Last Call For Bigotry Today, Bigotry Tomorrow, Bigotry Forevah!

GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal takes to the pages of the NY Times to write an opinion piece on how Louisiana will never, ever, ever, ever, ever allow same-sex marriage, and shame on you for trying to make them accept it, you awful intolerant hatemongers in the corporate wing of the GOP!

THE debate over religious liberty in America presents conservatives and business leaders with a crucial choice. 

In Indiana and Arkansas, large corporations recently joined left-wing activists to bully elected officials into backing away from strong protections for religious liberty. It was disappointing to see conservative leaders so hastily retreat on legislation that would simply allow for an individual or business to claim a right to free exercise of religion in a court of law. 

Our country was founded on the principle of religious liberty, enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Why shouldn’t an individual or business have the right to cite, in a court proceeding, religious liberty as a reason for not participating in a same-sex marriage ceremony that violates a sincerely held religious belief? 

That is what Indiana and Arkansas sought to do. That political leaders in both states quickly cowered amid the shrieks of big business and the radical left should alarm us all. 

As the fight for religious liberty moves to Louisiana, I have a clear message for any corporation that contemplates bullying our state: Save your breath.

Louisianans will have the God-given right to hate some gay people, Goddammit.

I hold the view that has been the consensus in our country for over two centuries: that marriage is between one man and one woman. Polls indicate that the American consensus is changing — but like many other believers, I will not change my faith-driven view on this matter, even if it becomes a minority opinion.

A pluralistic and diverse society like ours can exist only if we all tolerate people who disagree with us. That’s why religious freedom laws matter — and why it is critical for conservatives and business leaders to unite in this debate.

Sure, we all have to tolerate people who disagree with us, except I'm the governor of this effing state and I'm going to sign this bill that makes my minority opinion into law. Tolerance, you see, is you dealing with discrimination and accepting it.

Right?

Breaking StupidiNews Roundup

Wow, busy afternoon.

Loretta Lynch has been confirmed by the US Senate to succeed Eric Holder as Attorney General.

The highly politicized five-month battle to choose President Barack Obama's next attorney general came to a close Thursday when the Senate finally voted to confirm Loretta Lynch. The 56-43 vote makes Lynch the first African-American female attorney general in U.S. history. 

But the delay of her nomination neared record-breaking proportions. Republicans leading the Senate refused to bring her nomination up for a vote until Democrats cut a deal on abortion language in an unrelated bill. That legislation passed Wednesday, setting up Thursday's vote and ending the latest partisan Washington standoff. 

Ten Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined Democrats. Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz was the only senator not to vote.

The Comcast-Time Warner merger deal looks to be dead in the water.

Comcast Corp. is planning to walk away from its proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc., people with knowledge of the matter said, after regulators decided that the deal wouldn’t help consumers, making approval unlikely. 

A formal annoucement on the deal’s fate may come as soon as Friday, said one of the people, who asked not to be named discussing private information. 

This week, U.S. Federal Communications Commission staff joined lawyers at the Justice Department in opposing the planned $45.2 billion transaction.

And finally, former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus has been sentenced to probation and a $100,000 fine for disclosing classified information to his mistress.

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced David H. Petraeus, the highest-profile general from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to probation for disclosing classified information. He was also fined $100,000, which was $60,000 more than the government had recommended. 

The sentencing was the end of a leak investigation that embarrassed Mr. Petraeus and created bitter disputes inside the Justice Department about whether he was receiving too much leniency from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr..

I'll have more on these stories this weekend, I'm sure.

Earth Dazed

Yesterday was Earth Day, and Gallup has released a poll on what Americans believe will be coming with the effects of climate change. Most Americans agree that the effects of climate change will happen in their lifetimes, a few believe the effects won’t be felt until future generations.

And then there are the paste eating blockheads conservative Republicans.

While a majority of fart-lighting Jackass reenactors conservative Republicans actually do believe the effects of climate change will affect humanity at some point, two in five are running around going “Well, actually…” while the evidence (and the super storms, rising sea levels, melting polar ice caps, public opinion and reams of data) drowns them.

Pretty solid evidence here that like most other issues in America, there’s a major partisan gap between people on the left and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 watchers people on the right.

Happy Earth Day indeed.

StupidiNews!

• The Calbuco volcano in southern Chile has erupted twice in less than 24 hours, prompting officials to evacuate hundreds from the area as the volcano hasn't seen an eruption since 1972.
• The Senate Finance Committee has easily passed "fast track" authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade treaty, where it could go to a full Senate vote as early as next week.
• Reuters has discovered multiple errors in Clinton Foundation charity tax returns, prompting the non-profits to refile at least five returns and to audit others.
• Social media stocks have boosted the Nasdaq to over 5,000, prompting speculation that tech stocks could be in another "dot com" bubble.
• Now defunct TV streaming service Aereo, slaughtered by a Supreme Court ruling that regulated it as a cable utility, has less than $1 million of the $100 million broadcasters were suing it for.

Last Call For The Clinton Cash Con

We live in an era where you can just make up a scandal and then dare actual news outlets to go and prove your assertions, which you yourself don't have any solid evidence about.  That's the scam behind the latest News Corporation attack on Hillary Clinton.

"Clinton Cash", a book by former Breitbrat Peter Schweizer. designed to keep the 18 months of Campaign 2016 interesting and to keep the haters tuned into FOX News, will be hitting the shelves next month.  But FOX News and the NY Times have cut deals to investigate the book's unproven allegations before the rest of the vultures can strike.  It's literally a manufactured, slickly packaged, and baseless scandal.

ThinkProgress obtained an advance copy of Clinton Cash, which will be released May 5. Schweizer makes clear that he does not intend to present a smoking gun, despite the media speculation. The book relies heavily on timing, stitching together the dates of donations to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s speaking fees with actions by the State Department. 

Schweizer explains he cannot prove the allegations, leaving that up to investigative journalists and possibly law enforcement. “Short of someone involved coming forward to give sworn testimony, we don’t know what might or might not have been said in private conversations, the exact nature of the transition, or why people in power make the decision they do,” he writes. Later, he concludes, “We cannot ultimately know what goes on in their minds and ultimately provide the links between the money they took and the benefits that subsequently accrued to themselves, their friends, and their associates.” 

Right there, the NY Times should have passed on it, but it didn't.

Though Schweizer is unable to provide direct evidence that State Department actions were influenced by Clinton Foundation donations, he does raise questions about unsavory donors and possible conflicts of interest, regardless of whether or not they dictated Clinton’s policy. 

The book alleges the Clinton Foundation has failed to disclose some of its donors, digging up Canadian tax records as evidence of a $2 million donation from the Fernwood Foundation that Schweizer says went unreported. He also says he found a $40,000 donation in the form of stocks from the Dattels Family Foundation that was listed on their website but not on the Clintons’ donor list.

Well, those are pretty specific allegations, so they should be easily proven or disproven, yes?

Another 18 months of this is going to be awesome.  Charles Pierce reminds us this stuff has a long, ugly history, and we're going to spend the next year plus getting very familiar with it.

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't

The coming shortfall in Kansas's state budget is now official, and Gov. Brownback's tax cuts completely failed to create hundreds of millions in new revenue for the state as promised.  Now the plan to balance the state's budget will fall on the poor with a new hike in the state's sales tax.

"You've got policymakers at this point who are unable to embrace the fact that there was a mistake made," said Annie McKay, the executive director of the left-leaning Kansas Center for Economic Growth. The think tank in Topeka argues that the state's deficit can't be eliminated without reversing some of the income tax cuts Brownback made in 2012. 

Poor and working-class Kansans already carry a heavy burden under the state's tax system, compared to people of modest incomes in most other states. Among the fifth of the Kansas population with the lowest incomes, the average person pays 11.1 percent of what they make in state and local taxes, including sales taxes. Among the wealthiest one in every 100 Kansans, the average tax bill is just 3.6 percent of annual income, according to a recent report from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. 

So the poorest Kansans have three times the tax burden as the wealthiest do, and that burden is about to be dramatically increased.

People who make less are more vulnerable to increases in sales and excises taxes, since they spend more of their money buying basic goods and services they need to get by. This is especially the case in Kansas, where food is subject to sales tax. Kansans can receive a tax rebate for their food purchases, but those who make nothing or too little, to owe income tax aren't eligible. The pay the sales tax on food in full. 

The defense of the plan to raise sales and excise taxes -- the sales tax would increase from 6.15 percent to 6.3 percent, under one proposal -- is that people should be taxed on what they spend, not what they make, so as not to penalize them for earning more but instead to encourage them to save and invest their money. 

"You're moving from taxing a productive activity to taxing a consumption activity," said Joseph Henchman of the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. "Most economists will say that it is good for economic growth." 

In practice, though, people who don't have much money can't save or invest it. They have to spend it to get along. The more you make, the smaller the fraction of your income you have to spend to cover the basics. And wealthier households, which spend more on luxuries and entertainment, can always give up some of their purchases and keep the money in the bank if they don't want to pay the higher rate. 

As a result, raising the sales tax equally for everyone means asking poorer households to pay significantly more, relative what they earn.

And remember, this is what Kansas voters cast their ballots for.  Or, at least the ones that bothered to vote did, anyway.  Austerity economics is failing miserably in Kansas, and in 2016, the GOP plan is to bring it to all 50 states.

Might want to start giving a damn, then.

They Make Great Pets

As Steve M reminds us, in a post-Citizens United world, presidential candidates now have public oligarch support. Got the cash? You too can own your own GOP 2016 hopeful, like Norman Braman.

Braman, a former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles football franchise, is poised to occupy the sugar-daddy role for [Marco] Rubio....

The Miami businessman, Braman’s friends say, is considering spending anywhere from $10 million to $25 million -- and possibly even more -- on Rubio’s behalf, a cash stake that could potentially alter the course of the Republican race by enabling the Florida senator to wage a protracted fight for the nomination.

Or Robert Mercer.

Robert Mercer, a Wall Street hedge-fund magnate ... who started at I.B.M. and made his fortune using computer patterns to outsmart the stock market, emerged this week as a key early bankroller of Mr. Cruz’s surprisingly fast campaign start. He is believed to be the main donor behind a network of four “super PACs” supporting Mr. Cruz that reported raising $31 million just a few weeks into his campaign.

Or the Koch brothers, who are wisely making it known who they back, but are saving their money for the general election and not the primary.

On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker would be the Republican nominee....

Two people who attended the event said they heard Mr. Koch go even further, indicating that Mr. Walker should be the Republican nominee.

... Mr. Koch’s remark left little doubt among attendees of where his heart is, and could effectively end one of the most closely watched contests in the “invisible primary,” a period where candidates crisscross the country seeking not the support of voters but the blessing of their party’s biggest donors and fund-raisers.

As Steve says:

So (even though a Koch spokesman denied this report) here were the Kochs declaring Walker their boy without promising a dime to him -- but because they have so much money they could give him, he's owned.

And if he falters in the primaries, others will line up to be owned by the Kochs, even though they'll know that the Kochs would have preferred to own someone else.

Hey, I guess you could call this the Ownership Society. 

We live in an era where billionaires are openly doing battle for America by purchasing the White House, and it's 100% legal.  The Kochs have bought Scott Walker, and they will get what they want from him.

Republicans often rail about undocumented immigrants. But Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an expected GOP presidential candidate, took it a step further Monday by sounding some critical notes about the number of those who immigrate to the U.S. legally.

"In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying -- the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages. Because the more I’ve talked to folks, I’ve talked to [Alabama Sen. Jeff] Sessions and others out there -- but it is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today -- is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages. And we need to have that be at the forefront of our discussion going forward," Walker said in an interview with Glenn Beck, according to Breitbart News.

The Kochs want a nationalist, protectionist candidate. and Scott Walker has become that candidate, now far, far to the right of the rest of the GOP pack on immigration.

What the voters want is now 100% irrelevant.

StupidiNews!

• Less than 24 hours after announcing an end to Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is once again resuming airstrikes against Houthi targets after a brigade was attacked.
• Hundreds of protesters rallied in Baltimore to march in support of Freddie Gray, who died after being in police custody after complications from a nearly severed spinal cord.
• US Drug Enforcement Administration director Michele Leonhart will resign as Congress plans hearings into whether DEA agents spilled secrets at lavish sex parties thrown by Colombian cartels.
• European Union officials are accusing Russian natural gas giant Gazprom of market manipulation to raise natural gas prices across Europe through its near monopoly presence.
• Google is expected to announce its new wireless network service as early as today, combining and reselling Sprint, T-Mobile and WiFi service to make calls on its Nexus 6 phones.

Last Call For The Real Racists In Michigan

Just pointing out the fact this Michigan couple has a noose and Confederate flags hanging from the trees in their yard makes me a racist, or something.

A suburban Detroit business owner and his wife who hung Confederate flags and nooses on their property insist that anyone who sees the actions as racist is “stupid.” 

“I am not a racist,” Robert Tomanovich, owner of Robert’s Discount Tree Service in Livonia, Mich., told the Daily News Monday night. 

“I know black guys, I have black friends. We’re all laughing at this stupidity. Do you know how many white guys were hung back in the day? This isn’t racist. But all of a sudden it’s out of control.” 

Tomanovich , 55,made local headlines when WXYZ reported last Friday that Confederate flags and a noose were hanging outside two of his properties, one of which he uses for his tree-cutting business. The noose hung from a tree small enough for a child to scale. 

The decorations have no connection to the racist history of the Confederacy, said his wife Lindy, rushing to his defense.

Boy, sure is a terrible time we live in when people get upset over stuff like a noose hanging from a tree.  Besides, all those slave lynchings and hangings? White guys died too or something, so what's the big deal?

It's not racist cause he said so, guys.  CASE CLOSED.

Johnny Volcano's Revenge

Sen. John McCain has finally reached the stage in his life where he completely blames his failure to win the White House in 2008 on Barack Obama, and that he's just out of damns to give when it comes to making up niceties and excuses for his foul behavior towards the man who beat him.

Sen. John McCain has an explanation for Obama administration appointees whose confirmation votes are languishing in the GOP-led Senate: It’s payback for Democrats using the so-called nuclear option to push through scores of nominations in the previous Congress.

“I told ’em: ‘You jam them through, it’s going to be a long time before I approve of them,’” McCain said, recounting what he told Democrats after they changed the rules in 2013 and confirmed dozens of lifetime judicial appointments and several high-profile Cabinet nominees. “It’s affected me as chairman of the Armed Services Committee.”

McCain did help shepherd Defense Secretary Ash Carter through confirmation — the only Cabinet nominee approved by the GOP Senate. Since then, the Arizona Republican has refused to move 10 civilian nominations that have landed in his committee.

And none of them are going anywhere, either.  It's just petty revenge now, that's all he lives for.

McCain is far from the only one, however.

There are 18 nominations waiting for a vote on the Senate floor — including Loretta Lynch’s nomination to be attorney general — and more than 130 idling in committees. So far, though, only McCain has admitted to deliberately stymieing President Barack Obama’s picks. But even as the GOP Senate Judiciary Committee moves at a pace similar to that of last year’s Democratic Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has done little to bring up nominations for a vote by the full Senate. 

That has Democrats accusing Republicans of slow-walking the nominations amid lingering anger over the nuclear option. 

“It’s appalling,” groused Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat. “I mean, how many times are they just going to throw logs on the process of government? I mean, even district court judges, for lord’s sake.” 

The pace of action on confirmations stands in contrast to legislative action, where Republicans have considered more than 100 amendments this year and passed a budget, and are hoping to soon push through major trade and foreign policy bills.

And voters won't punish the GOP at all.  They haven't in the past.  Why would they now?  Even if a Democrat wins the White House, at best the Dems will have a small Senate majority, and the GOP will still have a huge House majority.  In 2018, the Dems will have to defend the Senate again, and unless the GOP makes the same mistakes as they did in 2012, they'll get the Senate back too.

But all this?  Of course it's mean ol' Obama's fault.

West Of The Abyss

You may have heard about this scathing deconstruction of Cornel West in TNR by Michael Eric Dyson over the weekend, but really everything you need to know about Dyson, West, and the entire black academic cottage industry of OBAMA FAILED BLACK PEOPLE can be summed up in the piece's second paragraph:

Cornel West’s rage against President Barack Obama evokes that kind of venom. He has accused Obama of political minstrelsy, calling him a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface”; taunted him as a “brown-faced Clinton”; and derided him as a “neoliberal opportunist.” In 2011, West and I were both speakers at a black newspaper conference in Chicago. During a private conversation, West asked how I escaped being dubbed an “Obama hater” when I was just as critical of the president as he was. I shared my three-part formula for discussing Obama before black audiences: Start with love for the man and pride in his epic achievement; focus on the unprecedented acrimony he faces as the nation’s first black executive; and target his missteps and failures. No matter how vehemently I disagree with Obama, I respect him as a man wrestling with an incredibly difficult opportunity to shape history. West looked into my eyes, sighed, and said: “Well, I guess that’s the difference between me and you. I don’t respect the brother at all.”

And that's where the game of black political academia is right now in 2015, the "I hate Obama but I respect him" crowd versus the I hate Obama and don't respect him" crowd.  No group has turned on Obama faster than these puffed-up pinheads, and no group is more aware of the complete expiration of their mild at best relevance to current politics on January 20, 2017.

Both of these men, along with Tavis Smiley and Melissa Harris-Perry and a whole host of other black thought leaders on campuses across the country, have made a fortune on "If only President Obama would listen to me, black America wouldn't be in this mess."

But the grifters, man they have to grift, and West has gone so far down the Obama Derangement Syndrome rabbit hole that he's even an embarrassment to the rest of the grifters, enough so that instead of making the fight always about Obama and his failures, Dyson breaks that cardinal rule and makes it about West.

The rest of the piece is Dyson just absolutely wrecking West, and deservedly so.  It's been a long time coming as well, a 10,000 word disassembly of the last ten years of West's numerous academic sins that only could be delivered by the man he once mentored, and not just the sins against President Obama.

But the whole time Dyson has one foot in the same abyss that claimed West's career and Dyson can't see it. in a very real way it kind of proves the point that the rest of us have figured out: we're really going to miss Barack Obama as President when he's gone.

West and Dyson will too, of course, but for a whole other batch of reasons.

StupidiNews!

• Ousted former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the deaths of dozens of protesters in 2012.
• A Chicago judge on Monday found police officer Dante Servin not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Rekia Boyd in 2012.
• Iranian officials are optimistic that a cease fire in Yemen will be reached today between Houthi rebels and a coalition of Arab forces led by Saudi Arabia.
• The European Central Bank may be considering slowing down emergency liquidity support to Greek banks if a bailout deal cannot be reached soon.
• Norway plans to become the first country to entirely transition away from FM radio to digital radio starting in 2017.

Last Call For 20 Years Later

Some 20 years after Timothy McVeigh attacked the Alfred P, Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, America has clearly forgotten that our domestic terrorism problem remains, and has forgotten at our peril.

Officers Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans never saw it coming. 

The white minivan pulled over on Interstate 40 near West Memphis, Ark., in 2010 came back registered to a church in Ohio. Inside the vehicle were a Bible and some documents quoting Scripture. 

Minutes later, Evans lay dying in the ditch and Paudert was sprawled on the roadway, their bodies tattered by two dozen bullets from an AK-47. 

The killers: members of the sovereign citizen movement, which the officers had never heard of. 

“They didn’t realize that there are people at war with this country who are not international terrorists,” said Bob Paudert, then West Memphis police chief and father of one of the slain officers. 

“These people are willing to kill and be killed for their beliefs. And they are more dangerous to us in law enforcement than international terrorists.”

But today, Republicans will attack you for even mentioning right-wing terrorist groups. All domestic terrorists are somehow radical 60's liberals. Cliven Bundy?  Who's that?  Sovereign citizen movement? White supremacist groups?  All liberals, you see.  Or they don't exist at all.  We certainly don't need to spend taxpayer money harassing these kind people.

Domestic terrorism used to be a major focus for police and federal agents, especially after the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people 20 years ago Sunday. 

But the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, led to a dramatic change: Law enforcement shifted its focus from domestic to foreign terrorism. 

And today, while the number of violent incidents committed by domestic extremists is actually increasing, the holes in the net to catch them are growing larger, The Kansas City Star found in a one-year investigation. 

A network of centers set up to detect and deter terrorism has done little of either, while at the same time federal funding to train law enforcement officers has been slashed. 

Authorities and others are beginning to raise the alarm — the same one raised after Oklahoma City. 

“Domestic terrorism was the focus after the Oklahoma City bombing,” said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst with the Department of Homeland Security. “Then when 9/11 happened, it became way too focused on al-Qaida and its affiliates.” 

Now, in a period of increasing extremism, the domestic danger is greater than ever, Johnson said. 

“Our leaders don’t seem too concerned about the threat from within,” he said. “My fear is that there will be some kind of mass-casualty attack, with more people dying needlessly at the hands of domestic extremists. That’s what keeps me awake at night.”

Nope, these guys are all patriots who hate Obama and the federal government, just like the God-fearing, rock-ribbed salt of the earth Republican voters in the heartland.  The ties these movements have to hate groups, both old and new?  Slander, lies, fantasy.  Obama's your only real enemy.

And 20 years later, very little has changed other than these groups have gotten worse, and we've done nothing to stop them.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Here in Cincy the talk over the weekend involved a "victory over those evil Mooslem types" up in John Boehner country as students at a high school up in Mason were bullied out of an exercise in religious tolerance, mainly because the religion in question wasn't Christianity.

A group of Muslim students organized a one day challenge to their fellow students to wear a hijab to school for a day in order to promote religious understanding of Muslim culture, and if you know anything about the northern suburbs of Cincinnati (which is John Boehner's district up all the way up to Dayton), you know damn well "religious understanding of Muslim anything" sure as hell doesn't exist there.

What started out as a cultural awareness effort by Mason High School Muslim students this week morphed into a fierce 48-hour debate about prejudice, freedom and religion in public schools.

By the end, Mason High School canceled the "Covered Girl Challenge," and principal Mindy McCarty-Stewart sent an apology to district families. The challenge was student-sponsored and voluntary, meant to combat stereotypes students may face when wearing head coverings, McCarty-Stewart wrote.

"As word spread beyond our school community ... we received many strong messages that made me reconsider the event's ability to meet its objectives," she wrote. "I now realize that as adults we should have given our students better guidance."

Even afterward, though, the episode and arguments illustrate the fault lines in Greater Cincinnati - and the U.S. - over where cultural awareness ends and promoting a religion begins. And where avoiding controversy ends and turns into bigotry.

When the right-wing hatemongers got wind of this, the students found themselves as targets, with the blogs claiming that the school was "forcing all female students to wear hijabs" and attacking the student group for perpetuating human rights violations against Muslim women. By Thursday, the principal had canceled the April planned event completely.

Intense criticism has prompted an Ohio high school's principal to cancel a student event in which girls would celebrate diversity by spending a day wearing a Muslim headscarf.

Mason High School Mindy McCarty-Stewart also issued an apology in an email Thursday to district families, saying the intent of the April 23 student-led event was meant to be positive, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

"I now realize that as adults we should have given our students better guidance. After much consideration and after talking with the student event organizers, we have canceled the event," she said.

The reality is that this event happened  without too much trouble at other schools and universities in the US, and again it wasn't a problem even when it happened at high schools in the Midwest.

Somehow, Mason, Ohio became a firestorm.

I wonder why.

Reminder: The Voting Rights Act Is Still Dead

The NY Times editorial board rips into Chief Justice John Roberts over the 2013 decision that destroyed the Voting Rights Act's "preclearance" formula because the racism of voter suppression simply didn't exist anymore.  The truth is far more insidious.

A comprehensive new study by a historian of the Voting Rights Act provides a fresh trove of empirical evidence to refute that assertion. The study by J. Morgan Kousser, a professor of history and social science at the California Institute of Technology, examines more than 4,100 voting-rights cases, Justice Department inquiries, settlements and changes to laws in response to the threat of lawsuits around the country where the final result favored minority voters.

It found that from 1957 until 2013, more than 90 percent of these legal “events” occurred in jurisdictions that were required to preclear their voting changes. The study also provides evidence that the number of successful voting-rights suits has gone down in recent years, not because there is less discrimination, but because several Supreme Court decisions have made them harder to win.

Mr. Kousser acknowledges that the law’s formula, created without the benefit of years of data, was a “blunt tool” that focused on voter turnout and clearly discriminatory practices like literacy tests. Still, he says, the statistics show that for almost a half century it “succeeded in accurately homing in on the counties where the vast majority of violations would take place.”

Members of Congress had seen some of this data in 2006 when, by a near-unanimous vote, they reauthorized the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. In fact, the legislative record contained more than 15,000 pages of evidence documenting the continuation of ever-evolving racially discriminatory voting practices, particularly in the areas covered by the preclearance requirement.

But the Roberts opinion showed no interest in actual data. Nor did it seem to matter that the law was already adapting to current conditions: Every one of the more than 200 jurisdictions that asked to be removed from the preclearance list was successful, because each showed it was not discriminating.

Instead, the court said the coverage formula had to be struck down because it failed to target precisely all areas with voting rights violations in the country.

Quite literally Roberts struck down the formula because it was "antiquated" to the point of reverse discrimination, even though Congress had approved the formula just seven years before.  The same Republicans who had no problem with it in 2007 of course would never vote to fix the formula in 2015.

I can't imagine what's different now about America than 1957 to 2007, can you?

StupidiNews!

• In Somalia, Al-Shabaab militants are claiming responsibility for killing seven near the city of Garowe, including four UNICEF aid workers.
• Australian officials have announced an end to accepting religious-based exemptions for vaccinations, saying the public health risk outweighs the benefits.
• EU foreign ministers are meeting in Luxembourg to discuss the mounting refugee crisis after this weekend's deadly boat capsize that killed as many as 700 migrants fleeing Libya.
• Finland's Center Party, led by millionaire engineer Juha Sipila, has triumphed in national elections and will attempt to form a government to rescue Helsinki's moribund economy.
• The US Justice Department is expected to file an anti-trust lawsuit to block the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger.

Last Call For Riding Dirty

I guess it's time to add "riding a bicycle" to the long, long list of things that will get you pulled over by a cop for doing when you're black. The Tampa Bay Times:

The Times analyzed more than 10,000 bicycle tickets Tampa police issued in the past dozen years. The newspaper found that even though blacks make up about a quarter of the city's population, they received 79 percent of the bike tickets.

Some riders have been stopped more than a dozen times through the years, and issued as many as 17 tickets. Some have been ticketed three times in one day.

It's possible blacks in some areas use bicycles more than whites. But that's not what's driving the disparity.

Police are targeting certain high-crime neighborhoods and nitpicking cyclists as a way to curb crime. They hope they will catch someone with a stolen bike or with drugs or that they will scare thieves away.

"This is not a coincidence," said Police Chief Jane Castor. "Many individuals receiving bike citations are involved in criminal activity."

She said her department has done such a good job curbing auto theft that bikes have "become the most common mode of transportation for criminals."

Many of the tickets did go to convicted criminals, including some people interviewed for this story. And there are cases where police stopped someone under suspicious circumstances and found a gun or caught a burglar.

But most bike stops that led to a ticket turned up no illegal activity; only 20 percent of adults ticketed last year were arrested.

When police did arrest someone, it was almost always for a small amount of drugs or a misdemeanor like trespassing.

Ordinances that mysteriously don't get enforced for bicycle riders in the nicer neighborhoods of Tampa Bay, only the black ones. 

Weird how that works.

Burning Up The Charts

Another month, another global temperature record, as 2015 is proving to be even hotter across Earth than record-setting 2014 was.

Last month the average global temperature was the highest recorded for March since record keeping began in 1880, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Friday.

Average global temperature, including both land and ocean surfaces, was 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average.

“Record warm temperatures continued to dominate in the northeast Pacific Ocean and were also notable in the southwest Pacific and parts of the Arctic Seas to the north and northwest of Scandinavia,” NOAA said in its report. “Overall, every major ocean basin had at least some areas with record warmth and large areas with much warmer-than-average temperatures.”

The first quarter of this year, from January to March, had already broken records. It was the hottest such period in the administration’s 136-year archive.

But remember, global warming is a myth, all the world's climate scientists are involved in a massive conspiracy to deceive you, it's really a major hoax to impose a new world order and destroy the world's economies, and only the Republican Party can save you from it.

Or, you know, we could lower carbon emissions. One of these two paths is the truth.  So far, America has overwhelmingly decided on path number one.

Sunday Long Read: Disappeared Like Magic

Your Sunday long read this week is Jonathan Abrams and his essential piece at Grantland on the mid-90's era Orlando Magic.  The team, led by the duo of Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway, should have won three, maybe four NBA titles.  Instead they imploded and ended one of the biggest duds in NBA history.

They were destined for greatness. Back in the mid-1990s, you couldn’t imagine a more promising basketball pairing than the Orlando Magic’s Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway. O’Neal was powerful and agile, plus swift and skillful in a way that hadn’t been seen in a 7-footer since Wilt Chamberlain (and hasn’t been seen since O’Neal retired). Hardaway was seen as the rightful heir to Magic Johnson — a tall, transcendent point guard who would headline the new generation of NBA superstars. If you wanted to build an ideal basketball team, you would start with a center and a point guard. If you wanted to build the perfect team, you would start with O’Neal and Hardaway. The Magic, only a few years removed from their lowly expansion-team origins, skyrocketed to fame with their abundant talent and black-and-white pinstripes. O’Neal and Hardaway were surrounded by capable role players like Dennis Scott, Brian Shaw, Nick Anderson, and Horace Grant. Together, they seemed poised to become the NBA’s next dynasty. 

Perhaps no NBA team has ever featured two players more marketable than O’Neal and Hardaway. The two filmed Blue Chips together and became dueling campaign faces for Nike and Reebok. O’Neal had his wide smile and an outsize personality to match his towering physique. Hardaway was more reserved, but possessed that unforgettable nickname and a Chris Rock–voiced alter ego to talk trash for him. The possibilities seemed endless, as if the championship rings and parades would be a formality.

And then it ended. The Magic’s competitive window slammed shut faster than anyone imagined, thanks to O’Neal’s unexpected departure to Los Angeles, the firing of Magic coach Brian Hill, and the decline of Hardaway’s game thanks to knee injuries. It took years for the franchise to build another competitive team, and even though the Dwight Howard–led Magic reached the NBA Finals in 2009, the pride mixed with disappointment from 1995 and ’96 remained strong. 

The Shaq and Penny Magic are in an unfortunate class similar to the ’70s Blazers,’80s Rockets, or 2000s Kings — a story of unfulfilled potential and a dynasty that never was. “We were just having so much fun playing the game,” Scott said. “We weren’t really thinking about making history or understanding how good we really could be. All that stuff was happening so fast.”

Penny and Shaq. Shaq and Penny. For a brief time — they played only three seasons together — most of the NBA believed no one could stop them.

I remember the Shaq and Penny-era Magic pretty fondly throughout college. They were the next coming of Jordan and Pippen Bulls or the Rodman and Thomas "Bad Boys" Pistons and then everything melted down.  They were exciting and cool and awesome, and then they were gone.

Give the story a read, it's a good one, even by Grantland standards.

Last Call For Working The Refs

Peeking over the fence at what conservatives are up to is something of a necessary occupational hazard in this gig, but every now and then you catch something informative, disturbing, and flagrant.  This time around it's our old friend Cap'n Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, reviewing of all things, NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd appearing as a guest on the internet-based talk show of conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt.

The transcript falls into that informative, disturbing, and flagrant pile.

HH: The former Secretary of State installed a homebrew server. What was your reaction upon learning of that, as a technology executive aware of the security challenges of maintaining privacy and security?

CF: Well, I had two reactions. One was that clearly, she had a plan to shield her communications.

HH: Chuck Todd, Trey Gowdy came on the show as well and said he’s going to subpoena her if she doesn’t show up. And then he’s going to subpoena Huma Abedin and Sidney Blumenthal and Cheryl Mills. How big of an issue, we’ve got 45 seconds, is this server going to be?

CT: Look, I think it’s a huge issue. I’m sorry. I think it’s why those trust, those honest and trustworthy numbers were the way they were. We talked about this last week. I used those numbers on the show on Sunday.

HH: Yeah.

CT: I think this is, it brought back all of the Clinton demons that swing voters are uncomfortable with.

HH: And she doesn’t, she didn’t take any questions this week to dispel those, did she?

CT: No, and all, and can I just say this week, she had a golden opportunity to come across unscripted and truly out of her bubble. She created opportunities for herself, and then didn’t take them. I just say this was a perplexing week.

HH: Very.

CT: …watching her. They did very well on day one, and then sort of swung and missed every other day.

Now, this is the supposedly neutral (if not FLAMING EVIL LIBERAL if you ask most conservatives) Chuck Todd just trashing Hillary Clinton here.  Todd clearly seems to believe that if he's a guest on someone else's political roundup show, he's a pundit and not the host of Meet The Press.  That's one thing.

The other is Chuck Todd clearly does not like Hillary Clinton, and believes she's in a lot of trouble, sounding very much like, well, Hugh Hewitt.

Keep that in mind next time you hear Chuck Todd proclaim that he can't ask tough questions on his show because otherwise newsmakers won't come on.