Last Call For The Notorious RBG

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has a few choice words for you, America, after that Ferguson thing.

Justice Ginsburg, for her part, warned that tossing out a key prong of the Voting Rights Act “when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

In what may become the most controversial part of her interview with Coyle, Ginsburg also suggests that public acceptance of gay Americans is eclipsing our ability to relate to each other across racial lines. “Once [gay] people began to say who they were,” Ginsburg noted, “you found that it was your next-door neighbor or it could be your child, and we found people we admired.” By contrast, according to Ginsburg, “[t]hat understanding still doesn’t exist with race; you still have separation of neighborhoods, where the races are not mixed. It’s the familiarity with people who are gay that still doesn’t exist for race and will remain that way for a long time as long as where we live remains divided.”

Hard words, but true.  America needs to think about things like that.  I know I do.

The Fix For Hobby Lobby

New proposed Health and Human Services rules regarding Obamacare and birth control may be the insurance coverage fix that hundreds of thousands of American women were hoping for.

A "proposed rule" by the Department of Health and Human Services lets female employees of for-profit businesses, like Hobby Lobby, obtain birth control directly from their insurer, at no extra cost, if their boss opts out of covering the service in the company's insurance plan for religious reasons. 

The move extends an accommodation that already exists for non-profit organizations, which are allowed to refuse to cover for birth control. In short, the religious owners can pass the cost on to the insurer so that they're no longer complicit in what they view as sin. 

The Supreme Court ruled in June that owners of closely held for-profit corporations cannot be required, under Obamacare, to cover emergency contraception like Plan B, Ella and two types of IUDs if it violates their sincerely-held religious belief. The HHS move is a workaround to that ruling. 

So that's actually great news, and insurance companies will be thrilled, because contraception is a fraction of the cost of neonatal services, pregnancy complications, and childbirth.  This is outstanding, and I hope these rulesgo into effect as soon as possible so that employees of religious companies can go back to using science to do things.

This is going to help a lot of people, and I'm glad I have good news for once in the Friday news dump slot.

The Luckiest Blue Dog Democrat In Minnesota

Democratic Rep. Tim Walz of Minnesota's first district is a decent swing state liberal at best, certainly no firebrand, but he does have one thing going for him in a pretty purple part of the state:  Republicans keep nominating utterly batshit crazy people to run and lose against him.  Walz would be exactly the kind of depressingly moderate, Obama-avoiding jellyfish that would be in trouble this year (with his 63.37 lifetime Progressive Punch score on crucial votes that puts him square into ConservaDem territory)  but the GOP goofball running against him has about 3 cubic acres of baggage.  MoJo's Tim Murphy:

Republican congressional candidate Jim Hagedorn could face a major obstacle in his race to unseat Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz: conservative blogger Jim Hagedorn. 

Hagedorn, the son of retired congressman Tom Hagedorn, was a surprise victor in last Tuesday's GOP primary. But he brings some serious baggage to his race against Walz, a four-term incumbent. In posts from his old blog, Mr. Conservative, unearthed by the now-defunct Minnesota Independent, Hagedorn made light of American Indians, President Obama's Kenyan ancestry, and female Supreme Court justices, among others, in ways many voters won't appreciate.

Oh good.  Yeah, I know I'd have all kinds of fun trying to run for office with this blog.  Hagedorn hasn't figured that out yet, it seems.

Hagedorn also reveled in the type of gay innuendo you may have heard in high school courtyards in decades past. (Kids these days know better.) He referred to former Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl as an "alleged switch-hitter" and a "packer." Former GOP candidate Mike Taylor, the target of a homophobic attack ad during his campaign against then-Sen. Max Baucus,came out even worse: "[T]he ad really bent Taylor over with rage and caused him to go straight to the bar and get lubricated," Hagedorn wrote. "It must have taken all Taylor's power to refrain from fisting…err…using his fists on Max Baucus, or at the very least ream him inside and out." 

In an entry on the Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which ruled that state bans on sodomy were unconstitutional, he wrote: "Butt (sic) never have winners lost so dearly. The Court's voyage into uncharted, untreated cultural bathhouse waters was designed to offer a gentle push from behind…to generate a small skip forward for the pink triangle class…to throw them a bone, so to speak."

This is comedy in conservative GOP circles, I guess.  It's unintentionally funny to see a candidate this awful pretty much assuring Tim Walz doesn't have to try to move left, either.

Except that part doesn't make me laugh, but cry.

StupidiNews!

• A collision between two tourist buses in Egypt has killed at least 38 people and injured more than 40 as search teams are still working on recovering all of the casualties.
• Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has ordered the National Guard to leave Ferguson as a second straight night of relative calm passed in the St. Louis suburb.
• Moscow has ordered a Russian convoy of aid trucks into eastern Ukraine without permission from the government in Kiev, raising fears it contains military supplies for pro-Russian rebels.
• US World Cup soccer star goalie Tim Howard says he'll take at least a year off from playing for the US national team, citing a desire to be with his family.
• California officials are requiring Google's self-driving cars to have a steering wheel where someone in the driver's seat can take "immediate control" in case of an emergency.

Last Call For The Epidemic In South Carolina

A new in-depth feature from Charleston, SC's Post and Courier examines the state's massive domestic violence epidemic, and what the state's lawmakers, clergy, state workers, women's groups, and others are, and in most cases are not, doing about it.

More than 300 women were shot, stabbed, strangled, beaten, bludgeoned or burned to death over the past decade by men in South Carolina, dying at a rate of one every 12 days while the state does little to stem the carnage from domestic abuse.

More than three times as many women have died here at the hands of current or former lovers than the number of Palmetto State soldiers killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

It’s a staggering toll that for more than 15 years has placed South Carolina among the top 10 states nationally in the rate of women killed by men. The state topped the list on three occasions, including this past year, when it posted a murder rate for women that was more than double the national rate.

Awash in guns, saddled with ineffective laws and lacking enough shelters for the battered, South Carolina is a state where the deck is stacked against women trapped in the cycle of abuse, a Post and Courier investigation has found.

Couple this with deep-rooted beliefs about the sanctity of marriage and the place of women in the home, and the vows “till death do us part” take on a sinister tone.

The stories here are heartbreaking, and all too real.

Consider 25-year-old Erica Olsen of Anderson, who was two months pregnant when her boyfriend stabbed her 25 times in front of her young daughter in October 2006. Or Andrenna Butler, 72, whose estranged husband drove from Pennsylvania to gun her down in her Newberry home in December. Or 30-year-old Dara Watson, whose fiancé shot her in the head at their Mount Pleasant home and dumped her in a Lowcountry forest in February 2012 before killing himself.

Interviews with more than 100 victims, counselors, police, prosecutors and judges reveal an ingrained, multi-generational problem in South Carolina, where abusive behavior is passed down from parents to their children. Yet the problem essentially remains a silent epidemic, a private matter that is seldom discussed outside the home until someone is seriously hurt.

Do read the whole article.

The Root Of All Evil

Part-time Republican candidate and full-time white supremacist Wayne Allyn Root has some thoughts on Ferguson, Missouri and the shooting of Michael Brown, and the one thing he's fairly sure of is that racism in America was a solved problem until January 20, 2009.

“It’s like we’re reliving the 1960s with Barack Obama,” said Wayne Allyn Root during a radio appearance Wednesday. “He didn’t come in to help us end the specter of racism, he brought it back, folks.” 

Root, a Fox News contributor and the 2008 Libertarian Party vice-presidential nominee, told religious right broadcaster Steve Deace that police had been cowed into submission by Obama, reported Right Wing Watch.

“Is it not a racist overreaction by the police department that is scared to death of being called racist to allow people to loot and burn and do nothing but stand by while stores are being looted and burned because the people doing the looting and burning might have dark skin, and therefore if you hit one of them, if you arrest any of them – if you kill one of them in a gunfight – you’ll be charged with even more racism?” Root argued.

To recap, Root is arguing that racism is worse than murder.  In fact, he's arguing that perceived racism is so awful, it makes people kill people in ways that can be perceived as racist, like some Moebius strip steamroller of shame.

The Tea Party activist claimed Ferguson police were deeply concerned about being perceived as racist. 

“It’ll make the riots that much worse, and you’ll look that much worse in the eyes of a president who’s looking to indict police officers for racism,” Root said.

And it's all Obama's fault.  Of course it is.  Because no black man was ever shot by police before January 20, 2009.

PS, Wayne here is going to be running for Harry Reid's job in Nevada in 2016.  Good luck with that.

Plumber And Dumber

If there is anything advantageous to this whole awful Ferguson, Missouri tragedy, it's the fact that it's made the racist elements of the GOP readily visible for all the world to see.  Take Joe (actually Samuel) the Plumber (not a plumber) here in Ohio, for example.

Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as "Joe the Plumber," took to Facebook on Wednesday to post his thoughts about the ongoing conflict in Ferguson, Mo. and compared the protestors to "cockroaches."

In two separate Facebook posts, Wurzelbacher speculated about the clashes and looting that have broken out in Ferguson in the wake of the killing of a black unarmed teen by a white police officer:

Yeah.  Because we all know those people are all lazy parasites who do as little work as possible, cost taxpayers billions, and do nothing but complain.

Oh wait.  That's Congress.  Never mind.

StupidiNews!

• Dr. Kent Brantly, who contracted Ebola while fighting the outbreak in West Africa and was flown to the US for treatment, will be leaving Atlanta's Emory University Hospital today.
• A number of Missouri state lawmakers and civic leaders are demanding that Ferguson, Missouri Mayor James Knowles and Police Chief Tom Jackon both resign from office immediately.
• An Israeli airstrike in Gaza Thursday morning has killed three Hamas commanders near the southern town of Rafah.
• The beheading death of US journalist James Foley has elicited hard words from President Obama, who has promised a response to Islamic State forces in Iraq.
• UPS says that at least 51 of its UPS Stores in several states have been infected by credit-card stealing malware, the latest company to admit hackers have compromised retailer credit card security.

Last Call For Operation Turtle Trap

Mitch McConnell's internal polling must still be showing him vulnerable to an upset by Alison Grimes, because he's playing the one real card he has in his hand.  If re-elected, he's going to shut down the government unless President Obama surrenders completely.

Mitch McConnell has a game plan to confront President Barack Obama with a stark choice next year: Accept bills reining in the administration’s policies or veto them and risk a government shutdown. 

In an extensive interview here, the typically reserved McConnell laid out his clearest thinking yet of how he would lead the Senate if Republicans gain control of the chamber. The emerging strategy: Attach riders to spending bills that would limit Obama policies on everything from the environment to health care, consider using an arcane budget tactic to circumvent Democratic filibusters and force the president to “move to the center” if he wants to get any new legislation through Congress. 

In short, it’s a recipe for a confrontational end to the Obama presidency. 

“We’re going to pass spending bills, and they’re going to have a lot of restrictions on the activities of the bureaucracy,” McConnell said in an interview aboard his campaign bus traveling through Western Kentucky coal country. “That’s something he won’t like, but that will be done. I guarantee it.”

So yeah, if you thought Ted Cruz's little test run was fun, wait until enough Democrats stay home to give Mitch the Turtle here control of the Senate.  It'll be the GOP's way or else.

A “good example,” McConnell said, is adding restrictions to regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency. Adding riders to spending bills would change the “behavior of the bureaucracy, which I think has been the single biggest reason this recovery has been so tepid,” he said. 

“He could,” McConnell said calmly when asked if such a tactic would prompt Obama to veto must-pass appropriations bills. “Yeah, he could.”

So yes, this would be the staring point of a Congress controlled completely by the GOP, a standing threat for the next two years to throw a tantrum and shut the country down, causing tens of billions in economic damage, any time they don't get what they want.

Of course, as Steve M. reminds us, voters are too lazy to care about shutdowns.

The fact that voters don't remember government shutdowns helps explain why McConnell's threat might be serious. If you were a Republican and you were looking at this chart, and at other 2014 polls, you'd think: Why shouldn't we shut down the government again, just as long as we don't do it a week or two before Election Day 2016? Voters won't remember. They sure don't remember the last shutdown, otherwise they wouldn't be on the verge of reelecting a GOP House and (probably) a GOP Senate.

Remember, Americans have shown no real appetite when it comes to punishing Republicans for bad behavior in the last 20 years.   And there are tens of millions of Americans who will vote for the Republicans to shut down the government anyway, because they know Republicans won't allow it to hurt their checks from Uncle Sam, just the programs for those people.


That's not governance.  That's lunacy.

But they're convinced they will win, because they're convinced you won't give a damn and will stay home in November.

Of course here in Kentucky you could vote Mitch out totally.

I happen to like that idea.

License To Be Obnoxious

Looks like over the river in Ohio, Cuyahoga County executive Ed FitzGerald is running into more silly errors with the whole driver's license issue that are hurting him in his race to unseat Gov. John Kasich.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer's latest:

As Cuyahoga County executive, Ed FitzGerald has disciplined employees for not holding a valid driver's license – something the former FBI agent and Democratic candidate for governor himself lacked for years. 

In 2013 his administration punished at least eight employees, with penalties ranging from a written reprimand to a five-day suspension without pay, according to documents the Northeast Ohio Media Group obtained through a public-records request. (scroll down to view the records) 

The county's inspector general first began reviewing potential violations of the county's driving policies last year, months after FitzGerald obtained his first permanent driver's license in more than a decade. More than 150 other driving-related infractions involving other county employees remain under investigation and could yet result in discipline. 

FitzGerald's own license lapse came to light this month, after NEOMG reported that police in suburban Westlake found him parked in car with a woman who was not his wife at 4:30 a.m. on Oct. 13, 2012. FitzGerald was not cited, and he and police maintain nothing inappropriate happened. But the county executive had a learner's permit, meaning he could drive only with a licensed driver 21 or older. He has acknowledged driving home alone after dropping the woman at a hotel.

FitzGerald has always struck me as eccentric (not full-blown Dennis Kucinich eccentric, but kind of an oddball anyway) and this is not helping his chances.  As long as the framing is on FitzGerald's driving habits and "do as I say, not as I do" nonsense, the story isn't on Kasich all but closing Ohio's abortion clinics, his fracking public safety problems, and the state's wrecked safety net.  Kasich needs to go, but FitzGerald isn't playing like he wants to win at all.

The polls still have FitzGerald down by 8-10 points, and something big has to change or Kasich will waltz to another four years of wrecking the Buckeye State.

Hagan Holds On

The latest Public Policy Polling numbers for the NC Senate race finds incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan's lead over Republican NC House Speaker Thom Tillis down to 4 points, but still a lead.

Tillis' slightly improved position is a reflection of Republicans starting to close ranks a little bit more as the election approaches. Last month in the head to head with Hagan he led by 59 points with Republican voters at 72/13, now it's a 71 points advantage at 79/8. And although his favorability numbers still remain very poor at a 28/48 spread, those are also up some from a month ago when they were 24/47. That's also a reflection of improvement with his party base- he's gone from a 39/29 spread with GOP voters up to 52/24.

Nevertheless the recent legislative session continues to be a weight on Tillis. One of the GOP's main goals was to look more moderate on education by increasing teacher salaries, but for the most part those efforts have fallen flat with voters. Only 39% think a good faith effort was made to raise teacher pay this session, compared to 50% who think it was not. Asked to grade the General Assembly's work on education this year 45% of voters give it a D or an F, compared to only 25% who give it an A or a B. The mean grade comes out somewhere in the C-/D+ range. Voters also express overall opposition to the budget that was finally passed, with 29% in support of it to 44% who are opposed. The approval rating for the General Assembly is 21%, with 57% of voters disapproving of it. 

Hagan remains unpopular as well though. She has a 42% approval rating compared to 49% of voters who disapprove of her. Hagan's approval numbers have tracked very closely with Barack Obama's for months now- only 41% of voters are happy with the job he's doing to 54% who disapprove.

So yes, if the Republicans had managed to nominate anyone who wasn't a teacher-hating jackass, Hagan would be in real trouble and probably down by double digits.  As it is, Tillis's problems are enough to outweigh Hagan's -- and President Obama's -- so far.

We'll see if Key Hagan can hold on to this, and the wild card remains Libertarian Sean Haugh, who has 8% of the vote so far.  If Haugh starts taking more of Tillis's voters, Hagan can win, because with Haugh out of the picture, the numbers become 43/42 in favor of Hagan with a healthy chunk of undecided.  Right now, Haugh is costing Tillis the race, and that can't be sitting will with Tillis's campaign people.

Just 11 weeks to go...

StupidiNews!

• Heavy rains near the Japanese city of Hiroshima have caused deadly landslides, killing at least 27 people and leaving at least 10 missing.
• Dozens were arrested in Ferguson, Missouri last night, but police did not use excessive force and State Highway Patrol captain Ron Johnson says the night may have been a "turning point".
• IDF airstrikes killed 11 as Israelis accused Hamas of breaking the latest cease fire first, Hamas responded with news that the airstrikes killed a Hamas commander's wife and baby.
• Militant group Islamic State has released a video purported to show the beheading of captured US journalist James Foley, who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012.
• With ownership of the LA Clippers now occupying most of his time, former Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer is stepping down from the company's board effective immediately.

Last Call For Holder The Line

I know it seems like this place is rapidly turning into the 24-hour Ferguson protest blog, but frankly it's news and I feel like running stories on it, and things need to be said.  Attorney General Eric Holder had some things to say today too in an op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch entitled "A message to the people of Ferguson".

The full resources of the Department of Justice have been committed to the investigation into Michael Brown’s death. This inquiry will take time to complete, but we have already taken significant steps. Approximately 40 FBI agents and some of the Civil Rights Division’s most experienced prosecutors have been deployed to lead this process, with the assistance of the United States Attorney in St. Louis. Hundreds of people have already been interviewed in connection with this matter. On Monday, at my direction, a team of federal medical examiners conducted an independent autopsy.

We understand the need for an independent investigation, and we hope that the independence and thoroughness of our investigation will bring some measure of calm to the tensions in Ferguson. In order to begin the healing process, however, we must first see an end to the acts of violence in the streets of Ferguson. Although these acts have been committed by a very small minority — and, in many cases, by individuals from outside Ferguson — they seriously undermine, rather than advance, the cause of justice. And they interrupt the deeper conversation that the legitimate demonstrators are trying to advance.

The Justice Department will defend the right of protesters to peacefully demonstrate and for the media to cover a story that must be told. But violence cannot be condoned. I urge the citizens of Ferguson who have been peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights to join with law enforcement in condemning the actions of looters, vandals and others seeking to inflame tensions and sow discord.

Law enforcement has a role to play in reducing tensions, as well. As the brother of a retired law enforcement officer, I know firsthand that our men and women in uniform perform their duties in the face of tremendous threats and significant personal risk. They put their lives on the line every day, and they often have to make split-second decisions.

At the same time, good law enforcement requires forging bonds of trust between the police and the public. This trust is all-important, but it is also fragile. It requires that force be used in appropriate ways. Enforcement priorities and arrest patterns must not lead to disparate treatment under the law, even if such treatment is unintended. And police forces should reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

I'm glad to see Eric Holder openly say that he's backing the people of Ferguson here, and that regardless of the outcome of the shooting of Michael Brown, the Ferguson PD and St. Louis County PD have a lot of work to do to earn back the trust of the people.

For some that will never happen.  There just isn't anything that can make this 100% right again.  But they have to go ahead and do it regardless because it's the right thing to do.

And yes, I wouldn't mind seeing both departments taken over by the feds.  They've lost the trust of whom they serve, and that's enough to pull the plug and reform them wholesale.

Cops Talk Shop, Cops Talk Shock

Former LAPD officer and professor of homeland security Sunil Dutta explains that cops aren't murderers, but boy you will fear and respect them or they will end you.

Working the street, I can’t even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my safety zone, and outright challenges to my authority. In the vast majority of such encounters, I was able to peacefully resolve the situation without using force. Cops deploy their training and their intuition creatively, and I wielded every trick in my arsenal, including verbal judo, humor, warnings and ostentatious displays of the lethal (and nonlethal) hardware resting in my duty belt. One time, for instance, my partner and I faced a belligerent man who had doused his car with gallons of gas and was about to create a firebomb at a busy mall filled with holiday shoppers. The potential for serious harm to the bystanders would have justified deadly force. Instead, I distracted him with a hook about his family and loved ones, and he disengaged without hurting anyone. Every day cops show similar restraint and resolve incidents that could easily end up in serious injuries or worse.

Sometimes, though, no amount of persuasion or warnings work on a belligerent person; that’s when cops have to use force, and the results can be tragic. We are still learning what transpired between Officer Darren Wilson and Brown, but in most cases it’s less ambiguous — and officers are rarely at fault. When they use force, they are defending their, or the public’s, safety.

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

Believe me when I say that 98% of cops believe the same as Dutta here does.  They are police officers, and you are not.  When they tell you to do something, you do it or else, regardless of what that may be.

So when these guys swing their weight around and go after black men and women and Latino men and women, they expect obedience, respect and fear.  If you are black or brown and the President of the United States, for that matter, and a cop like Dutta pulls you over, it's because he knows he has 100% of the power in the encounter.  It's because he knows he has the power to take your life if he sees fit.  You only continue to draw breath because he allows it.

So yes, black fathers and Latino fathers have "The Talk".  That you assume all cops are Officer Dutta, and you do 100% of what they say, or they will end you.

How difficult is it to cooperate for "that long"?  For a black man, "that long" is his entire lifespan.

Or that lifespan may end.

The Division Hell

Pew Research has unsurprisingly found major racial divisions in how blacks and whites view the case of Michael Brown, the man shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri nine days ago.  The disagreements are very telling nationwide:



Some 80% of blacks say the case raises important issues about race, while a plurality of whites, 47%, say "Race is getting more attention than it deserves."  That actually doesn't surprise me in the least and I'm honestly shocked it's not a full-blown majority of whites who feel this way.

As far as the police response is concerned:





Nearly twice as many blacks, 65%, as whites, 33%, believe the police response in Ferguson has gone too far.   Perhaps it's because black America is actually paying attention to the story: 54% of blacks say they are following this story very closely, where only 25% of whites are.

After last night's police response where both MSNBC's Chris Hayes and CNN's Jake Tapper and Don Lemon were on the ground in Ferguson and tear gassed, maybe these numbers will change.

For his part, Chris Hayes suggested that maybe police should charge Officer Darren Wilson with the shooting of Michael Brown, but that's just going to happen.