? Lobbying from H&R Block and Intuit.

But H&R Block's latest lobbying effort is even more loathsome than its opposition to automatic filing. At the company's instigation, the Senate Appropriations Committee haspassed a funding bill covering the IRS whose accompanying report instructs the agency to at least quadruple the length of the form that taxpayers fill out to get the Earned Income Tax Credit.

A recent IRS study found EITC-claiming returns from paid preparers were more likely to result in overpayments than self-filed returns. That's right: People who fill out taxes for a living are, on average, worse at it than taxpayers who do it themselves (and, by the way, the IRS's volunteers do a better job than anybody).

The only possible reason to change the form, then, is to confuse taxpayers enough that even more of them will pay companies like H&R Block to prepare their returns.
Other low-income families will just not bother to claim the credit at all if this policy takes effect. "Were this directive implemented," Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities writes in a piece decrying the proposed change, "no one should be surprised to see large numbers of individuals who now file their own returns either giving up and not claiming the EITC due to the added complexity or turning to paid preparers, who could charge hundreds of dollars for their services."


the language also instructs the IRS to add similar questions to forms for the refundable part of the Child Tax Credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit for college tuition and fees, and the Premium Tax Credit that subsidizes Obamacare plans.

Think about what tax breaks are being targeted here. These are all refundable credits, which, with the exception of the college credit, overwhelmingly help low-income and working-class people. H&R Block is not pushing to make the mortgage interest deduction more complicated, or to make the charitable deduction more confusing. Tax breaks that mostly help rich people go untouched. H&R Block knows that rich people already use TurboTax or hire accountants; because it wants new business, it has decided to prey upon the poor.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9195129...ushpmg00000003

Corporatocracy SCREWS Americans

[boutons_deux]

5 Reasons Republicans Cannot Be Trusted With Power


1. They let Trump become Trump.

Trump’s birtherism should have disqualified him from public life. Instead, his embrace of a lunatic conspiracy theory vaulted him to the forefront of conservatism. Mitt Romney pleaded for Trump’s endorsement and Fox News made him a staple of right-wing discourse.

For decades the GOP base has been offered scapegoats to blame for the demise of the middle class, concealing the true cause — namely, the enactment of conservative policies. “Welfare queens” have faded and now the threat is people who risked their lives to come to America to pick your fruit. The thrill of having someone weak and safe to blame is contagious, providing the perfect opportunity for a huckster promising the defeat of all foreign enemies, spouting incoherent bluster and sporting a dopey hat.

It took three staff members at The New York Times — Mike Barbaro, Nate Cohn, and Jeremy W. Peters — to come up with this analysis of how a thrice-married charlatan who takes pleasure in calling a female critic a “fat pig” has managed to win the hearts of even conservative evangelicals: “Tellingly, when asked to explain support for Mr. Trump in their own words, voters of varying backgrounds used much the same language, calling him ‘ballsy’ and saying they admired that he ‘tells it like it is’ and relished how he ‘isn’t politically correct.'”

Was Trump telling it “like it is” when he was constructing racist fantasies about the president’s citizenship? Is he telling it “like it is” when he pretends to love the Bible and Ronald Reagan, checking all the boxes to qualify as a generic conservative? Is he telling it “like it is” when he calls immigrants “rapists” and criminals, despite evidence suggesting the exact opposite?

No, he’s telling it how conservatives would “like it to be” — and he gets away with it the way they would like to.

He’s promising an America defined by white iden y that forces all others to bow down. For a movement that has been fed subtle promises of such a world for decades, these outlandish declarations feel like truth, when they are nothing but a dangerous fantasy.

2. They’re opposing peace with the same dishonesty that led us into war.

The American politicians and pundits opposing the nuclear deal reached with Iran by the United States—along with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China—nearly all have two things in common: They supported the Iraq war, and they opposed negotiating with Iran in the first place.

All of the arguments that the right is making against the agreement — from the inflated 24-day inspection canard and the fiction that Iran will inspect itself to the nonsensical promise of a better deal — are easily debunked. And those arguments all lack the suggestion of any secret classified information of the kind that supposedly justified the Iraq invasion.

“The opponents of the Iran nuclear deal are doing fairly well in the media-pundit-sphere,” Talking Points Memo‘s Josh Marshall wrote. “But they’ve had an extremely difficult time making substantive arguments against the deal because according to almost all technical experts, it is about as tight and comprehensive and total a surveillance regime as we’ve ever seen. Ever.”

So the casual promise made by several Republican candidates to trash a deal achieved with our closest allies on day one should instantly disqualify them from occupying the White House.

3. They’re paralyzed by irrational promises.

Senator Ted Cruz demanded a government shutdown before Obamacare’s exchanges opened because, he said, if millions of Americans gained coverage, the law would never be repealed. Cruz failed, and while 15 million Americans now have insurance thanks to the law, he’s still demanding repeal.

Cruz’s primary opponents Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio recognize that running on the promise of stripping something valuable from a block of voters larger than that which will likely decide the election isn’t so smart. So they’ve released their own plans with the exact flaws that they revile in Obamacare.

“Is a party that brutalized Obamacare for taking insurance away from people who were happy with what they had really going to become the party that takes insurance away from millions of people who are happy with what they have?” asks Vox‘s Ezra Klein. “Is a party that attacked Obamacare for raising premiums on people really going to raise premiums for millions?”

Klein says no. But how does the next Republican president, after nearly a decade of pandering to the hope of full repeal, sanctify Obamacare without dividing the party?

4. They’ve abandoned all pretense of serving anyone but the rich.

Nearly every Republican candidate for president is vowing to raise the retirement age.

“For the record, these proposals would be really bad public policy — a harsh blow to Americans in the bottom half of the income distribution, who depend on Social Security, often have jobs that involve manual labor, and have not, in fact, seen a big rise in life expectancy,” The New York Times‘ Paul Krugman wrote.

Cuts to the public retirement guarantee are especially harmful to women — who live longer, are more likely to leave the workforce to care for family members, and inevitably are more dependent on Social Security.

The program continually polls as one of the most popular, if not the most popular thing that government does. So why would Republicans embrace drastic cuts in benefits for the poor rather than slight tax increases for the rich? The reasons are obvious.

“By a very wide margin, ordinary Americans want to see Social Security expanded. But by an even wider margin, Americans in the top 1 percent want to see it cut,” Krugman wrote. “And guess whose preferences are prevailing among Republican candidates?”

After a decade of the complete failure of conservative policies and unprecedented wealth inequality, the right cannot escape its urge to make the rich richer, no matter the costs.

5. They refuse to learn from failure.

In six years, we’ve seen unprecedented advances in fairness for the sick, the LGBTQ community, and those who’ve come to our country or been brought here to pursue a better life. The deficit is now manageable and health care cost predictions have shrunk, despite (or more likely due to) the historic expansion of coverage. We’ve made leaps in green energy, the regulation of Wall Street, and favoring diplomacy over war in resolving conflict. And in every arena in which we’ve made progress, Republicans promise a complete reversal of that progress.

Conservatives see in Donald Trump the realization of their worst fears: Someone who can capitalize on a base to which they’ve fed delusions for decades, and expose their promises and policies for the divisive frauds that they truly are.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-reason...ed-with-power/

[boutons_deux]

Dumb Jackhole Sen. Tom Cotton Still Thinks He’s President Of Obama

Newbie Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Teabagsville) getting himself all confused about who is the boss of Us-of-A America, and who is a newbie senator who doesn’t know nothin’ ’bout nothin’ and should shut his dumb face hole before he gets pwned (wait, is pwned still a thing?) on Twitter again by Iran’s foreign minister.

Go on, Senator, show us how you did a dumb this time:

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today released the following statements on reports that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid may filibuster a Senate vote on the Iran Nuclear Deal:

First, the president did an end-run around the Cons ution by refusing to submit the Iran deal as a treaty requiring a two-thirds vote of the Senate for approval. Now Harry Reid wants to deny the American people a voice entirely by blocking an up-or-down vote on this terrible deal. If Harry Reid has his way, Congress won’t even get the little oversight we were provided in Corker-Cardin. He is obstructing because he is scared. He knows that a majority of Americans and Senators oppose this dangerous deal, and that its only chance for survival is if he and the president ram it down the throats of the American people.

Sorry to interrupt, but no one is ramming a treaty to avoid thermonuclear war with Iran down your throat; you’re thinking of gay marriage.

The Congress and the president should speak with one voice when it comes to dealing with the Iranians, but —

Stop right there, Tom, and put down the paste you’re eating. Because we coulda sworn there was some senator who scribbled a letter in crayon to Iran suggesting that so-called “President” Obama does not have the authority to talk to Iran, does not even have the authority to look it up on Google Maps. Who was that? We forget.

While Cotton has been throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler who needs a diaper change, the grown-ups have been trying to make a deal happen so we could maybe avoid getting ourselves stuck in yet another endless war in the Middle East. (The grown-ups have also found some time to laugh at Cotton for being A Idiot, because grown-ups can mul ask.) Avoiding war actually is the goal here, even if Cotton doesn’t realize that.

But if the senator now thinks the president and Congress should speak with one voice — all of a sudden and contrary to everything he has done during his brief tenure — he might consider letting the Obama administration do the talking, because Cotton’s chest-thumping and Twitter failing clearly hasn’t worked.

http://wonkette.com/593294/dumb-jackhole-sen-tom-cotton-still-thinks-hes-president-of-obama

[dbestpro]

One link rebuttal to pages, and pages of dribble.

http://frederickdouglassrepublican.com/did-you-know/

[boutons_deux]

One link rebuttal to pages, and pages of dribble.

http://frederickdouglassrepublican.com/did-you-know/

Southern racists were Dems until late 1960s, when, in reaction to the progressive legislation in the 60s, switched to voting Repug in Nixon's slimey, racist Southern Strategy.

Since then the Repugs are the party of racists, xenophobes, jingoists, nativists, rednecks, bubbas, low-wage, low-info (ignorant) assholes, like yourself. Trump huge value is exposing the Repug base for its nasty assholiness.

Today's Repugs would obviously NEVER vote to end slavery, or for the progressive laws of the 1960s.

[Quetzal-X]

One link rebuttal to pages, and pages of dribble.

http://frederickdouglassrepublican.com/did-you-know/

LOL If thats it.

[Quetzal-X]

Just face it honkeys and confused s--

Y'all ed up and lost the War on Civil Rights.

[boutons_deux]

Another state ED UP by Repug MISgovernance

Alabama Is About To Make It Much Harder To Get A Voter ID

With Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature refusing to consider any tax hikes, the state is preparing to take drastic measures to address its budget crisis — including shutting down all state parks and the vast majority of Departments of Motor Vehicles (DMVs). The proposal to close dozens of DMVs across the state — starting in rural areas — could hurt voters who need access to those offices in order to get the ID they need to cast a ballot.

Susan Watson, the executive director of the Alabama American Civil Liberties Union, told ThinkProgress this could put up yet another barrier to voting for the state’s lowest-income residents.

“They want to disenfranchise the most people possible,” she said. “It seems like they work hard to try to find ways to make it harder to vote. We have zero days of early voting. You aren’t allowed to vote absentee unless you’re out of the county or working more than 10 hours on Election Day. It’s already hard to get an ID if you are in a rural place and don’t have a DMV close to you. But if they shut these offices down, I’m wondering what people are supposed to do.”

The proposed budget leaves just four DMV offices in the state, in Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile and Huntsville, meaning potentially several hours of driving and long lines for the tens of thousands of people who live far from those cities.

“This won’t just hurt voters,” said Watson. “I can see a lot more people getting arrested and fined for not having a current drivers license, since it’ll be harder for them to get one.”

Alabama implemented its voter ID law shortly after the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which required the state get preapproval from the Justice Department every time it changed its voting laws because of its long history of racially-based and often violent voter suppression.

The ACLU and other voting rights groups argue the law disproportionately burdensthe elderly, people of color, students, and the poor — who may have difficulty finding transportation to an office during the narrow hours they are open, and who may lack a birth certificate or other do ent needed to get the free identification card.

The state itself estimated that 250,000 eligible voters lacked the proper ID, but gave out only about 1,000 as of last April.

http://thinkprogress.org/election/20...et-a-voter-id/

[boutons_deux]

Alabama cheerleading coach banned for complaining about pro-KKK t-shirt worn by the team’s assistant vice president




An Alabama woman claims that she’s no longer allowed to be a volunteer cheerleading coach after she complained about the racist shirts being worn by the team’s assistant vice president, Brian McCracken, and his friend, Brian McDowell, WAFF’s Lauren Bale reports.

Former volunteer cheerleading coach Kayleigh Tipton said that she arrived at a practice of the Boaz youth cheerleaders only to find McCracken and McDowell sporting the racist t-shirts.

The team’s assistant vice president, McCracken, was wearing one that featured a robed member of the Ku Klux Klan in front of a burning cross, accompanied by the words “The Original Boys In The Hood.” His friend McDowell’s t-shirt was more direct — it read “White Pride.”

Tipton said she contacted Commissioner Kenny Jones, who said he “ended up taking care of the situation” by informing “the parents that they are no longer allowed to wear that type of shirt to any NAYF function.”

“We have zero tolerance for any kind of discriminatory apparel or anything,” Jones added. :loL AFTER somebody complains

However, the next time Tipton arrived at a practice, Vice President for Boaz Cheer Melynnda McCracken told her that her volunteer work was no longer required.

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/25/alabama_cheerleading_coach_banned_for_complaining_ about_pro_kkk_t_shirt_worn_by_the_teams_assistant_ vice_president/

Don't with the Good Ol' Boys in 'Bama.

[boutons_deux]

Liz Cheney: The ‘gra ude’ Americans feel for my dad ‘is matched only by our love for him’

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/liz-...e+Raw+Story%29

holy ! Repugs in general live is a self-congratulating fantasy world.

[boutons_deux]

Your move, Donald Trump: Scott Walker says building a wall along Canadian border a ‘legitimate issue’


http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/your...e+Raw+Story%29

[boutons_deux]

Texas secessionists launch pe ion drive for vote to break away

A group called the Texas Nationalist Movement fanned out to 31 cities across Texas this weekend trying to gather the 75,000 signatures they say they need to get the question of the state's secession from the United States on the primary ballot next spring.

Texas is one of only two U.S. states, the other being Hawaii, that were once internationally recognized sovereign nations, with diplomatic ties to other countries. Although legal experts said it would be uncons utional for Texas to break away via a primary vote, there is still a spirit of Texas independence among many in the Lone Star State.

"What we are seeing, over and over, is this complete disconnect between the people of Texas, what they want, and what is going on in Washington, D.C.," TNM President Daniel Miller told Reuters.

"The people of Texas don't have anything against the United States, they are just tired of being governed by bureaucrats we didn't elect pushing programs we don't want."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...e=domesticNews

That's Entertainment!

[boutons_deux]

anarchist Christian Taliban news, from TX, of course

David Barton’s Appalling Lie that the Cons ution Puts God’s Law Above Man’s Law

From the Religious Right’s response to Kim Davis’ arrest, you would think none of them had ever heard of the United States Cons ution.

David Barton, the Religious Right’s premier fake historian, in Houston to attend Deputy Darren Goforth’s funeral, proclaimed that “the Founding Fathers made it real clear that the laws of God are higher than the laws of man.”

According to Barton, “This is a law of God. Man’s law is not allowed to contradict God’s law.”

In fact, it is exactly the opposite.

The United States Cons ution was written by those same Founding Fathers to put humans, not deities, in the driver’s seat, that political
power derives from the hands of the people and the consent of the governed. You could not tell a bigger lie than David Barton just did if you tried.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/09/05/david-barton-thinks-cons ution-puts-gods-law-mans-law.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm _campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politicus +USA+%29

[boutons_deux]

White supremacists threaten to assassinate ‘anti-white’ Pope Francis during US visit

White supremacists have been calling for the assassination of Pope Francis over his calls on Europeans to house refugees fleeing Syria, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors extremist organizations.

SITE reported Monday that the comments were posted to the infamous white supremacist blog Stormfront in response to a Washington Post article reporting the pontiff’s call for European Catholics to shelter asylum seekers who are streaming across Europe, mainly from Syria.

“This mofo needs a third eye, right in the middle of where his two existing eyes are,” wrote someone using the handle “Freedom lover.”

Another, using the handle “Peace through Stormfront,” wrote, “White people need to be protected from the genocidal anti-white Pope and the genocidal anti-white religion he pushes.”

The Post article was published on another white supremacist forum, Vanguard News Network, with user “John Adams” responding, “The pope deserves to be executed for crimes against the White race.”

According to SITE, members of these forums have been deadly in the past. Users have included Wade Michael Page, who killed six people in a Sikh temple shooting in 2012, Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 and injured 241 in 2011 in Norway, and Frazier Glenn Miller, who killed three at a Jewish community center in Kansas.

Both sites are frequented by Craig Cobb, a notorious white supremacist, who according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is best known for trying to transform the town of Leith, North Dakota into an Aryan stronghold.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/whit...e+Raw+Story%29

[boutons_deux]

Christian Taliban supremacist racist gone totally insane

Huckabee: Dred Scott Decision 'Remains To This Day The Law Of The Land'

Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said on Wednesday that the Supreme Court decision that upheld slavery "remains to this day the law of the land."

“Michael, the Dred Scott decision of 1857 still remains to this day the law of the land which says that black people aren’t fully human," he told the radio host. "Does anybody still follow the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision?”

Medved corrected Huckabee, noting that the Dred Scott ruling was later overturned by a cons utional amendment.

“Well the Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th amendment and if you go look at the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 right after the Dred Scott decision was adjudicated, Governor — and seriously it’s right there — Lincoln says, ‘we must respect this decision as the will of the court but I think it was wrongly decided and now we must overcome it.’"

(Medved got his history wrong — the 13th amendment abolished slavery, but the 14th amendment overturned the Supreme Court decision.)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...+%28TPMNews%29

Christian Taliban science!

Christian Taliban history!

Christian Taliban Cons ution

Christina Taliban!

[boutons_deux]

G.O.P. Anti-Gay Bigotry Threatens First Amendment

This past June, in the heat of their outrage over gay rights, congressional Republicans revived a nasty bit of business they call the First Amendment Defense Act. It would do many things, but one thing it would not do is defend the First Amendment. To the contrary, it would deliberately warp the bedrock principle of religious freedom under the Cons ution.

The bill, versions of which have been circulating since 2013, gained a sudden wave of support after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. It is being hawked with the specter of clergy members being forced to officiate such marriages. This is a ploy, as the bill’s backers surely know: There has never been any doubt that the First Amendment protects members of the clergy from performing weddings against their will.

In reality, the act would

bar the federal government from taking “any discriminatory action” —

including the denial of tax benefits, grants, contracts or licenses —

against those who oppose same-sex marriage for religious or moral reasons.

In other words, it would use taxpayers’ money to negate federal anti-discrimination measures protecting gays and lesbians, using the idea of religious freedom as cover.

For example, a religiously affiliated college that receives federal grants could fire a professor simply for being gay and still receive those grants. Or federal workers could refuse to process the tax returns of same-sex couples simply because of bigotry against their marriages.

It doesn’t stop there. As critics of the bill quickly pointed out,

the measure’s broad language — which also protects those who believe that “sexual relations are properly reserved to” heterosexual marriages alone — would permit discrimination against anyone who has sexual relations outside such a marriage.

That would appear to include women who have children outside of marriage, a class generally protected by federal law.

This bizarre fixation on what grown-ups do in their bedrooms — which has long since been rejected by the Supreme Court and the vast majority of Americans — is bad enough. The bill makes matters worse by covering for-profit companies, which greatly multiplies the potential scope of discrimination against gays and lesbians.

These are radical proposals, but they are accepted without question by many in today’s Republican Party. In its current form,the bill has 148 co-sponsors in the House and 36 in the Senate — all Republicans but one

, Representative Daniel Lipinski of Illinois. It has been endorsed by the Republican National Committeeand at least four Republican presidential contenders. It is, in other words, a fair representation of right-wing reaction to the long overdue expansion of basic civil and cons utional rights to gays and lesbians.

Thankfully, the bill’s chances of passage are low. Even if it were to get through Congress, President Obama would surely veto it. Still, its symbolic power will embolden those looking for a legal justification to discriminate — whether they are individuals like Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who went to jail rather than obey the law and issue same-sex marriage licenses, or states, where similar legislation has a much better chance of becoming law. In Indiana and Arkansas, laws protecting such discrimination have already passed.

Both laws, of course, provoked a swift and emphatic backlash from the public and the corporate world, leading both states to scale them back. (Indiana’s governor, Mike Pence, embarked on a bumbling effort to claim that his state’s law would not provide cover for discrimination against gays and lesbians.)

Fear of a similar debacle at the national level may help explain why a committee vote in Congress on the First Amendment Defense Act, which conservative Republicans pushed for in late July, was not scheduled.

The best outcome at this point would be for the bill to die where it is. The First Amendment needs no assistance in protecting religious freedom in America.

Many religious leaders and clergy members are themselves deeply disturbed by the proposed legislation; more than 3,000 signed a letter opposing it on the grounds that genuine religious liberty “does not allow us to harm or discriminate against others.” The supporters of this bill, who are so eager to talk about religious freedom, would do well to listen to the people they claim to represent.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/opinion/sunday/gop-anti-gay-bigotry-threatens-first-amendment.html?_r=0

Repugs and Dems are identical! You Lie!

[boutons_deux]

Fox News Host: ‘Everyone Benefited’ From Putting More Blacks in Prison For Drugs In the 1990s

Fox News host Tucker Carlson argued over the weekend that “everyone benefited” after the incarceration rate for non-violent drug crimes increased in the 1990s.

http://www.alternet.org/media/fox-ne...er1042348&t=20