TSA

The news is depressingly the same today, except for one small bright spot, via Joe.My.God.:

With the final vote now officially tallied, voters in Bowling Green, Ohio, have passed two ordinances protecting people from discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and public education based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression. Last year, the city council added those categories to Bowling Green's Fair Housing Law with Ordinance 7905, and the Unlawful Discrimination Ordinance with Ordinance 7906. The majority of voters backed those ordinances, allowing LGBT people to be protected under the city’s nondiscrimination laws. According to the results released today, Ordinance 7905 passed 52.67 percent to 47.33 percent and Ordinance 7906 passed 51.65 percent to 48.35 percent.

That's about the same margin that passed Prop 8. A big loss for the Christianists.

Also via Joe (and others), the SPLC has added a whole slew of our very favorite people to their hate groups list:

1. Abiding Truth Ministries [Scott Lively]
2. American Family Association
3. Americans for Truth About Homosexuality
4. American Vision
5. Chalcedon Foundation
6. Dove World Outreach Center [Terry Jones]
7. Faithful Word Baptist Church [Steven Anderson]
8. Family Research Council
9. Family Research Institute [Paul Cameron]
10. Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment
11. Illinois Family Institute
12. MassResistance
13. Traditional Values Coalition

Here's the full list, with commentary, from SPLC.

And now you're asking why I've titled this post "TSA." OK: put together all the incidents you've heard about and seen reported of people being arrested for making video recordings of police officers abusing their authority, of unarmed and sometimes physically restrained people being tasered, of unwarranted police raids on gay bars in which the police used unnecessary force and otherwise exceeded their authority, and of those cases, in those rare instances in which charges are actually brought against the police, the penalties, if any are imposed at all, are negligible to the point of insult to the victims, and then consider that the TSA is only the most currently high-profile example of the country being given over to the tender mercies of government-backed thugs.

And, as much as I hate to say it, the current furor is probably at least in part because the victims are not brown or gay, but middle-class white people.