Today in Blatant Hypocrisy

And who but Tony Perkins, who is still bent out of shape by the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Here's the whole diatribe, via Joe.My.God.:

The Fourth of July is a time of national celebration and commemoration. We rejoice in our liberty and remember those who won our freedoms and have preserved them at great cost. Yet underlying these things is a foundation that must remain strong for “liberty and justice for all” to mean anything.

It’s the rule of law. Law that is fair and impartial, consistent and understandable. Without allegiance to the rule of law, we become a nation where those in power can do what they want without accountability. And in this 244th year of our independence, I fear we are on the brink of that happening.

Last month, the court ruled in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that the 1964 Civil Rights Act opposing discrimination based on the biological sex of an individual now must mean that “discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote these words, even acknowledges in his decision that the meaning of “sex” in 1964 was not even vaguely connected to homosexuality or transgenderism. In his words, the court “proceeds on the assumption that ‘sex’,” in 1964, referred “only to biological distinctions between male and female.”

America has never been a perfect nation and never will be. But with all our problems, we have made tremendous progress in securing the God-given rights we too often take for granted.

But the exercise of those rights will be increasingly diminished and put in jeopardy if Congress refuses to safeguard them and, instead, allows the Supreme Court to rule however its justices prefer, regardless of the text of the Constitution and the law itself.

I don't know if I have the fortitude this morning to dissect this drivel. Let me just note, as a foundation, that, as usual, Perkins is speaking in code. In this case,"liberty and justice for all": given Perkins' record, we can safely assume that "all" is code for "white, heterosexual Christian men".

And of course, the rest of it bears that out, since it's Perkins' usual attack on gay and trans people, this tine hinging on the meaning of "sex". Perkins, of course, would like us to believe that we live in a world in which nothing changes, or should: attitudes remain carved in stone, and language always means what he thinks it should mean.

And of course, the real world isn't like that. Take, for example, attitudes toward same-sex marriage, one of Perkink's favorite bêtes noires. Pew Research has an instructive article about the change in attitudes on this subject over the past twenty years or so:

One caveat on this: this only notes changes over the past twenty years or so, during the time same-sex marriage was becoming a hot-button issue. It's worth noting that in the period covered by this chart, marriage was already being legalized in various jurisdictions, including the Netherlands (2001), Belgium and several Canadian provinces (2003), and by 2005 was legal in Canada nationally, as well as Spain -- and Massachusetts. If we went back another twenty years, the shift would be much more dramatic.

Perkin's major beef (this time) is with the Court's interpretation of the word "sex" as denoting a protected class in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He maintains that Congress intended it to mean biological sex and nothing more. (And have you noticed the reverence with which the evangelicals regard biological sex?) The Obama administration, which first included gay and trans people in the definition of sex discrimination, quite rightly interpreted "sex" to include characteristics normally associated with one sex or the other. Thus, if you can't fire a woman for marrying a man, you can't fire a man for doing the same. This is the reasoning that Justice Gorsuch included in his opinion. Does anyone think that the meaning hasn't changed in 56 years, with the progress made in gay rights and now being made in trans rights? Only Perkins and his ilk, apparently.

At any rate, that's the story on the latest bullshit from Perkins, one of the most mendacious people in the public sphere. I guess he needs money.

The Hysteria Mounts

The Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock has really hit the anti-gay hate groups and hate-group wannabes hard. They're just beside themselves. This, from the ever hateful Tony Perkins, is perhaps more revealing than he intended:

To most Americans, the sellout of Neil Gorsuch, who not only voted with the liberal members on the Harris case but authored the majority opinion, will be the lingering horror. If even he can’t bring himself to agree that the word “sex” means male and female — not the Left’s wild reinterpretations of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” who will?

To label Justice Gorsuch a "sellout" just fairly screams "We didn't put you on the Court to rule on the basis of reality!" I like the bit about the ruling being a "lingering horror", too. They're really pulling out the stops.

And The Federalist is even more over the top:

Joy Pullmann, executive editor at The Federalist, wrote that the ruling would result in the “further degradation of Americans’ natural rights to free speech, to free association, and to worshipping God as their consciences require.” The headline on Pullmann’s article claims that Monday’s ruling “Firebombs” the U.S. Constitution. She writes:

This decision is a disgrace to these bedrocks of Western civilization, our nation built upon them, the voters who vote for them, and to these men’s honor. President Trump ran promising judges who wouldn’t murder America, and Gorsuch just gave him and everyone who voted for him a giant middle finger. The court’s newfound weakness will also be exploited and explored by leftist legal agitators whose goal is the destruction of the American system.

Now, Ms. Pullman, we all know who's out to destroy the American system, and it's not Neil Gorsuch or his colleagues on the Court -- it's your hero's puppet master, who's sitting in the Kremlin laughing himself silly.

Even James Dobson has come out of his crypt to rant (yes, apparently he's still alive):

Not only was this decision an affront against God, but it was also a historical attack against the founding framework that governs our nation.

Our judiciary is constitutionally charged with interpreting the law, not making law. In its 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court acted as a super-legislature and failed to carry out its primary duty to the American people. And we will all pay the price.

Oh, and about the judiciary interpreting the law: that's exactly what they did.

And from our "president":

“They’ve ruled and we live with the decision,” Trump said, defeated and somewhat sad. “We live with the decision of the Supreme Court.”

I guess someone told him he can't fire Gorsuch. And note the enthusiasm. (My own take is that he doesn't care one way or the other about LGBT rights -- he just needs to keep the evangelicals feeding at the trough.)

And in spite of the right, time marches on, and society marches with it.

Smarmy Hypocrite du Jour

None other than Tony Perkins:

They were the biggest gatherings, by far, but in Washington, D.C., where one reporter said it “felt as if the entire city had emptied into downtown,” the atmosphere felt different. Calmer.

For once, it was pastors and faith leaders holding the bullhorns, as riots turned into rallies for reflection and repentance. Hundreds of evangelicals in the D.C. area led a long march across the Anacostia River, stopping, periodically, to pray.

Together with different generations and races, they called for the church to rise up and help heal our nation. “Our protest needs to be different,” Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile urged the crowd — not rooted in hatred or bitterness, but in Jesus.

Across the city — from the Reflecting Pool to hot asphalt sidewalks — people knelt to pray. It was the same serene picture in other parts of the country, where Christians met up in parking lots and city centers to offer an alternative to the violence and anger.

A few random thoughts on this:

I'm old enough that I remember when "faith leaders" would have been leading these demonstrations from the beginning -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., anyone? Or the Berrigans, both priests and leaders of anti-war demonstrations in the '60s and '70s. What's changed? Maybe it's just that the voices of the real followers of Christ have been drowned out by the power-hungry hypocrites.

There's evidence that the violence was initiated by right-wing, white supremacist agitators:

As demonstrations spread from Minneapolis to the White House, New York City and overseas, federal law enforcement officials insisted far-left groups were stoking violence. Meanwhile, experts who track extremist groups also reported seeing evidence of the far-right at work.

I'm sure they're all good "Christians". And at this point, I'll believe anyone but the feds -- the party line is "It's Antifa"; my guess is it's the Boogaloo Bois.

And where has Perkins been during all this? Hiding in a bunker? Why wasn't he out marching against racism in law enforcement? Oh, right.

Oh, in case you were wondering, from Merriam-Webster:

Definition of smarmy

1: revealing or marked by a smug, ingratiating, or false earnestness

a tone of smarmy self-satisfaction
— New Yorker

Chipping Away, "Free Exercise" Version

Catholic Charities is at it again, and now the Trump/Barr "Justice" Department, Evangelical Division, has stepped in:

In the latest example of the Trump administration seeking to enable legal discrimination against LGBTQ people, the Justice Department is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to allow religious-affiliated adoption agencies to refuse child placement into LGBTQ homes.

In a 35-page brief, U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco and other Justice Department attorneys maintain the City of Philadelphia has “impermissibly discriminated against religious exercise” under the First Amendment by requiring Catholic Social Services to abide by a contract requiring LGBTQ non-discrimination practices in child placement.

“Governmental action tainted by hostility to religion fails strict scrutiny almost by definition,” the brief says. “This court has never recognized even a legitimate governmental interest — much less a compelling one — that justifies hostility toward religion.”

The U.S. government isn’t a party to the case, known as Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, so the brief is completely voluntary. In justifying the brief before the Supreme Court, the filing makes the case the Justice Department has a compelling interest to intervene.

The City of Philadelphia is insisting that "Christians" abide by a contract. The horror!

The case came about after the City of Philadelphia learned in March 2018 that Catholic Social Services, which the city had hired to provide foster care services to children in child welfare, was refusing to license same-sex couples despite a contract prohibiting these agencies from engaging in anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

And the DOJ's brief looks to be 35 pages of bullshit:

Although the case involves Catholic Social Services refusing to abide by the terms of its contract, the Justice Department framing of the litigation makes it seem like the City of Philadelphia is an aggressor and unfairly targeting Catholic Social Services, asserting the municipality is allowing for exemptions in some cases, but not religious-affiliated adoption agencies.

“The City impermissibly targeted religious organizations for enforcement of its newly articulated policies,” the brief says. “Commissioner Figueroa testified that, in determining whether foster-care agencies were complying with the anti-discrimination requirements of their contracts, the city focused only on religious agencies, making just a single inquiry to a secular foster-care agency…City officials made no effort to determine whether other secular agencies perform home studies for everyone who requests them, or show preference for or against individuals who fall within particular groups.”

When this happened in Illinois, the state suspended funding to Catholic Charities adoption services and threatened to pull their license. Catholic Charities got out of the adoption business -- and a number of other agencies, including those run by the Lutheran Church -- took over their case load.

Via Joe.My.God.

Today in Disgusting People (Updated)

That would be anyone associated with the Trump regime.

First, another attack on migrants:

It’s a puzzle of public health that we don’t take flu seriously. Every year, only about half of American adults get the vaccine that prevents it. And yet, every year, at least 37 million Americans catch the flu, more than 500,000 become sick enough to be hospitalized, and somewhere between 36,000 and 61,000 die. Let’s pause for a second: That’s tens of thousands of deaths, many of which could have been prevented with a simple shot. Meanwhile, international health planners tensely monitor the unpredictable evolution of the flu virus, watching for the emergence of a pandemic strain that could kill many millions.

Yet perhaps because only a small percentage of cases ends catastrophically—or conversely, because many of us have experienced recovering from flu—we chronically underestimate the toll taken by the virus. Which might be the kindest explanation for the decision by US Customs and Border Protection, uncovered last week by CNBC, not to give the flu shot to any of the adults or children the agency is holding in crammed border camps.

We've already come to understand that this regime, and the would-be dictator that heads it, are inhumane. But there's probably also another purpose here -- aside from killing more children. Just think of the propaganda value:

The saddest part of the danger being created by this policy is that, accidentally or cynically, it revives a trope that a globalized world ought to have discarded: that immigrants are dirty and dangerous and inherently embody risk. As Alan Kraut of American University has written, that charge has been leveled at new arrivals throughout US history, against the Irish (cholera), Jews (tuberculosis), Italians (polio), and Chinese workers (plague). In almost every case, the diseases were an accident not of migration, but of close urban living—but, prefiguring the current situation, the immigrants had been forced into legal or actual ghettos that facilitated the spread of illness.

And once diseases took hold in an immigrant group, that could be used against them, as is happening again now. “It’s a crude political ploy,” says T. Katherine Hirschfeld, a University of Oklahoma anthropologist who studies health conditions after political collapse. “Denying people bathing and encouraging the spread of disease increases their dehumanization. It is part of a propaganda campaign.”

This one is worth reading. Hat tip to commenter Lazycrocket at Joe.My.God.

And then, there's the troops. Support our military, indeed:

Some children born to U.S. service members and government employees overseas will no longer be automatically considered citizens of the United States, according to policy alert issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Wednesday.

Previously, all children born to U.S. citizen parents were considered to be "residing in the United States," and therefore would be automatically granted citizenship under Immigration and Nationality Act 320. Now, children born to U.S. service members and government employees who are not yet themselves U.S. citizens, while abroad, will not be considered as residing in the U.S., changing the way that they potentially receive citizenship. Children who are not U.S. citizens and are adopted by U.S. service members while living abroad will also no longer receive automatic citizenship by living with the U.S. citizen adopted parents.

This one's on really shaky legal ground. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Traditionally, children have automatically been considered citizens if at least one parent was a citizen. Now, if your parents are overseas when you are born, you have to apply for citizenship.

Previously, all children born to U.S. citizen parents were considered to be "residing in the United States," and therefore would be automatically granted citizenship under Immigration and Nationality Act 320. Now, children born to U.S. service members and government employees who are not yet themselves U.S. citizens, while abroad, will not be considered as residing in the U.S., changing the way that they potentially receive citizenship. Children who are not U.S. citizens and are adopted by U.S. service members while living abroad will also no longer receive automatic citizenship by living with the U.S. citizen adopted parents.

A nice thank-you for those serving their country abroad.

There's been a lot of speculation that this is another attack on birthright citizenship, which is part of the Fourteenth Amendment -- gotta stop those "anchor babies", after all -- something that gives Ken Cuccinelli a woody -- not to mention the rest of the GOP. (Cuccinelli, you will remember, aside from being an openly racist politician in Virginia, is now the "acting" director of Citizenship and Immigration Services.) And that's probably true. But one other thing occurred to me: a significant proportion of U.S. service members belong to racial or ethnic minorities and/or are women.

Two birds with one stone, so to speak.

This one's via Joe.My.God.

Update: The Hill has published an article that clarifies the new policy:

USCIS issued a clarification to the rule later Wednesday, explaining that the new rule would only affect three categories of people: Children of non-U.S. citizens adopted by U.S. citizen government employees or service members; children of non-U.S. citizen government employees or service members who were naturalized after the child's birth; and children of U.S. citizens who do not meet residency requirements.

From the statements by representatives of USCIS and the Pentagon, this is just a matter of bringing the current policy in line with the Immigration and Naturalization Act and existing State Department guidance.

And if I trusted anyone in this regime, that might be enough.

Update: And the war on the environment continues:

The Trump administration is set to announce on Thursday that it intends to sharply curtail the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change, according to an industry official with knowledge of the plan.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in a proposed rule, will aim to eliminate federal government requirements that the oil and gas industry put in place technology to inspect for and repair methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities.

The proposed rollback is particularly notable because major oil and gas companies have, in fact, opposed it, just as some other industries have opposed the Trump administration’s other major moves to dismantle climate change and other environmental rules put in place by President Barack Obama.

Some of the world’s largest auto companies have opposed Mr. Trump’s plans to let vehicles pollute more, while some electric utilities have opposed the relaxation of restrictions on toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Via Joe.My.God.

Trump's attitude toward our air and water reminds me of a Tom Lehrer song:

Back to the Fifties!

From the Wingnut Wurlitzer, Or 1984 Redux

Up is down, black is white:

As thousands of immigrants face getting caught up in ICE raids this weekend, Fox News hosts are shilling for these Gestapo-like raids by trying to criminalize those advising immigrants of their Constitutional rights.

Fox & Friends seems to have taken the lead this morning in smearing those who want to abide by our Constitution - while posing as patriots. Cohost Griff Jenkins, once again moonlighting from his day job as a supposedly objective reporter, said, “the Democrats are putting themselves in a unique position of running against the rule of law.”

Actually, it’s Fox News running against the rule of law since Democrats have merely been publicizing rights under the U.S. Constitution. Despite all the insinuation, I have yet to see a Fox host actually dispute the rights' existence.

Not surprisingly, immigrant-hating Katie Pavlich took the dishonest insinuation a step further on Outnumbered today. She accused Democrats of “advocating for [immigrants] to continue breaking the law by not answering the door when ICE agents show up.”

In fact, disallowing an ICE agent to enter without a judicial warrant is abiding by the law. But Trump lickspittle and cohost Harris Faulkner endorsed the falsehood. “It’s what Katie said,” Faulkner said. “They’re here illegally,” as if she’s too ignorant to know that even the worst criminals have rights under our Constitution.

And a footnote to that last statement by Faulkner: Under U.S. law, an immigrant on U.S. soil has the right to apply for asylum, no matter how they got here. The Trump regime is violating the law by deporting them without due process.

And of course the trumpanzees will swallow this bullshit whole.

Well, That Didn't Take Long

Now that Rape-a-holic Kavanaugh is on the throne -- excuse me, I mean Supreme Court -- the government is jumping right in to give Tony Perkins another wet dream:

The Justice Department today told the U.S. Supreme Court that businesses can discriminate against workers based on their gender identity without violating federal law.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the high court that a civil rights law banning sex discrimination on the job doesn’t cover transgender bias. That approach already has created a rift within the Trump administration, contradicting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s view of the law it’s tasked with enforcing.

This was, you understand, the EEOC's view under the Obama administration. They just haven't gotten around to changing their minds yet.

If the Court decides to take this case, it will be interesting to see what logical gyrations they undertake to find that Title VII does not protect against anti-LGBT bias. The Sixth Circuit was quite definite:

With its ruling in the funeral home case, the Sixth Circuit last year became the first federal appeals court in the country to conclude that transgender bias is sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It previously recognized transgender discrimination as a form of prohibited sex stereotyping.

The court said Harris Funeral Homes violated the law by firing Stephens after she told owner Thomas Rost she was transitioning to a woman.

“It is analytically impossible to fire an employee based on that employee’s status as a transgender person without being motivated, at least in part, by the employee’s sex,” Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote for the Sixth Circuit.

The court rejected the company’s claim that Stephens overstepped a funeral home dress code requiring her to wear clothing corresponding to her birth gender and that allowing her to continue to work at the funeral home would distract mourners. It also said the company wasn’t protected by a federal religious freedom law, even though Rost said allowing Stephens to continue working would conflict with his Christian beliefs.

“You’re talking about someone with the same bundle of experience and qualifications coming back in the form of a woman,” Nevins said. “That sounds like not only a viable sex discrimination case but a slam dunk case.”

I wonder if they can come up with a decision as badly reasoned as Citizens United or Hobby Lobby.

Via Joe.My.God.

They Won't Stop Until We Make Them

Not only does the Trump administration have no respect for the law, it has no respect for basic human decency. They're still putting children in concentration camps:

In shelters from Kansas to New York, hundreds of migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in West Texas.

Until now, most undocumented children being held by federal immigration authorities had been housed in private foster homes or shelters, sleeping two or three to a room. They received formal schooling and regular visits with legal representatives assigned to their immigration cases.

But in the rows of sand-colored tents in Tornillo, Tex., children in groups of 20, separated by gender, sleep lined up in bunks. There is no school: The children are given workbooks that they have no obligation to complete. Access to legal services is limited.

These midnight voyages are playing out across the country, as the federal government struggles to find room for more than 13,000 detained migrant children — the largest population ever — whose numbers have increased more than fivefold since last year.

Under American law, anyone who is on U.S. soil has the right to apply for asylum. Also under American law, anyone who needs legal counsel is entitled to have it provided.

And if we're not able to take adequate care of detained children, we really need to get our act together.

Via BarkBarkWoofWoof.

Today's Must-Read: Privilege in Action: A Twofer

Two posts at Hullabaloo on the ramifications of Thursday's Senate Judiciary hearings on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh and the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

First, from Digby, some comments on how privileged white males react to having their status questioned:

I'm not a lawyer but I would imagine that if one has a client who has been accused of sexual assault it would not be an obvious strategy to have him angrily yell and cry in red-faced fury denying that he could ever do something so terrible. Neither would it seem to be a good idea for a man in such a position to arrogantly behave as if it's an affront that someone with his elite credentials should ever even be asked to answer to such charges. One would think that any good lawyer would want her client to present himself as a sober, thoughtful, empathetic person, willingly answering questions and submitting himself to whatever inquiries would clear his name.

She also looks at Lindsey Graham's tantrum. She doesn't even really have to say anything: he did it all himself.

And from Tom Sullivan, a broader perspective on the reaction to things like women acting as though they were actually people:

We stand at the nexus between the world that was and the world that will be, observed Eugene Robinson on MSNBC. The dying one will not let go without a fight.

Make no mistake: The drama in the Senate today was about power. On one side, the power of men who harass or abuse women and get away with it, the power of privileged white men to entrench their power on the Court, the power of men to take away a woman’s control of her own body.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) September 28, 2018

The privileged believe high status is theirs by birthright (or by virtue of highly superior genes, if one believes Donald Trump). The privileged rule according to race and gender. Challenged, they fight back. Viciously and loudly, as Brett Kavanaugh did through tears:

"This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election. Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons. And millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups."

That's privilege under assault speaking: how dare anyone question his right to have whatever he wants, whenever he wants it.

This is not the first time human society has undergone upheavals. This one, however, is aimed right at the root of the social structure. It's an assault that's implicit in our founding, by inference if not by outright statement: We are all equal.

Period.

Today's Must-Read: The "Conservative" Court

Digby has a post on one part of the Kavanaugh hearings that I think everyone should know about. This graphic says it all:

This is from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The post includes a transcript of his opening statement. Key quote:

There is a feature to these eighty cases. They almost all implicate interests important to the big funders and influencers of the Republican Party. When the Republican Justices go off on these partisan excursions, there’s a big Republican corporate or partisan interest involved 92 percent of the time.

A tiny handful of these cases don’t implicate an interest of the big Republican influencers — so flukishly few we can set them aside. That leaves 73 cases that all implicate a major Republican Party interest. Seventy-three is a lot of cases at the Supreme Court.

Is there a pattern to those 73 cases? Oh, yes there is.

Every time a big Republican corporate or partisan interest is involved, the big Republican interest wins. Every. Time.

Let me repeat: In seventy-three partisan decisions where there’s a big Republican interest at stake, the big Republican interest wins. Every. Damned. Time.

And Kavanaugh will just make it worse -- a lock on the Supreme Court for the oligarchy.

Today's Must-Read: Trump and the "Christians"

Digby has a must-read post on the reasons why the "Christian" right supports Trump. It boils down to a very simple summary: Roe v. Wade:

It's easy to see why they love Trump so much. He's a kindred spirit: a liar and a con man. They love liars and con men:

For evangelical Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr., this is their political holy grail.

Like many religious conservatives in a position to know, the Liberty University president with close ties to the White House suspects that the Supreme Court vacancy President Donald Trump fills in the coming months will ultimately lead to the reversal of the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade. But instead of celebrating publicly, some evangelical leaders are downplaying their fortune on an issue that has defined their movement for decades.

“What people don’t understand is that if you overturn Roe v. Wade, all that does is give the states the right to decide whether abortion is legal or illegal,” Falwell told The Associated Press in an interview. “My guess is that there’d probably be less than 20 states that would make abortion illegal if given that right.”

People like Falwell are savvy enough to realize that if they start blowing horns and beating drums, there's going to be a backlash, big time. And overturning Roe is just the first step: in the event that should happen (and I have my doubts), the fight will go to the state houses. And right now, public opinion is against them:

Two-thirds of Americans do not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, according to a poll released Friday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Among women of reproductive age, three out of four want the high court ruling left alone. The poll was conducted before Kennedy’s retirement was announced.

There is similar support for same-sex marriage, the "Christian" right's other hot-button issue.

And don't forget that neither of those is an end in itself: they are a means. Watch for more cases centering on what the right calls "religious freedom" (i.e., their right to tell everyone else how to live).

A note: I don't share the widespread fear that Roe and Obergefell are going to be overturned next week. There's a whole process that has to happen, starting with finding someone who can prove they have suffered harm by someone else having an abortion or getting married.

As always, read the whole thing.

Tent Cities? (Updated)

Looks like Health and Human Services are taking policy direction from "Sheriff" Joe Arpaio:

The Department of Health and Human Services will visit Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army base near El Paso in the coming weeks to look at a parcel of land where the administration is considering building a tent city to hold between 1,000 and 5,000 children, according to U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the plans.

HHS officials confirmed that they’re looking at the Fort Bliss site along with Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene and Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo for potential use as temporary shelters.

(Via Shakesville.)

Sound familiar?

"Hitler! Hitler!” the prisoners chanted to the TV cameras in protest. It was 4 February 2009. More than 200 Latino men in black-and-white striped uniforms, shackled to each other, were being marched towards an outdoor unit especially for “illegal alien” prisoners in Arizona’s infamous jail, Tent City.

The chants were directed at the Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who a few months before had called this outdoor jail close to downtown Phoenix – his own tough-on-crime creation – a “concentration camp” in a speech to political supporters at his local Italian-American club.
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When asked about the comment by the Guardian in July, Arpaio brushed it off as a joke. “But even if it was a concentration camp, what difference does it make? I still survived. I still kept getting re-elected,” he said.

So now HHS is thinking about running concentration camps for kids who've been forcibly separated from their parents.

Even Franklin Graham has had enough (he says):

First of all, I think it’s disgraceful. It’s terrible to see families ripped apart and I don’t support that one bit. And I blame the politicians for the last 20, 30 years that have allowed this to escalate to the point where it is today. We are a country of laws; laws need to be obeyed, no question about that. But the situation that we have today is a result of our lawmakers in Washington over generations ignoring this and I’m hopeful that soon something could be done to fix it.

And somehow, it's not Trump's fault, it's everyone else's -- in spite of the fact that it's a plainly stated policy of the Trump regime. And quite frankly, given Graham's slavish support of Trump from the beginning, I'm calling bullshit. I guess he felt he needed to pretend to be a real Christian for a while.

Note that they're making great play on applying this to those who cross the border illegally, but they're doing it to people who are legally coming into crossing points seeking asylum. Of course, this is about what you'd expect from a bunch of racist neo-Nazis.

(Tom Sullivan has a fairly detailed post on how Trump and Sessions are stacking the deck against people seeking asylum that's worth reading in toto. He also has a post on how these children are being treated. We're in the realm of small people with a little bit of power, it seems.)

I'd ask if this regime can get any more disgusting, but they keep uncovering new bottoms (and I don't mean that in any fun way).

Update: MSNBC aired this story when one of their journalists visited a child detention center in Texas.

This is one of the better facilities, and it's only going to get worse.

Masterpiece Cakeshop

I was going to spend some time this morning doing a summation post on the Supreme Court decision and its ramifications, but I've spent this morning, and last morning, fighting with my browser and I'm pooped.

The bottom line is that the decision was very limited, did not deal with the Constitutional issues of "religious freedom" (read: "license to discriminate") versus equality under the law, and was really a punt based on a somewhat dubious interpretation of comments by members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Nevertheless, the "religious" right is going to be braying about their immense victory over the forces of evil (gay people) and expect a flurry of suits and legislation on that basis.

Maybe tomorrow.

Today's Must-Watch

As a follow-up to this post from yesterday, I strongly recommend that you watch this segment of All In with Chris Hayes. It's horrifying, and it's our government doing it:

Via Digby, who notes the "president's" reaction to the bad PR:

Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018

And his base thinks it's all OK, because they are as ugly and racist as he is. Clinton was too kind: they're not "deplorables" -- they're contempible.

Today in Disgusting People: Next Targets

Betsy DeVos is another of Trump's cabinet whose goal is to dismantle the department she's supposed to head -- and in her case that goes hand in hand with furthering the "Christian"/fascist agenda of the right-wing religious extremists. First she and archbigot Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III rescinded the guidance protecting trans students. Now she's going after the disabled:

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos early in October quietly rescinded 72 guidance documents, some in place for many years, that detailed the protections children with disabilities are supposed to receive. During her confirmation hearing DeVos refused to say children with disabilities deserve equal protection in schools, and in fact admitted she was "confused" by the federal laws.

And she's not even being above-board about it:

Rather than make an official announcement, the Education Dept.'s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services said in a newsletter Friday – nearly three weeks after taking action – that "a total of 72 guidance documents ... have been rescinded due to being outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective - 63 from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and 9 from the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA)," according to The Chicago Tribune.

There's more detail at the Tribune link.

This really does start to call to mind Germany in the 1930s. Do remember that the "Christian" right is solidly behind Trump (as long as he keeps trashing their victims du jour), and that DeVos herself is one of them.

When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

Attrib. Sinclair Lewis

Actually, Snopes couldn't find that quote anywhere in Lewis' writings, but it does have an interesting discussion of Lewis' politics as revealed in his novel It Can't Happen Here:

Lewis painted a vivid counterfactual portrait of a United States of America sliding into dictatorship, one that is still cited as a cautionary tale to this day:

The main character, Buzz Windrip, appeals to voters with a mix of crass language and nativist ideology. Once elected, he solidifies his power by energizing his base against immigrants, people on welfare, and the liberal press. The novel has been called “frighteningly contemporary” in the wake of the Trump campaign and election.

As Time magazine noted on 16 November 2016, It Can’t Happen Here was completely sold out on Amazon.com and Books-A-Million within a week of the presidential election.

Trump and his backers are going to take the country apart in small ways, at first -- like chipping away at all the progress we've made toward fulfilling our stated ideals in the last century. That's been the "Christian" right's strategy since Roe v. Wade.

Today in Christian Supremacy

Via Joe.My.God., from noted "Christian" Matt Barber's website:

Christian service members who openly profess and support the rights of Muslims, Buddhists, and all other anti-Christian worldviews to practice their religions—because the language in the Constitution permits—are grossly in error, and deceived. Also, is it wrong for a professing Christian service member to say, “I support the rights of all Americans to practice their faith since the Constitution protects their rights?” Absolutely!

(Emphasis added.)

There's not really much to say, save that the "Christian" right is getting more and more blatant about its opposition to fundamental American values.

Can you say "anti-American"?

Today's Must-Read: Thoughts on Labor Day

From Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

Workers are the Rodney Dangerfields of this economic terror the financial empire has constructed. An afterthought. Collateral damage. A necessary evil to the sainted "job creators." As in the last Gilded Age, as Twain put it, "Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite--but they all worship money." Those without it should have worked harder, planned better, and saved more. Sadly there is no new Twain to properly satirize this new Gilded Age. Save, perhaps, for the president who personifies it.

It is Labor Day weekend. Not that America celebrates labor, mind you. And not everyone gets to celebrate. But both those who do and do not have organized labor to thank for their holiday pay.

He goes into the history of the labor movement, which is something we all need to remember, as Trump and the GOP keep trying to convince us that labor unions are so 1930s.

Point of information: My dad worked with the teacher's union in his school district when I was a kid -- he may even have been one of the organizers: my memory's not to clear on it. (I was what? Maybe eight years old?)

Yes, I come from a line of leftists.

OF All Places

This is not something I would have expected:

Lithuania’s Parliament marked the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia this week.

Marked on May 17 around the world, IDAHOT raises awareness of persecution and hate crimes faced by lesbian, gay, bisexuals and transgender people around the world. . . .

The day is heavily marked in countries that are already progressive on LGBT rights, but it is also making inroads in places where there is still a way to go on LGBT equality.

Lithuania has lagged behind on equality, with no legal recognition for same-sex couples, no gender recognition for transgender people, a ban on same-sex adoption, and generally negative social attitudes.

However, progress is slowly being made, and the day was marked this week with celebrations in the country’s Parliament in Vilnius.

My father's family is Lithuanian; my grandparents came to the US before World War I, which marks us, I guess, as the first wave. I went to university with a group of kids whose families came over after World War II -- most of them were born in Germany. They tended to be very conservative, mostly because they hated Russia and everything Russian, but I suspect they reflected attitudes prevalent in the old country -- as the article notes, Lithuania has not been on the forefront of the struggle for gay rights.

But, times change, and so do attitudes. They even lit up Vilnius city hall with rainbow colors.

A more substantial mark of a change in attitude is this:

But two asylum seekers from Chechnya have been granted asylum in Lithuania, reports the Russian Interfax news agency.

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius has confirmed that the two men have been granted asylum there after fleeing persecution in Russia.
.
He said that the Lithuanian Government had “issued visas to two people from Chechnya who were persecuted because of their sexual orientation”.

“We have consistently raised these issues both within the EU and in the parliamentary structures of the Council of Europe – regarding the possibility of helping and, if necessary, granting asylum,” he added.

The US, under our neo-fascist regime, has so far refused to grant visas to gays fleeing persecution in Chechnya.

Shell Game du Jour

.@HRC, @EqualityNC Speak Out Against @NCAA’s Damaging Reversal on Discriminatory Laws in #NorthCarolina https://t.co/A4LrWLLNN6 #RepealHB2

— Stephen Peters II (@stephenpeters2) April 4, 2017

So, NCAA buys into the scam.

Story here.

Today's Must-Read: More Than You Wanted to Know About Keystone XL

Aksarbent has very kindly pulled it all together:

Donald Trump has given TransCanada a permit denied it by President Obama for its Keystone XL pipeline, an extension to Keystone 1, which leaked 12-14 times in its first year of operation. The pipeline, touted as a guarantee of energy independence for the U.S., will actually raise oil prices in the Midwest, according to TransCanada's own internal documents.

It goes on. And gets worse. Much worse: Basically, everything we've been told by TransCanada and the Trump regime is bullshit.