A Telling Tweet

Digby has a post on the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association's request to Gov. John Kasich to suspend open carry for the Republican convention, which in itself is delicious and worth reading. (Also note that police are not in favor of open carry or concealed carry.) One thing that sticks out, though, is a tweet from Ann Coulter (which, incidentally, appears on both stories linked):

Ann Coulter Verified account
‏@AnnCoulter

Instead of suspending 2d amt rights at the Cleveland Convention, how about suspending 1st amt rights and ban the protesters?

12:15 PM - 17 Jul 2016
1,498 retweets 3,052 likes

Yeah, it's Ann Coulter, who will say anything to get some attention, but I find it revealing of the mindset of what passes for "conservatives" these days. (Note the number of "likes".)

I've pointed out before that the right -- especially the "Christian" right -- really despises our foundational principles: they hate an independent judiciary, they don't think the Bill of Rights should apply to everyone (or anyone other than them), they especially hate the Establishment Clause, they think the teabagger caucus in the House should be the supreme branch of government (subject to change, of course, depending on who's in the White House), they think the Tenth Amendment should override the Supremacy Clause, and on down the line. This just sort of puts it front and center.

(Of course, Coulter will claim she was joking. Right.)

The Through the Looking Glass Award

Jeb Bush published an Op Ed in WaPo that -- well, this is just the beginning:

Eight years of the divisive tactics of President Obama and his allies have undermined Americans’ faith in politics and government to accomplish anything constructive. The president has wielded his power — while often exceeding his authority — to punish his opponents, legislate from the White House and turn agency rulemaking into a weapon for liberal dogma.

In turn, a few in the Republican Party responded by trying to out-polarize the president, making us seem anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker and anti-common-sense.

The result has been the vanishing of any semblance of compromise or bipartisanship in our nation’s capital. Simple problems don’t get solved. Speeches happen; the important stuff doesn’t. The failure of elected leaders to break the gridlock in Washington has led to an increasingly divided electorate, which in turn has led to a breakdown in our political system.

Obama's "divisive tactics"? Seriously? I don't need to remind anyone which party it was that first, proclaimed that its priority was to make Obama a one-term president, and second, refused to consider any legislation that might actually have a positive effect on the country as a whole. This is just Jeb Bush flipping reality on its head, a specialty of the GOP.

(There's one commenter at the article that does it even better:

Republican voters, and anyone who cares about the country on the Right, from libertarians, to religious conservatives, to fiscal hawks, to reasonable Democrats, is concerned about establishment Republicans' so called "compromise" and "bipartisanship." For Democrats, compromise means Republicans give them everything they want. For Republicans, compromise with Democrats means giving them everything that they want.

Words fail me. Read it, if you can stand it.

It's Sunday -- You Know What That Means

It's "What's New" day at Green Man Review, and so there are more reviews published.

You know what to do.

Today in WTF?

New Zealand starts to sound very good, and it's not just Trump:

Restaurants with the rather generic name “Lucky Teriyaki” in Washington are bearing the brunt online after a misunderstanding caused by a language barrier prompted the Skagit County Sheriff’s Office to post on their official Facebook page that the one in Sedro-Woolley wasn’t welcoming police officers to eat there.

On Thursday, four Skagit County deputies stopped at the Sedro-Woolley restaurant to eat. When they were paying their bill, they say the owner told them they were no longer welcome there because they upset other customers. But after Skagit County Sheriff Will Reichardt called for a boycott of the business, a local television station, KIRO-TV, sent a reporter to the restaurant with a Mandarin interpreter to ask them about the incident.

It turned out the restaurant owner and his son had not understood what was being said to them and didn’t intend to tell the officers that police weren’t welcome there.

OK, a misunderstanding because of a language barrier. So what the hell is the sheriff doing calling for a boycott? Get that? The sheriff, in his capacity as a government official, called for a boycott of a private business.

The did publish a follow-up which, frankly, is rather lame:

This morning I met with the owner of Lucky Teriyaki and his son. They apologized for the incident that made news yesterday, and expressed their desire to accept everyone to their business, including law enforcement officers associated with all offices and departments. I told both father and son that I was appreciative and grateful for their willingness to once again welcome everyone to visit their restaurant. And that it was my hope that this matter can quickly be put behind us all.

Thank you to all of the citizens who expressed support for law enforcement in Skagit County. Please accept that this matter has been resolved to our satisfaction, and we encourage everyone to patronize Lucky Teriyaki.

(Emphasis added.)

They never were unwilling to welcome everyone. They misunderstood your cops, your cops misunderstood them, and you shot from the hip. So who are you, John Wayne?

And, just to prove the level of intelligence in "real 'Muricans," get this:

“I couldn’t believe what your doing, if people don’t like the police, then the people in your dump are the same kind of people who ought to find some other country to live in,” wrote Ray Ginting on the review page for a Lucky Teriyaki restaurant in Everett, which is almost an hour away from Sedro-Woolley. “Who you gonna call if you get robbed ? Enough said – and i live 1,700 miles away. I think its time for some inspections, don’t you.”

Another man echoed the boycott call.

“Avoid this place at all cost,” Ross Zanzucchi wrote. “The fact that you won’t serve police officers is a total disgrace. Boycott this place and shut it down!”

Some tried to point out, to no avail, that it was the wrong business.

“You’ve got the wrong restaurant, Einstein,” one man wrote.

The Lucky Teriyaki in Tacoma, which is 100 miles away from Sedro-Woolley, is also facing a backlash.

“Is there a way too give negative stars,” wrote Paul C. on Yelp. “If I ever go back thru Tacoma, I will never give them my business. I hope that they are robbed and feel that need to call the police. ..hmm if I were part of the law enforcement in the Tacoma area of just tell them, well not not much we can do.”

It's instructive that these yahoos are immune to being corrected -- it's the mindset fostered by the more -- how shall I put it -- "conservative" elements in our country: What they "know" to be true is true, and that's that. Facts, as we learned from the Hobby Lobby* decision, take second place to belief.

* One of the key parts of that decision, authored by Justice Alito:

The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients. If the owners comply with the HHS mandate, they believe they will be facilitating abortions. . . .

One thing that is not mentioned in the opinion is the scientific consensus on the particular contraceptives:

 In an editorial, the New England Journal of Medicine called the decision "a setback for both the ACA's foundational goal of access to universal health care and for women's health care specifically", voicing concern that "in assessing the competing claims about abortion and birth control, the Court's majority focused on the religious claims of the corporations without discussing scientific or medical opinions."^[65] In JAMA Internal Medicine, Alta Charo wrote that "consistent with a disturbing trend among courts and legislatures to misstate or misuse scientific information in the context of women's reproductive rights and health, the Supreme Court's decision ignored the well-accepted distinction between contraception and abortion."^[66] The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, representing 90% of U.S. board-certified gynecologists, supported a bill to overturn the Hobby Lobby ruling.^[67]

Alito makes the point, amply supported by precedent, that the Court should not be adjudicating what constitutes a valid religious belief (although it has done so in the past). However, what this leaves us with is a ruling by the Supreme Court that says, in essence, belief trumps fact.

Saturday Science: Earth: A Biography: Prokaryotes and Beyond

To backtrack a bit, the formation of the Earth took place at the beginning of the Hadean Eon (from the Greek "Hades"), which lasted from about 4.5 to 4 billion years ago. Although it's generally considered that the surface of the Earth, such as it was, was extremely unstable, with major seismic activity, strong upwelling of magma and subduction of what surface managed to form, there is evidence that the continents had, indeed, started to form, that there were seas, and possibly even rivers -- in effect, Earth was more user friendly earlier than we had thought. There are pieces of zircon from Australia that have been dated to 4.1 billion years ago, and the oldest extant rocks are found in Quebec and go back to 4.2-4.3 billion years ago. (There even seems to be evidence that the moon formed during this period, but since I'm not doing a biography of the moon, I'm not going to worry about it.)

Fast forward to the Archean Eon (which is actually the first division of the Precambrian Era, which might be a little more familiar), which started about 4 billion years ago, and we have life: the earliest evidence suggests living organisms from at least 3.5 billion years ago, and there is some evidence that life actually began as early as 4.1 billion years ago -- although that's still a big maybe. (That bit of zircon turned out to be quite important -- and fairly controversial.) The image at left should give you some idea of what the world looked like at that point: mostly water, not much land.

The first living organisms were prokaryotes (from the Greek words meaning "before the nut" -- that is, before the nucleus). They have no discrete nucleus and no discrete organelles (mitochondria), although they do have an analogous structure, a ribosome. These produce proteins, much the same as the DNA and mithochondria in eukaryotes (which we'll get to in a bit). The "contents" -- DNA, proteins, metabolites, all the things that make them work -- are enclosed within the cell membrane without being separated into compartments. The prokaryotes fall into two groups, the archaea and bacteria. Both groups are still with us.

3500 million year old Apex Chert, Australia
containing the first fossil evidence of life on Earth

The archaea constitute a domain (the highest level of classification) and a kingdom. They were originally considered to be "extremophiles" confined to extreme environments, such as undersea thermal vents (remember those?) and highly alkaline lakes (as in California's Mono Lake or Africa's Lake Natron). They have, however, been discovered in much less hostile environments. Their ability to survive the extremes is due to the structure of their cell membrane, which I'm not going to get into in any detail here (see this if you're interested).

The really interesting part, aside from the fact that the Archea are still us (in environments as diverse as marshes, undersea vents, and the human gut) is that they are thought to be the ancestors of the eukaryotes -- organisms with nucleus and organelles bound by membranes.

The other major group among the first living organisms are the bacteria, which, as you well know, are also still with us. While they have some distinct differences from archea, they are alike in two very important ways: both reproduce asexually, by fission, and both allow for lateral gene transfer. That is, genetic material can be transferred between two different organisms, which sort of blows the idea of "species" as a group of organisms that produce viable offspring within the group but cannot produce viable (fertile) offspring outside the group. Think horses and donkeys: mules are sterile.


One of the most important things about bacteria at this stage of the game is that some of them started using colored pigments -- mostly chlorophyll, but there were others as well -- to convert sunlight into energy: combine carbon dioxide and water and through the action of chlorophyll as a catalyst, you create simple sugars, which you can then burn for energy. The reason this is important is because one of the byproducts -- the waste product, actually -- is oxygen.

Banded iron formation.  Photo via Britannica

Remember, up until the advent of cyanobacteria -- the ones who used photosynthesis -- there was no free oxygen. It was all bound up with hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, what have you to form water, carbon dioxide, various acids, and the like. It took a while, but the advent of free oxygen, first in the oceans and then in the atmosphere, fundamentally changed the character of life on earth. It took several million years, because there was, for example, a lot of iron in the environment, which latched on to the oxygen molecules to form what are technically known as "banded iron deposits," or more commonly, "rust." The first evidence we have of this dates to about 3 billion years ago, so you can see that a) it took some time for cyanobacteria to develop and b) it took even longer for all that iron to turn to rust.

So, we have what I consider the first major extinction (although no one else seems to think of it that way) with the advent of free oxygen in the atmospere, which wiped out a large percentage of the single-celled organisms then existing (although some survived -- even today, we have anaerobic bacteria, which find oxygen toxic) and paved the way for life as we know it.

So, next time we'll talk about the eukaryotes, where they came from, and how they developed.

Idiot du Jour

Sen. Tom Tillis (R-NC -- of course):

Republicans have never made it easy for President Barack Obama to confirm judges. But Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) came up with a new reason the Senate shouldn’t be filling empty court seats: It’s not our job.

Democrats including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) made repeated requests Wednesday to confirm a batch of Obama’s judicial nominees who are ready for votes. Each time they tried, Tillis objected and suggested the Senate shouldn’t be spending time on judges.

“What we get are things that have nothing to do with doing our jobs,” he said. “I’m doing my job today and objecting to these measures so we can actually get back to pressing matters.”

(Emphasis added.)

Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

(Emphasis added.)

It is your job, Senator.

Via Digby, who goes on to opine:

Thinking about the literacy test, I've changed my mind. Let's get to the nub of the problem: the Senate. It's an undemocratic institution that really has no place in a modern democracy. It's decided not to bother doing the few specific jobs it does as an individual body. Even with the loons running the House today the only legislative body this country would not be in any worse shape. So really, why are we paying for it at all? It's useless.

I don't think I agree: with the loons running the House, we need the Senate to use its dead weight to stall some of their colleagues' more outlandish attempts at wrecking the country.

Nice: Reaction and Analysis

Tom Sullivan has a good summary of what happened in Nice, with special attention to a couple of reactions here. President Obama, being a presidential president, issued a statement that was pretty much expected, considering that at the time no one knew any whys or wherefores.

But:

Enter Donald Trump. Without knowing details about the attack, Trump wants to declare war. On whom, he doesn't say. On what basis, he doesn't know. A NATO country has been attacked, sure (by a lone individual as far as we know now). But Trump thinks NATO is obsolete and the U.S. pays too much for it. Others should pay. So with that for background, when Bill O'Reilly asked Trump if he would send in air and ground forces (somewhere) Trump said:

“I would, I would” when asked if he would seek a formal declaration of military action from the US Congress. “This is war,” Trump continued. “If you look at it, this is war. Coming from all different parts. And frankly it’s war, and we’re dealing with people without uniforms. In the old days, we would have uniforms. You would know who you’re fighting.”

But since Trump doesn't know who that is and can't force whoever it is to wear uniforms, what this situation absolutely requires is a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part. And Trump is just the guy to do it. Count on him to try to make somebody else pay for it. In the end, that someone would be us.

That's right -- put them in uniforms (whoever they are) -- and then what? Start digging trenches?

And do note the repeated "War!!1!" mantra. We've been hearing that for fifteen years now, and you know what? It's bullshit. It's good for stirring up the rubes and that's all. We've already seen what good results we get by bombing civilians -- more terrorists.

Digby has a fairly thorough analysis of conditions in France that make it an epicenter, more or less, for terrorist attacks in Europe, and links to this article by Arthur Goldhammer that makes one important point:

Each such event pushes frightened citizens a little closer to surrendering to the impulse to embrace an authoritarian response. And, as it happens, Marine Le Pen has been offering just such a response for years now, insisting that draconian police measures are the only way to deal with the threat. She wants France to “take back control” of its borders, as the British have just voted to do with Brexit. . . .

Not that a Le Pen government would be any less helpless than a government of the center-right or center-left. Her authoritarian instincts would do nothing to lessen the threat—au contraire. But for too many people, I fear, electing Le Pen to speak loudly and carry a big stick will feel like “doing something rather than nothing”—and, in these circumstances, it is all too human to want to do something. We saw this in the United States after 9/11.

(Emphasis added.)

That's what Trump is offering, even though he's even less focused than the Bush administration after 9/11. (In my own opinion, we went after the right people first -- the Taliban. And then attacked Iraq? It didn't make any sense then and doesn't make any sense now -- unless you're Halliburton or a major oil company. And if you wonder where Trump got his "make them pay for it" mantra -- remember, the Iraq war was going to be paid for with Iraq's oil. Trump's not only a jackass, he's not even original.)

Back to Digby's comments. She makes the very good point, vis-a-vis France as an epicenter, that France has a very different history in regard to immigration and minorities than, say, the U.S. (We're a nation of immigrants. I like to make the point that, in reality, every human being who ever lived in America came of immigrant stock: Homo sapiens is not native to the Americas.)

France has a long colonial history in the Middle East, specifically in Syria and its experience in Algeria was particularly brutal. It has the largest Muslim population in Europe and French society has traditionally been somewhat culturally intolerant, insisting that newcomers strictly adapt to French mores rather than embracing diversity. All of this has unfortunately created a combustible mixture in a dangerous time.

So, you have a large group of culturally alienated immigrants, a political party that's promising to "do something" in the most authoritarian -- read "dictatorial" -- way possible, and a sizable chunk of the population who are willing to go along with it. You'd be forgiven for wondering whether you're in France or the US, except that we haven't managed to alienate our Muslim population -- although there are elements here that are trying very hard to do just that, along with every other minority (read "GOP") -- but we certainly do have the politicians who are willing to advocate dictatorial responses.

I think Goldhammer's point is right on the mark: we want someone to do something. The problem is, we're not willing to listen to the people who might do something that works.

Antidote

To all the crap that's in the news about the Republican candidate, the Republican platform, killer cops and their apologists. Sometimes people just do the right thing:

When police officers were called to investigate a tent set up outside a Georgia college, they didn’t expect to find inspiration.

The officers were called July 9 to a campsite near a Gordon State College parking lot, where they found a 19-year-old homeless student staying in a tent hidden in some bushes, reported The Herald-Gazette.

The officers ordered him out of his tent with his hands up, but they listened to his story instead of writing a ticket for trespassing.

Fredrick Barley had ridden six hours — and more than 50 miles — on his younger brother’s 20-inch bicycle and arrived about a month early for his second year as a biology major, with nothing but his tent, a duffle bag, a box of cereal and two gallons of water.

The student, who hopes to go on to medical school, wanted to make sure he had enough time to find a job before classes began, and he spent his days riding his too-small bike to fill out applications at local businesses.

Click through to read the whole story -- it's the way things should happen. Here's the kid's reaction, in his own words.

Sidebar: It can't be just me -- I'm sure other people feel the same. Short story: I was waiting for the bus one afternoon; a few feet down a man hailed a cab, which pulled up in front of me because the bus was pulling in -- several feet from the man, who was obviously disabled. As the man made his way to the cab, I opened the door and held it until he was in and seated. When I got on the bus, the drive said "That was a good thing you did." I was sort of flabbergasted -- all I could think of to say was "It's just what you do."

What was I supposed to do, just stand there and watch this poor guy, who seemed to have had a stroke, trying to get himself and his walker into the cab without helping?

I don't think I'm weird.

Image of the Week

Digging through the files and ran across this. See? Even Chicago can be a little mysterious.

Religion Is Just the Excuse

I'm still trying to make some sense out of the reports coming from Nice (which, as might be expected, are chaotic and contradictory -- here's The Guardian's report), but sure enough, there are comments galore on the theme of "Filthy Muslims! Get them all!" (Donald Trump, strangely enough, has been relatively silent -- so far.)

This is going to be something of a rant, but it's going to be brief: Religion is merely the excuse for what people want to do anyway. It's convenient, it has behind it unchallengeable authority, and it means you don't have to really examine your motives.

History is littered with examples of religious conflicts that are nothing more than pretexts for power grabs, money grabs, land grabs, you name it. Thirty Years' War? Politics: who was going to control Germany? The Crusades? Who was going to control the Middle East, plus stopping the expansion of Arabs into Europe. The Partition of India? Who was going to control the newly liberated country? The Buddhist atrocities against Muslims in Myanmar (which are still going on)? Shoring up a dictator's power. And of course, the ongoing campaign against gays in the U.S. -- money and power. (Because these are people who need an enemy to justify themselves, and the Soviet Union is history. Just look at the timeline: the Soviet Union was tottering in the 1970s-80s, and guess when the "Christian" right started to become a factor in US politics.)

I know some Muslim guys. In addition to being big flirts, they're really nice guys. My Sikh doctor, aside from being terminally gorgeous, is completely charming. I've known too many real Christians -- and I'm including evangelicals -- to think that the likes of Kevin Swanson or Tony Perkins are real examples of the religion and what it's about. (There's this thing called the Gospels -- they should read them.) I've known Jews all my adult life, and for the most part, they've been a lot of fun to be around. I can't say that I know many Hindus or Buddhists, but I'd guess they're pretty much the same as anyone else.

And religion -- all religions -- offer a few basic lessons in common, which boil down to "treat each other with decency and respect" and "we're all in this together, so help each other out," which I take as the basis for morality -- and which is not something you're going to hear from the Family Research Council or ISIS.

So, it will hardly come as a surprise that I have no patience with comments that single out a particular religion as "evil," or even worse, condemn all religions as garbage. That's bullshit.

And I have to wonder what those who make those kinds of statements are trying to avoid dealing with.

Culture Break: R.E.M.: Losing My Religion

Just because I like it.

I have no idea who those people in the initial image are, unless they're the band members all grown up. Must be.

The Republican Convention

Should be something to watch -- it's starting to look like a combination of the Keystone Kops and Mad Max. Nobody wants to attend:

Even if a large portion of convention delegates weren’t planning a coup against the presumptive nominee, the convention would still be a disaster because it would end with the nomination of Donald Trump as president.

Because of this, many Republican politicians and operatives are avoiding the convention like the plague. In interviews with Politico, many operatives describe their fear and loathing of next week’s convention in hilariously blunt terms.

“I would rather attend the public hanging of a good friend,” GOP digital strategist Will Ritter tells the publication.

Considering the presumptive nominee and the toxic platform coming out of the committee, I'm wondering how they're going to pull it off.

Parsing the GOP (Update; and Again)

Portions of the draft Republican platform have been leaking out, sort of like when meat goes bad andd starts oozing, and they're pretty awful -- but then, what does anyone expect when the likes of Tony Perkins are on the subcommittees?

This, via Box Turtle Bulletin, is a case in point:

  Fortunately, the New York Times has reprinted the draft language in full:

The data and the facts lead to an inescapable conclusion: that every child deserves a married mom and dad. The reality remains that millions of American families do not have the advantages that come with that structure. We honor the courageous efforts of those who bear the burdens of parenting alone and embrace the principle that all Americans should be treated with dignity and respect. But respect is not enough. Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere in the platform, we do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to states.”

Let's start at the beginning, where I see the hand of La Perkins at play: one of his favorite mantras is some variation on "Social science has conclusively proven that children do best when raised by their biological parents." (I have to hand it to him for that one: it not only lies about the research, it misrepresents science as a discipline.) In this case, yes, the data and the facts lead to an inescapable conclusion, but it's not the one in the platform language: the data and the facts point overwhelmingly to the conclusion that children thrive in home where they receive love and support from two parents; if the parents are married, that only strengthens the household.

"[We] embrace the principle that all Americans should be treated with dignity and respect." Liar, liar, pants on fire: This is the party that wants to strip rights from women, ethnic and racial minorities, and LGBTs. This is sort of like the Catholic Church claiming that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect, even those "intrinsically disordered" gays.

And then there's the marriage part, which is utter nonsense. Aside from the man/woman=marriage thing (and man/woman marriages are still recognized, after all), the government does actively promote married family life. It's just that more people are able to get married. As for the the "Supreme Court's redefinition of marriage," that didn't happen. The Court did not address the definition of marriage, which in law is still an agreement between two consenting adults to form a new household. And the states are still able to regulate who can marry, as long as those regulations do not conflict with the federal Constitution.

There's more coming out of the subcommittees, most of it equally pernicious (the post by Jim Burroway linked above also includes a mention of their anti-trans statement), which I may comment on, but to be honest, rebutting the same lies over and over again gets tiring.

Update: If you want to see just how awful these people are, just look at the headlines this morning at The New Civil Rights Movement -- that's all the "culture war" stuff, which is bad enough, but from TPM, there's also this which I've dubbed the "Bundy plank":

In a nail-biting vote Monday, the committee tasked with writing the Republican Party's 2016 platform voted to include language calling on Congress to return federal lands to the states immediately. . . .

The amendment has new resonance this year after dozens of anti-government protestors took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in January to protest federal control of lands. Many affiliated with that takeover had argued the federal government had no business managing federal lands.

(Emphasis added.)

That last bit is a real howler -- that's the way these goofballs think: the states should be managing federal lands, which by definition belong to all of us, not just the ranchers out west.

Another Update: RawStory has a piece on some of the planks and proposed planks coming out of the subcommittees. I was going to pick out the most outlandish to quote, but I couldn't make the decision.

Sidebar: On the trans news front, Burroway has a good, thorough summary of the status quo.

An Antidote: Today's Must-Read

This article on Judge Carlton Reeves, whom you may know as the federal judge in Mississippi who just struck down Mississippi's "Religious Freedom" bill, one of the nastiest to be enacted.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves has been in the news recently for his eloquent decision striking down Mississippi's odious anti-gay “religious freedom” law, HB 1523, which would have allowed county clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and which would have given “special rights” to Christians to discriminate against LGBT people in numerous ways. But quite apart from his decisions regarding the “religious freedom” law and his earlier, equally eloquent decision striking down Mississippi's ban on same-sex marriage, Reeves has emerged as a courageous defender of the rule of law in Mississippi and an exemplar of the possibility of progress in a state that continues to be plagued by remnants of an ugly past.

Idiot du Jour

After 9/11, Rudy Giuliani had a chance to become a real leader in this country. Instead, this is the direction he chose:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Sunday said when people use the phrase "black lives matter," it's "inherently racist."

"Black lives matter, white lives matter, Asian lives matter, Hispanic lives matter," he said.

"That's anti-American and it's racist. Of course black lives matter, and they matter greatly," he said.

"But when you focus in on 1 percent of less than 1 percent of the murder that's going on in America and you make it a national thing, and all of you in the media make it much bigger than the black kid who's getting killed in Chicago every 14 hours, you treat it disproportionately."

I think he missed the point.

Almost Forgot

I was actually about to do this post yesterday, and then got distracted. Be that as it may, yesterday was update day at Green Man Review, so go on over and check it out.

Dallas (Updated)

I know I haven't really commented all that much about the Dallas shooting: after wading through all the conflicting accounts, updates, second guesses, etc,. etc., etc. (which I'm sure you've been following anyway), my head was swimming. (Well, there was also trying to sort out the prokaryotes for the Saturday Science post, which you'll notice has been delayed -- until I figure out the relationships and hypothetical histories of the Archaea and Bacteria.)

At any rate, I think this sums up my reaction:

Update: I think it's time to highlight something the president said about the whole gun issue, via Digby:

And so we have to talk about [guns]. And as I've said before there is a way to talk about it that is consistent with our constitution and the 2nd Amendment. The problem is that even mention of it somehow evokes this kind of polarization. And you're right when it comes to this issue of gun safety there is polarization between a very intense minority and a majority of Americans who think we could be doing better when it comes to gun safety.

(Emphasis added.)

Another case of the tail wagging the dog. The gun freaks and other right-wingers are, of course, blaming everyone but guns, from Ben Carson (remember him?) accusing the president of "politicizing" the issue (and of course, thanks to that asshole Wayne LaPierre and his gun manufacturers' lobby, it is a political issue -- even most gun owners favor restrictions on gun ownership) to Fox News blaming the president for "hating cops" and Black Lives Matter for engaging in a peaceful demonstration -- well, you get the picture. (At this point, I'm ambivalent about BLM, mostly because of the hold-up they pulled at Toronto Pride, but that was a local chapter and in the case of Dallas, BLM is blameless.)

So, in less than a month we have two major mass shootings, but it's not because guns are readily available to any crazy person with a grudge against someone, whether real or imagined. Couldn't possibly be that.

This seems like an appropriate coda:

Dallas: A Stray Thought

Yeah, so the good guys had guns. Helped a lot, didn't it?

And, under the head "Great Minds Think Alike," I just ran across this piece by Digby:

After Newtown and Paris and every other mass shooting we were told that the answer to these problems is for more people to be armed so they can "take out" the bad guys when they start shooting. After Orlando, Donald Trump even mused on the stump that it would have been "beautiful":

“If we had people, where the bullets were going in the opposite direction, right smack between the eyes of this maniac. And this son of a bitch comes out and starts shooting and one of the people in that room happened to have (a gun) and goes boom. You know what, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks.”

Well, in Dallas last night dozens if not hundreds of highly trained good guys with guns were unable to stop madmen from killing four of their own and injuring seven more. And it was anything but beautiful.

Point taken -- I wish.

(It occurs to me that Donald Trump is a prime example of the idea the evolution has a lot of dead ends.)

And, to offer a bit of perspective:

With thanks to Barry Sloane on Twitter.

Clinton Derangement Syndrome

Now that Benghazi!!1! is dead and buried -- for the moment -- it's E-mails!!1!. I've been thinking a bit about the press reaction to this (among other things), and once again, Digby to the rescue. First, quoting Brien Beutler:

What made this episode unique is that the same media that expected Republicans to overreach played a critical role in increasing their expectations of a political windfall.

Republicans in Congress and their conservative media allies largely brought this upon themselves. They were the ones who made right-wing sop out of baseless speculation that Clinton might be indicted for violating a law nobody’s ever been convicted of violating.

But due to a strange brew of incentives that proved toxic—the competition for eyeballs, the lack of subject matter expertise, the industry standard of reportorial balance—the mainstream media did nothing to puncture this myth. To the contrary, it treated the threat of indictment as a permanent question mark hovering over Clinton’s campaign like a dark cloud. In a different media ecosystem, this wouldn’t have happened. A mix of common sense and truly basic research and reporting would have established a consensus that Republicans were trying to gin up intrigue and damaging innuendo, but that an indictment was extraordinarily unlikely. Instead, the remote odds of one came to be seen as something like a 50-50 proposition, to the point where even professional Democrats began to worry Clinton might be charged with a felony and prosecuted.

I don't know that this is particularly unique. The media, for lack of a better term, ceased to practice journalism a long time ago, with a few exceptions -- most of them on Comedy Central. We're seeing the same kind of bullshit mantras repeated again in the wake of the Dallas shooting, and we've seen it time and time again in the aftermath of just about every high-profile event over the past couple of decades. The idea of any news anchor or interviewer holding anyone's feet to the fire over obvious distortions, or even challenging their bullshit, is simply not in the mix.

Digby's summation is, I think, pretty much on the mark:

I would just add that liberal journalists are also subject to a herd mentality and seem to find themselves searching for reasons to reassure the public that they aren't political hacks so they add to the atmosphere by being heavily critical on the "optics, judgment and narrative" aspects of these scandals which leads to a different kind of distortion. These dynamics play into each other creating the sort of febrile environment that characterizes these passion plays.

This is what leads to a sort of political establishment consensus that "something is terribly wrong" that the rest of the country finds confusingly out of touch.

I would just add that what's "terribly wrong" is the fact that the political establishment is so completely out of touch. It's at the point where Washington is damned near a closed system, and entropy is taking its toll. (Note that one reason the Republicans -- and even a few Democrats, although they tend to be quiet about it -- hate the Clintons so much is that they were "outsiders" -- they weren't part of the Village.)

Maybe it would help if the news departments were not part of the entertainment division.

Idiot du Jour: Another WTF? Moment

I realize that Texas is not all sagebrush and teabaggers, but you have to hand it to them: they've elected one of the wingnuttiest state governments in the country (and when you consider the competition, that's saying something).

And now, in the wake of the Dallas attack, Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called protesters who ran away from the hail of bullets that rained down on Downtown Dallas on Thursday night "hypocrites" during an interview Friday on Fox News.

"All those protesters last night, they turned around and ran the other way expecting the men and women in blue to protect them. What hypocrites!" an audibly emotional Patrick said.

Somehow, I doubt that the thought uppermost in the protesters' minds was "The police will protect me." I'm sure it was more on the order of "Get me outta here!"

As Gov. Greg Abbott issued on open letter calling on Texans to calmly unite and come together, Patrick took a more combative tone. He blamed Black Lives Matter protesters for the violence against police and said people "with big mouths are creating situations like we saw last night."

Sorry -- I should have warned you to turn your irony meter off. And it is, of course, BLM's fault, because reasons. Or something.

If you want a take on just how unhinged Dan Patrick is, there's this little tidbit:

AUSTIN – Today, as acting governor, I am directing that the Texas flag be immediately lowered to half-staff in honor of the lives and public service of our slain officers and victims of yesterday’s tragic and senseless event.

I ask that you keep the brave men and women in law enforcement in your thoughts and prayers.

Apparently, no one told Gov. Greg Abbott that he'd been replaced.

I think Dan Patrick deserves a Through the Looking Glass Award.

Via Crooks and Liars.

Image of the Week

I meant to do this yesterday and was so fed up with the news that I just left.

At any rate, the juvenile black-crowned night herons are up and about, gathered around the Waterfowl Lagoon staring into the water, so I thought this one from Bernice would be appropriate:

The Clinton E-Mail Scandal, Liberal Redneck Style (Update)

This sort of sums up my feelings about the whole "scandal":

Footnote: Jason Chaffetz (R-Spanish Inquisition) has already called on FBI Director James Comey to testify on the investigation; any bets on whether Loretta Lynch is next?

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday said the Justice Department has decided not to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton or her aides and will close the investigation into her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. . . .

“Late this afternoon, I met with FBI Director James Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State,” Lynch said. “I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation.”

Do read the whole article, but keep in mind that it's Politico, not the most left-friendly site on the Internet. And as for Comey's press conference, keep in mind also that he is a Republican, appointed by George W. Bush, and is no friend to the Clintons. Given that, I'm not surprised that he took the opportunity to slam Hillary Clinton as much as he could, but I find it illuminating that he couldn't find anything to hang a prosecution on. There's a lot of "may have beens" and "possiblys" in his statements. Take them for what they're worth, which in my book is simply nothing.

Update: Here's a good dissection of Comey's press conference. Pretty much bears out my take.

None of this would have even made it into a court of law, or even a halfway-decent newspaper, but because Comey got to stand there and testify unilaterally against Hillary Clinton for 15 minutes, no one gets to make Comey look like a fool for contradicting himself, and for engaging in the sort of rank speculation that courts of law are designed to weed out, and which competent editors relegate to spaces like Alex Jones‘ Infowars.

You can bet Comey will be handled with kid gloves when he testifies before whatever spin-off of the Witch-Hunt Committee the teabaggers come up with.

Culture Break: Eid Mubarak, Bollywood Style

Today (actually beginning last night at sunset) marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. So, celebration is in order. "Eid mubarak" is a traditional greeting for the end of Ramadan (Eid al-Fitr) and Eid al-Adha (the month of Dhul Haj).

Since I have a fondness for Bollywood, I thought this would be fun:

No, I have no idea what's going on here, except that, yes, there are Muslims in India.

Did I Say E-Mails? (Updated)

Well, I called it: to no one's real surprise, the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server while Secretary of State has turned up exactly nothing (except some bad judgment, same as Colin Powell, who also had a private e-mail server). And to no one's further surprise, the right is up in arms. Cue the House Witch-Hunt Committee:

"While I respect the professionals at the FBI, this announcement defies explanation," House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump's most prominent political supporter, said in a statement.

"No one should be above the law."

There's a real simple explanation, Mr. Speaker: the investigation found no evidence of criminal intent, nor did Clinton break any laws. Therefore, no criminal charges. See how that works?

And of course, Twitter-Wizard Donald The Hairpiece knows what's afoot:

 

Via Digby, who also notes:

The prevailing GOP theme is that there was some kind of corrupt deal between Obama, Clinton, Lynch and James Comey that kept her from an indictment. The prevailing coverage from the press is that because Comey took the unprecedented step of holding a press conference to lay out evidence in a case for which he will not recommend a prosecution, it means that the "optics" are so bad that "the narrative" is that she is in real trouble even though she is not legally liable and many other government officials have used exactly the same practices.

I hear Trey Gowdy is looking for something to do.

Update: John Cole has some interesting background on the whole "why" of the private server:

Regardless, the idea that HRC used her own server to avoid FOIA requests is not the case. The reason she did it is posted proudly on the Judicial Watch server:

Newly released emails show a 2009 request to issue a secure government smartphone to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was denied by the National Security Agency.

A month later, she began using private email accounts accessed through her BlackBerry to exchange messages with her top aides.

There's more. Read the whole thing.

Antidote

To all the Trumpistas, the hard-core BernieBots, BLM, and everyone else who wants to separate us into tiny little enclaves:

A belated Happy Fourth of July.

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People

So, Black Lives Matter decided to hold Toronto's Pride Parade hostage this year, because they're so very interested in constructive dialogue. From John Aravosis at AmericaBlog:

Black Lives Matter protesters brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “Surrender Dorothy” this weekend when they shut down the Toronto LGBT Pride parade with smoke flares and a sit-in.

BLM held Toronto Pride hostage, unless their demands, which included excluding police from the parade, were immediately met.

This is choice: From Alexandra Williams of BLM Toronto:

"We are not taking any space away from any folks. When we talk about homophobia, transphobia, we go through that too ... It should be a cohesive unit, not one against the other. Anti-blackness needs to be addressed and they can be addressed at the same time, in the same spaces," she said.

"We didn't bully our way into Pride ... we made space for ourselves in a place where we have been erased," Williams added.

Her entire comment is so completely self-absorbed and clueless that I don't even know where to start. Pride Toronto included them as honored guests and they took the opportunity to to spit in the face of the gay community They didn't "make space" for themselves in the parade -- they were invited to participate as a gesture of inclusion (because, after all, that's what Pride is about), and then they took our space away.

If Ms. Williams want "anti-blackness" addressed in the gay community, maybe she can work on having "anti-gayness" addressed in the black community.

Needless to say, this little stunt was not greeted with universal approbation. BLM responded on Facebook: From Pink News:

“Ya’ll quick to forget Pride was a riot. Or that it was the bodies, organising brilliance, and hearts of Black, Latinx, & Brown people and communities that created Pride.”

Bullshit. Yes, it was a riot, and guess who the majority of the rioters were: young white gay men. And guess who it was who got AIDS activism up and running: white gay men. And who was it who formed the first gay advocacy organizations: white gay men and white gay women. (I've done several posts on this issue, mostly hinging on the release of, and reaction to, Roland Emmerich's Stonewall. If you want to refresh your memory, you can look here, here, here, and here.)

I've been through this kind of crap before, in the '70s' and '80s, when we would all gather in Lincoln Park at the end of the Pride Parade and listen to the likes of Urvashi Vaid tell us how we were going to solve everyone else's problems first. I don't have much patience with BLM or anyone else who thinks I'm going to put up with it again.

I may revisit this -- I'm really pissed off about this, quite possibly because, as someone who has supported equal rights for everyone, I feel used, and consequently, right now it's hard to be dispassionate about it.

Another Must-Read: The Aftermath of Brexit

Politicians being selfish and greedy. Where have I heard that before?

This week’s antics of Gove and Johnson are a useful reminder. For the way one has treated the other is the way both have treated the country. Some may be tempted to turn Johnson into an object of sympathy – poor Boris, knifed by his pal – but he deserves none. In seven days he has been exposed as an egomaniac whose vanity and ambition was so great he was prepared to lead his country on a path he knew led to disaster, so long as it fed his own appetite for status.

He didn’t believe a word of his own rhetoric, we know that now. His face last Friday morning, ashen with the terror of victory, proved it. That hot mess of a column he served up on Monday confirmed it again: he was trying to back out of the very decision he’d persuaded the country to make. And let’s not be coy: persuade it, he did. Imagine the Leave campaign without him. Gove, Nigel Farage and Gisela Stuart: they couldn’t have done it without the star power of Boris.

He knew it was best for Britain to remain in the EU. But it served his ambition to argue otherwise. We just weren’t meant to fall for it. Once we had, he panicked, vanishing during a weekend of national crisis before hiding from parliament. He lit the spark then ran away – petrified at the blaze he started.

He has left us to look on his works and despair. The outlook for the economy is so bleak, the governor of the Bank of England talks of “economic post-traumatic stress disorder.” The Economist Intelligence Unit projects a 6% contraction by 2020, an 8% decline in investment, rising unemployment, falling tax revenues and public debt to reach 100% of our national output. No wonder George Osborne casually announced that the central aim of his fiscal policy since 2010 – eradicating the deficit – has now been indefinitely postponed, thereby breaking what had been the defining commitment of the Tories’ manifesto at the last election, back in the Paleolithic era known as 2015.

Via Digby.

Maybe this resonates the way it does because it came right after this:

I can't help but enjoy reading hysterical essays from the Wall Street Journal these days even though Trump's popularity with tens of millions of Americans makes me feel sick to my stomach when I stop to think about it:

Before they gather in Cleveland for their convention, it’s not too soon for Republicans to begin thinking about what exactly a Donald Trump defeat might be like...

[W]hat happens if Mr. Trump decides he can’t win and no longer is willing to throw good money after bad. Unless they were born on a turnip truck yesterday, campaign vendors will be the first to figure it out. Look for them quickly to cut off services rather than get stiffed in the inevitable Trump campaign bankruptcy filing.

Mr. Trump’s harsher Republican critics are kidding themselves to think Mr. Trump is crazy or unstable and will suffer a breakdown. More likely, he will simply and coldbloodedly toss the ball to the GOP, saying, in effect, “If you want to pay for some events or TV, I’m available. Otherwise I’m done.” The GOP would then have to shoulder the dual burden of propping up a minimally respectable Trump campaign while also distancing its down-ballot candidates from Mr. Trump so they might survive.

And that’s the optimistic scenario. Mr. Trump has learned the value of audacity. He might well decide to cover his retreat and preserve his amour propre with a flurry of lawsuits and conspiracy theories about a “rigged” election.

We've already heard the "rigged" mantra. And we already know that Trump is a liar who's out for himself -- at least, those of us with two brain cells to rub together do. It's no news that the Republican leadership is now faced with the prospect of the party disintegrating under them; that's why they're so desperate to neutralize Trump. And question is, can they do it without disastrous results: Trump's supporters are ignorant and gullible, and not averse to violence. (Rush Limbaugh's little fantasy about the left erupting in violence if Trump wins the election is a classic bit of projection, but what happens if Trump gets done out of the nomination? Some of his supporters are planning on bringing their guns to Cleveland, after all.)

There are some frightening parallels between the Trump campaign here and the Leave campaign in Britain. There's hope that the move to revisit the vote there can have some success -- it's not an instant process, despite the calls from some European leaders to get the hell out asap. As for how it's going to play out here, I'm not prepared to make any predictions, aside from the inarguable conclusion that the GOP has already suffered severe damage. As far as that goes, though, all I've got to say to them is "You made it -- you own it."

Today in WTF?

OK, now I've heard it all: the latest wingnut theory is that the Statue of Liberty was modeled after a man:

According to an upcoming Discovery Family channel program, French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi may have used his brother as a model for the Statue of Liberty instead of his mother as most historians believe.

“Going through photos he had in his files of his brother, I started to look at the face more carefully, and it really did look to be like Liberty," author Elizabeth Mitchell told the New York Post.

As a point of reference:

The face is so stylized that it could be anyone -- quite deliberately so, I'm sure.

And now that I think about it, why am I wasting space on this? I mean, who cares who the model was?

Today's Must-Read, 4th of July Edition

Interesting and very thorough article on the significance of Prop 8:

Although the Supreme Court dismissed the challenge to Proposition 8 on a technicality, the long and winding struggle against it nevertheless was pivotal in the quest for equal rights under the law, as well as in the sweeping marriage equality victory that was to come two years later when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that gay men and lesbians had a fundamental right to marry.

A quick video summary:

Read the article -- it's lengthy, but you won't regret it. Trust me.

Happy Independence Day.

Another Reviews Update

It's "What's New" day at Green Man Review, and I have a lot of stuff up, so go on over and take a look -- there's fantasy, art, comics, anime, and music.

Today's Must-Read

An exhaustive article for the Hillary-haters out there. It's a Facebook post by a man named Michael Arnovitz, reprinted here at Daily Kos. It begins thusly:

"In the course of a single conversation, I have been assured that Hillary is cunning and manipulative but also crass, clueless, and stunningly impolitic; that she is a hopelessly woolly-headed do-gooder and, at heart, a hardball litigator; that she is a base opportunist and a zealot convinced that God is on her side. What emerges is a cultural inventory of villainy rather than a plausible depiction of an actual person." —Henry Louis Gates The quote above comes from a fascinating article called “Hating Hillary”, written by Gates for the New Yorker in 1996. Even now, 20 years after it was first published, it’s a fascinating and impressive piece, and if you have a few spare moments I strongly recommend it to you. (www.newyorker.com/...)

And I’m reading pieces like this because now that Hillary has (essentially if not officially) won the Democratic Primary, I have become increasingly fascinated by the way so many people react to her. In truth, I sometimes think that I find that as interesting as Hillary herself. And I can’t help but notice that many of the reactions she receives seem to reflect what Gates referred to as “a cultural inventory of villainy” rather than any realistic assessment of who she really is and what she has really done.

It's worth taking time with. I confess to having mixed feelings about Hillary Clinton: as I responded to one Hillary-hater in a comment thread, "She's what we've got, so we need to make the best of it." This article makes me feel better about it.

Footnote: This is breaking:

Hillary Clinton will likely not be charged with any criminal wrongdoing after the FBI completes their investigation into her private email server, CNN reports. The former Secretary of State sat down with FBI investigators Saturday morning for three and a half hours, in what is broadly considered tho be the final stages of the investigation.

A Senior Producer at the CNN, Edward Mejia Davis, posted the news that Clinton is not expected to be charged to Twitter, citing unnamed sources who spoke with CNN's Evan Perez:

Edward Mejia Davis
‏@TeddyDavisCNN

Sources tell CNN's Evan Perez: expectation is that there will be announcement of no charges in Clinton email probe w/in next two weeks or so


2:02 PM - 2 Jul 2016
882 retweets 680 likes

The usual suspects are beside themselves.

North Carolina: The "Fix" Is In

And what a fix it is. You may recall that no one (except Tony Perkins and the "Christian for Pay" crowd) likes North Carolina's HB2, known variously as the "bathroom bill" and "Hate Bill 2." Well, the NBA has threatened to move the 2017 All Star Game out of the state, so the legislature "fixed" it:

The legislature approved limited changes to House Bill 2 late Friday night, restoring residents’ right to bring claims of discrimination in state courts.

Gov. Pat McCrory had been seeking the action for months. HB2, best known for requiring transgender people in government facilities to use bathrooms matching the gender on their birth certificates, also blocked a path that North Carolinians had to file state-court discrimination claims.

Though lawmakers’ action Friday restores that path, it comes with a statute of limitations shorter than before — one year instead of three years.

That's all they "fixed" -- nothing about bathroom access, or the ability of local governments to pass LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination ordinances, or raise the minimum wage, or anything else that the legislature took away from the people of North Carolina.

And this is choice:

“As we said from the beginning, there was never an intent to limit the right of anybody to seek redress in state court,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters.

Then, Speaker Moore, why put in a provision limiting the right of everyone to seek redress in state courts?

This is the first "fix" they came up with:

Draft legislation circulating this week included a proposal to offer “gender reassignment certificates” that would allow transgender people who haven’t changed the gender on their birth certificate to prove they’ve had gender reassignment surgery – and can therefore use the bathroom they prefer.

Malice compounded by ignorance: only about a third of trans folk have surgery; the rest either can't afford it or don't want to take that step (not to mention those who may be mid-transition). And this smacks too much of our rapidly approaching police state: May I see your papers, please?

And it was a complete non-starter with the NBA:

The vote came a day after the NBA and the Charlotte Hornets said they do not support “the version of the bill” that was circulating earlier in the week.

The league reiterated its commitment to its “guiding principles of inclusion, mutual respect and equal protections for all,” and that “constructive engagement with all sides is the right path forward.”

“There has been no new decision made regarding the 2017 NBA All-Star Game,” the statement read.

Moore's response is what one might expect:

Moore responded to the NBA’s comments on Friday. “I certainly hope that the NBA will keep the All-Star Game here,” he said. “The process I don’t think lends itself to (passing) legislation perhaps that they might want to see. I hope that they – and frankly every business that had concerns about discrimination arguments – see fixing this issue with access to state courts as fixing that.”

And of course, they've fixed nothing.

I find it instructive that the NC legislature took no notice of all the businesses -- including major corporations -- that bailed on expansion plans or plans to open new facilities and the like, but when the NBA barked, they noticed. Now it just remains to be seen whether the NBA will follow through, because this "fix" is a joke -- it addresses nothing.

I wish I had enough confidence in the voters of North Carolina to think that they'll boot these assholes out of office in November, but I doubt it: their strength is in the back hills, places like Marion and Sevier and Boone. If the resort areas on the coast and in the mountains start losing business, it might have an effect, but I doubt it.

Oh, and because the state attorney general (a Democrat) has refused to defend the law, the governor has asked the legislature to set aside half a million from the disaster relief fund to hire outside counsel. That's generating the kind of reactions you might expect, from outrage to ridicule ("Even the Governor knows it's a disaster.")

Saturday Science: A Sidebar

This is actually relevant to my first post on "Earth: A Biography". From CNN (which for some reason has it in the "Health" section):

A spinning, solar-powered spacecraft as wide as a basketball court will arrive at Jupiter on July 4 to study the giant planet and to take the highest-resolution images of Jupiter in history.

NASA's robotic Juno probe is carrying seven science instruments designed to help scientists figure out how Jupiter formed and evolved. The planet is the most massive in our solar system -- a huge ball of gas 11 times wider than Earth. Researchers think it was the first planet to form and that it holds clues to how the solar system evolved.

"One of the primary goals of Juno is to learn the recipe for solar systems," Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, said at a news conference on June 16. "How do you make the solar system? How do you make the planets in our solar system?"

Spacecraft have been to Jupiter before, but scientists still are puzzled. What's going on under Jupiter's dense clouds? Does it have a solid core? How much water is in its atmosphere? And how deep are those colorful bands and that mysterious giant red spot?

"Jupiter looks a lot like the sun," Bolton said. But it has much more than the sun, and that's really important.

"The stuff that Jupiter has more of is what we're all made out of," he said. "It's what the Earth is made out of. It's what life comes from."

A note: It seems that the Hadean eon of Earth's history might not have been as violent as previously reported: there is evidence that there were oceans as early as 4 billion years ago.

Now, back to Juno. From Nasa (via Joe.My.God.):

And this:

That one has 360° control (which means you can manipulate the image with your cursor).

(I know -- I get like a little kid with stuff like this. I should have been a scientist of some sort.)

There Is Some Good News

Away from the grand vaudeville show of electoral politics.

This, for example:

A group of kids were selling lemonade at New York Pride last weekend – to raise money to support Orlando victims.

As the city held its annual Pride parade on Saturday, four-year-olds Sam Bernstein and Finn Madden and three-year-old Dean Haines set up a lemonade stand to raise money for the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting.

The trio had a lot of help from their parents as they set up the stand, but proud mum Stephanie Bernstein says they were excited to be making a difference.

They raised $250.

And this, from Ireland:

Next Saturday, Dublin’s Muslim community will break bread with the LGBT community, and members of the council hope the evening will foster dialogue and promote positivity between the two communities.

“As more than one billion Muslims worldwide celebrate Ramadan by fasting and appreciating the blessings given to us, it is important for the Irish Muslim community to reach out to our neighbours as an example of true Islamic ideals,” said Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri – chairman of the Irish Muslim Peace & Integration Council and Imam of the Al-Mustafa Islamic Centre mosque.

A break from The Hairpiece.

RFRAs, Thy Days Are Numbered

Via Joe.My.God., this:

U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves late Thursday night issued an injunction blocking a bill by the Mississippi legislature that would have allowed private citizens and some public officials professing a “sincere religious belief” to deny services to gays and lesbians.

Just minutes before House Bill 1523 was to take effect at midnight, Reeves eviscerated the bill — the most sweeping attempt by a state to undermine the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize gay marriage — as being in violation of the First and Fourteenth amendments.

“The State has put its thumb on the scale to favor some religious beliefs over others. Showing such favor tells ‘nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and . . . adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.’ ” Reeves wrote, citing precedent. “And the Equal Protection Clause is violated by HB 1523’s authorization of arbitrary discrimination against lesbian, gay, transgender, and unmarried persons.”

“The plaintiffs’ motions are granted and HB 1523 is preliminarily enjoined.”

Coupled with a ruling Reeves filed earlier in the week — preventing circuit clerks from denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples — the proposed law is, for the moment, stillborn.

The preliminary injunction will hold until any appeals are completed. Then, if upheld, they will be filed as permanent injunctions.

This is a preliminary injunction pending appeal, and unfortunately, appeals will be heard by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is notoriously conservative. And even worse, the Circuit Justice is your friend and mine, Clarence Thomas. No doubt, the state of Mississippi will appeal, and the appeal will be accepted. As for a ruling, who knows? The preponderance of the judges on the Circuit are Republican appointees (although that's not a sure indicator -- remember Richard Posner?), but given the history, this will wind up at the Supreme Court.

What's key here is Judge Reeves' finding that the Mississippi law violates both the First (Establishment Clause) and Fourteenth (Equal Protection) Amendments, which to me seems pretty obvious. Apparently, it's not so obvious to the state of Mississippi.

And a footnote: With his usual perspicacity, Jason Chaffetz (R-Oblivion), chair of the House Witch-Hunt Committee, has scheduled hearings on the hysterically mis-named "First Amendment Defense Act" (which eviscerates important parts of the First Amendment) for one month to the day after Orlando.

And as one can easily suspect, the hearings are stacked:

Currently, only anti-gay witnesses have been invited to testify before Chairman Chaffetz's committee hearing on July 12, as the Blade reports. They include heroes of the anti-gay religious right, including former Atlanta fire chief Kelvin Cochran, fired for not obtaining permission to publish and distribute to his employees a virulently anti-gay book steeped in religious dogma, while using his title and position to promote the book. Also invited is Alliance Defending Freedom's Kristen Waggoner, who represents Barronelle Stutzman, a Washington state florist who refused to provide flowers to a same-sex couple for their wedding and refused to settle the case for $1000. Waggoner repeatedly and falsely claims Stutzman may lose her home, business, and life savings because she refused to sell flowers to a same-sex couple.

In the remote chance that this bill actually passes, Obama will veto it, and Congress won't won't have the votes to override. But it will make great ammunition as Chaffetz runs against Obama (as every Republican will be doing.)

Your tax dollars at work.

Well, It's Done

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter this afternoon announced that “effective immediately,” the ban on openly transgender service members in the military has come to an end:

“The Defense Department and the military need to avail ourselves of all talent possible in order to remain what we are now — the finest fighting force the world has ever known,” Carter said Thursday at the Pentagon.

“We don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualification to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the soldier, sailor, airman or marine who can best accomplish the mission. We have to have access to 100% of America’s population,” he added.

“Although relatively few in number, we’re talking about talented and trained Americans who are serving their country with honor and distinction,” he said. “We want to take the opportunity to retain people whose talent we’ve invested in and who’ve proven themselves.”

As you may imagine, this is not being greeted with glad cries across the political spectrum:

"This is the latest example of the Pentagon and the President prioritizing politics over policy," said [Rep. MaCc] Thornberry [(R-TX -- of course)], Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

"Our military readiness -- and hence, our national security -- is dependent on our troops being medically ready and deployable," he added. "The administration seems unwilling or unable to assure the Congress and the American people that transgender individuals will meet these individual readiness requirements at a time when our Armed Forces are deployed around the world."

We're talking about 11,000 people out of a million and a half.

And of course, the World's Biggest Liar weighs in:

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a Marine Corps veteran, said President Barack Obama was using the military "to fight culture wars."

"This is yet another example of President Obama using America's military to fight culture wars instead of to fight real wars against the enemies of our nation," Perkins said.

"Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that 'the only military matter . . . about which I ever sensed deep passion on [Obama's] part was 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' Now Mr. Obama has only added to his legacy of misplaced priorities with regard to our country's defense," Perkins added.

And if anyone's an expert on misplaced priorities, it's Tony Perkins. (Hmm -- I thought the biggest threat to our country was same-sex marriage.)

CNN, of course, fails to mention that the Family Research Council is a recognized anti-LGBT hate group. And I've read that Perkins' military service was as an MP. Somehow, that fits.

A little guessing game: which member of the teabagger caucus will be the first to introduce a "military bathroom bill"?