Last Call For Church And State Of Insanity

In a 5-4 ruling today, the Supreme Court all but blew a hole in the remaining barriers between religion and local government as the conservative justices and Justice Kennedy agreed that having a "Chaplain of the Month" giving invocations at open council meetings did not violate the First Amendment.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that divided the court’s more conservative members from its liberal ones, said the prayers were merely ceremonial. They were neither unduly sectarian nor likely to make members of other faiths feel unwelcome.

“Ceremonial prayer,” he wrote, “is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond that authority of government to alter or define.”

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the town’s practices could not be reconciled “with the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share of her government.”

Town officials in Greece, N.Y., near Rochester, said that members of all faiths, and atheists, were welcome to give the opening prayer. In practice, however, almost all of the chaplains were Christian. Some of their prayers were explicitly sectarian, with references, for instance, to “the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.”

But that didn't matter, as five justices found that expression of religion is not only protected under the First Amendment's religion clause, but doubly so as it is protected, free speech.  So is there anything that can actually violate the notion that the government cannot officially sanction a state religion?  Kennedy replied a very narrow window for that:

Justice Kennedy did suggest that some prayers may be unacceptable if offered consistently over time, including ones that “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation or preach conversion.”

Justices Thomas and Scalia went even further, suggesting that only outright threats of civil reprisals based on belief or non-belief would constitute a violation.

You might then be excused for thinking that conservative jurists seem to believe that we already have a state-sanctioned religion in WASP Christianity.

In comments earlier this year only now coming to light, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court asserted that the First Amendment only applies to Christianity since neither Buddha nor Mohammed created man.

"Everybody, to include the United States Supreme Court, has been deceived as to one little word in the First Amendment called religion. They can’t define it," chief justice Roy Moore said in January, according to video published Friday by Raw Story.

“Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures. They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”

But Christianity is under threat in America, right?

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

The Wall Street Journal is the kind of place where you can find long diatribes on why those wimpy "doctors" are pushing the silly hoax that saturated fats can cause heart disease, and why those evil climate "alarmists" are happy to see Africans dying in poverty for lack of electricity from polluting power plants but the science is 100% rock solid on why black people are genetically inferior to whites.

But liberal media, so go figure.

Generation Dudebro

Maybe this is statistical noise, and maybe it's not, but the crew at the Monkey Cage cite new evidence suggests that while Millennials in their 20's are reliably Democratic having come of age during the Bush years, voters 18-20 have grown up with a lot more Obama bashing from both the left and right and are nearly evenly split on party affiliation:

Below is the party identification of millennials broken down by age group. (I thank Esten Perez and John Della Volpe of Harvard for providing me these data.)



The graph captures the percent who identify with or lean toward the Democratic or Republican parties. The remainder identify as independents and do not lean toward either party. Older groups of millennials are decidedly Democrats. For example, the Democratic advantage is +18 (48%-30%) among 27-29-year-olds.

But among younger millennials, that advantage shrinks. In fact, Democrats and Republicans are essentially tied among 18-20 year olds: 41 percent Democratic and 38 percent Republican.

As I noted in my first post — and as Dan Hopkins recently described in more detail — the explanation is straightforward: the partisan complexion of each new generation reflects underlying economic and political fundamentals, like how well the economy is doing and how popular the president is.

Thus, it’s hardly any surprise that the youngest millennials are not as Democratic as older millennials. The youngest millennials came of age politically under a Democratic president whose popularity is below average and who has presided over a sluggish economy. Older millennials came of age politically under a Republican incumbent who became even less popular while presiding over a controversial war and a catastrophic recession. There is no reason that the two groups should be political twins.

I hit my college age years during the Clinton administration, only to run into the buzzsaw of the dot-com collapse, 9/11 and the recession, and Bush's wars.  You couldn't pay me to vote Republican.  But for today's college freshmen, the issues important to them: jobs, college loans, and digital privacy, the Democrats haven't delivered (even though most of that is the GOP's fault.)  I don't really blame them for that, then again I've got the benefit of 18 more years of experience.

Pretty striking difference however.  It's not like the youngest Millennials were responsible for 2010.

They may however be responsible for 2014.

StupidiNews, Cinco de Mayo Edition!

• The estranged wife of LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling approves of the NBA's plan to name a new CEO for day-to-day operations of the team.
• In Panama, conservative opposition candidate and former VP Juan Carlos Varela has been declared the country's new President, succeeding his former running mate Ricardo Martinelli.
• Pro-Russian militants led a strike on an Odessa police station, freeing 67 fellow activists as the Ukrainian government declared the local police force to be corrupt and in collusion.
• Nokia is the latest tech company to partner with Google to build "intelligent" and internet-connected vehicles of the future.
• A high school senior in Miami has been charged with accessing his grades online and changing grades for him and at least four other students.

Last Call For The Webs We Weave

Got a chance to see Amazing Spider-Man 2 this afternoon, and I have to say that it's definitely better than the first Andrew Garfield outing as Peter Parker.



Having said that, it's still nowhere near as good as 2004's Spider-Man 2 with Tobey Maguire as the web-slinger and Alfred Molina as his most awesome nemesis, Doc Ock.  It's a lot to live up to, but ASM2 does give it a shot (and it's still better than 2007's Spider-Man 3 to boot.)

Garfield reprises his role as Peter Parker, still somehow dating Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone, reprising her role) and living with his Aunt May (still the excellent Sally Field).  Graduating with Gwen, she's trying to get into Oxford, he's trying to juggle all this with his responsibilities as Spider-Man, defending New York City from bad guys big and small.  Things are going pretty well for Spidey, less well for Peter, but he's managing his promise to keep Gwen safe at the cost of his relationship with her.

All that goes to hell when an old friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), shows up back in Peter's life, wanting to know why his father Norman (Chris Cooper), the head of tech giant Oscorp Industries, was so interested in Peter's dad and the research he was working on.  Peter too has a lot of questions concerning his missing parents and what kind of research his father was doing for Oscorp at the time. Each of the two digging into their respective father's past eventually leads to a collision.

That collision plays out in the life of Max Dillion (Jamie Foxx), a nerdy Oscorp electrical engineer and Spidey fanboy who ends up in a freak accident involving, of all things, electric eel powered bio-batteries, turning him into the lightning-powered villain Electro.  A big theme in any Spider-man story is the web-slinger taking on bad guys way above his weight class, and Electro is no exception. When Harry starts to figure out that his old buddy Peter may be the man behind Spidey's mask and that he may be the key to curing the genetic disease that affected both father and son, he eventually takes matters into his own hands as the Green Goblin, giving Spidey seemingly well more than he can handle.

If "With great power comes great responsibility" was the theme of the first ASM, the sequel is "With great decisions come great consequences", a far more applicable lesson to the rest of us not able to swing from webs and crawl up walls.  It seems like everyone in the film has made some sort of momentous choice, and have to now live with the consequences of that choice, both good and bad. Seeing all this play out on the screen does get a little stale in the movie's 2:21 running time, but the action and special effects (particularly with Foxx's Electro) help move the film along to a conclusion that Spider-Man fans should expect, knowing Gwen Stacy's role in Spidey's universe.

Not as good as last month's Captain America: the Winter Soldier, but still a good matinee comic book popcorn flick.  Your next Sony Marvel flick:  X-Men: Days of Future Past in three weeks (stick around for the ASM2 end credits stinger for more on that one!)

Make Mine Marvel, as they say...

Dear America

"As a white male college freshman at Princeton, your assumption that my race or gender provides me with any advantages is the racist and misandrist proof that I'm really at a massive disadvantage compared to women and minorities.  Also I'm Jewish, so that must mean you're anti-Semitic as well.  But I don't apologize for being a rich white Jewish kid because I need that leg up in order to balance out how awful it is being a white man on a college campus in 2014, so the rest of you need to get over your jealousy already and maybe someday you'll be as awesome as I am.  YOLO, you sad bitches. YOLO."

-- Tal Fortgang, TIME Magazine

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting. While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life. But that is a legacy I am proud of.

I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing.

I got mine.  Screw the rest of you.  Right, Tal?

Everyone's A Constitutional Law Expert These Days

Take WaPo columnist George Will for instance.  He's boldly predicting Obamacare is doomed as doomed can be and that it will be struck down any day now over the "origination clause" in the Constitution that states a bill must originate in the House:

In October 2009, the House passed a bill that would have modified a tax credit for members of the armed forces and some other federal employees who were first-time home buyers — a bill that had nothing to do with health care. Two months later the Senate “amended” this bill by obliterating it. The Senate renamed it and completely erased its contents, replacing them with the ACA’s contents.

Case law establishes that for a Senate action to qualify as a genuine “amendment” to a House-passed revenue bill, it must be “germane to the subject matter of the [House] bill.” The Senate’s shell game — gutting and replacing the House bill — created the ACA from scratch. The ACA obviously flunks the germaneness test, without which the House’s constitutional power of originating revenue bills would be nullified.

Case law establishes that the origination clause does not apply to two kinds of bills. One creates “a particular governmental program and . . . raises revenue to support only that program.” The second creates taxes that are “analogous to fines” in that they are designed to enforce compliance with a statute passed under one of the Constitution’s enumerated powers of Congress other than the taxing power. The ACA’s tax, which the Supreme Court repeatedly said is not an enforcement penalty, and hence is not analogous to a fine, fits neither exception to the origination clause.

The ACA’s defenders say its tax is somehow not quite a tax because it is not primarily for raising revenue but for encouraging certain behavior (buying insurance). But the origination clause, a judicially enforceable limit on the taxing power, would be effectively erased from the Constitution if any tax with any regulatory — behavior-changing — purpose or effect were exempt from the clause.

Will argues that the individual mandate being a tax violates this principle and that there's no way the ACA can survive the Supreme Court.  At least one challenge to the law on this was waived by the DC Circuit court back in March.  But the lower courts have ruled in favor of the ACA.

Senate rules don't trump the Constitution, obviously; the bottom line is what the Constitution means when it says the Senate has the power to "propose or concur with amendments" on House revenue bills "as on other bills." If the Senate's power to amend revenue bills is no different from its power to amend any other bill, where does the germaneness requirement for tax measures come from? Because you won't find it in the text of the Constitution.

The lower court disagreed with the foundation's reasoning, ruling against Sissel in June. It held that the Affordable Care Act didn't violate the origination clause because that provision applied only to measures whose purpose was to raise revenue. And even if the origination clause applied, the court held, the Affordable Care Act satisfied it because HR 3590 started in the House.

So the question is will the Supreme Court eventually kill the ACA on a technicality some five or six years after the law was passed?  Having already survived at least one Supreme Court challenge, I would have to think that the answer would be another 5-4 ruling in the ACA's favor.

But that's well down the road. 

Last Call For Open Carry, Openly Threatened

I'm sure cops really, really love open carry firearms laws, especially in states like Texas where stuff like this is becoming a more regular occurrence.

A demonstration by a pro-gun group in Ft. Worth, TX sent restaurant employees at a Jack in the Box location fleeing into the freezer as police responded to the scene thinking a robbery was in progress.

According to Dallas-Ft. Worth’s NBC Channel 5, Open Carry Texas protesters are irate that police treated them like criminals for staging a heavily armed protest without notifying authorities and without visible signs stating the purpose of the demonstration.

Sgt. Ray Bush of the Ft. Worth Police Department told Channel 5 that officers received a call Thursday night from employees of the restaurant who thought that the large group of heavily armed white men had come to rob them.

“They locked themselves inside a freezer for protection out of fear the rifle-carrying men would rob them,” Bush said via email. “The demonstration had no signage that would have alerted anyone to their real purpose, and to our knowledge they did not attempt to contact anyone in the Fort Worth Police Department to advise us prior to the demonstration.”

And as any open carry advocate will tell you, this is the entire point of open carry laws:  I can exercise my Second Amendment rights anywhere I choose to.   And no, these wonderful patriots really see themselves as the aggrieved party here.

The department responded as it would to any armed robbery in progress, with multiple police cruisers and officers carrying tactical weapons. Demonstrators say that the aggressive response by law enforcement was unnecessary.

“I’m upset that that many officers had to arrive on the scene,” demonstrator Edwin Haros said. “I would estimate around 10 squad cars showed up, some with two per squad car. I believe we counted more than 15 officers showed up on scene.”

Haros is an Open Carry Texas member who believes it is his right to carry his Smith and Wesson semi-automatic rifle with him at all times and in all situations.

“We’re not breaking the laws,” Haros complained. “We’re not here to hurt anybody. We’re not trying to alarm anybody. We’re doing this because it’s our constitutional right.”

The constitution says I have the right to terrify the hell out of you with an armed group of people ready to use deadly force at a moment's notice in self-defense.  Cool.

Exit questions:  Would you feel safe at a fast food restaurant with your kids and family when a dozen visibly armed guys came in and sat down?  Would your answer be the same if the armed men in question were all say, black or Latino?

Have a nice day.

Condi-ments No Longer Available, Upon Request

Kinda hard to get speaking gigs these days when you're a war criminal.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has backed out of delivering the commencement address at Rutgers University following protests by some faculty and students over her role in the Iraq War.

Rice said in a statement Saturday that she informed Rutgers President Robert Barchi that she was declining the invitation to speak at the graduation.

"Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families," Rice said. "Rutgers' invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time."

The school's board of governors had voted to pay $35,000 to the former secretary of state under President George W. Bush and national security adviser for her appearance at the May 18 ceremony. Rutgers was also planning to bestow Rice with an honorary doctorate.

But some students and faculty at New Jersey's flagship university had protested, staging sit-ins and saying Rice bore some responsibility for the Iraq War as a member of the Bush administration. Barchi and other school leaders had resisted the calls to disinvite Rice, saying the university welcomes open discourse on controversial topics.

It's not "open discourse" over someone's place in history when you pay somebody $35,000 to speak at your commencement and plan to give them an honorary doctorate, it's complete acceptance of them as a hero and holding that person up as a living example of someone you want your students to be.

The students of Rutgers disagreed with that assessment of Condi Rice, as apparently unlike the school's board of governors, they still have a functioning moral center.  Frankly, the faculty and administration should be proud that the students told Condi to go screw herself.  It means that the students are smart kids who will more likely than not become better people that the board of governors.

And yes, Condi should be rotting in a cell along with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Dubya.

Cheesed Off Republicans In Wisconsin, Again

Remember the story a few weeks back about Wisconsin Republicans holding a vote at the state convention to "affirm the right of the state to secede from the union" if necessary?

It turns out that Republicans will actually get to vote on that now this weekend, and now that it's had some time to sink in that the party will be voting on what is essentially the right to reserve planned treason at some later date, they can't run from it fast enough.

“This has been totally blown out of proportion,” said Michael Murphy, vice chairman of the 4th District Republican Party and a former chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, a Ron Paul-affiliated outlet. “This is one sentence in one resolution out of 23 that were passed, it is one tag line out of a larger resolution discussing state sovereignty. At no point are we going to the convention and debate that we want to secede from the union, even though some paint that as the case.”

To be clear, the text of the resolution reads, in full, “BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we strongly insist our state representatives work to uphold Wisconsin’s 10th Amendment rights, and our right to secede, passing legislation affirming this to the US Federal Government.”

“We should remove it. Nobody wants to secede from the union,” said Todd Welch, chairman of the libertarian-leaning Wisconsin Campaign for Liberty and a member of the Republican Party. “Obviously, it is an option, but nobody wants to do that. We should focus on the real issues of stopping Obamacare, stopping Common Core, protecting gun rights.”

Wisconsin Republicans say they are not exactly sure how the resolution got through the caucus to begin with. “It was stuck in there by somebody, and nobody seems to know who,” said Welch. There was, they acknowledge, a states’ rights fervor in the air at their meeting, with the caucus voting to censure two state lawmakers who support the Common Core educational reforms and calling on them to resign from their position on the legislature’s education committee.

So these idiots are now shuffling their feet going "Well, secession of course is still an option but nobody would ever actually do it and all"  and trying to have it both ways.  Worse, nobody seems to know the identity of the brave, brave patriot who suggested this in the first place.

And the state of Wisconsin should elect these clowns in November?

I'm betting this vote is actually going to be a lot closer than people think it will be.  And that should scare the hell out of all of us.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• The first confirmed case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) has been reported in the US as a health-care provider from Indiana traveled to Saudi Arabia last month and contracted the disease.
• Firefighting costs to battle Western state wildfires on federal lands this year may exceed the budgeted amount by $470 million or more, according to the latest estimates.
• A firefight in the streets of the Ukranian port city of Odessa has killed dozens as pro-Russian militants and Ukrainian government forces clashed near the Black Sea.
• Swiss officials are looking to the US for a "fair and balanced process" in the Department of Justice cracking down on Swiss banks used to avoid US taxes.
• Apple has again won its copyright infringement trial against Samsung, but got less than $120 million of the $2.2 billion in damages requested.

Last Call For MAXIMUM BENGHAZI

With the House GOP report on Obamacare an embarrassing dud directly contradicted by insurance companies who say the White House's figure of 85-90% of first premiums have been paid up is correct and the April unemployment rate seeing the best numbers since September 2008 the Republicans are now in pure panic mode.  No surprise then that just hours after that monster jobs report and the unemployment rate down to 6.3%, Orange Julius gave the Tea Party what they wanted: a select committee to investigate Benghazi and Darrell Issa's clown show calling up John Kerry to testify.

The creation of the panel, which Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced on Friday, comes the same day that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) issued a subpoena to force Secretary of State John Kerry to testify about the attacks.

Together, the steps signal a bold escalation of the Republican strategy to find the Obama administration at fault for its handling of the Benghazi attacks, which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. They come after internal White House emails were released this week that Republicans say prove the administration lied about its role in drafting talking points about the attack.

“These revelations compel the House to take every possible action to ensure the American people have the truth about the terrorist attack on our consulate that killed four of our countrymen,” Boehner said in a statement announcing his intent to create the select committee.

It’s unclear who will chair the panel, but leadership aides said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) is being seriously considered for the post.

By convening a select committee and demanding that Kerry testify, House Republicans are assuring that scrutiny of the White House over Benghazi — a topic that energizes the GOP base — will remain strong in the months ahead of the midterm elections.

 Because Benghazi was such a successful issue for the GOP during the 2012 elections.

Look, the GOP is clearly terrified that they've got nothing for 2014, and need something to keep the rubes busy while they keep pillaging the country.  Benghazi fits the bill pretty well.  If they're reduced to this nonsense, then they're screwed and they know it.

Bring it on, clowns.  New Tag:  Benghazi Is The New Hodor

A Streetcar Now Desired

Time to check in on Cincinnati politics again, and as a reminder Mayor Cranley's quixotic battle against the streetcar ended last December.  He's not only accepted the fact that the streetcar is cheaper to finish than the kill right now, but suddenly with Cincinnati being in the mix to land the GOP National Convention in 2016, getting the streetcar done ahead of time to show off to the country is suddenly making the project a priority.

Cincinnati's streetcar could be open to riders up to two months earlier than expected if the city lands the 2016 Republican National Convention.

"It's certainly possible," said John Deatrick, head of the streetcar project. "If all goes well, it could be done quicker than the time we've laid out."

The $133 million streetcar currently is scheduled to open on Sept. 15, 2016, but project leaders have started looking at whether they can open it in time for the convention – most likely in July or August.

Cincinnati is one of six cities on the short list to land the Republican convention. Members of the Republic National Committee's convention site selection committee are scheduled to visit Cincinnati on Tuesday to help determine whether the city makes the next round of cuts in mid-May.

Business leaders have told The Enquirer that the local steering committee expects to push for the streetcar to open early if Cincinnati makes the next round of cuts. The streetcar was not mentioned in Cincinnati's official convention bid package, because the steering committee did not think it would be finished in time, City Councilwoman Amy Murray said.

But Murray said she now expects the possibility of the streetcar being ready at convention time will be discussed with RNC officials on Tuesday. Murray is a member of the local convention steering committee and chairwoman of City Council's transportation committee.

"Ideally, if we have any large convention in the summer of 2016, it would be great if the streetcar would be done in time," Murray said. "If we get the Republican National Convention, then I think it's time to have a serious conversation."

What a difference five months makes, huh John.  The streetcar project went from albatross and boondoggle to selling point for the Republican National Convention in near-record time.  It would be hysterical except for the fact that Cranley largely won by opposing the streetcar, then dropped that opposition within weeks of taking office, and now he's hoping to sell it as a convention draw.

That's our Mayor!

The Assault On Sexual Assault

The Obama administration this week launched efforts at dealing with sexual assault on college campuses nationwide, and it's not just public service announcements. These also include investigations with real teeth as the Department of Education is going after a number of major universities for failure to handle these cases correctly.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released a list of 55 colleges being investigated, a move that the agency expects will encourage dialogue and coax schools to toughen up on how they deal with sexual violence.

Among the schools on the list are: Michigan State University, Arizona State University, Princeton University, Catholic University of America, Florida State University and Swarthmore College.

“We are making this list available in an effort to bring more transparency to our enforcement work and to foster better public awareness of civil rights,” Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement.

The investigations are being conducted under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which ensures that students are not denied, for reasons of gender, the ability to fully participate in educational and other opportunities at schools that receive federal funds.

The comprehensive list released on Thursday is the first of its kind. The move is part of the administration’s efforts to curb sexual harassment and sexual violence, especially in colleges, and to push schools to do more to prevent and punish on assaults.

Following a three-month study conducted by a task force established by President Barack Obama to address the issue, the White House earlier this week launched a website, NotAlone.gov, to help victims find help and report crimes.

According to the White House, one in five women, and a smaller number of men, are sexually assaulted during their college years, with cases often going unreported.

One in five is a real problem, a serious epidemic that has to be stopped.  I'm glad to see the Department of Education stepping in because it's painfully clear that universities are more inclined to sweep these incidents under the rug than deal with them.  It's a promising start.

StupidiNews!

• The NTSB is investigating the cause of Wednesday's oil train derailment in Lynchburg, VA that spilled 50,000 gallons of crude into the James River.
• A senior prank night gone wrong resulted in over 60 students arrested for vandalization of a high school in New Jersey.
• Reported sexual assaults in the US military spiked by 50% in 2013 as Pentagon officials credit more incidents being reported due to crackdowns by the various military branches.
• Toyota is joining the effort in California to fund building hydrogen-fuel stations statewide to power the next generation of fuel-cell vehicles.
• Chinese university researchers may have answered that oldest of existential human questions: How to win at rock, paper, scissors.