Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

With the recovery starting to roll forward, The Great Othering begins in earnest. Rev. Franklin Graham won't say President Obama is a Muslim...but he can't completely rule it out, either.

“(Obama’s) said he’s a Christian, so I just have to assume, you know, that he is,” Graham said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, adding that he doesn’t know whether Obama has accepted Jesus Christ as his lord and savior. Then Graham repeated his claim that Obama’s father was a Muslim and therefore the “Muslim world sees (Obama) as a son of Islam.”

Graham said he doesn’t believe Obama is personally a Muslim, because, you know, the president has said that he is not. But he wouldn’t go so far as to say “categorically” that Obama doesn’t practice Islam.

“I can’t say categorically because Islam has gotten a free pass under Obama,” Graham said, referring to the Arab Spring protests across the Middle East and North Africa. He called deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak a dictator, but said he kept the peace with Israel. As dictators fall, Graham said, Islamists are taking control of the Middle East. “Now, those Christian minorities throughout the entire Arab world are under attack.”

The prospect of President Santorum and a theocracy that would roll back the laws and put those people in their place again is too tempting to resist for the fever bright nutbars on the right.  They know if they get Santorum as the nominee, he'll get 40% of the vote to Obama's 40% no matter how dirty, how awful, how racist, how bigoted, and how repugnant their campaign is.  All they need is half the 20% in the middle to side with them through intimidation, extortion, or outright fear-mongering.


And they know it.  No accident that the same day this happened...

We get "Obama's a secret Muslim.

Challenge Accepted

You can't put a gun rack on a Chevy Volt, eh Newt Gingrich?

StupidiNews!

• London Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin was reportedly one of two journalists killed today in Homs, Syria by government forces shelling the city.
• Australian Foreign Minister Paul Rudd has resigned, seemingly in preparation to run against Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
• The White House hosted blues legends including B.B. King and Mick Jagger as part of the "Red, White and Blues" concert.
• Cable giant Comcast will offer its own streaming video service to existing cable customers starting this week.
• Megaupload's Kim Dotcom has been granted bail by a New Zealand judge, on conditions that he make no attempt to use the internet or flee the country.

Last Call

I don't see how affirmative action as admission criteria in colleges and universities will survive this case being heard by SCOTUS.  Fisher v. Texas may very well be the beginning of the end for affirmative action in general.  This issue was last heard nine years ago and survived a 5-4 ruling.  With the Roberts court now, this seems grim.

The court’s membership has changed since 2003, most notably for these purposes with the appointment of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who replaced Justice O’Connor in 2006. Justice Alito has voted with the court’s more conservative justices in decisions hostile to the use of racial classifications by the government. 

“There thus seem five votes — Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito — to overrule Grutter and hold that affirmative action programs are unconstitutional,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine, wrote in a recent book, “The Conservative Assault on the Constitution.” 

Justice Kennedy has never really backed affirmative action.  He is unlikely to start now, but even if you believe that somehow he'll have a change of heart...

Justice Elena Kagan disqualified herself from hearing the case, presumably because she had worked on it as solicitor general. Arguments in the case will be heard during the court’s next term, which starts in October. 

This might be it, folks.  The only issue is how broad or narrow the eventual ruling will be here.  This court has already balanced the scales of campaign free speech through unlimited donations.  What they will do if they see affirmative action as a greater evil than discrimination is anyone's guess.