Another Unconstitutional Decision by SCROTUS: What Next?

 Politics
Jun 192013
 

Few things are more cut and dried than American citizens’ right against self incrimination.  …nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself…  At least that used to be correct.  In most 5-4 decisions, the Supreme Court is split between the fascist five Injustices of SCROTUS and the four Justices of SCOTUS.  Not only did SCROTUS deny the Constitution in this case, but also, four critical cases remain on this year’s calendar.

SCROTUS

…The court ruled that a suspect’s failure to answer a police officer’s questions before an arrest may be used against the suspect at trial.

The Supreme Court has long said the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination applies after arrest and at trial. But it had never decided, in the words of a 1980 decision, “whether or under what circumstances pre-arrest silence” in the face of questioning by law enforcement personnel is entitled to protection…

…Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said allowing “a prosecutor to comment on a defendant’s constitutionally protected silence would put that defendant in an impossible predicament.” Mr. Salinas’s choice, Justice Breyer wrote, was “between incrimination through speech and incrimination through silence.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

The four Justices of SCOTUS were absolutely correct. The right against self incrimination is meaningless, if its invocation before arrest can be used in court to imply guilt. But the Fascist Five Injustices goose-stepped against the Constitution to help make this nation a Republican police state. As for what’s next, Chris Hayes covered the remaining four decisions in two segments. In the first, Chris and his panel discussed what’s at stake in the decisions.

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I strongly fear that Chris may be correct in his hypothesis that SCROTUS may use gay rights to mask the demise of voting rights and affirmative action. The wrong decision in any of these cases will be tragic, because all are key to America’s freedom. However, the worst decision they could would be to allow their Republican cronies to steal elections by denying minority Americans the right to vote. In Chris’s second segment, he and his panel discussed that.

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Chris is correct that the legitimacy of the Supreme Court is at stake, because Republicans have already made it clear that their intent is to use the law to disentrance blacks and Latinos, in addition to seniors, students, labor and poor people. If destroying the Voting Rights Act is the decision, in combination with Citizens United, the Supreme Court will have demonstrated that it is illegitimate.

No Republican may be allowed to infest the White House before the Injustices od SCROTUS have been replaced with Justices.

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Open Thread–6/9/2013

 Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 092013
 

I’m writing early again to beat the heat that will take a day or two to dissipate from the building.  I slept from about 10 PM to 1:00 AM, put up my articles, and slept from 4:00 AM until 12 Noon.  Nevertheless, I still feel quite tired and think it may be a side effect of the Chantix.  Other than sacrificing my next door neighbor to the devil, the drug has caused no mental aberrations. ;-)   It is my hope that I will be able to send out links, as I have been too pooped to do so for the last several days.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:45 (average 4:26). :-( To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Alternet: “Right to work” is the most dishonest phrase in American political discourse. It sounds like it’s defending people’s right to earn a living. But as used by its supporters, it means making it impossible for workers to form an effective union, couched in the language of “freedom” and “choice.”

Specifically, it means laws banning “union shops,” in which everyone in a workplace has to join the union or pay a fee to cover the cost of union representation.

The ‘Right to work’ label should be ‘Right to be paid less so the 1% can have more’.  Support Union Labor!!

From Daily Kos: Attention every journalist that is currently trying to write the definitive 2012 presidential campaign retrospective: We finally have the real reason that Mitt Romney failed in his bid to unseat President Obama. In fact, we get the answer straight from the loser presidential runner-up himself.

The answer? His penny-pinching, underdog campaign simply couldn’t keep pace with the cash-fueled machine that was the Obama re-elect…

…It’s a touching story. It is also complete bullshit.

According to a campaign finance study by the New York Times, the GOP’s big three (the RNC, the Super PAC Restore Our Future, and the Romney campaign) actually outspent the Democratic big three (the DNC, the Super PAC Priorities USA, and the Obama campaign) by about $6.3 million in the election cycle…

I would think that CNN should have challenged Little Lord Willard’s lie. Are they trying to goose-step higher than Faux Noise?

From Huffington Post: House Republicans just don’t get it.

That was the message Latinos and immigrant rights advocates sent to the GOP on Thursday when nearly all House Republicans voted to approve an amendment to defund the deferred action program that currently allows undocumented youth to stay and work in the United States.

The amendment to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations bill also restricts DHS from implementing prosecutorial discretion policies that allow immigration officials to delay the deportations of undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed serious crimes and are considered “low-priority.” It was approved 224 to 201, with House members largely voting along party lines. Six Republicans voted against it, and three Democrats voted for it.

Immigration hard-liner Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who offered the amendment, celebrated Thursday, saying his amendment would prohibit the Obama administration from implementing “executive amnesty.” He also warned that the passage of the amendment is “the first test of the 113th Congress in the House of Representatives on immigration.”

“My amendment blocks many of the provisions that are mirrored in the Senate’s ‘Gang of Eight’ bill,” King said in a statement. “If this position holds, no amnesty will reach the president’s desk.”

Fortunately, before this can go anywhere it has to pass the Senate, and I don’t see that happening. However, it should send a clear message to Latinos that Republicans do not represent them at all. The three Democratic pigs (porcine apology here) who goose-stepped with racist Republicans were John Barrow (D-GA), Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC) and Nick J. Rahall II (D-WV).

Cartoon:

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He’s frowning, because they were reinstated for the rich in 2011. :-)

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Open Thread–6/7/2013

 Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 072013
 

Yesterday, from the perspective of when I will post this, was another hot one, but I’m beating it by doing my research in the morning and writing the articles in the afternoon.  The “breezeway” has super-heated to 99° at 3:00 PM, put heat exhaustion is not yet sufficient to keep me from writing.  Late tonight, I’ll fill in the puzzle times and post it.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:33 (average 5:33).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: You’ll Never Guess What 30,000 MoveOn Members Did After Hurricane Katrina.

 

This is what Democrats did, when Republicans were using the disaster to make New Orleans a white city. It shows what matters to whom.

From Crooks & Liars: Ever wonder why Bill O’Reilly gets the drop on many of his guests on The Factor? Sure, he’s a talented TV show host, but even he needs an advantage. Joe Muto describes BIllo’s typical details Billo typical work day in his new book, "An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media"…

…I know many people often cite BIll’s editing of each segment which would always give him the upper hand, but knowing what your guest is going to say before he or she says it is not playing it fair and balanced, Billy. Your show is rigged, period.

Is it any wonder that I call him Bill O’Lielly?

From Right Wing Watch: WorldNetDaily columnist Erik Rush is reiterating his case for armed resistance against the Obama administration today, calling for a revolution [terrorist delinked]to topple President Obama just as colonists rebelled against King George III.

According to Rush, Obama is creating a government of “absolute despotism” and along with Attorney General Eric Holder is trying to “enslave the people.” Rush asks: “Is this not an identical situation to that in which America’s founders found themselves – and which they became willing to fight to overcome?”

He argues that Obama is trying to “import” Muslims, whom he claim are part of a “retrograde cult of oppression and death,” into the U.S. and turn them into “Obama’s cutthroat foot soldiers” who might be “mobilized to rise up, paralyze America with widespread terror attacks, and incite the chaos that will necessitate martial law and an end to our free society.”

How Republican!! Lies, projection, hate, terrorism, bigotry, pseudo-Christianity, TEAbuggery and sedition, all in one brief statement!!!

Cartoon:

7Cartoon

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Open Thread–5/20/2013

 Open Thread, Personal, Plus, Politics
May 202013
 

Yesterday, I intended to nap during the day, but I could not.  They were doing maintenance on the building all afternoon and evening, causing the power to go out over and over again.  Each time it does, it sets off an alarm on my O2 system that wakes me up, so I could not sleep until late last night.  I’m feeling fatigued, so I have only this message.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:49 (average 5:20).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: The board of Yahoo, the faded Web pioneer, agreed on Sunday to buy the popular blogging service Tumblr for about $1.1 billion in cash, the companies announced Monday, a signal of how the company plans to reposition itself as the technology industry makes a headlong rush into social media.

When StumbleUpon changed format and drove away most of their members, many of them fled to Tumblr. As with other network acquisitions, I trust that this shall be a bad development for Tumblr members.  Thank God for Care2.

From Think Progress and Think Progress: If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year. At least, that’s what would have happened if a bill introduced by Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R) had become law.

And yet, the Virginia Republican Party wants to make Obenshain into the state’s top prosecutor. This weekend, Virginia Republicans selected Obenshain as their nominee to replace tea party stalwart Ken Cuccinelli (R) as the state’s attorney general.

But if voters don’t like him, the Republican party offers another choice.

Here are some of the most alarming facts you need to know about E.W. Jackson:

  • He has said gays and lesbians are “very sick people, psychologically and emotionally” whose minds are perverted. He has also said homosexuality “poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies”
  • He led an “Exodus Now!” movement encouraging African Americans to leave the Democratic party because opposition to same-sex marriage and government endorsement of religion means “Democrats are engaged in a concerted effort [bigots delinked] to do away with all symbols of our Judeo-Christian culture.”
  • He rallied against hate crimes legislation as a “virulent strain of Anti-Christian bigotry and hatred.”

Residents of Virginia had better elect Democrats for their own protection.

From Huffington Post: Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) confirmed on Sunday that he is proposing an amendment to the upcoming farm bill that would eliminate the "Monsanto Protection Act."

Officially known as the Farmer Assurance Provision, the controversial agricultural provision was surreptitiously tucked into budget legislation — passed by Congress in March and signed into law by President Barack Obama — that was intended to avoid a government shutdown. The provision, which the public at large caught wind of only after the bill’s passage, allows agricultural companies such as Monsanto to ignore court orders against selling genetically-engineered seeds.

As HuffPost’s Ryan Grim explained last week:

Federal courts have recently ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had failed to consider the potential harm some genetically engineered crops may have, and acted too hastily in approving their sale. The industry fought back with the [Monsanto Protection Act], preventing the enforcement of court rulings.

I don’t want to hear Obama blamed for not vetoing the bill. This was, after all, a minor provision in the bill to end the Republicans’ seditious attempt to shut down the entire government. Sign Jeff’s petition, please. Once again, Oregon leads the way!

Cartoon:

20Cartoon

Those two images were so boring that I chose a more recent graphic.

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Why Republican Minority Outreach Fails

 Politics
Apr 112013
 

Not Long ago, Rand Paul embarrassed himself and his party with a  condescending attempt to paint the GOP as attractive to Latinos.  Yesterday he was outright insulting, when he embarrassed himself and his party to black students at Howard University.  Republican minority outreach has one problem.  To succeed, Republicans must convince minority communities that obviously racist GOP policy is not at all racist.

11PaulHowardSo now we know the basis of Kentucky's libertarian Sen. Rand Paul's strategy for expanding the Republican Party's appeal to African Americans: amnesia.

That's the only conclusion I can reach after watching the C-SPAN broadcast of Paul's 52-minute appearance today at Howard University. He deserves credit for appearing before a potentially hostile audience to make the case for conservative policies with which most black voters utterly disagree. But he also deserves strong criticism — even derision — for pretending that there's any mystery about why most black folks are so skeptical about the GOP. He wants us to forget the party's recent history — and his own.

So in his speech today, he asked, "How did the party that elected the first black U.S. senator, the party that elected the first 20 African-American congressmen, become a party that now loses 95 percent of the black vote? How did the Republican Party, the party of the Great Emancipator, lose the trust and faith of an entire race?"

He went on to argue that blacks began to switch their long-standing allegiance from Republicans to Democrats during the Great Depression. "The Democrats promised equalizing outcomes through unlimited federal assistance, while Republicans offered something that seemed less tangible: the promise of equalizing opportunity through free markets," Paul argued… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Root>

Rand seems to think that he gets to make up a history different from what actually happened. He insulted black people by accusing them of moving to the Democrats during the great depression, because they prefer welfare to opportunity. Horse feathers shit! The Republican Party came to be as the progressive party that freed the slaves and, after the war, fought for their equality. The Southern Democrats, aka Dixiecrats, were the racists that opposed them. In the 1960s, Northern Democrats and moderate Republicans combined to pass the Civil Rights Acts and Voting Rights Acts. In a play for political power, the Republicans adopted the Southern Strategy, in which they adopted the Dixiecrats racist policies. The Dixiecrats switched to the Republican Party and became its base. Until that time, black people were overwhelmingly Republican. Only after the Republican Party adopted racism as policy did the majority of black people change their support to the Democrats. That's what really happened.  Idiot, son of Idiot, named after Idiot spread more BS than an agricultural spreader.

Rachel Maddow demonstrated, in no uncertain terms, that Rand Paul also lied when he claimed he has never been against the Civil Rights Act.

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Like his racist father, Paul has said he believes that businesses have the right to racist discrimination.

I believe that the Republican Party is committing slow suicide.  Because demographics in this country are shifting, they will need successful minority outreach to survive.  However the only they can do this is to abandon racism and bigotry, but if they do, they lose their base, without which they cannot survive.  When they adopted the Southern Strategy, they sold out to hate to gain power.  Now they can’t let go of it.

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Open Thread–4/11/2013

 Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion
Apr 112013
 

Yesterday I got the rest I needed to recover from my long volunteer day in prison.  I’m current with replies.  Tomorrow appears routine.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:24 (average 4:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: The military prosecutors seeking to have Pfc. Bradley Manning convicted of violating the Espionage Act over his release of secret government files to WikiLeaks will face an additional burden at his court-martial under a ruling on Wednesday by a military judge.

The judge, Col. Denise Lind, ruled at a pretrial hearing that prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Private Manning had “reason to believe” that the files could be used to harm the United States or to aid a foreign power. Prosecutors had contended that they should be required to prove only that he willfully disclosed defense-related files to win a conviction under the spying law.

I think the judge made the right decision. Unlike many on the left, I believe that Manning should receive some punishment. In Civil Disobedience (one of my favorite books), Henry David Thoreau made it clear that the moral authority for civil disobedience is that the perpetrator considers the issue so important that he or she willingly accepts the consequence of punishment to emphasize that point. That said, I also believe that after being convicted of a charge less than espionage, he should be sentenced to time served and released. He has been punished more than enough already.

From Huffington Post: Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) turned to the Bible on Wednesday during a congressional hearing, using the Great Flood to support his claim that climate change isn't man-made…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great Flood really exists! It is a flood of BS, and the B stands for Barton.

From The New Observer: An N.C. House lawmaker is equating any prayer to the Islamic God with terrorism.

In an email exchange with a constituent, Republican state Rep. Michele Presnell of Burnsville was asked whether she was comfortable with a prayer to Allah before a legislative meeting. Presnell responded: “No, I do not condone terrorism.”

The first-year lawmaker who represents a district in the North Carolina mountains is a co-sponsor of House resolution 494, a measure asserting that North Carolina can establish a state religion. She did not return a call for comment Monday about the string of emails obtained by Dome.

This is what happens when bigoted Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians ignore the First Amendment.

Cartoon:

11Cartoon

Targeted by Republicans for repeal.

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Social InsaniTEA

 Politics
Apr 072013
 

Republicans are in love with conspiracy theories, because, after years of brain numbing by the Republican Ministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, sheeple are sufficiently dumbed down to believe anything.  They want you to get your gun and head to the border, Granny!  They say those Obama illegals are after your Social security benefits.  Call it Social InsaniTEA.

7SSplotThe Senior Citizens League, a conservative outfit focused, as the name suggests, on scaring the crap out of senior citizens in order to best solicit money from them, is out with a new mailer that claims:

"of all the items being considered by our leaders in Washington, the illegal immigration amnesty plans hatched by the Obama administration presents the greatest potential threat to Social Security." The mailer also contains a personalized complaint form that individuals can fill out and return to the Senior Citizens League, which the group would then send to their elected officials in Congress. Not surprisingly, the reply form asks for a donation "to help cover the cost" of the national petition. The group used similar scare tactics to derail President Barack Obama's health care reform law.

The premise is that if we were to allow a path to citizenship for people already in the country, those people would then expect Social Security benefits and all the other accoutrements of citizenship, and how dare they, and somehow that's going to mean less money for you and yours, grandma.

There's an obvious flaw in this logic, of course. Many undocumented workers already pay Social Security taxes, as well as a great deal of other taxes, and they don't get much benefit back because, as undocumented workers, they don't have a right to. Right now, the Huffington Post points out that undocumented workers have contributed almost 10 percent of the overall total in the Social Security Trust Fund; allowing a more secure legal status for those people is, if anything, only going to boost the taxes they pay… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Needless to say, the bigoted Republican claims are pure garbage.  There remains one severe threat to Social Security, the Republican plan to give it to Banksters.  Some of you might disagree, over Obama’s purported intent to adopt chained CPI.  While I believe that we should continue to protest it with all vigor, keep in mind, that that offer depends on Republicans agreeing to significant revenue increase through cuts in tax welfare for the 1% and corporate criminals.  I don’t see that happening, and the Republican response is that they’ll take the chained CPI only, but not the revenue increases.  When Republicans do agree to tax increases for the rich, the Stanly Cup playoffs will be held in hell.

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