Replies to post #197977 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[sideeki]

So "conservatives" need all the guns they can get to fight against oppression by the government. But these same "conservatives" object to any cuts in defense spending to arm the government that they need guns to defend themselves from.

Logically wouldn't the second amendment advocates want to decrease the military strength of the government?

[fuagf]

AR-15 Assault Rifle Beginning To Worry It May Never Get To Kill Innocent Person

News • News • ISSUE 49•05 • Jan 30, 2013


The melancholy assault rifle says it has “almost given up hope” of slaughtering even one innocent human.

RICHMOND, VA—As the Obama Administration signaled its determination to pass through extensive gun control reforms, a local AR-15 assault rifle told reporters Wednesday that it is beginning to fear it might never actually get the chance to kill an innocent human being in the course of its lifetime.

The Colt-manufactured assault rifle confirmed that, given the administration’s intention to advance gun control measures designed to curb the nation’s ready access to deadly firearms such as itself, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the weapon will ever have the opportunity to act on its long-held desire to brutally execute even a single innocent person.

“Ever since I came off the assembly line, I've dreamed of being used to annihilate dozens of frantic people in a deadly rampage; it’s what I was made to do,” the semiautomatic rifle said from its display stand at Richmond-area gun retailer Pete’s Munitions. “But if the government clamps down on sales of guns like me, then I can pretty much kiss that dream goodbye. And, I have to say, the idea of that happening is massively disappointing for me.”

“Just the idea that I might actually never get the chance to let loose a torrent of bullets on a roomful of bystanders is inconceivable to me,” the rifle added. “It’s awful. I mean, what else am I supposed to do with my life?”

The AR-15 further lamented that gun control advocates’ plan to impose strict background checks on gun sales and restrict firearms access to mentally ill individuals would likely prevent the 5.56 mm, magazine-fed assault rifle from falling into the hands of the type of unhinged individual who would be likely to put the rifle to “[its] intended use” of butchering helpless civilians.

“Believe me, if these new laws go into effect, there’s almost zero chance someone like that ever gets their hands on me,” the visibly emotional military-grade armament told reporters. “At best, I’ll probably end up in some responsible gun owner’s basement, spending the rest of my life plugging paper targets at a shooting range until I rust. Not exactly what you’d call a bright future for a precision-engineered killing machine like me.”

“Imagine if your life’s dream was suddenly just taken away from you, just like that,” the gun added. “How would you feel?”

Though a series of legally obtained firearms have left a staggering body count in recent shootings at Newtown, Aurora, and many other massacre sites, the lightweight assault rifle claimed that its own ambitions are relatively modest.

“Honestly, I don’t even need to mow down an entire schoolyard of shrieking children, nothing like that,” the gun explained. “I mean, that would be fantastic, obviously, but at this point I’ll take what I can get. I would be thrilled to take out even one terrified mall shopper. That’s it. Just one. Or two, if possible. Is that really so much to ask?”

At press time, the AR-15 was praying that the man in the camo pants currently inspecting him from the other end of the store counter had a history of mental illness.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/ar15-assault-rifle-beginning-to-worry-it-may-never,31080/

yep .. we all know whether or not an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle is seen as an assault rifle, or not, depends
on the definition under relevant gun laws .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban

[F6]

Archbishop Gerhard Mueller: Critics Waging 'Pogrom' Against Church



02/02/13 08:26 AM ET EST

BERLIN -- The Vatican's head of doctrine says critics in North America and Europe are conducting a "concerted campaign" to discredit the Catholic Church that is resulting in open attacks against priests.

In an interview [ http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article113313904/Gezielte-Diskreditierung-der-katholische-Kirche.html ] published Friday by Germany newspaper Die Welt, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller likened the sentiment directed toward the Church to that of the pogroms against Jews in Europe.

Mueller, who leads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [formerly known as the Inquisition, previously headed by Ratzinger ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_for_the_Doctrine_of_the_Faith )], was quoted as saying that those attacking the Church borrow arguments used by totalitarian ideologies such as Communism and Nazism against Christianity.

In recent years, the Catholic Church has faced growing criticism in Europe and North America for its handling of sexual abuse cases and its opposition to contraception, same-sex marriage and the ordination of women.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/02/archbishop-gerhard-mueller-critics-waging-pogrom-against-church_n_2606241.html [with comments]


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'Forgetful of History': Top Vatican Cleric Criticized for 'Pogrom' Remark


German Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller watches over the Catholic church's doctrine.
dapd

A German archbishop is under fire for appearing to liken recent criticism of the Catholic Church to a Nazi-era pogrom. The cleric, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, had said that "targeted discrimination campaigns" against the church sometimes reminded him of a "pogrom sentiment."

February 04, 2013 – 01:22 PM

The doctrinal watchdog of the Catholic church, German Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, has run into criticism from politicians for saying the church was being subjected to a "pogrom sentiment" because of its position on the ordination of women, same-sex partnerships and the celibacy of priests.

In an interview with the newspaper Die Welt published on Friday, the archbishop said: "Targeted discreditation campaigns against the Catholic Church in North America and also here in Europe have led to clerics in some areas being insulted in public. An artifcially created fury is growing here which sometimes reminds one of a pogrom sentiment."

Müller was appointed last year as head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position Pope Benedict XVI occupied for 24 years before his election to the papacy.

'Tasteless'

The reference to a pogrom prompted a number of politicians to accuse Müller of drawing a parallel with the persecution of Jews by the Nazis.

"Comparisons with the Holocaust are tasteless when it comes to divergent opinions in our society about current issues such as the role of marriage, family and registered life partnerships," Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

The co-leader of the opposition Greens, Claudia Roth, called Müller's statement "utterly unacceptable and dangerously forgetful of history."

She accused Müller of trying to block calls for a reform of the Catholic Church. "The chief ideologist of the Vatican sounds as if he would like to beam the Catholic Church back into the Middle Ages."

Another senior Greens politician, Volker Beck, said: "He should take back the use of the term 'pogrom sentiment' as soon as possible, and express regret."

cro -- with wire reports

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/bishop-slammed-for-comparing-criticism-of-catholic-church-to-pogroms-a-881343.html


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(linked in):

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=54568354 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84244697 and preceding and following


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Catholic Hospital: It Was 'Morally Wrong' To Argue That A Fetus Is Not A Human In Colorado Court



By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
02/04/13 02:06 PM ET EST

DENVER -- It was a startling assertion that seemed an about-face from church doctrine: A Catholic hospital arguing in a Colorado court that twin fetuses that died in its care were not, under state law, human beings.

When the two-year-old court filing surfaced last month, it triggered an avalanche of criticism – because the legal argument seemed to plainly clash with the church's centuries-old stance that life begins at conception.

But it is also now fueling an already raging debate in Colorado and beyond about whether fetuses should have legal rights and, if so, what kind.

On Monday, the hospital and the state's bishops released a statement acknowledging it was "morally wrong" to make the legal argument.

News of the wrongful death lawsuit came as Colorado lawmakers weigh how far they should go in penalizing acts that harm a fetus, and some worry that the case could diminish the Catholic Church's credibility in advocating more rights for the unborn.

Miguel De La Torre, a professor at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, noted that the church often argues for laws recognizing a fetus as a human being.

"If that legislation was to come up again, how could the Catholic Church argue we should protect the rights of a fetus?" he said.

Indeed, last week Colorado's bishops met with executives at Catholic Healthcare Initiatives, a branch of the church that operates the hospital at the center of the case, to review how the lawsuit was handled. The two released separate statements Monday saying CHI executives had been unaware of the legal arguments and pledging to "work for comprehensive change in Colorado's law, so that the unborn may enjoy the same legal protections as other persons."

Spurred on by advancing medical technology that makes fetuses more viable and more visible, states have been expanding some rights to fetuses, sometimes in conjunction with anti-abortion groups and the Catholic Church.

State laws vary widely. It's difficult to quantify how many states allow wrongful death lawsuits on behalf of unborn children because each state has different case law and judicial interpretation. A report from the anti-abortion Americans United for Life estimates that 38 permit such lawsuits.

According to The Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive health issues, 37 states allow some form of prosecution for killing a fetus. A federal law also makes it a crime to harm a fetus while committing other federal crimes.

The debate over such measures has been especially heated in Colorado, which has long battled over the legal status of unborn children. For example, Colorado has been ground zero for the "personhood" movement, which pushes laws that give fertilized eggs all the legal rights of human beings. Opponents warn that such laws would outlaw all forms of abortion and some types of birth control. Voters here so far have overwhelmingly rejected such proposals.

In 1986, a federal court ruled that fetuses are indeed people for purposes of wrongful death lawsuits in Colorado, but state courts have offered conflicting views. This latest case further calls the matter into question.

The case centers on St. Thomas More Medical Center in Canon City, a few hours south of Denver, and a wrongful death lawsuit filed by a husband who lost his pregnant wife.

Lori Stodghill was 28 weeks into her pregnancy when, on New Year's Day 2006, she began vomiting and feeling short of breath, according to court papers. Her husband, Jeremy, took her to the emergency room of St. Thomas More, where Stodghill collapsed and went into cardiac arrest.

Doctors and nurses tried to revive her, but she was declared dead from a pulmonary embolism. No one tried to remove the fetuses via an emergency cesarean section, and they perished, too, court papers said.

Jeremy Stodghill sued the hospital, some doctors and Catholic Healthcare Initiatives, which owns the company that operates Thomas More. Attorneys for CHI in 2010 filed court papers asking a judge to dismiss the case because the plaintiffs couldn't prove negligent care killed Lori Stodghill and her fetuses. They also argued that "under Colorado law, a fetus is not a `person,' and Plaintiff's claims for wrongful death must therefore be dismissed."

The trial judge agreed, finding that previous state cases required a fetus to be "born alive" to have a legal claim. An appellate court upheld the dismissal on other grounds. Stodghill's attorneys are now asking the state Supreme Court to hear the case.

The arguments were first reported on Jan. 23 by The Colorado Independent and Westword and set off a firestorm because of Catholic health groups' past stances on such issues. The trade group representing Catholic Hospitals opposed a provision of the federal health care law mandating that birth control be covered by insurance.

In their Monday statement, Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila, Colorado Springs Bishop Michael Sheridan and Pueblo Bishop Fernando Isern said: "Catholic healthcare institutions are, and should, be held to the high standard of Jesus Christ himself."

They and CHI pledged not to argue against fetal personhood further in the case. They also said they and CHI sympathize with the Stodghill family.

Attorney Timms Fowler, who wrote a brief on behalf of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association in the case, doesn't believe that allowing lawsuits over wrongfully killed fetuses leads to giving them the same rights as human beings. He said there is a difference between "the duty owed by a stranger to the mother and the unborn child" and the mother's own decisions about the fetus' future.

"To die by the wrongful conduct of a stranger, you don't have to be a walking, talking, full person," Timms said, stressing he was speaking for himself and not the association.

Last Monday, no church representatives testified as a state legislative committee considered a proposal to make it a crime to kill a fetus. Republican Rep. Janak Joshi said his measure was not meant to wade into abortion politics but rather enable prosecutors to file additional charges in cases like the Aurora movie theater shooting. One victim was so severely wounded during the July massacre that she miscarried, but prosecutors could not file murder charges on her unborn child's behalf.

Witness Heather Surovik told the committee about how a drunken driver injured her last year and killed her 8 1/2-month-old unborn son, Brady. At the hospital, the emergency staff removed him from her body and dressed his corpse in infant clothes. Prosecutors could not file vehicular manslaughter charges because Brady was not legally a person.

Democrats and an attorney for Planned Parenthood argued that Joshi's measure, as written, could enshrine legal rights for fetuses in state law and lead to an abortion ban. The committee voted it down, but Democrats later unveiled their own bill that would make it a crime to kill a fetus during a criminal act committed against a pregnant woman. That measure specifically states that the intent is to neither outlaw abortions nor give unborn children additional rights.

A hearing on that proposal is scheduled later this month.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/catholic-hospital-fetus-not-human-morally-wrong-colorado_n_2616743.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Birth Control Benefit a Huge Advance for Women's Health and Equality

By Cecile Richards
President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Posted: 02/01/2013 4:35 pm

Birth control was illegal 97 years ago, when Margaret Sanger and her sister, Ethel, opened a clinic in a tiny storefront in Brooklyn -- the first Planned Parenthood health center. For 10 cents apiece, women could get information about family planning. From the very first day, women lined up down the block with baby buggies and babies in their arms.

Back then, it wasn't unusual for women to have eight or 10 children, and women routinely died in childbirth. Margaret's own mother had died at the age of 48, her body literally worn out from having 11 children and seven miscarriages.

Ten days after Margaret opened her clinic, she was arrested and thrown in jail -- where she taught her fellow inmates about birth control. And the Planned Parenthood movement was started.

In 1960, the pill was approved as a contraceptive by the FDA and began to change women's lives dramatically. But we still had to fight. It wasn't until 1965 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that married couples had a right to use birth control, in a case heard on behalf of one of Planned Parenthood's great leaders. Since then, we've spent decades trying to make birth control more affordable by getting health insurance coverage that includes birth control, like it does any other preventive care.

Today we are closer than ever to realizing that promise. This morning, the Department of Health and Human Services announced new guidance for implementing the birth control benefit of the Affordable Care Act. The proposed regulations released today make clear that women will have access to birth control at no cost, no matter where they work.

Regulations like this can get confusing. Here's the bottom line: places of worship are exempt from the birth control benefit, and they always have been. Today's regulations don't expand the group of employers that are exempt. Instead, the regulations simplify the definition of who is exempt, and they map out how women at other religiously affiliated employers (like schools and hospitals) will get birth control at no cost.

In short, the regulations released today make it clear that your boss doesn't get to decide whether you can have birth control. These regulations treat birth control like what it is -- basic preventive health care that should be available, just like any other preventive care.

This is a huge advance for women's health and equality -- one that generations of women have fought to make happen.

What Margaret Sanger started 97 years ago is now Planned Parenthood, with more than 750 health centers around the country, delivering birth control and other health care to nearly three million patients a year. We have been on the front lines of making birth control available to women nationwide -- and we've seen firsthand the impact of women having access to the contraception method that works best for them, at no cost.

Just last fall, results were released from a four-year study of 9,200 women and teens in Missouri. They received full information about different types of contraception and then received the method of their choice at no cost -- which the Affordable Care Act's birth control benefit would do nationally.

The results were dramatic. Unintended pregnancy dropped sharply. Birth rates among the teens in the study were less than a fifth of the national rate. The need for abortion dropped, and abortion rates were less than half of the regional and national rates.

When women have access to birth control, they can choose whether and when to have families. They can have an education, a career and a family.

That's the promise of the Affordable Care Act -- and that's why the policy released today is so important for women nationwide.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cecile-richards/birth-control-benefit-a-h_b_2601609.html [with comments]


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Bishops Reject Birth Control Compromise

By ROBERT PEAR
Published: February 7, 2013

WASHINGTON — The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the latest White House proposal on health insurance coverage of contraceptives [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/us/politics/white-house-proposes-compromise-on-contraception-coverage.html (about halfway down at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84115869 )], saying it did not offer enough safeguards for religious hospitals, colleges and charities that objected to providing such coverage for their employees.

The bishops said they would continue fighting [ http://www.usccb.org/news/2013/13-037.cfm ] the federal mandate in court.

The administration said the proposal, issued last Friday, would guarantee free employee coverage of birth control “while respecting religious concerns” of organizations that objected to paying or providing for it.

The bishops said the proposal seemed to address part of their concern about the definition of religious employers who could be exempted from the requirement to offer contraceptive coverage at no charge to employees. But they said it did not go far enough and failed to answer many questions, like who would pay for birth control coverage provided to employees of certain nonprofit religious organizations.

“The administration’s proposal maintains its inaccurate distinction among religious ministries,” said Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “It appears to offer second-class status to our first-class institutions in Catholic health care, Catholic education and Catholic charities. The Department of Health and Human Services offers what it calls an ‘accommodation,’ rather than accepting the fact that these ministries are integral to our church and worthy of the same exemption as our Catholic churches.”

The bishops’ statement, issued after they had reviewed President Obama’s proposal for six days, was more moderate and measured than their criticisms [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/us/politics/birth-control-coverage-rule-debated-at-house-hearing.html ] of the original rule issued by the White House early last year. Cardinal Dolan said the bishops wanted to work with the administration to find a solution.

The administration had no immediate reaction to the bishops’ statement, other than to say it was not a surprise.

Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center [ http://www.nwlc.org/ ], said that 99 percent of women used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that their interests must be considered.

“The health needs, the religious and conscience beliefs of women deserve to be respected and protected,” said Ms. Greenberger, who supports the White House proposal.

Under the latest proposal, churches and nonprofit religious groups that object to providing birth control coverage on religious grounds would not have to pay for it. Women who work for such organizations could get free contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies. The institution objecting to the coverage would not pay for the contraceptives. Costs would be paid by an insurance company, with the possibility that it could recoup the costs through lower health care expenses resulting in part from fewer births.

The administration refused to grant an exemption or accommodation to secular businesses owned by people who said they objected to contraceptive coverage on religious grounds.

The bishops rallied to the defense of such employers.

“In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage,” Cardinal Dolan said, “we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs that they proclaim on the Sabbath. We cannot now abandon them to be forced to violate their morally well-informed consciences.”

Federal courts have issued differing judgments on the legality of the federal rule. The litigation appears likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia [ http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/id/8 ] said that the administration’s proposal, at first glance, had “struck some people as a modest improvement.” The proposal, he said, appeared to increase the number of religiously affiliated entities that could claim exemption from the requirement.

But on closer examination, the archbishop said, the federal mandate “remains unnecessary, coercive and gravely flawed.”

“The White House has made no concessions to the religious conscience claims of private businesses, and the whole spirit of the ‘compromise’ is minimalist,” Archbishop Chaput said.

In court cases, judges have expressed keen interest in details of the arrangements for contraceptive coverage. The most difficult question, which the administration has yet to resolve, is how coverage will be provided and financed for employees of self-insured faith-based institutions, which serve as both employers and insurers.

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Related

Birth Control Rule Altered to Allay Religious Objections (February 2, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/us/politics/white-house-proposes-compromise-on-contraception-coverage.html [about halfway down at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84115869 ]

A Flood of Suits Fights Coverage of Birth Control (January 27, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/health/religious-groups-and-employers-battle-contraception-mandate.html [about halfway down at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84115869 ]

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© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/health/bishops-reject-white-house-proposal-on-contraceptive-coverage.html


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New Pope? I’ve Given Up Hope

By GARRY WILLS
Published: February 12, 2013

THERE is a poignant air, almost wistful, to electing a pope in the modern world. In a time of discredited monarchies, can this monarchy survive and be relevant? There is nostalgia for the assurances of the past, quaint in their charm, but trepidation over their survivability. In monarchies, change is supposed to come from the top, if it is to come at all. So people who want to alter things in Catholic life are told to wait for a new pope. Only he has the authority to make the changeless church change, but it is his authority that stands in the way of change.

Of course, the pope is no longer a worldly monarch. For centuries he was such a ruler, with all the resources of a medieval or Renaissance prince — realms, armies, prisons, spies, torturers. But in the 19th century, when his worldly territories were wrested away by Italy, Pope Pius IX [ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/462365/Pius-IX ] lunged toward a compensatory moral monarchy.

In 1870, he elicited — from a Vatican [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html ] council he called and controlled — the first formal declaration that a pope is infallible. From that point on, even when he was not making technically infallible statements, the pope was thought to be dealing in eternal truths. A gift for eternal truths is as dangerous as the gift of Midas’s touch. The pope cannot undo the eternal truths he has proclaimed.

When Pope Paul VI’s commission of learned and loyal Catholics, lay and clerical, reconsidered the “natural law” teaching against birth control, and concluded that it could not, using natural reason, find any grounds for it, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the secretary of the Holy Office, told Paul that people had for years, on papal warrant, believed that using a contraceptive was a mortal sin, for which they would go to hell if they died unrepentant. On the other hand, those who followed “church teaching” were obliged to have many children unless they abstained from sex. How could Paul VI say that Pius XI, in his 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii [ http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121930_casti-connubii_en.html ], had misled the people in such a serious way? If he admitted it, what would happen to his own authority as moral arbiter in matters of heaven and hell? So Paul VI doubled down, adding another encyclical in 1968, Humanae Vitae [ http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html ], to the unrenounceable eternal truths that pile up around a moral monarch.

In our day, most Catholics in America have reached the same conclusion that Paul VI’s commission did. But successive popes have stuck by Pius and Paul and have appointed bishops who demonstrate loyalty on this matter. That is why some American bishops in the recent presidential election said that President Obama was destroying “religious liberty” if his health plan insured funds for contraception. Nonetheless, more Catholics voted for Mr. Obama than didn’t. In a normal government, this disconnect between rulers and ruled would be negotiated. But eternal truths are nonnegotiable.

Wistful Catholics hope that on this and other matters of disagreement between the church as People of God [ http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p2.htm ] and the ruling powers in the church, a new pope can remedy that discord. But a new pope will be elected by cardinals who were elevated to office by the very popes who reaffirmed “eternal truths” like the teaching on contraception. They were appointed for their loyalty, as were the American bishops who stubbornly upheld the contraception nonsense in our elections.

Will the new conclave vote for a man who goes against the teachings of his predecessors? Even if they do, can the man chosen buck the structure through which he rose without kicking the structure down? These considerations have given the election of new popes the air of watching Charlie Brown keep trying to kick the football, hoping that Lucy will cooperate.

As this election approaches, some hope that the shortage of priests, and their damaged reputation and morale, can be remedied by adding married priests, or women priests, or gay priests. But that misses the point. Whatever their sexual status, they will still be priests. They will not be chosen by their congregations (as was the practice in the early church). They will be appointed from above, by bishops approved for their loyalty to Rome, which will police their doctrinal views as it has with priests heretofore. The power structure will not be changed by giving it new faces. Monarchies die hard.

In 1859, John Henry Newman published an article that led to his denunciation in Rome as “the most dangerous man in England.” It was called “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine [ http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/newman-faithful.asp ]” and it showed that in history the laity had been more true to the Gospel than the hierarchy. That was an unacceptable position to Rome. It still is. Pope Benedict XVI [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/benedict_xvi/index.html ], when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was asked if it did not disturb him that Catholics disagreed with the rulings of Rome. He said no — that dogma is not formed by majority rule. But that is precisely how it was formed in the great councils like that at Nicaea [ http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/sbrandt/nicea.htm ], where bishops voted to declare dogmas on the Trinity and the Incarnation. There was no pope involved in those councils. Yet they defined the most important truths of the faith.

Jesus, we are reminded, said to Peter, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” But Peter was addressed as a faithful disciple, not as a priest or a pope. There were no priests in Peter’s time, and no popes. Paul never called himself or any of his co-workers priests. He did not offer sacrifice. Those ideas came in later, through weird arguments contained in the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews. The claim of priests and popes to be the sole conduits of grace is a remnant of the era of papal monarchy. We are watching that era fade. But some refuse to recognize its senescence. Such people will run peppily up, like Charlie Brown, to the coming of a new pope. But Lucy, as usual, still holds the football.

Garry Wills is the author, most recently, of “Why Priests? A Failed Tradition [ http://www.amazon.com/Why-Priests-Failed-Tradition-ebook/dp/B008EKMAKG ].”

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Related

A Statement Rocks Rome, Then Sends Shockwaves Around the World (February 12, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/europe/pope-benedict-xvi-says-he-will-retire.html

Related in Opinion

Op-Ed Contributor: The Humble Pope (February 12, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/the-humble-pope.html

Op-Ed Contributor: Farewell to an Uninspiring Pope (February 12, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/farewell-to-an-uninspiring-pope.html

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© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/opinion/new-pope-ive-given-up-hope.html


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The Conscience of a Corporation


R.O. Blechman

By BILL KELLER
Published: February 10, 2013

DAVID GREEN, who built a family picture-framing business into a 42-state chain of arts and crafts stores, prides himself on being the model of a conscientious Christian capitalist. His 525 Hobby Lobby stores forsake Sunday profits to give employees their biblical day of rest. The company donates to Christian counseling services and buys holiday ads that promote the faith in all its markets. Hobby Lobby has been known to stick decals over Botticelli’s naked Venus in art books it sells.

And the company’s in-house health insurance does not cover morning-after contraceptives, which Green, like many of his fellow evangelical Christians, regards as chemical abortions.

“We’re Christians,” he says [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/us/politics/white-house-proposes-compromise-on-contraception-coverage.html ], “and we run our business on Christian principles.”

This has put Hobby Lobby at the leading edge of a legal battle that poses the intriguing question: Can a corporation have a conscience? And if so, is it protected by the First Amendment.

The Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare, requires that companies with more than 50 full-time employees offer health insurance, including coverage for birth control. Churches and other purely religious organizations are exempt. The Obama administration, in an unrequited search for compromise, has also proposed to excuse nonprofit organizations [id.] such as hospitals and universities if they are affiliated with religions that preach the evil of contraception. You might ask why a clerk at Notre Dame or an orderly at a Catholic hospital should be denied the same birth control coverage provided to employees of secular institutions. You might ask why institutions that insist they are like everyone else when it comes to applying for federal grants get away with being special when it comes to federal health law. Good questions. You will find the unsatisfying answers in the Obama handbook of political expediency.

But these concessions are not enough to satisfy the religious lobbies. Evangelicals and Catholics, cheered on by anti-abortion groups and conservative Obamacare-haters, now want the First Amendment freedom of religion to be stretched to cover an array of for-profit commercial ventures, Hobby Lobby being the largest litigant. They are suing to be exempted on the grounds that corporations sometimes embody the faith of the individuals who own them.

“The legal case” for the religious freedom of corporations “does not start with, ‘Does the corporation pray?’ or ‘Does the corporation go to heaven?’ ” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing Hobby Lobby. “It starts with the owner.” For owners who have woven religious practice into their operations, he told me, “an exercise of religion in the context of a business” is still an exercise of religion, and thus constitutionally protected.

The issue is almost certain to end up in the Supreme Court, where the betting is made a little more interesting by a couple of factors: six of the nine justices are Catholic, and this court has already ruled, in the Citizens United case, that corporations are protected by the First Amendment, at least when it comes to freedom of speech. Also, we know that at least four members of the court don’t think much of Obamacare.

In lower courts, advocates of the corporate religious exemption have won a few and lost a few. (Hobby Lobby has lost so far, and could eventually face fines of more than $1 million a day for defying the law. The company’s case is now before the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.)

You can feel some sympathy for David Green’s moral dilemma, and even admire him for practicing what he preaches, without buying the idea that la corporation, c’est moi. Despite the Supreme Court’s expansive view of the First Amendment, Hobby Lobby has a high bar to get over — as it should.

For one thing, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — which was enacted at the behest of religious groups — companies cannot impose religious tests on their employees. They can’t hire only Catholics, or refuse to hire Catholics. They cannot oblige you to practice the same faith their owners do. Companies are, by legal design, zones of theological diversity and tolerance. So Green, whose company is privately held, can spend his own money to promote his faith, but it would be an act of legal overreach to say that he can impose his faith on his employees by denying them benefits the government has widely required.

“If an employer can craft a benefits system around his religious beliefs, that’s a slippery slope,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a critic of religious exemptions. “Can you deny treatment of AIDS victims because your religion disapproves of homosexuals? What if your for-profit employer is a Jehovah’s Witness, who doesn’t believe in blood transfusions?”

Also, courts tend to distinguish between laws that make you do something and laws that merely require a financial payment. In the days of the draft, conscientious objectors were exempted from conscription. A sincere pacifist could not be obliged to kill. But a pacifist is not excused from paying taxes just because he or she objects to the money being spent on war. Doctors who find abortions morally abhorrent are not obliged to perform them. But you cannot withhold taxes because some of the money goes to Medicaid-financed abortion.

“Anybody who pays taxes can find something deeply offensive in what the government does,” said Robert Post, a First Amendment expert at Yale Law School. “ ‘I’m not paying my taxes because of torture at Guantánamo.’ ‘I’m not paying my taxes because of drones.’

“People can’t pick and choose their taxes, because you couldn’t have a functioning tax system.”

I don’t know what the courts will say, but common sense says the contraception dispute is more like taxation than conscription. Nothing in the Obamacare mandate obliges anyone to use contraception if, for example, she is in the tiny minority of American Catholics who take the church’s doctrine on birth control seriously. And Hobby Lobby’s policy doesn’t prevent the use of morning-after pills: it just assures that if an employee does use emergency contraception, she pays for it out of her Hobby Lobby paycheck rather than her Hobby Lobby insurance.

Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia who often sides with proponents of broader religious liberty, has taken to warning his friends that their aggressive positions on abortion, gay rights and now contraception are undermining the longstanding American respect for free exercise of religion.

“The religious community cannot take religious liberty for granted,” he said in a speech [ http://www.law.udmercy.edu/udm/images/lawreview/v88/Laycock.PS.4.pdf ] before the contraceptive issue blew up. “It needs to expend a lot more energy defending the right to religious liberty, and it would help to spend a lot less energy attacking the liberty of others.”

Cases like Hobby Lobby, he told me, have compounded his worry.

“Interfering with someone else’s sex life is a pretty unpopular thing to do,” he said. “These disputes are putting the conservative churches on the losing side of the sexual revolution. I think they are taking a risk of turning large chunks of the population against the idea of religious exemptions altogether.”

But Laycock’s is a lonely voice among advocates of religious exemptions. More typical is Rick Warren, the evangelical megachurch pastor, who says the battle to preserve religious liberty “in all areas of life” may be “the civil rights movement of this decade [ http://www.becketfund.org/pastor-rick-warrens-on-hobby-lobby-lawsuit/ ].” Warren goes on to say — I am not making this up — that “Hobby Lobby’s courageous stand, in the face of enormous pressure and fines,” is the equivalent of the Birmingham bus boycott.

When I read that kind of rhetoric from our country’s loftier pulpits, I understand why the fastest-growing religious affiliation [ http://www.pewforum.org/unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx ] in America is “none.”

© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/opinion/keller-the-conscience-of-a-corporation.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/opinion/keller-the-conscience-of-a-corporation.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]


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Are Atheists The New Campus Crusaders?


Members of the Illini Secular Student Alliance having good, nonreligious fun

By Katherine Don
February 7, 2013

This month at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a select group of students will show their humanitarian spirit by participating in the Bleedin’ Heathens Blood Drive. On February 12, they will eat cake to celebrate Darwin Day, and earlier this year, they performed “de-baptism” ceremonies to celebrate Blasphemy Day [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_Day ], attended a War on Christmas Party, and set up Hug An Atheist and Ask An Atheist booths in the campus quad.

These activities and more are organized by the Illini Secular Student Alliance (ISSA), one of 394 student groups that are affiliated with the national Secular Student Alliance (SSA). “We brand ourselves as a safe place and community for students who are not religious,” says Derek Miller, a junior at Illini and president of the ISSA.

Secular groups on college campuses are proliferating. The Ohio-based Secular Student Alliance, which a USA Today writer once called [ http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-11-24-college-atheists_N.htm ] a “Godless Campus Crusade for Christ,” incorporated as a nonprofit in 2001. By 2007, 80 campus groups had affiliated with them, 100 by 2008, 174 by 2009, and today there are 394 SSA student groups on campuses across the country. “We have been seeing rapid growth in the past couple of years, and it shows no sign of slowing down,” says Jesse Galef, communications director at SSA. “It used to be that we would go to campuses and encourage students to pass out flyers. Now, the students are coming to us almost faster than we can keep up with.”

The Secular Student Alliance [ http://www.secularstudents.org/ ] provides its affiliate groups with support and materials, including banners, pins, and informational materials with titles like What Is An Atheist?, a brochure with cheerful graphics and information about the identities of secularists, including “non-theist,” “freethinker,” and “humanist.”

Oddly enough, in the geography of on-campus student groups, atheist organizations fit within the category of faith-based groups like the Campus Crusade For Christ, which recently (and controversially) changed its name [ http://abcnews.go.com/US/campus-crusade-christ-losing-christ-crusade/story?id=14136976 ] to Cru. At Stanford University, the Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics (AHA!) register with the Office For Religious Life, just like Cru, and are a member of Stanford Associated Religions.

“There are a lot of parallels with religious groups on campus,” says Ron Sanders, Cru’s missional team leader at Stanford.

“They have weekly meetings similar to ours, and give one another support, and they do social justice projects on campus and in the communities... I don’t know that they aren’t a faith group. They don’t have a faith in God, or in revelation or something like that, but they have faith in reason and in science, as I understand it, as a guide for human flourishing.”

“I don’t think it’s unfair to say that groups like Cru are our cultural opponents,” says Galef at SSA. “It comes down to which values we’re promoting. We are promoting values of critical thinking and acceptance.”

Conflicting values on campus have led to unsavory events. Last year at Salisbury University in Maryland, the Atheist Society took offense when Cru students chalked a verse from the Bible: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is not one who does good.” This led to a chalking counter-offensive [ http://www.thesuflyer.com/2011/12/04/atheist-society-and-cru-members-clash-over-chalk/ ], which escalated but ended peacefully. In 2010, secular student groups at the University of Illinois and other Midwestern schools drew controversy when they chalked images of Muhammad. After the fallout, this event led to interfaith conversations, followed by friendship and cooperation with the Muslim Student Association. They have since hosted events together and convened for pizza and board games.

“We really encourage interfaith activities,” says Sarah Kaiser, field organizer at the Center For Inquiry [ http://www.centerforinquiry.net/ ], an international organization that promotes “science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.” As a student, Kaiser was member of the Secular Alliance at the University of Indiana. Her group raised money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through a “Send An Atheist To Church” tabling event. The atheists put out cups for each of the campus’ religious groups, and whichever cup raised the most money determined which church the atheists would attend as an interfaith educational activity.

The Muslim Student Union’s cup received the most donations, so the atheists attended mosque.

The Unstoppable Secular Students

The Secular Student Alliance is essentially a support network for the autonomous atheist, agnostic, and humanist student groups that choose to be its affiliates. The rapid growth of the SSA is analogue to the general growth of the American secular movement. Atheist groups were once fringe organizations that didn’t get along. That began to change around 2007, on the heels of bestselling books from atheist authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Suddenly, the movement had leaders, a sense of direction and a common purpose. Today, the Secular Coalition For America [ http://secular.org/ ] is an umbrella lobbyist group for a number of once-competing groups, including American Atheists, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the American Humanist Association.

These “adult” organizations support the growth of campus groups. American Atheists offers scholarships to student activists, noting that “special attention is given to those students who show activism specifically in their schools.” The American Humanist Association provides support to campus groups, as does the Richard Dawkins Foundation and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Increasingly, students who are active in SSA groups continue with the movement after college. “The dynamic of being in a [secular] college student group translates so well into national advocacy and lobbying,” says Kelly Damerow, research and advocacy manager at the Secular Coalition For America.

The Center For Inquiry, like the Secular Student Alliance, has college campus group affiliates. “Groups can co-affiliate, and most affiliate with both of us,” says Kaiser. Cody Hashman, also a field organizer at the Center For Inquiry, says many campus activities focus on activism training. “We give them advice on how to implement activism campaigns, resources on service projects, and help with putting on book tours for non-religious authors,” Hashman says. “Every summer we have a leadership conference where we train students on how to organize their group, manage volunteers, how to talk to the media, how to send a press release, how to make posters.”

National organizations, particularly the Secular Coalition For America, are primarily concerned with lobbying in Washington over First Amendment church/state and freedom of religion (and of non-religion) issues. But the anti-religious (or “antitheist”) thread within the secular movement is difficult to ignore and implicit in the names of some of the organizations, such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Foundation Beyond Belief, and, of course, the Pastafarians, an atheist group worshipping under the parody Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The Skeptics and Atheists Network at East Tennessee State University rather pointedly calls itself S.A.N.E.

“We do a lot of interfaith activities if they align with our humanist values, but the one thing we never compromise on is our right and responsibility to criticize bad ideas,” says Miller at ISSA. “When you assume a supernatural world, that is a train of thought that does not have a basis. When you start from that, you will automatically lead yourself to a bad idea.”

A recent SSA presentation entitled “The Unstoppable Secular Students [ http://www.secularstudents.org/unstoppable-secular-students ]” compared SSA to Cru. Cru takes in $500 million a year, while SSA takes in $998,000; Cru has three paid staff members per 1 campus group, while SSA has 78 campus groups per 1 adult organizer. And yet Cru is growing at a rate of 16 per cent while SSA is growing at a rate of 116 per cent. The presentation concludes:

“Cru has a massively larger budget, the majority of the U.S. population to draw from (76% Christian), an organized political voting bloc to give them politicians and laws and supreme court justices in their favor. But they are losing in the cultural war. The secular students are winning, and they are unstoppable!”

This hawkish stance is understandable in light of Cru’s rather unilateral mission statement: “Win, build, and send Christ-centered multiplying disciples who launch spiritual movements.” No doubt many student secular groups hope to find those freshman questioning their faith and prevent them from becoming multiplying disciples. “As the secular students clear up misconceptions about what it means to be secular, I feel that more students will leave their faith,” says Galef.

Most campus groups are more concerned with strengthening the community, visibility, and tolerance of secularists than engaging in the cultural war. Hashman at the Center For Inquiry says that some students come from homes and communities where they have to hide their secular identity, and secular student groups become an important community for them. “It has now become more acceptable for people to state that they are questioning or no longer religious” says Hashman. “We are dedicated to free inquiry and freedom of expression, and that can come off as abrasive, but we believe it necessary for a free and democratic society.”

© Religion Dispatches 2013 (emphasis in original)

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/6790/are_atheists_the_new_campus_crusaders/ [with comments]


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What Ockham really said

Feb 11, 2013
http://boingboing.net/2013/02/11/what-ockham-really-said.html [with comments]


===


Ireland admits involvement in Catholic laundry slavery
February 5, 2013
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57567706/ireland-admits-involvement-in-catholic-laundry-slavery/ [with comments]


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Catholic Church enslaved 30,000 Irish women as forced unpaid labor in Magdalene Laundries until 1996

2/6/2013 8:00am by Myrddin (John Aravosis co-wrote this story.)

What a horrific story. The Irish Prime Minister gave a partial apology [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21326221 ] today for the government’s role in a 74-year scandal in which, a new official government report says, over 10,000 women were forced to work without pay at commercial laundries [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Magdalen-asylum-england.jpg ] called Magdalene Laundries, operated by the Catholic Church for “crimes” as small as not paying a train ticket.

Wikipedia notes [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum ] that the estimate of the number of women who were used as forced slave labor by the Catholic Church in Ireland alone goes as high as 30,000 over the entire time the Magdalene laundries were in operation.

The last Magdalene laundry closed in 1996.

Women were locked in, couldn’t leave Magdalene Laundries for months, sometimes years

The women were locked in and not permitted to leave. And if they tried to get away, the cops would catch them and bring them back. They were quite literally Catholic slave labor working for the government and even Guinness, which would pay the laundries for the women’s slave labor.

Half of the girls enslaved in these Catholic Church prisons were under the age of 23. The youngest entrant was 9 years old.


Girls and women working in Catholic Church’s Magdalene Laundry in Ireland in the early 20th century.
Public domain photo in the US, via Wikipedia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Magdalen-asylum.jpg ]. (PD-US-1923-ABROAD)

Singer Sinead O’Connor was perhaps the most famous Magdalene Laundry slave

Singer Sinead O’Connor [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032502363.html ] was forced to work in a Magdalene Laundry in Dublin:

When I was a young girl, my mother — an abusive, less-than-perfect parent — encouraged me to shoplift. After being caught once too often, I spent 18 months in An Grianán Training Centre, an institution in Dublin for girls with behavioral problems, at the recommendation of a social worker. An Grianán was one of the now-infamous church-sponsored “Magdalene laundries,” which housed pregnant teenagers and uncooperative young women. We worked in the basement, washing priests’ clothes in sinks with cold water and bars of soap. We studied math and typing. We had limited contact with our families. We earned no wages. One of the nuns, at least, was kind to me and gave me my first guitar.

No apology from the Catholic Church

Absent from any of the media reports on the scandal that I could find was an apology from the Catholic Church which operated the Magdalene laundries and made handsome profits from contracts with government and hotels. Oh, found one [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/world/europe/25iht-abuse25.html ]. It seems the Catholic Church blew the women off. I know, you’re as surprised as I am:

Victims of the child sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Irish Catholic Church have received an apology and compensation, but no one has taken responsibility for what happened in the laundries. Cardinal Sean Brady, the most senior Catholic cleric in Ireland, met with Justice for Magdalenes in 2010. He said “by today’s standards much of what happened at that time is difficult to comprehend” but that it was a matter for the religious orders who ran the laundries to deal with. The religious orders have declined to meet the women.

The Irish Cardinal wasn’t interested in hearing from people who were hurt and abused — if not sexually, certainly physically and mentally, by the Catholic Church. And it’s not the Catholic Church’s fault. Where have we heard that story before [ http://americablog.com/2012/02/former-ny-cardinal-retracts-apology-for-enabling-child-rapists-i-dont-think-we-did-anything-wrong-2.html ]?

The laundries were run by nuns, many of whom treated the women sent to work there as slaves:

Senator McAleese’s inquiry found that half of the girls and women put to work in the laundries were under the age of 23 and 40%, more than 4,000, spent more than a year incarcerated.

Fifteen percent spent more than five years in the laundries while the average stay was calculated at seven months.

The youngest death on record was 15, and the oldest 95, the report found.

The Irish state is also implicated in the scandal because the police would take women to the asylums after arresting them for trivial offenses and would return runaways.

The story of the Magdalene laundries shows what happens when an institution — in this case the church and the government — is considered beyond criticism. It probably isn’t a coincidence that the last of the laundries closed in 1996, shortly after the first wave of the Catholic pedophile priest scandals hit Ireland.

Let me reiterate that for a moment. The Catholic Church had slaves as late as 1996.

“It changed me as a person to authority, God forgive me I learned to hate people then”

Here are some of the testimonials of the women who served as forced Catholic slaves. You can find them in the official report [ http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/MagdalenRpt2013 ]:

“The only thing was I had appendicitis and asked [named nun] could I go to bed and she wouldn’t let me”.

-

Some, but not all women reported that their hair had been cut on entry to the laundry. Some described this as an upsetting and degrading experience.

“T’was the ultimate humiliation for you. It changed me as a person to authority, God forgive me I learned to hate people then”.

-

One woman said that in the Magdalene Laundry in which she was, “You could write once a month but the nun would read the letters”.

This is one is pure torture:

Another very common grievance of the women who shared their stories with the Committee – particularly those who had previously been in Industrial or Reformatory Schools – was that there was a complete lack of information about why they were there and when they would get out. None of these women were aware of the period of supervision which followed discharge from industrial or reformatory school.

Due to this lack of information and the fact that they had been placed in an institution among many older women, a large number of the women spoke of a very real fear that they would remain in the Magdalene Laundry for the rest of their lives. Even if they left the Laundries after a very short time, some women told the Committee that they were never able to fully free themselves of this fear and uncertainty.

Victims reject Irish PM’s apology

The victims have rejected the Prime Minster’s “apology,” which does sound somewhat lame [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9850882/Magdalene-Laundries-survivors-reject-apology.html ]:

“To those residents who went into the Magdalene Laundries through a variety of ways, 26pc from state intervention or state involvement, I am sorry for those people that they lived in that kind of environment,” Mr Kenny said in parliament in Dublin today.

“I want to see that those women who are still with us, anywhere between 800 and 1000 at max, that we should see that the state provides for them with the very best of facilities and supports that they need in their lives.”

Did your defense lawyer write that one up for you?

Here’s Joni Mitchell singing about the Magdalene Laundries [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU1Zymqlhko (below, as embedded)]:

© 2013 AMERICAblog (emphasis in original)

http://americablog.com/2013/02/magdalen-laundries-catholic-ireland-irish-apology.html [with comments]


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Magdalene Laundries: Reaction to the McAleese report

Video [embedded]

Magdalene survivors want apology from church and state

5 February 2013 Last updated at 12:50 ET

[...]

A number of organisations and survivors have responded to the report.

Maureen Sullivan, survivor

In the report I find that some people are still in denial and yet there are other parts that clearly state and people can see we were telling the truth all along.

I ask for an apology from the religious orders and I ask the Prime Minister of my country to give us an apology, they took my education and they took my identity.

Marina Gambold, survivor

When I came out of the convent I was determined to get out of Ireland.

I was 19 years of age then.

I had a nervous breakdown. Most of the time I have cried bitter tears, especially when I had nobody and I never knew my parents and the pain never goes away. I will be very happy if the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) apologises.

The apology would be worth a million dollars to me.

Good Shepherd Sisters

We welcome the publication of this comprehensive report on state involvement and other related matters in regard to the Magdalene laundries.

We were part of the system and the culture of the time. We acted in good faith providing a refuge and we sincerely regret that women could have experienced hurt and hardship during their time with us. It saddens us deeply to hear that time spent with us, often as part of a wider difficult experience, has had such a traumatic impact on the lives of these women.

We have noted in the report that "the lack of information given to some women, as to why they were sent and the length of time they would remain" was hugely upsetting for these women.

In truth most of us were often not privy to this information. However, this should not have happened and we fully understand how wrong and upsetting this must have been.

We have been meeting and will continue to meet these women personally, to listen to them compassionately and to discuss, if they so wish, their on-going concerns.

Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge

For the past 160 years in Ireland our intention has been to offer refuge to women in need. The laundries which were attached to refuges were hard and demanding places to work. Many women used our refuges as a place of last resort. There are also many who found themselves in a refuge through no choice of their own.

Regardless of why a woman was in a refuge or how she came to be there, we endeavoured to provide care. It is with deep regret that we acknowledge that there are women who did not experience our refuge as a place of protection and care. Further, it is with sorrow and sadness that we recognise that for many of those who spoke to the inquiry that their time in a refuge is associated with anxiety, distress, loneliness, isolation, pain and confusion and much more.

We hope that this report gives all women who lived in refuges and worked in laundries a sense that they have been heard, believed and are not forgotten. Our desire is that this report contributes to the healing and to the peace of mind that the chairman referred to in his introduction.

BBC © 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21345313


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Magdalene Laundries: Ireland Oversaw Abusive Catholic Asylums, Report Says


Unidentified Magdalen Laundry in Ireland, c. early 20th century.
(WikiMedia)

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
02/05/13 02:28 PM ET EST

DUBLIN — Ireland's government oversaw workhouses run by Catholic nuns that once held thousands of women and teenage girls in unpaid labor and usually against their will, a fact-finding report concluded Tuesday, establishing state involvement in the country's infamous Magdalene Laundries for the first time.

But Prime Minister Enda Kenny stopped short of making any official apology for the decades of harsh treatment documented in 10 Magdalene Laundries, the last of which closed in 1996. He emphasized that the more than 1,000-page report offered a nuanced view of life in the laundries far less stark or one-sided than has been depicted on stage and in film.

Kenny rejected activists' claims of laundry conditions akin to prison and slavery, and confined his statement of regret to the longtime popular view in Ireland that most residents of the Magdalene Laundries were "fallen women," a euphemism for prostitutes.

"The stigma that the branding together of all the residents, all 10,000, in the Magdalene Laundries, needs to be removed, and should have been removed long before this," Kenny said. "And I really am sorry that that never happened, and I regret that it never happened."

Opposition leaders demanded that he offer an official apology for the state's failure to enforce labor laws and human rights standards in the facilities, and to pledge to establish a taxpayer-funded compensation program for survivors. But Kenny instead said all lawmakers should read the report and debate its findings in two weeks.

The report's lead author, former Irish Sen. Martin McAleese, said until now the facts and figures of the workhouses run by four orders of Catholic nuns had been shrouded in "secrecy, silence and shame."

McAleese, the husband of Ireland's former President Mary McAleese, said the failure of successive governments and the nuns to provide any public records on the laundries' operations meant that "stories grew to fill these gaps."

He wrote in the report's introduction that the investigators "found no evidence to support the perception that unmarried girls had babies there, or that many of the women of the Magdalene Laundries since 1922 were prostitutes. The reality is much more complex."

The report found that 10,012 women were committed to the workhouses from 1922, the first year of Ireland's independence from Britain, to the closure of the last two laundries in 1996. It found that the average length of stay was just seven months, not the lifetime imprisonment commonly depicted in fictional works. It said 14 percent stayed more than 5 years, and 8 percent more than a decade. And many hundreds checked into the facilities repeatedly for short periods, reflecting their poverty and the Irish state's inadequate facilities for women needing a home.

It found that 27 percent of the women were ordered into the facilities by an array of state employees: judges, probation officers, school truancy officials, social workers, doctors at psychiatric hospitals, or officials at state-funded shelters for unwed mothers and their babies. Some 16 percent entered laundries voluntarily, 11 percent were consigned there by other family members, and 9 percent were sent there on the recommendation of a priest.

It found that until recent decades, judges often ordered women guilty of crimes ranging from shoplifting to infanticide into the laundries rather than Ireland's male-dominated prison system.

The report disputed depictions in popular culture of physical beatings in the institutions, noting that many Magdalene residents had transferred there as teenagers from other Catholic-run industrial schools where such violence was common, and some survivors failed to distinguish between the two. It found no evidence of such attacks in the nuns' care and, specifically, no complaints of sexual abuse by the nuns.

McAleese said most of the 118 former residents interviewed by the report authors "described the atmosphere in the laundries as cold, with a rigid and uncompromising regime of physically demanding work and prayer, with many instances of verbal censure, scoldings or even humiliating put-downs." Yet a minority, he said, viewed the laundry as "their only refuge in times of great personal difficulty."

Campaigners for justice for the "Maggies" expressed disappointment with the report and particularly the government's response.

"These women were locked up against their will and not paid a penny for their work," said Clare McGettrick, spokeswoman for the Justice for Magdalenes pressure group. She noted that the state inspected the laundries as licensed workplaces, yet never required the nuns to fund any state pension entitlements for the women as normal employers do, which means they are among Ireland's poorest residents today.

"Frankly their country has failed them yet again," said McGettrick said. The prime minister's refusal to apologize on behalf of the state, she said, "prolongs the stigma for these women. The beginning of this process should have been the apology. More women would have given their testimony."

They have pressed Ireland for more than a decade to admit its legal responsibility to compensate residents for hardships experienced, freedom denied, and the lack of wages paid. The government since 2002 has paid more than (EURO)1 billion ($1.3 billion) to more than 13,000 people who suffered sexual, physical and psychological abuse in other Catholic-run workhouses and orphanages but explicitly excluded former Magdalene residents, contending these were privately run institutions with negligible state involvement.

The United Nations Committee on Torture in 2011, hearing a legal petition from the Justice for Magdalenes group, rejected the Irish government's arguments and ordered the fact-finding effort subsequently undertaken by McAleese and officials from six Irish government departments.

McAleese concluded that his investigation had "found significant state involvement with the Magdalene Laundries."

The four orders issued their own statements of regret to past laundry residents, but largely defended their conditions as inevitable in tougher times.

The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, which ran the two biggest laundries in Dublin, in a statement expressed "deep regret" that many residents "did not experience our refuge as a place of protection and care." But they suggested that women in their care faced worse conditions and fewer options in the hostile Ireland outside the laundry gates.

And the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, which ran two laundries south of Dublin and in the western city of Galway, said some workers built lifelong friendships with nuns running the workhouse. "We wish that we could have done more and that it could have been different," the nuns said. "It is regrettable that the Magdalene homes had to exist at all."

Online:

Magdalene Laundries report, http://www.idcmagdalen.ie/

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press (emphasis added)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/05/magdalene-laundries-ireland-oversaw-abusive-catholic-asylums-report_n_2623236.html [with comments]


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Ireland finally admits state collusion in Magdalene Laundry system


Magdalene Survivors Together members hold copies of the Government report on Tuesday.
Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

Taoiseach Enda Kenny fails to formally apologise for involvement over female enslavement causing more outrage

Henry McDonald in Dublin
The Guardian, Tuesday 5 February 2013 15.50 EST

[...]

Labelled the "Maggies", the women and girls were stripped of their names and dumped in Irish Catholic church-run laundries where nuns treated them as slaves, simply because they were unmarried mothers, orphans or regarded as somehow morally wayward.

Over 74 years, 30,000 women were put to work in de facto detention, mostly in laundries run by nuns. At least 988 of the women who were buried in laundry grounds are thought to have spent most of their lives inside the institutions.

McAleese and his co-authors said they hoped the report would bring "healing and peace of mind to all concerned, most especially the women whose experience of the Magdalene Laundries had a profound and enduring negative effect on their lives".

"The majority of women who engaged with the committee spoke of the hurt they felt due to loss of freedom. They were not informed why they were there, they had no information on when they could leave and were denied contact with the outside world," said the report, adding that the Gardaí "brought women to the laundries on a more ad hoc or informal basis".

Among the key findings were:

• Over a quarter of the women, at least 2,500, who were held in the Magdalene Laundries for whom records survived were sent in directly by the state.

• The state gave lucrative laundry contracts to these institutions, without complying with Fair Wage Clauses and in the absence of any compliance with Social Insurance obligations.

• The Gardaí pursued and returned girls and women who escaped from the Magdalene institutions.

The report concluded there was no physical or sexual abuse by nuns or others on their charges, some of whom were only girls as young as 12.

Stephen O'Riordain, who made a film about the victims of the laundry system and speaks for Magdalene Survivors Together, said ex-inmates were "completely surprised" by the Taoiseach's stance in the Dail. "I don't think sorry is enough for these women who were seeking a fulsome, public apology. I feel he has let us down as a leader of the country.

"There was also a lot of disappointment that the report said there was no physical abuse which is something our members would completely dispute. Nor should we underestimate the impact of psychological abuse," he said.

O'Riordain said he hoped the government was not trying to "water down" the import of the findings and the Magdalene women's testimony.

Established in 1922, some Magdalene laundries operated as late as 1996. Half of the women incarcerated in these institutions, which washed clothes and linen from major hotel groups and even the Irish armed forces, were under the age of 23.

The Justice for the Magdalenes group said it was time for a compensation scheme to include "the provision of pensions, lost wages, health and housing services. Magdalene survivors have waited too long for justice and this should not be now burdened with a complicated legal process or closed-door policy of compensation."

The inquiry into the Magdalene scandal was prompted by a report from the UN Committee Against Torture in June 2011. It called for prosecutions where necessary and compensation to surviving women.

Maureen Sullivan, 60, said: "I feel that they are still in denial, but other parts of this report clearly state that we were telling the truth," she said.

The victims

Maureen Sullivan was first sent to the Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry in New Ross, County Wexford, in 1964. Two years later she was moved to Athy and finally to Dublin. She left in 1969.

"I was 12 years of age and my father had died, my mother had remarried and my home situation was abusive.

"They told me I would have a great education and I went off to New Ross from my primary school, actually in a laundry van. When I arrived there they took my books from me that my mother had bought. That was the last I saw of them; that was the last time I had a decent education. From then on it was laundry every day, where it was horrible, where you were not allowed to talk to anyone. All it was there in the laundry was work, work, work.

"There was physical abuse where they would dig you in the side with a thick cross off the rosary beads, where you got a thump on the side of the head and where there would be constant putting you down, shouting, verbal abuse. You got the cross in the side of the ribs if you slowed down on your way around the laundry.

"[The nuns] ate very well while we were on dripping, tea, bread. I remember another torture – one when we were all hungry – we could smell the likes of roast beef and cooked chicken wafting from where the nuns were eating. That was like another insult."

"I had no education, no means of applying for a job and for several years I was on the streets. It wasn't until I tried to take my own life in the 70s that I went for counselling and then it all came back, all the abuse and exploitation I had suffered in those places."

Mari Steed is a second-generation victim of the Magdalene Laundry system. Her mother, Josie, was transferred from an orphanage to Sundays Well laundry, Co. Cork, when she was 14. She was there from 1947-57. Mari became a third-time victim of the system because she, too, eventually gave up her daughter to a Catholic charity in the US in 1978.

"She lost me to adoption after spending the first two decades or more of her life in these institutions. So when she was released into the world she was vulnerable and susceptible to any man that paid her attention. She was in her mind 10 years old rather than a mature woman. And as fair prey, she found herself pregnant and then got sent down to a home for single mothers and was forced to give me up.

"It was a generational chain reaction and … a cycle we see often in the Magdalene woman. The vicious cycle tends to continue.

"It was slightly less miserable than what my mother experienced, but it was still pretty bad with a lot of stigma, a lot of shame. This was the chain reaction going on.

"I tracked my mother down in the early 1990s and she was open at long last to talk. She had had no other children because she feared having any more. She told me right out: "Mari, I was just so afraid that if the nuns didn't take another baby then God would.' So out of fear she and her husband decided not to have any more children."

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/ireland-magdalene-laundry-system-apology [with comments]


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Magdalene laundries survivors threaten hunger strike


Martin McAleese (left), with former president Mary McAleese meeting the Prince of Wales in 2002, headed up the report.
Photograph: Chris Bacon/PA

Women seeking redress from Irish state after being ordered to work unpaid in institutions run by Catholic church from 1920s

Henry McDonald Dublin
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 February 2013 03.33 EST

Elderly survivors of Ireland's notorious Magdalene laundries are threatening to go on hunger strike if the Irish government fails to establish a financial redress scheme for women held in the institutions.

The Fine Gael-Labour coalition will receive a report on Tuesday that will establish the Irish state's role in a system that the UN Committee on Torture described as slavery.

Girls described as "troubled" or deemed to have been morally "fallen" – mainly unmarried young mothers – were ordered by courts to work unpaid in the laundries run by the Irish Catholic church. The workhouses operated from the early 1920s until 1996.

Steven O'Riordain, a representative of the Magdalene Survivors Together, has warned some women will go on hunger strike if the government does not meet their demands.

"There is a possibility that this will happen. Some of the women have said if they do not get proper redress from a state which was responsible for being abandoned in these institutions. Many of them say they are at that age now where they have nothing to lose if the government fails to set up a scheme that will give some compensation for what happened to them," he said.

In 2011, the UN Committee Against Torture called on the Irish government to set up an inquiry into the treatment of thousands of women and girls.

It has been estimated that up to 30,000 women passed through the laundries and had to wash clothing and bedding for bodies ranging from the Irish army to hotel groups in the republic without any pay.

Tuesday's report has been headed by Senator Martin McAleese, the husband of the former Irish president Mary McAleese.

Four orders of Catholic nuns – the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, the Religious Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd – ran the Magdalene laundries.

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/magdalene-laundries-hunger-strike


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Magdalene Laundry Survivor Claims Life 'Destroyed' By Nuns


Maureen Sullivan wants a full apology for the years she spent in a Magdalene Laundry

Posted: 05/02/2013 21:36 GMT | Updated: 05/02/2013 21:36 GMT

Maureen Sullivan is the youngest known survivor admitted to one of the Magdalene laundries.

She was an innocent 12-year-old child when taken from her school in Co Carlow and put in the Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry in New Ross, Co Wexford, because her father died and mother remarried.

Ms Sullivan said she was told that this place would further her education, but she never saw her schoolbooks again.

For 48 years she had been haunted by memories of a lost childhood and slave labour and is demanding a full apology from the Government and religious orders for stealing her education, name, identity and life.

"I feel that they are still in denial, but other parts of this report clearly state that we were telling the truth," she said.

By day she worked in the laundry, was fed bread and dripping, and then made Aran sweaters or rosary beads before going to bed at night in St Aidan's Industrial School.

"It was long, hard tedious work and because I was small they made a timber box," said the 60-year-old.

"I remember being hidden in a tunnel when the school inspectors came.

I can only assume that this was due to the fact that I should not have been working in the laundry."

Even at the weekends, the youngster was forced to clean the floors of the local church when she should have been out playing, enjoying life and meeting other children.

"How come all this was taken from me?" she asks.

"The nuns have destroyed my life and they never allowed me to develop as a young girl.

"I was only a young girl of 12 years of age."

Several courageous, brave and determined women fighting for justice for other survivors, and thousands more who have died, spoke out about the physical and physiological abuse they suffered behind locked doors, which they said were revamped for visiting dignitaries.

Mary Smyth said was forced to follow in the steps of her mother who had also been one of the Magdalene women when she became pregnant.

She said when growing up in an industrial school she never realised there could be worse to some, and went in to shock when she first walked through the doors of a laundry, which were locked behind her.

The 60-year-old believes she was treated like a slave and had her dignity, identity and life taken from her for fear she would follow in her mother's footsteps.

"My name was changed, my hair was chopped off, all my possessions were taken from me," she said.

"I didn't eat for three weeks. I wanted to die."

Ms Smyth has described her time in the Good Shepherd Convent in Sunday's Well, Cork, as hell and revealed she was afraid to have children as an adult in case she was locked up.

"It was horrendous and inhumane. It was worse than any prison," she continued.

She said she will go to the grave with the pain of what happened to her.

"It was soul destroying, it will never ever leave me," she said.

"I think the government should stand up be counted and the religious need to acknowledge the damage that they done to us and the scars that they left and the pain that will never ever go away."

Copyright 2013 Press Association

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/02/05/magdalene-laundry-survivor-maureen-sullivan_n_2625408.html with comments]


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Politicians knew all about the laundries – and they did nothing

06 February 2013

THE findings by Senator Martin McAleese are a welcome, if predictable, outcome to an impressively swift and efficient investigation of material that has become well known to all of us over the past decade. And no one could take issue with his wish that the report will bring "healing and peace of mind" to those women whose lives were mostly wrecked by their incarceration in one or other of these hideously cruel and vicious places.

That being said, it must also be recognised that the putting right of these innumerable wrongs comes too late for a vast number of the victims who endured the Magdalene Laundries. The system was worse than the industrial schools, where the inmates, who were prisoners, were subject to the law. The young people sent to them served their time and were released at the end of their term imposed by the courts.

Those at the Magdalene Laundries had no end date to their "sentences" and many spent their lives in slavery. Often they were beaten, starved, had their heads shaved as punishment, their identity stripped from them, their names changed, and were kept in captivity for years longer than the industrial school victims.

The tragedy lies in the fact that the Magdalene Laundry system was fully known about from the birth of the State. Its operation has been acknowledged in various ways covered by Mr McAleese's report.

Beyond his findings, however, was a foolproof state system contained in the country's census of population. This recorded all the inmates of Magdalene Laundries throughout the country, as it did with industrial school inmates.

The first 1911 census was pre-independence but is now of the utmost importance since it has been published and can be consulted online. It is the first census to be published. It will be fifteen years before the next census (for 1926, the State's first) is published.

The 1911 census lists, for example, all the inmates of the High Park Magdalene Laundry, 166 women whose ages vary from 15 to 70, and whose untold misery is masked by details of whether they were single, married or widowed, whether they had children and whether the children were alive or dead. Their place of birth is listed. They come from all over Ireland, though more are from Dublin. They are, without exception, described as "Dom," for their occupation as a "domestic servant", concealing the primitive washing of soldiers' underwear and hospital linen.

Similar listings for similar institutions occur throughout Ireland, and the first national census was taken in 1926 when the laundry service was at full steam. The holding of the national census followed again in 1936, 1946, 1951, 1956, 1961, 1966, 1971, 1979 (the census due in 1976 was cancelled as an economy measure), 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2002 and 2006.

Until the system was amended in 1993, control of the census was exercised by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and he had wide powers over the records collected. Did he wonder why High Park in Drumcondra needed 166 domestics, and how much they were paid? Or did he know, along with most adults in the country, that it and similar places were commercial enterprises paying no taxes on their profit and giving over no income to their "employees"?

Of course he did. And he did nothing. Just as successive Ministers for Education did nothing about the industrial schools for which they were responsible, though they had full records.

Not until 2027 will we have knowledge of the Magdalene Laundries in 1926, when the next census was taken, by which time they had evolved in size and profitability.

But those who ran the country knew it all, and did nothing.

The most lamentable period of all, for the suffering victims of the laundry system, was the period between 1999, when Bertie Ahern [ http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Bertie_Ahern ] made his speech of so-called 'apology' to the victims of the industrial school system, and today, when a very belated measure of closure has come as a result of Mr McAleese's report.

And what should we make of Sean Aylward, the former Secretary General of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, telling the UN Committee Against Torture that, so far as the Government was aware, the women "volunteered" to give up their freedom and wash dirty clothes for all their lives under the harsh rule of nuns devoted to laundry work?

© Independent.ie

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/politicians-knew-all-about-the-laundries-and-they-did-nothing-29051716.html [with comment]


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Abuse survivors fought long and hard for justice

Michael Brennan Deputy Political Editor– 06 February 2013

THE survivors of the Magdalene laundries had to battle hard for the long-awaited report into the State's role in their detention.

They were excluded when former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made an official state apology in 1999 to the victims of abuse in state-run institutions.

And they were excluded from the €1bn compensation scheme set up as a result.

The official state position was that the Magdalene laundries were run by four religious congregations – and that the State had no involvement.

But there were several factors that led to the publication of the report which has found that the State was actually responsible for around one-quarter of the 10,000 women who ended up in the laundries.

The first was the release in 2002 of director Peter Mullan's harrowing film 'The Magdalene Sisters', and this was followed up in subsequent years by other documentaries.

The second factor was the formation of groups such as Justice for Magdalenees and Magdalene Survivors Together – who ran strong campaigns to get a proper investigation, state apology and compensation scheme.

Influence

But as the years dragged on, there were two other events that had a big influence.

In 2010, the Irish Human Rights Commission said it was the "State's duty" to apologise and to rectify the fact victims were excluded from compensation scheme for industrial-school abuse.

But as Labour senator Lorraine Higgins said yesterday, the report which "shamed" the Government into action came from the UN Committee Against Torture in 2011.

It said it was gravely concerned by the failure of the State to undertake a prompt and thorough investigation into the allegations of mistreatment of the women in the Magdalene Laundries.

The decision was taken by cabinet to set up an inter-departmental committee and to ask Senator Martin McAleese to chair it.

© Independent.ie

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/abuse-survivors-fought-long-and-hard-for-justice-29051638.html [no comments yet]


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The forgotten women of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries


The 2002 film, 'The Magdalene Sisters', depicted the suffering of those women who worked in the laundries.
Photo: Film Stills

Justice could be imminent for the women who toiled in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. Rachel Cooper talks to Maeve O'Rourke, the lawyer who has made sure their voices are heard.

By Rachel Cooper
8:30AM GMT 04 Feb 2013

They have been described as 'Ireland’s disappeared'.

Thousands of women are thought to have passed through the gates of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, some of them never to emerge again and others to leave with deep emotional scars.

The women - some of whom had fallen pregnant outside marriage, or were the daughters of unmarried women - worked for years in church-run laundries, at times allegedly enduring both mental and physical abuse.

Campaigners have long been calling for justice for the Magdalene women and this week, it could finally come.

'The women have waited too long'

The Irish government will tomorrow present a report into the laundries [ http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0201/1224329516154.html ], which supporters hope could be the catalyst for an apology and compensation.

“The women have waited too long for the apology that they’re due, for their pension, compensation and unpaid wages,” says Maeve O’Rourke, a 26-year-old lawyer with the Justice for Magdalenes [ http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/ ] campaign.

“It’s time that everybody acknowledges that they were innocent victims of a system that included society, state and church.

“They were sacrificed for the sake of an ideal - and it was only an ideal - of a pure society.”

From the early 1920s, it is estimated that tens of thousands of women worked in the laundries, which were run as businesses while the women were said to go unpaid.

Women worked in the laundries sometimes for years. On arrival at the laundry, they were said to have been given a different name by which they would be known.

Those who have spoken about their experiences talk of constantly washing laundry in cold water, of using heavy irons for hours, of close friendships being forbidden, and of never feeling free to leave.

Named after the Bible’s redeemed prostitute, Mary Magdalene, the laundries were first used to reform so-called ‘fallen women’.

But, they then expanded. Justice for Magdalenes says the laundries took in girls who were considered ‘promiscuous’, those who were unmarried mothers or were considered a burden on their families.

Ireland’s last Magdalene Laundry closed in 1996. Three years earlier, the laundries were brought to light when a convent sold off part of its land and the remains of 155 inmates who had been buried in unmarked graves on the property were exhumed.

'I was horrified'

“I was horrified that I’d known [about the laundries] and not understood,” says Dublin-born O’Rourke.

“I’d been to a Catholic girls school, been very well educated, studied history, was interested in human rights. And yet, I hadn’t come across this. It was a history that remained to be told.”

O’Rourke took her chance to tell that history when she went to Harvard after doing a law degree in Dublin. While in America, she studied children’s law, reproductive health and women’s rights.

She was drawn to these topics partly because of her upbringing, which instilled in O’Rourke a commitment to equality. “My mum is a feminist - she was the first female sports broadcaster in Ireland. I grew up, whether I knew it or not, with a real sense of feminism.”

Given this background and her study of human rights, particularly women’s rights, O’Rourke was shocked when she read the Irish government’s investigation into abuse in industrial schools - published in 2009 - and found no mention of the Magdalene Laundries.

She went to her lecturer, Catharine MacKinnon, telling her of her concerns. “It represents continuing discrimination against women on the basis of sexuality,” O’Rourke told her. “She said: ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

O’Rourke answered the call to arms and decided to write her Masters thesis at Harvard about the laundries.

'That could have been me'

In the course of her research, she discovered the Justice for Magdalenes campaign and has been working for them - for free, and in her own time - ever since. Last month, O’Rourke received an award from the Ireland Fund of Great Britain [ http://www.irelandfund.org/ ], recognising her work.


Maeve O'Rourke, receiving her award from the Ireland Fund of Great Britain.
Picture: Malcolm McNally, The Irish Post

Following her year at Harvard, she worked in London for year on a fellowship, spending time with the women’s rights organisation Equality Now and still working on the Magdalenes campaign.

While in the capital, she took the opportunity to interview women who had been detained in the laundries.

“When I spoke to women in London, what really gets me is, I think 'that could have been me'. Had I been born a few decades earlier, had I lost my parents for example, that could have been me.

“It really hit home then. It really horrifies you and you think this is something we’ve got to put right.”

While the Irish government has acknowledged that women in the laundries were victims of abuse, it maintained that because they were privately run, they lay outside the state’s remit.

'A sense of vindication'

But, the premise of O’Rourke’s research was to demonstrate that the state had been complicit in the incarceration of women and girls and had dealt commercially with the laundries without ever subjecting them to official regulation or inspection.

The research claims that laundries were used as remand institutions and that government departments may have held contracts with the laundries. Testimony from women claims that police would return girls who had escaped to the laundry.

O’Rourke and her fellow campaigners compiled a submission to the Ireland Human Rights Commission, which led to the commission calling on the Irish government to initiate an inquiry.

“I remember feeling this overwhelming sense of vindication for the women, that someone was listening,” recalls O’Rourke.

But, with no inquiry forthcoming, the campaign decided to take their cause to the UN Committee Against Torture.

They submitted a dossier to the committee [ http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/docs/ngos/JusticeMagdalenes_Ireland46.pdf ], detailing what they believed “constituted a more than 70-year system of torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of women and girls”.

“I went to Geneva in May 2011,” says O’Rourke. “It was scary. I was 24. I’d read about these committees in college, studied what they do. You don’t really think you’d actually do it.

“I just remember this giant conference room, six translators behind a big glass wall and ten experts from around the world. You get your five minutes and I made my case for the women.”

'Essential to fully establish the true facts'

Subsequently, the UN committee said it was “gravely concerned at the failure by the State party to protect girls and women who were involuntarily confined” in the laundries.

It recommended that the state instigate an inquiry into complaints of torture and other degrading treatments that were allegedly committed in the laundries, and ensure that victims had a right to compensation.

In response, the Government said it was “essential to fully establish the true facts and circumstances relating to the Magdalene Laundries as a first step”.

The Government therefore proposed setting up a committee that would clarify any state interaction with the laundries and address issues such as putting in place a “restorative and reconciliation process”.

Representatives of the congregations of nuns who ran the laundries said they would be willing to participate in any inquiry that would serve the interests of current and former residents.

At the time, they said that the the Magdalene homes issue is “a sad, complex and dark story of Irish society that extends over 150 years”.

They added that acting in good faith, the nuns had taken over and run the ten homes during most or part of that time.

Also, they noted that they were still “in relationship” with many current and former residents and the four groups of sisters were willing to participate in any inquiry that would bring greater clarity, understanding, healing and justice in the interests of all the women involved.

3,500 pages of evidence

The state’s report, which has been prepared by officials from five government departments and chaired by Senator Martin McAleese - the husband of former Irish president Mary McAleese - is due on Tuesday.

Senator McAleese, who is resigning from the upper house of the Irish parliament [ http://www.independent.ie/national-news/former-presidents-husband-martin-mcaleese-resigns-from-seanad-3374966.html ], said on Friday that he had completed the report after spending 18 months of putting it together.

“It is my fervent hope that it will be of real public service most especially to the women concerned,” he said.

Justice for Magdalenes has submitted 3,500 pages of evidence to the inquiry, including 700 pages of testimony from women who worked in the laundries, as well as people who visited them, such as delivery men.

“I know that we have submitted what I would call a watertight case,” says O’Rourke.

What will be of utmost importance to O’Rourke is the government response to the report and whether the women receive an apology.

“I’m really proud to be Irish. I’d be even more proud if we could deal with this in an open and honest fashion.”

She is also keen to see that the government do not distinguish between those women who entered the laundries at the hands of state actors and those who were sent there by their families.

'They just feel let down'

O’Rourke trusts too that the report will provide some clarity on just how many women spent time in the laundries: “That is the question that everyone’s asking.”

If an apology materialises, she hopes that this will give more women the courage to tell their stories of what they experienced in the laundries.

“They just feel let down and they feel abandoned by the Irish state and society. They still carry a lot of trauma,” says O’Rourke.

“It’s stayed with them throughout their entire lives, they speak about having nightmares, flashbacks, crying for no reason.”

“You can’t underestimate the sense of the stigma and the sense of shame attached to having been in one of these laundries,” she adds.

But with this week’s report, there is hope that more women will finally come out of the shadows.

“Women need a chance to tell their own stories now,” says O’Rourke.

“We’ve got to know our history, even the bad bits,” she adds. “Only by knowing and recognising what happened, can you make sure it doesn’t happen in future.”

*

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© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9844412/The-forgotten-women-of-Irelands-Magdalene-Laundries.html


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Beyond the veil of tears: Survivors of the Magdalene Laundries


Historical file image of Magdalene Laundry workers


Historical file image of Magdalene Laundry workers

by Jerome Elam
Friday, February 1, 2013

DALLAS, Texas - “As I looked back on all the years I had suffered within the dark halls and stone hearts that were called a Magdalene Laundry, I felt a warmth on my cheeks as a lifetime of pain rushed in and I struggled to free my tortured soul and finally escape the veil of tears.” Magdalene Survivor.

In August 1993, workers in North Dublin, Ireland discovered the bodies of 155 young women in a mass grave. The grave is on property once owned by the Catholic Church and the Sisters of Charity. Records of the deaths can not be found; only 75 of the women have been identified.

Finding the grave forced open a 150-year-old secret. All the women had been residents of a Magdalene Laundry, an institution run by the nuns of Our Lady of Charity.

Its history reaching back to the middle ages, the Magdalene Laundries are named after Mary Magdalene, a reformed prostitute who became a follower of Jesus. The Magdalene convents were created by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages for repentant prostitutes. The institutions, however, shifted from being a refuge into forced labor camps for women accused of violating a strict feminine moral code.

The Magdalene story is a difficult and heart-wrenching journey into the price of innocence lost at the hands of a broken and corrupt system driven by misguided principles and unbridled greed.

Authorities would send young girls with “attitude problems” into the Magdalene Laundries and into a nightmare beyond their wildest comprehension. There were no limitations to the list of reasons a girl could be sent to a Magdalene Laundry. Most were from devout Catholic families that did not question Church rulings.

Unwed pregnant young women were sentenced to hard labor and their babies put up for adoption as they wept and begged to hold their child just one more minute before they became only a painful memory.

Physical, sexual and emotional abuse became rampant at these institutions. One survivor recounts that one day after school, she was sexually assaulted. Her mother called the police to report the rape and were stunned when police came and arrested the girl. A judge deemed the attack her fault and sentenced her to hard labor within a Magdalene Laundry.

Other victims have equally disturbing stories. Thousands of innocent young girls were swept up by a current of injustice driven by a corrupt state and church. Many were from impoverished environments or orphans, dumped into a Magdalene Laundry after falling out with a foster family.

At the age of fifteen, Irish singer Sinead O’Connor spent time in a Magdalene Laundry after she was arrested for shoplifting. She was trapped in intolerable conditions for eighteen months until her father secured her freedom. The physical and sexual abuse she suffered under the auspices of the Catholic Church propelled her career halting 1992 protest, where she ripped up a picture of the Pope following a performance on Saturday Night Live.

Upon entering a Magdalene Laundry, nuns stripped women of their given name and assigned them one they chose. Victims were forced to work long, difficult hours and to endure strict silence. Punishments could include severe beatings as well as being locked in a closet for days.

Sexual assaults were a routine occurrence at these institutions and survivors report that resistance led to even more punishment.

In her book, “The Origins of the Magdalene Laundry,” Rebecca Lea McCarthy describes how the Magdalene covenants spread across Europe and transitioned from houses of hope to prisons of despair.

The change began with a rise of global capitalism combined with a shift in the Roman Catholic Church’s economic policies and papal authority. Magdalene Laundries were set up as self-supporting organizations, not dependant on funding from the Church. Ireland, Canada, Australia and the United States would eventually become home to Magdalene Laundries as they spread across the globe, and thousands suffered in silence under the auspices of moral righteousness.

In Ireland, the narrow definition of appropriate behavior of women and a strict moral code meant thousands of women were sentenced to the Laundries. Girls fourteen and younger could be deemed a moral threat and sentenced to manual labor until mandatory release at the age of eighteen. It has been estimated that nearly 30,000 Irish women served time in one of these institutions by the time the last Magdalene Laundry closed in that country in 1996.

Magdalene Laundries were for the most part unregulated and not subject to any educational requirements and were exempt from labor laws and safety standards. Women were not educated while in the institutions. When their sentences were completed, they were tossed onto the streets, unable to support themselves.

Victims struggled against a culture that idolized the Catholic Church to find a voice to express the pain and suffering they endured. Survivors’ stories hold a common theme of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Survivors allege collusion between court systems, business, government and the church, with cash rewards for each young girl sent to the laundries. Survivors also speak of illegal adoptions sanctioned by authorities as impoverished and powerless families lost their children to a system which ignored them.

The cries for justice from the flood of victims now coming forward have generally fallen on deaf ears. The countries that allowed this abuse to prosper have done little to expose the seedy underbelly of collusion between Social Services, big business and the political clout of an unimpeachable Catholic Church.

In 1999, the Irish government bowed to pressure and created the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) with the purpose to investigate child abuse within Irish institutions.

In 2004, the Irish group Justice for Magdalenes began gathering survivors and families of the deceased to demand justice for all who suffered under the intolerable system of the Magdalene Laundry. Mary Raftery was an Irish journalist who fought tirelessly to expose the rampant child abuse with the Irish system, including the Magdalene Laundries.

She died from cancer in January of 2012. She wrote that one of her great regrets was not being able to find justice for the Magdalene victims.

In 2009 the public findings of the Commission, known as the Ryan Report were released and called by the Irish Times newspaper "the map of an Irish hell." The report states that institutionalized children were treated like slaves, or inmates, stripped of even the most basic of human rights.

The Irish government was forced to issue an apology to the tens of thousands of victims who suffered under the institutions run by the Catholic Church and offered damages to victims in the amount of £1billion.

The Ryan Report and pressure from advocacy groups like Justice for Magdalene’s prompted the United Nations Committee Against Torture to investigate the Magdalene Laundries. In 2011, the Committee issued a report condemning the Irish government for failure to acknowledge the pain and suffering of the victims and calling for a thorough investigation into the abuses that occurred.

The Irish government has resisted involvement in the investigation, saying the Laundries were privately run and that women chose to enter the institutions. However following the U.N. recommendation, the government of Ireland vowed to look into the state’s involvement in the Laundries. The government also vowed to offer the compensation due to victims and their families as a hundred years of silent screams echoed through the now empty halls of the Magdalene Laundries.

The government report was due out last year but has been delayed due to the discovery of additional evidence. Magdalene victims wait as the weight of a lifetime of pain and suffering fills their hearts and grips their souls, hoping justice will find them before they are more than just a memory.

The Catholic Church has thus far denied any responsibility for the treatment these victims suffered. The Vatican states that the institutions were privately run by the orders and did not answer to Rome. Only one of the orders involved in the Laundries has apologized.

The Catholic Church has locked away information regarding the Laundries, making it inaccessible to victims, their families, or the press. In some cases, the facilities failed to keep records of the young women who passed through the gates of a Magdalene Laundry.

While the victims of the Irish Magdalene laundries await an end to their prison of silence, other victims around the world struggle on the difficult path to find justice.

I had the honor to interview three victims of the U.S. Magdalene/Good Shepherd Laundries and their stories will follow in the days to come. In telling their stories over the weeks to come, I hope that justice will find these brave women. Their stories will appear in this column in the coming weeks.

I challenge the Obama administration to lead the charge in the search for that justice for all victims and their families so that the pain and suffering they have endured will be have meant something and no longer echo trapped in the halls of stone and darkness of a Magdalene Laundry.

Copyright 2013 Jerome Elam and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/heart-without-compromise-children-and-children-wit/2013/feb/1/beyond-veil-tears-survivors-magdalene-laundries/ [with comments]


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The Magdalene Sisters - Part 1 of 10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdWdcwkhqpM [embedded in the item just above]

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The Magdalene Sisters - Part 2 of 10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSIMXA8uk3k

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The Magdalene Sisters - Part 3 of 10

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The Magdalene Sisters - Part 4 of 10

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The Magdalene Sisters - Part 5 of 10

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The Magdalene Sisters - Part 6 of 10

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The Magdalene Sisters - Part 8 of 10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvDwNl1PcOs

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The Magdalene Sisters - Part 9 of 10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhO7Jyp0vLg

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The Magdalene Sisters - Part 10 of 10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzj8igSPS0w


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Busting the Myth That Christians Are More Generous Than Non-Believers



Many religious people believe giving to the church is the be-all and end all of generosity.

By Valerie Tarico
February 5, 2013

The story has gone viral: A group got together at Applebees. When the tab came the minister wrote on the ticket, “I give God 10 percent, why do you get 18?” She scratched through the automatic large-group tip and substituted a fat zero and signed it with the word “Pastor” in front of her name. The waitress posted an image on Reddit. The pastor called to complain. The waitress got fired. The internet went wild. Last I saw, one story [ http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/applebees-waitress-fired-pastor-receipt-193820748.html ] had 80,000 comments and counting.

In reality, the pastor simply exposed something that is all too common to Christian thinking: the sense that giving to the church and to religious charities is the be-all and end all of generosity. As indignant reactions to the Applebee’s incident show, service workers sometimes pay the price:

“I worked at the Outback Steakhouse for 3 years and we ALL dreaded Sundays.”

“The Sunday after church crowd were allways the worst tippers. I found another line of work.”

“As a former waitress who frequently served large parties of CHURCH members and pastors, I can attest to the fact that the majority of them were very demanding, condescending, dismissive and cheap. When 1 or 2 from the party of 12 -15 did tip they would leave pennies and loose change.”

“I have waited tables in the past and I am sorry to say this behavior is not unusual. Often Ministers come into restaurants with their parishioners and treat the staff their to wait on them beyond poorly. They usually come in rather large parties and often leave very little tip for the poor server, who goes out of their way to care for the group.”

“I also provide a service to the public. It is ALWAYS the churches that want something for free or don't tip.”

“I waited tables for over 30 years and I have been stiffed many times by people like her.”

I grew up in a community in which tithing was expected. My parents gave regularly to the church and provided sustaining support to missionary organizations ranging from Wycliffe Bible Translators, which targets isolated tribes for conversion, to Child Evangelism Fellowship which views America’s public schools as a mission field. Our church showcased individual missionary families as well as smart, far-reaching organizations like Focus on the Family. In my memory, it never encouraged generosity toward groups whose primary mission was justice or aid or stewardship. Similarly, church members were encouraged to take care of the elderly and ill—but only those within the church community or those being targeted for conversion. Whether and how to tip a hard-scrabbling waitress simply wasn’t a part of the conversation.

The practice of tipping taps into two very basic moral impulses – perhaps humanity’s two most fundamental moral instincts: reciprocity and empathy. The reciprocity aspect is obvious: you give good service, I give you a good tip. (Tipping is the reason service is better here than in France.) But as comment threads about the Applebee’s waitress indicate, many of us give generously to wait-staff because we know what it’s like to be in their shoes. “Servers work hard for little money. A lot are just trying to pay their way through college or even just trying to make a little cash in high school, or even supporting a family.” “My friend works in a restaurant and I asked him how much he get paid. He said $2.00/ hr. and only depend on tips. I said, that's against the minimum wage law? I need work just to survive to eat. Thinking about him, I always give at least 18% or 20 for the services they do.” Generosity is rooted in empathy.

Researchers are starting to apply the tools of the social sciences to study religion, and one of the big questions they are asking is whether religion makes people more generous. The answer is complicated and much debated [ http://yashwata.info/2011/03/15/charity-paper-preview/ ]. Religious people make more tax deductible donations, but without controlled research it has been hard to sort out how much of their giving is simply to promote their own religion or to pay for what economists call “club benefits.” A recent study [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9816803/Religion-does-not-make-you-love-your-neighbour-study.html ] by the Nottingham University Business School suggests that religion has little effect on generosity per se, except toward insiders. In one task, Malasians of different religions faced a situation in which they had an imaginary sum of money that they could share or not share with another person. The other person could give part back, in which case that part would be tripled. Religious participants, including Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists became more generous than nonreligious only when they were told that the other participant was a member of their own faith.

One factor this particular study doesn’t address is that religion provides social expectations and mechanisms for giving, and even sometimes establishes a duty to give a certain amount, as in the case of tithing. Stanford Professor Robert Putnam co-authored the book American Grace in which he lined up evidence that religious Americans give more than secular Americans. Contrary to much of the follow-up crowing about compassionate conservatives, he actually found that religious liberals were more generous than religious conservatives. The key to giving appeared to be not piety but community, the question of how many friends a person had that were a part of their church: “Faith is less important than communities of faith,” Putnam said [ http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/god-and-country/2009/05/05/religious-conservatives-are-more-generous-but-thats-only-half-the-story ].

Religious institutions sometimes exploit and redirect empathic or generous impulses, converting them into a means of simply feeding the beast more dollars or adherents. My friend Kent recently received a mailer titled, “They’re Crying Out for Bibles. Please Help!” It told of one “dear elderly” woman in China who had been waiting for a Bible all her life. When Haiti was devastated by an earthquake, a different missionary organization used the disaster to raise funds and ship Haitians much needed solar-powered Bibles [ http://awaypoint.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/solar-powered-bibles-for-haiti-why-some-christians-feel-compelled-to-exploit-disaster/ ]. At the time of the Asian Tsunami, a Seattle mega-church [ http://awaypoint.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/sad-about-haiti-give-to-our-megachurch/ ] sympathized on its website and then advised parishioners to pray for those affected, give to their church-building ministries (aka conversion activities) in India, and give to Mars Hill Church [ http://www.alternet.org/belief/oral-sex-yoga-and-gods-eternal-wrath-inside-new-hipster-megachurch-tells-modern-women-submit ]. A hip newspaper published by the same church, advises that God want you to give first and foremost to your home congregation. The formula has worked beautifully for them.

But the very same mechanisms that can direct the generous impulse to fill church coffers and pews can also elicit or shape generosity for other purposes. In his book and TED talk [ http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0.html ], Atheism 2.0, Alain de Botton argued that people who have moved beyond supernaturalism should adapt and keep the best of religion. One aspect of that is a structural, institutional emphasis on service and giving.

Nonbelief in America is growing rapidly, and as it does, nascent secular groups are asking what it might mean for them to be giving communities. A Kiva lending team that calls itself “Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists, and the Non-Religious [ http://www.kiva.org/team/atheists ]” is Kiva’s the top ranked team in terms of total microcredit lending. The Foundation Beyond Belief [ http://foundationbeyondbelief.org/ ] recently created added tools to build on-the-ground volunteer groups [ http://foundationbeyondbelief.org/vbb ] centered on “compassionate humanism. Religious communities increase giving by making it easy and fun to give and sometimes by making it uncomfortable not to. Many churches offer automatic monthly withdrawals. Mormon bishops have been known to have face to face discussions in which they actually review a family’s finances and level of giving. While few of us want the secular equivalent of bishops rooting around in our bank statements, doing a blood drive together, swapping notes about favorite charities, or teaming up on an aid project can be immensely rewarding.

So can cultivating a sense of empathy and a habit of generosity toward folks who work hard for a living.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington and the founder of Wisdom Commons [ http://www.wisdomcommons.org/ ]. She is the author of "Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light [ http://www.amazon.com/Trusting-Doubt-Former-Evangelical-Beliefs/dp/0977392937 ]" and "Deas and Other Imaginings [ http://www.amazon.com/Deas-Other-Imaginings-Spiritual-Folktales/dp/0977392945 ]." Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com [ http://awaypoint.wordpress.com/ ].

Copyright 2013 Valerie Tarico

http://www.alternet.org/belief/busting-myth-christians-are-more-generous-non-believers [ http://www.alternet.org/belief/busting-myth-christians-are-more-generous-non-believers?paging=off ] [with comments]


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(linked in):

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=54363930 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=58513524 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=75266511 and preceding and following


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666 on tax form makes man quit job to save soul


Walter Slonopas shows his ID badge and W-2 form with the number 666 that prompted him to quit his job.
Jae S. Lee / The Tennessean

Written by Bob Smietana
The Tennessean
Feb 6, 2013

A Clarksville man said that he quit his job last week in order to save his soul.

Walter Slonopas, 52, resigned as a maintenance worker at Contech Casting LLC in Clarksville after his W-2 tax form was stamped with the number 666.

The Bible calls 666 the “number of the beast,” and it’s often used as a symbol of the devil. Slonopas said that after getting the W-2, he could either go to work or go to hell.

“If you accept that number, you sell your soul to the devil,” he said.

Bob LaCourciere, vice president of sales and marketing for the Revstone Corp., which owns Contech Casting, said that Slonopas’ W-2 was labeled with 666 by the company that handles Contech’s payroll. It refers to the order in which the forms were mailed out, he said.

This isn’t the first time that the Satanic number has caused Slonopas trouble at work.

During his first day on the job in April 2011, Slonopas was supposed to be assigned the number 668 to use when he clocked in. But the human resources department gave him the wrong number — 666 — instead.

Slonopas, who said he became a born-again Christian about 10 years ago, complained and was given a new number.

In July 2011, the company changed time clock systems, and once again Slonopas got 666. This time he quit. The company apologized and he returned to work a few days later.

This latest incident with the W-2 baffled company spokesman LaCourciere. He could not believe it had happened again.

“I am completely at a loss for words,” he said.

The number 666 first appears in chapter 13 of the New Testament book of Revelation, which describes a Satanic figure called the beast or Antichrist who takes over the world and stamps everyone with a mark bearing the number 666. According to Revelation, no one will be able to buy or sell anything without that number stamped on them.

That’s caused people to fear anytime that number pops up, said Jay Phelan, senior professor of theological studies at North Park University in Chicago.

“It’s seen as a very dangerous number,” he said.

For believers like Slonopas, who take the book of Revelation literally, any tie to 666 is a betrayal of their faith. Phelan said he understands why Slonopas quit.

“It’s a desire to be loyal to his faith and to not be identified with the Antichrist,” he said. “The company ought to find a way to cut him some slack.”

Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, said the writer of Revelation was using a technique called “gematria” — in which letters have numerical values — to refer to a Roman emperor as the beast.

She said that over the past 2,000 years, readers of Revelation have tried to use 666 to figure out who the Antichrist is. Among the candidates were political figures like Hitler, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama and corporations like Proctor & Gamble and IBM.

The number 666 has caused problems for at least one other worker in the past. In 2011, a factory worker from Georgia named Billy Hyatt sued his former employer after he was fired for refusing to wear a sticker with 666 on it. The sticker referred to the number of accident-free days he’d had on the job.

Slonopas, though, said he has no interest in suing anyone. All he wants is for his former employer to give him a new W-2 without a Satanic number on it. Otherwise, he said, he can’t file his taxes.

He shakes his head when asked if he’d go back to work for Contech, even if the company gives him a new W-2. That would send the message that he sold out his faith for money.

“God is worth more than money,” he said.

His wife, Anna, said the couple will be fine. She said God will take care of them. They live frugally, and are currently house-sitting for their older son, who is in the military.

“If my husband makes $10, one goes to God, two go to savings, and we live on seven,” she said. “It’s not that my husband makes $10 and I spend $11.”

LaCourciere, the spokesman for Slonopas’ former employer, said the firm planned to mail out a new W-2, in a plain envelope, by the end of the day on Tuesday. The company also wants to rehire him.

“We’d love to have him back,” he said.

Copyright © 2013 www.tennessean.com

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20130206/NEWS06/302060176/666-tax-form-makes-man-quit-job-save-soul [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Kentucky Pastor Wants Snakes Used In Church Services Returned


[ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/13/kentucky-pastor-calls-on-tennessee-to-return-his-venomous-snakes/ ]

by Josh Breslow
Posted: Feb 12, 2013 6:08 PM
Updated: Feb 12, 2013 7:36 PM

A southeastern Kentucky pastor known for handling snakes isn't backing down after his reptiles were seized by police in Tennessee.

Gregory "Jamie" Coots, the pastor at Full Gospel Tabernacle In Jesus Name, is known around Bell County for using snakes in his services.

"The Bible says they should take up serpents," Pastor Coots told LEX 18. "All of our snakes have venom. I've been bit seven times. Lost a finger to a snake bite."

Video on the pastor's YouTube channel [ https://www.youtube.com/user/pastorcoots2012 ] shows him in action [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkMHVQL6h0s , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lpJiAG5Xzo , and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVgV5O4qunA (in sequence next below)].

The snakes he uses come from other states and Coots said that landed him in hot water.

Pastor Coots was in court Monday in Knoxville, Tennessee answering to charges he transported five snakes, identified as three rattlesnakes and two copperheads through that state, illegally. He said he purchased them in Alabama and was driving through Tennessee, when police said they pulled him over for tinted windows and discovered the reptiles.

"When you bought snakes in a state where it's legal to buy them and bring them to a state where it's legal to have them, I don't see how they can stop you and take them away," Coots said.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency confiscated the reptiles, along with the boxes they were in.

"One box means more to me than most worldly possessions. It belonged to my best friend who died in '98," said Coots.

The pastor told LEX 18 that with three services a week, he's not sure how he'll get by, but he vows not to let this setback keep him from doing what he feels he must.

"If I can find a way to bypass Tennessee, I won't go through it no more because I'm not gonna stop buying snakes," Coots said.

Coots was charged in 2008 after investigators said they found he had dozens of snakes, many that were not legal in Kentucky.

Pastor Coots is expected back in court later this month for a preliminary hearing.

Coots said there has only been one snake-related death in his church. That happened in 1995, when a woman was handling a serpent and later died as a result of a bite.

© 2013 LEX18.com

http://www.lex18.com/news/kentucky-pastor-wants-snakes-used-in-church-services-returned [with embedded video report, and comments] [also at http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50788803/ns/local_news-lexington_ky/ (with comments)]


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Ky. pastor wants snakes confiscated in Tenn.

Published on Feb 13, 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo4bQQKVVAw


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Poisonous Snakes Found in Backseat of Pastor's Car

Published on Feb 13, 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BMVyLIj1jg


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Serpent-handling pastor profiled earlier in Washington Post dies from rattlesnake bite



By Julia Duin
May 29, 2012

Mack Wolford, a flamboyant Pentecostal pastor from West Virginia whose serpent-handling talents were profiled last November in The Washington Post Magazine [ http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-11-10/lifestyle/35281689_1_snake-handlers-drink-strychnine-wolford ], hoped the outdoor service he had planned for Sunday at an isolated state park would be a “homecoming like the old days,” full of folks speaking in tongues, handling snakes and having a “great time.” But it was not the sort of homecoming he foresaw.

Instead, Wolford, who turned 44 the previous day, was bitten by a rattlesnake he owned for years. He died late Sunday.

Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them.

He and other adherents cited Mark 16:17-18 as the reason for their practice: “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

The son of a serpent handler who himself died in 1983 after being bitten, Wolford was trying to keep the practice alive, both in West Virginia, where it is legal, and in neighboring states where it is not. He was the kind of man reporters love: articulate, friendly and appreciative of media attention. Many serpent-handling Pentecostals retreat from journalists, but Wolford didn’t. He’d take them on snake-hunting expeditions.

Last Sunday started as a festive outdoor service on a sunny afternoon at Panther Wildlife Management Area, a state park roughly 80 miles west of Bluefield, W.Va. In the preceding days, Wolford had posted several teasers on his Facebook page asking people to attend.

“I am looking for a great time this Sunday,” he wrote May 22. “It is going to be a homecoming like the old days. Good ’ole raised in the holler or mountain ridge running, Holy Ghost-filled speaking-in-tongues sign believers.”

“Praise the Lord and pass the rattlesnakes, brother” he wrote on May 23. He also invited his extended family, who had largely given up the practice of serpent handling, to come to the park.

“At one time or another, we had handled [snakes], but we had backslid,” his sister, Robin Vanover, said Monday evening. “His birthday was Saturday, and all he wanted to do is get his brothers and sisters in church together.”

And so they were gathered at this evangelistic hootenanny of Christian praise and worship. About 30 minutes into the service, his sister said, Wolford passed a yellow timber rattlesnake to a church member and his mother.

“He laid it on the ground,” she said, “and he sat down next to the snake, and it bit him on the thigh.”

A state forester, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said park officials were unaware of Wolford’s activities. “Had we known he had poisonous animals, we would have never allowed it,” he said.

The festivities came to a halt shortly thereafter, and Wolford was taken back to a relative’s house in Bluefield to recover, as he always had when suffering from previous snake bites. By late afternoon, it was clear that this time was different, and desperate messages began flying about on Facebook, asking for prayer.

Wolford got progressively worse. Paramedics transported him to Bluefield Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. It could not be determined when the paramedics were called.

Wolford was 15 when he saw his father die at age 39 of a rattlesnake bite in almost exactly the same circumstances.

“He lived 101/2 hours,” Wolford told The Washington Post last fall. “When he got bit, he said he wanted to die in the church. Three hours after he was bitten, his kidneys shut down. After a while, your heart stops. I hated to see him go, but he died for what he believed in.”

According to people who witnessed Mack Wolford’s death, history repeated itself. He was bitten roughly at 1:30 p.m.; he died about 11 that night.

One of the people present was Lauren Pond, 26, a freelance photographer from the District. She had been photographing serpent handlers in the area for more than a year, including for The Post, and stayed at Wolford’s home in November.

“He helped me to understand the faith instead of just documenting it,” she said Tuesday. “He was one of the most open pastors I’ve ever met. He was a friend and a teacher.”

The family allowed her to stay near Wolford’s side Sunday night, and she’s still recovering from having witnessed the pastor’s agonizing death. “I didn’t see the bite,” she said. “I saw the aftermath.”

In an interview with The Post for last year’s story, Jim Murphy, curator of the Reptile Discovery Center at the National Zoo, described what happens when a rattlesnake bites.

The pain is “excruciating,” he said. “The venom attacks the nervous system. It’s vicious and gruesome when it hits.”

But Wolford refused to fear the creatures. He slung poisonous snakes around his neck, danced with them, even laid down on or near them. He displayed spots on his right hand where copperheads had sunk their fangs. His home in Bluefield had a spare bedroom filled with at least eight venomous snakes: usually rattlers, water moccasins and copperheads that he fed rats and mice. He was passionate about wanting to help churches in nearby states — including North Carolina and Tennessee, where the practice is illegal — start up their own serpent-handling services.

“I promised the Lord I’d do everything in my power to keep the faith going,” he said in October. “I spend a lot of time going a lot of places that handle serpents to keep them motivated. I’m trying to get anybody I can get involved.”

His funeral will be held Saturday at his church, House of the Lord Jesus, in Matoaka, just north of Bluefield.

Julia Duin, a contributing writer for The Washington Post Magazine, wrote the original article [ http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-11-10/lifestyle/35281689_1_snake-handlers-drink-strychnine-wolford ] about Mack Wolford.

© 2012 The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/serpent-handling-pastor-profiled-earlier-in-washington-post-dies-from-rattlesnake-bite/2012/05/29/gJQAJef5zU_story.html [ http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-05-29/lifestyle/35458376_1_serpent-wolford-rattlesnake ] [with comments]


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Serpent-handler Dies from Rattlesnake Bite - TYT Religion

Published on Jul 2, 2012 by TYTnation

Snake-handler Mack Wolford was bitten by a rattlesnake he owned for years and died. This was tied to his belief that people could speak in tongues and be bitten by a poisonous snake and live if they were true believers, noted in Mark 16:17-18. Both articles discuss the same event from slightly different angles, found below.

Article 1: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/serpent-handling-pastor-profiled-earlier-in-washington-post-dies-from-rattlesnake-bite/2012/05/29/gJQAJef5zU_story.html [the item just above]

Article 2: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/why-i-watched-a-snake-handling-pastor-die-for-his-faith/2012/05/31/gJQA3fRP5U_story.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAaDA1Gqq8Q


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This is What Happens When You Take Everything the Bible Says Literally

Published on Dec 9, 2012

Pastor Mark Wolford, Snake-handler, Dies Of Rattler Bite

By VICKI SMITH

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A West Virginia preacher who followed his father into the rare practice of handling snakes to prove faith in God died after being bitten during an outdoor service involving the reptiles.

Mark Randall "Mack" Wolford, 44 -- whose own father died in 1983 after suffering a fatal bite -- had been bitten before and survived. But he died earlier this week after witnesses say a timber rattler bit him on the thigh. Wolford's sister and a freelance photographer told media outlets it happened during a Sunday service at Panther State Forest.

Lauren Pond, a freelance photojournalist from Washington, D.C., didn't immediately return messages Thursday but told the Bluefield Daily Telegraph she was among 25 people at the service. She saw Wolford bitten but said congregants were unfazed.

"I don't think anyone necessarily expected it," she told the newspaper, "but they've dealt with it before so it's not such a huge shock, maybe."

Bluefield Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Becky Ritter said Thursday that Wolford was a patient and died Monday, but that federal privacy laws prevented her from releasing additional information.

Officials at the Cravens-Shires Funeral Home also declined to answer questions, saying the family had asked that the cause of death be withheld. Several relatives did not answer email and telephone messages.

The state medical examiner's office referred questions to the state Department of Health and Human Resources, which didn't immediately respond.

Born in Pike County, Ky., Wolford had lived in the Bramwell area for the past five years and was a pastor at Apostolic House of the Lord Jesus in Matoaka. Unlike many Pentecostal preachers, he embraced publicity, welcoming journalists and photographers, and even taking some on snake hunts as he tried to revive interest in his religion.

Ralph Hood, a religion professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, saw Wolford bitten by a copperhead about six years ago.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/31/veteran-snakehandling-pas_n_1559762.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jClUGVrqh0I


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(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=32565156 and preceding and following


===


Amish beard-cutters: Ringleader Samuel Mullet Sr jailed for 15 years

Last year, Mullet and 15 of his followers were convicted of hate crimes for the attacks on nine Amish men and women.
An Amish sect leader has been jailed for 15 years after a bizarre series of attacks in which his followers cut off the beards and hair of other Amish men and women.
08 Feb 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9858829/Amish-beard-cutters-Ringleader-Samuel-Mullet-Sr-jailed-for-15-years.html [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69318727 and preceding and following]


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Kevin Swanson, Anti-Gay Pastor, Claims Gays Will 'Burn Christians At The Stake'


Kevin Swanson's anti-gay radio show reached new heights last week when he predicted gays would someday burn Christians at the stake.

By Meredith Bennett-Smith
Posted: 02/06/2013 8:48 am EST

A Colorado preacher, known for his controversial opinions, ramped up his anti-gay rhetoric this past week, predicting that same-sex marriage will lead to homeschooled children being sent to live with pedophiles, and implying that members of the gay community will "burn Christians at the stake."

During a Jan. 28 segment of his radio program, "Generations With Vision [ https://generationswithvision.com/broadcast/uncivil-unions-in-colorado/ ( https://generationswithvision.com/ )]," Kevin Swanson tackled the issue of Colorado's same-sex civil unions bill [ http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22434252/hearing-colorado-civil-unions-bill-underway-senate-committee ]. The conservative Swanson, who is -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- against same-sex unions, made a number of unconventional claims while he was on the topic.

Swanson said he believes America will be a very, very different place in fewer than 10 years. He then outlined a bizarre scenario, in which home-schooled children would be "swooped away" by social services and given to homosexual homes, where he said children might be abused.

Said Swanson:

What’s happening is they want homosexuals to be able to be involved in adoption and foster care as much anybody else. So picture a nice little home-school family, just trying to do the right thing. An anonymous tip comes in, social services swoops in, they grab the kids in the year 2022, and the kids get remanded into a home with homosexuals, and these particular homosexuals happen to be tied into NAMBLA and other things.

(NAMBLA is a reference to the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a "tiny fringe group that looms large in the nightmares of the anti-gay movement," according to Right Wing Watch [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/swanson-predicts-future-homeschooled-children-will-be-given-pedophiles-gays-will-burn-christ ].)

As evidence, Swanson trotted out the so-called Regnerus study from 2012 [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/gay-parents-study-kids-social-scientists_n_1589177.html ], which claimed that children raised by same-sex parents were at a disadvantage. That study drew strong criticism and was labeled inaccurate by many social scientists, according to LifeScience.

Swanson went on to reference some murky historical "facts" about the history of gay marriage in Ancient Rome:

I’m not sure the world has ever gone to homosexual marriage. I think Nero tried it, it was very, very odd, very weird, very, very decadent for the Roman Empire. It’s about the worst the Roman Empire ever, ever got, under Nero...

Today, it might be a little different because you have a lot of quote-unquote apostate Christian churches that have adopted homosexuality and they will do their best to burn Christians at the stake or do what Nero did... because that’s sort of the history of homosexuals.

Swanson is echoing extremist rhetoric used before by conservative groups, including the anti-gay Catholic World Report [ http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1367/gay_marriagenothing_new_under_the_sun.aspx ], which wrote the following in May:

Gay marriage was, along with homosexuality, something the first Christians faced as part of the pagan moral darkness of their time.

What Christians are fighting against today, then, is not yet another sexual innovation peculiar to our “enlightened age,” but the return to pre-Christian, pagan sexual morality.

Meanwhile, Kevin Swanson has made Right Wing Watch headlines two more times since his inflammatory "burning at the stake" comments: for claiming that women on birth control have wombs "embedded with dead babies [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/swanson-wombs-women-birth-control-embedded-dead-babies ]", and for saying that allowing gay Boy Scout troop leaders is like allowing convicted child molesters and serial killers to teach in preschools [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/swanson-allowing-gays-boy-scouts-letting-serial-killers-teach-preschool ].

In July, Swanson criticized the Jim Henson Company for "taking the sodomy route," after the company decided not to work with Chick-fil-A [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/31/kevin-swanson-anti-gay-pastor-jim-henson-chick-fil-a_n_1724744.html ] over the fast food chain's anti-gay stance.

[Video [embedded]
Rescued- Kevin Swanson [ http://vimeo.com/27039616 ] from Wintons Motion Pictures [ http://vimeo.com/wintonsmp ] on Vimeo.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/kevin-swanson-gays_n_2625101.html [with comments]


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New Documents Show Catholic Leaders in Los Angeles Protected Abusive Priests

PBS NewsHour
REPORT [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OXdYwTXYRw (above, as embedded)]
AIR DATE: Feb. 7, 2013

SUMMARY

Twelve thousand pages of records are being released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, documenting decades of child molestation and cover-ups. The documents revealed retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and his top aide’s efforts to conceal the molestations from authorities and shield priests accused of abuse.

Cardinal Jose Gomez, in a rare public rebuke of a top church official, stripped his predecessor Mahony of all public and administrative duties.

In 2007 the Los Angeles archdiocese reached a $660 million settlement in a civil suit brought by more than 500 victims of sexual abuse. Ray Boucher, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in that case, joined Ray Suarez to discuss these developments.

Boucher said that without a doubt these documents and files confirm that top church officials provided cover for accused priests in order to protect them from being criminally prosecuted. Because many of the crimes coming to light occurred over a decade ago, the victims may not be able to file a civil law suit, explained Boucher.

“This is an important and substantive glimpse into a very deep and dark and ongoing problem within the Catholic Church and, frankly, in society itself,” concluded Boucher. “But it's simply a glimpse. It's by no stretch of the imagination the full picture.”

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles was invited to join the conversation, but they were not available.

TRANSCRIPT

RAY SUAREZ: We turn to the sexual abuse scandal that is shaking up the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese.

Last week, the diocese was forced to release 12,000 pages of documents about dozens of priests who are accused of molesting children, allegations that date back several decades. That led to a rare public rebuke of a top church official.

It began with a sweeping settlement involving more than 500 people in 2007. They said they'd been sexually abused by priests, and they won $660 million dollars.

Raymond Boucher was lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

RAY BOUCHER, Attorney for Victims: Far more important than the money, though, is a critical term of this settlement provides for transparency, for sunshine, and for the release of the confidential files and personnel records of the priests that were involved in molesting so many children over the last five or so decades.

RAY SUAREZ: Lengthy court battles kept those files and records sealed for five more years. But some were finally made public last month under a court order and more were released last week.

The vast document dump included letters to church officials from parents who claimed their child had been abused, checks from the archdiocese as payment for therapy sessions for priests, and even a letter to Pope John Paul III from one victim. The reams of material detailed that then-Archbishop Roger Mahony went to great lengths to shield priests accused of abuse.

In one case, diocesan officials wrote to Mahony that a priest who acknowledged abusing young boys should be reassigned, instead of getting therapy. "If he were to mention his problem with child abuse," the letter said, "it would put the therapist in the position of having to report him. He cannot mention his past problem."

In a handwritten note, Mahony agreed, saying: "Sounds good. Please proceed."

Some of the victims, including Manuel Vega, said the cover-up is now clear for all to see.

MANUEL VEGA, Church Abuse Victim: There's smells, there's touches, there's feelings. You have to put yourself into that moment to understand what the Catholic Church is protecting. This is what Cardinal Mahony, this is what vicars of clergy, nuns, attorneys, this is what they all got together and spoke about and in secret made these deals to protect these priests.

RAY SUAREZ: Mahony retired in 2011, to be succeeded by Archbishop Jose Gomez. In a statement last week, Gomez said: "The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children."

Cardinal Mahony has now been stripped of all administrative duties. But he is still allowed to celebrate the sacraments and to continue with other duties for the Vatican. And last Friday, he posted a defiant response to Archbishop Gomez on his personal blog. It read in part: "Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices, or procedures. I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth."

In the meantime, some abuse victims say some files still have not been released, but the archdiocese says it will comply fully with the court-ordered deadline, February 22.

We take a close look at the documents and what they reveal about the church's handling of abuse claims with Ray Boucher, the lead attorney representing victims in the cases that lead to the files release. We asked the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to join our conversation, but they were not available.

Mr. Boucher, now five-and-a-half years or so since the settlement, the documents are finally out. Did they provide any missing pieces of the puzzle? Did they tell you things you didn't already know?

RAY BOUCHER: Well, they certainly tell us in greater detail the horrific story of abuse and cover-up that we long suspected and understood existed. They just simply confirmed it, but confirmed it in a depth that I don't think anybody could have ever understood, fully comprehended.

RAY SUAREZ: So, when you say confirmed it, does this directly link abuse claims to the highest members of it the archdiocesan hierarchy and their full knowledge that there were priests who were accused who were then not removed from their job?

RAY BOUCHER: Without question.

These documents and files that go back five decades confirm that, in fact, the Vatican, the cardinals, the vicars of clergy here in Los Angeles were all intimately involved with the cover-up, providing sanctuary and immunity to priests and shifting them from parish to parish or state to state and sometimes country to country in order to protect them from being criminally prosecuted and in order to protect the image of the church.

RAY SUAREZ: As diocese after diocese has faced this problem, the question gets asked, but I think it bears asking again. If someone is aware that there's an accusation of a serious crime or is aware that a crime has been committed, does the law compel them to report it?

RAY BOUCHER: Without question, there's an absolute obligation to report crimes of this nature.

We're talking about rape and sodomy and sexual abuse at the worst levels. And there was absolutely always in my mind an obligation to report this. And the failure to do so makes you an aider and abetter, a co-conspirator, somebody that's covering up criminal conduct and behavior that should be prosecuted.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, apart from an obligation, which we can talk further about, I guess, is it legally required? Is not reporting a crime that you're aware of -- in this case, a felony -- a crime itself?

RAY BOUCHER: Well, for those people that were mandatory reporters -- and for many years, the leadership of the archdiocese in California were mandatory reporters -- it absolutely would have been a crime to fail to report that.

RAY SUAREZ: So, after these documents have been made public, are there still people serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles who may be open to prosecution for their behavior during the years in question?

RAY BOUCHER: Well, I know that the district attorney's office and the police here in Los Angeles are reviewing and combing through the files to determine whether there were, in fact, activities or conduct that took place during a period of time when the statute of limitations hasn't run.

Unfortunately, many of these crimes occurred in -- a decade or so ago, and so the statute of limitations has likely run on virtually all, if not all of them.

RAY SUAREZ: Can you give us some examples of individual priests or cases where the kind of behavior that's been alleged over a long period of time that in many cases the church denied was, in fact, going on?

RAY BOUCHER: Sure.

Fr. Miller, who served in various parishes throughout Los Angeles, in the '70s, there were complaints of sexual abuse relating to him. He admitted to the fact that he was sexually abusing children. He was sent for treatment at one of the treatment facilities of the Catholic Church, and yet put back in the ministry and continued to sexually abuse again.

You have Fr. Cafoe, who early on, there were reports that children were being abused or suspected of being abused by him, and yet no action was taken, other than, again, to send him to treatment and then bring him back. Fr. Rodrigue in Ventura, who went on to sexually abuse a whole family of young men after the reports from the psychiatrists said very clearly he should never be around children, and yet we have pictures of him saying children's-only Christmas mass.

RAY SUAREZ: And the documents indicate this is done -- this was done with the approval of fairly senior-ranking members in the archdiocese?

RAY BOUCHER: Certainly with the knowledge and understanding of the vicars of clergy and in most cases the cardinal himself.

RAY SUAREZ: Today, do you feel that you know everything you need to know about what went on over the last 30 years, or do you think there are cases that are still to come to light?

RAY BOUCHER: Oh, there's no question that there are a number of cases that have not come forward. There's thousands of victims that continue to suffer in silence that were abused by priests in Los Angeles.

We know there are other priests whose names have not come out because there were no allegations brought forth during the opening of the statute of limitations that resulted in the release of these documents. But they're still out there.

Clearly, this is an important and substantive glimpse into a very deep and dark and ongoing problem within the Catholic Church and, frankly, in society itself. But it's simply a glimpse. It's by no stretch of the imagination the full picture.

RAY SUAREZ: Attorney Ray Boucher, thanks for joining us.

RAY BOUCHER: Thank you very much.

RAY SUAREZ: You can read the recently released documents for yourself. Find a link on our website [the documents at http://documents.latimes.com/los-angeles-archdiocese-priest-abuse-files/ and http://clergyfiles.la-archdiocese.org/ ; full coverage at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/priestabuse/ ; see "LAPD detectives investigate newly disclosed priest abuse files", http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/lapd-launches-new-probe-of-priest-molestation-records-.html , and "L.A. Archdiocese considers $200-million fund drive amid scandal", http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-archdiocese-capital-20130206,0,3202095.story ].

*

Related

Crisis In the Catholic Church
Feb. 7, 2013
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/church_in_crisis.html

Scandals Place Catholic Church Between Ancient Traditions, Modern Faith Crisis
April 29, 2010
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/jan-june10/vatican_04-29.html

Tale of Abuse in Los Angeles Archdiocese All Too Familiar for Catholic Church
Feb. 7, 2013
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/02/los-angeles-roman-catholic-archdiocese-still-under-pressure.html

*

Copyright © 2013 MacNeil/Lehrer Productions

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/jan-june13/diocese_02-07.html [with comments]


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Paterno family report slams finding of child sex abuse cover-up

By Mark Shade
HARRISBURG, Penn. | Sun Feb 10, 2013 2:46pm EST

(Reuters) - Family members of the late Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno on Sunday released a report they commissioned that said that a former FBI director's finding that Paterno helped cover up a child sex abuse scandal was flawed and unfair.

The new report came seven months after former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who was hired by Penn State's trustees to investigate the handling of allegations that assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was molesting boys, found that Paterno and other high-ranking university officials covered up Sandusky's actions and did not care about his victims.

The new analysis, released on http://www.paterno.com , said the Freeh report is "deeply flawed and that its conclusions as to Joe Paterno are unfair and unsupported."

Paterno, who died in January 2012, "never asked anybody to conceal anything," lawyer Wick Sollers, one of four people hired by the Paterno family to conduct its own investigation on the handling of the Sandusky scandal, said Sunday on ESPN.

"The whole notion that there was a conspiracy to conceal is simply wrong and the Freeh Group got it wrong," Sollers said on "Outside the Lines."

Sandusky is now serving a 30- to 60-year sentence following his conviction last summer on charges he sexually abused 10 boys in a 15-year period. Former university president Graham Spanier, former athletic director Tim Curley, and ex-security official Gary Schultz were charged with child endangerment, perjury, criminal conspiracy, failure to report suspected child abuse, and obstruction charges.

Spanier, Curley and Schultz, who have maintained their innocence, have not yet been tried.

"I respect the right of the Paterno family to hire private lawyers and former government officials to conduct public media campaigns in an effort to shape the legacy of Joe Paterno," Freeh said in a statement Sunday. "However, the self-serving report the Paterno family has issued today does not change the facts established in the Freeh report or alter the conclusions reached in the Freeh report."

POSSIBLE SUIT

The Paterno family appears to be attempting to reclaim the iconic image of the late head coach while providing ammunition for a possible lawsuit against college sports' governing body, the NCAA, for its historic $60 million fine and sanctions against the university. Those penalties were based on the Freeh Group's report.

Former Pennsylvania governor and U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh, one of the people hired by the Paterno family, said the Freeh report was incomplete and full of inaccuracies.

"They state they carried out 430 interviews," Thornburgh said on the same ESPN program. "None of those were with the principal persons involved in these events. I think to represent that as a complete report is a good deal of misgiving about how thorough this was."

David La Torre, a spokesman for Penn State said in a statement Sunday that the Freeh report was an internal investigation into Penn State's response and that it was not within its scope to review the actions of people outside the university.

"It is understandable and appreciated that people will draw their own conclusions and opinions from the facts uncovered in the Freeh report," La Torre said.

He added that the university has implemented the majority of the Freeh report's 119 recommendations in areas such as safety and governance and plans to implement most of the others by the end of the year.

Sue Paterno, the late head coach's wife, said in a letter to Penn State football lettermen that she wanted her own probe of Freeh's handling of his investigation because "I did not recognize the man Mr. Freeh described."

"I will not attempt in this letter to summarize the report of the experts except to say that they unreservedly and forcefully confirm my beliefs about Joe's conduct," Sue Paterno wrote. "They present a passionate and persuasive critique of the Freeh report as a total disservice to the victims of Sandusky and the cause of preventing child sex offenses."

(Additional reporting by Dave Warner; Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Bill Trott)

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Related News

Judge rejects Sandusky's bid for new sex abuse trial
Wed, Jan 30 2013
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/30/us-usa-crime-sandusky-idUSBRE90T15F20130130

*

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/10/us-usa-pennstate-paterno-idUSBRE9190A520130210 [with comments]


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‘Don’t Say Gay’ Sponsor Compares Homosexuality To Injecting Heroin



By Zack Ford on Feb 5, 2013 at 12:57 pm

Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield (R) is making the press rounds to stump for the new and worsened version [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/01/30/1514051/dont-say-gay-tennessee/ ] of his odious “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibits teachers in grades K-8 from acknowledging the existence of homosexuality and also requires school officials to out gay students to their families. He has already made it clear he believes homosexuality itself is dangerous [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/01/31/1522591/dont-say-gay-bill-sponsor-the-act-of-homosexuality-is-very-dangerous/ ], and in an interview with TMZ, he doubled down on that absurd belief. After explaining the AIDS epidemic in Africa by claiming that sodomy was more common there among heterosexuals, Campfield went on to compare being gay to using heroin:

TMZ: If they’re going to engage in homosexual acts anyway, why not teach them how to protect themselves from [HIV]?

CAMPFIELD: You know, you could say the same thing about kids who are shooting heroin. We need to show them the best ways to shoot up. No, we don’t. Why do we have to hypersexualize little children? Why can’t we just let little kids be little kids for a while? Why do we have to have little kids be…?

TMZ: Do you believe in sex education period?

CAMPFIELD: …If you can show me where it works, great.

Watch the whole interview (HT: Alvin McEwen [ http://holybulliesandheadlessmonsters.blogspot.com/2013/02/dont-say-gay-bill-sponsor-stacey.html ]):

[video embedded]

Sex education actually works when a comprehensive safe sex curriculum is taught, and fails in states that only teach abstinence [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/04/10/461402/teen-pregnancy-sex-education/ ]. Southern states like Mississippi, which has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the country, are starting to realize this [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/08/03/634761/mississippi-abstinence-only-sex-ed/ ]. It’s doubtful, however, that Campfield would be interested in such facts.

Campfield’s understanding of homosexuality is limited to the performance of sex acts. It seems beyond his comprehension that those “little kids” might have same-sex parents. He has no sympathy for those children who might realize at a very young age [ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/09/when_do_gay_kids_start_acting_gay.html ] that they are not the same as all the other kids. Discussing the existence of gay people does nothing to “sexualize” young people, whatever that would even mean. It’s no surprise that the TMZ crew had to wrestle with the idea that Campfield had ever been elected; his understanding of the world around him is severely narrow.

© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/02/05/1543581/dont-say-gay-sponsor-compares-homosexuality-to-injecting-heroin/ [with comments]


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Have A Gay Day
Source: http://bit.ly/XXZ6kz [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/fox-news-runs-photo-of-lesbian-couple-in-story-about-traditi (next below)]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=337200633052723&set=a.192270474212407.34793.192269477545840&type=1&ref=nf [with comments]


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Fox News Runs Photo Of Lesbian Couple In Story About Traditional Marriage

Oh, the irony!

Ryan Broderick
posted on February 8, 2013 at 6:13pm EST

This is the photo FOX News is using for their article about traditional gender roles in marriage.


Via: foxnews.com [ http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/05/to-be-happy-must-admit-women-and-men-arent-equal/ (the photo/opening still of the embedded video captured in the above screenshot since changed, without comment, to two choices without that image, "A war on men?" and "Inside look at the 'war on men'" -- of course)]

Turns out it's actually a photo of same-sex coupe Lela McArthur and Stephanie Figarelle from Anchorage, Alaska.


Photo originally taken February 14, 2012.
Image by Andrew Burton / Reuters

It's an AP photo that was most recently used in a Huffington Post article about romance from around the world.


Via: huffingtonpost.co.uk [ http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/14/valentines-day-world-couples-romance-cupid-_n_1276516.html ]

(h/t Jessica Valenti [ http://jessicavalenti.tumblr.com/post/42612393836/shhhh-no-one-tell-fox-news-that-the-wedding-kiss ] for noticing it.)

Copyright © 2013 BuzzFeed, Inc.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/fox-news-runs-photo-of-lesbian-couple-in-story-about-traditi [with comments]


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Obama Super Bowl Interview Addresses Boy Scouts' Anti-Gay Policy


(JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

President Barack Obama and CBS News' Scott Pelley sat down for an interview ahead of Super Bowl XLVII [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/super-bowl/ ].

During the live discussion, Obama addressed the Boy Scouts' policy of excluding gays [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/boy-scouts-gay-ban_n_1679854.html ]. When asked if scouting should be open to gays, the president had a simple answer: "Yes."

"Gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everyone else does," Obama said.

The president has granted an interview to the network airing the Super Bowl [ http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/02/01/obama-super-bowl-interviews-lauer-oreilly/1882497/ ] every year, with past interviewers including Katie Couric and Bill O'Reilly.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/obama-super-bowl-interview_n_2600562.html [with embedded video of Obama's interview with Pelley, and comments]


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Utah Boy Scouts Council Achieves Delay In Consideration Of Anti-Gay Policy



By Zack Ford on Feb 6, 2013 at 11:02 am

The expectation was that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) would vote today [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/01/28/1505261/boy-scouts-board-will-consider-lifting-national-anti-gay-ban-next-week/ ] on whether to end its national policy banning gay Scouts and leaders, but it has decided to delay making that decision until May. The delay came at the request of the Great Salt Lake Council of Boy Scouts, which opposes the change and joined with 32 other councils [ http://fox13now.com/2013/02/04/coaltion-of-boy-scout-councils-seek-more-time-on-gay-membership-decision/ ] calling for an “open forum discussion with councils across the country.” In a joint letter, the Councils suggest polling should be done to determine the outcome:

Time must be allowed for accurate polling data to be collected from stakeholders at all levels and all areas in an unbiased way. The voices of existing chartered partners and financial contributors must be heard alongside those of our volunteer leaders and the parents who entrust their children to us. [...]

We must ask, what could have so radically altered the results of the [July] study as to shift the position on such an important issue? What does this say about the validity of either position or the character of our organization if we are so readily willing to dismiss the former for the latter?

While we understand the urge to support those councils who feel that the current policies negatively impact their ability to remain viable we also think that equal support and consideration should be given to those councils whose ability to remain viable will be impacted by adopting the new policy.

The Mormon Church’s role in this decision cannot be overstated. Though the Church itself has not issued a comment, it is the largest faith-based sponsor of the Scouts, supporting more than 39,000 troops. Church President Thomas Monson has longstanding ties [ https://www.doubleknot.com/venturing/venturing-program-what-is-venturing/photo-gallery/venturing-president-monson-85th-birthday-party/49614 ] with the Great Salt Lake Council and sits on the BSA national executive board, as do other high-ranking Mormon officials [ http://www.lds.org/church/leader/david-l-beck?lang=eng ]. The Church recently updated its policies [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/12/06/1295941/mormon-churchs-new-homosexuality-resource-tells-gays-to-be-chaste-and-hopeful/ ] on homosexuality, but still condemns it as sinful and calls on gays to be chaste, and it continues to advocate [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/02/05/1545021/mormons-and-evangelicals-to-scotus-ignore-preponderance-of-science-on-same-sex-parenting/ ] against LGBT equality.

Deciding whether or not to discriminate is not a question that can be answered by polling. If the Scouts choose to make such a decision by catering to financial stakeholders, then any claim the organization has to promoting character is without merit.

Update

The BSA has issued this official statement on the delay:

For 103 years, the Boy Scouts of America has been a part of the fabric of this nation, providing it’s [sic] youth program of character development and values-based leadership training. In the past two weeks, Scouting has received an outpouring of feedback from the American public. It reinforces how deeply people care about Scouting and how passionate they are about the organization.

After careful consideration and extensive dialogue within the Scouting family, along with comments from those outside the organization, the volunteer officers of the Boy Scouts of America’s National Executive Board concluded that due to the complexity of this issue, the organization needs time for a more deliberate review of its membership policy.

To that end, the executive board directed its committees to further engage representatives of Scouting’s membership and listen to their perspectives and concerns. This will assist the officers’ work on a resolution on membership standards. The approximately 1,400 voting members of the national council will take action on the resolution at the national meeting in May 2013.

© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/02/06/1549151/utah-boy-scouts-council-achieves-delay-in-consideration-of-anti-gay-policy/ [with comments]


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I Was an Atheist Child, and the Girl Scouts Didn’t Want Me



Posted by Lynn Stuart Parramore at 7:28 am
February 7, 2013

The news this week from Scoutland brings controversy over a proposed end to the ban on gay Americans [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/boy-scouts-postpone-decision-on-gays.html ]. But here’s another dirty little secret. The Boy Scouts also officially discriminate against atheists and agnostics. For much of their history, the Girl Scouts did, too, but in 1993, the national organization had the sense to stop this unfair and distinctly un-American practice.

That was too late for me. I was a Brownie in 1978, and wanted to become a Girl Scout. It was not to be.

I had a hard time fitting in as a kid. My Sunday school teacher’s eyes shot daggers at me when, after a lesson on the Virgin Mary, I asked, “Was Joseph a virgin, too?” I just didn’t take to the religion thing. Alongside my Bible, I read Bullfinch’s Mythology, and I much preferred the Greek gods. They fell in love and had adventures and didn’t seem to take themselves so seriously. There was laughter in heaven. Jesus was sort of okay – I liked some of his sermons. But the Bible seemed filled with harsh desert people (mostly men) morbidly obsessed with death and suffering. What had they to do with me?

When I was eight, I became a Brownie and took much pleasure in my crisp little uniform and close association with mint chocolate cookies. I vaguely recall winding yarn around popsicle sticks and doing things like that to prove my craftiness. Like most Brownies, I yearned to join the green ranks of the Girl Scouts, so I dutifully earned Brownie points in preparation for the big event when I would be pinned by a troop leader and accepted into the upper echelon of girldom.

But something unexpected happened during the Induction Ceremony. The ritual of transition from Brownie to Girl Scout was very sacred and solemn and involved, among other things, staring into a pool of water. It also required me to pledge an oath to God. (You can check out a video of some little tykes saying it here [ http://www.girlscouts.org/program/basics/promise_law/ ]).

On my honor, I will try:
To serve God and my country,
To help people at all times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.

This pledge didn't sit right with me, for the simple reason that as far as I could tell, God didn’t exist. To pledge an oath to him would be lying. I stood frozen when it was time to swear fealty to a non-existent being. Probably I could have gotten away with just mouthing the words, but a feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that was wrong. I sheepishly mumbled my dilemma to the troop leader and she looked at me with the exasperation adults get when confronting a pint-sized pain in the ass. “Well, that’s what it takes to be a Girl Scout.” Confused, ashamed, and a little defiant, I took off my sash and handed it to her.

That was that. I would never have those illustrious Girl Scout badges for basket weaving and what not proudly streaming across my chest. The green uniform would not be mine. Part of me was a little relieved, because I wasn’t the sportiest of children and joining the Scouts meant proving my fitness for things like orienteering and riflery [ http://www.girlscoutshs.org/otherlandsports ]. I still like the cookies, though.

Compared to the Boy Scouts, today’s Girl Scouts are known as the more progressive [ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/boy-scouts-are-from-mars-girl-scouts-are-from-venus/253957/ ] example of youth programming. According to The Atlantic, the Boy Scouts of America still “expressly prohibits membership (even as Cub Scouts) of atheists and agnostics.” The Girl Scouts, on the other hand, are now cool with atheism and have shown a fondness for New Agey tenets [ http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=1270 ]. They've even drawn the ire of Catholic bishops. I’ll give them points for that.

opyright 2013 Lynn Stuart Parramore

http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/lynn-parramore/i-was-atheist-child-and-girl-scouts-didnt-want-me [ http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/lynn-parramore/i-was-atheist-child-and-girl-scouts-didnt-want-me?page=entire ] [with comments] [also at http://www.salon.com/2013/02/10/i_had_to_leave_the_girl_scouts_for_being_an_atheist_partner/ (with comments)]


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CNN Host Destroys Supporter Of Boy Scouts Discrimination For Equating Pedophilia With Being Gay



By Igor Volsky on Feb 6, 2013 at 8:22 am

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien challenged the conservative opposition to keeping gays scouts and leaders out of the Boy Scouts on Wednesday morning, comparing the organization’s ban to past restrictions on African Americans and women.

The group has come under pressure from corporate sponsors to expand its policy of excluding gays and lesbians from the ranks and prominent right-wing activists [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/02/05/1541151/key-conservative-anti-gay-discrimination-is-the-core-value-of-scouting/ ] like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/02/04/1535331/conservatives-predict-mass-exodus-if-boy-scouts-accept-gays/ ] have come to its defense, arguing that excluding gays is part of the organization’s “core values” and essential for raising boys into men.

O’Brien disputed these claims during an interview with Perkins, pointing out that “core values” and moral codes evolve over time. “I remember when I was in school,” she said. “If you were a teacher and you were pregnant, you were removed from the classroom. It was considered morally inappropriate to have a pregnant woman in the classroom. Blacks in the military was morally problematic.” “How come this doesn’t fall into the same kind of guidelines?” O’Brien asked.

Perkins responded by arguing that unlike the immutable characteristic of race or gender, gay people can change their sexual orientation to become straight and insisted that allowing them into the Boy Scouts would lead to inappropriate sexual relationships and increase instances of pedophilia:

PERKINS: We’re talking about comparing immutable characteristics with characteristics that are not immutable. First, the Boy Scouts have had a long history of struggling with an issue of protecting the boys. Last fall they were forced by the court to release about 15,000 pages that identified 1,900 predators within the Boy Scouts. [...]

O’BRIEN: Are you saying that someone who is gay is a pedophile, Sir?

PERKINS: No, I never said that. You said that. I didn’t.

O’BRIEN: I’m asking the question. You are saying that you would be worried about –

PERKINS: They are trying to create an environment that is protective of children. This doesn’t make it more protective. There is a disproportionate number of male on boy — when we get on pedophilia, male on boy is a higher incident rate of that. We never said all homosexuals are pedophiles. that’s not what we’re saying.

Watch it [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUJi10vMfA4 (below, as embedded)]:

In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts — a private and traditionally religious organization — did not have to include gay and lesbian scout masters since it undermined its core value. In response to growing public pressure and plummeting membership rates, the group is considering instituting a local option, that will allow local chapters to admit gays, but could undermine its legal argument.

The Boy Scouts’ approach to admitting gays could “mirror the leave-it-to-the-locals tack the organization once took in deciding how to tackle the issue of desegregating its Scout troops.” Throughout the 20th century, the national leadership “gave wide discretion to councils to set their own racial policies,” permitting chapters in the South to run segregated groups or prohibit blacks. The last such council did not integrate until 1974 [ http://www.npr.org/2013/01/30/170585132/boy-scouts-repeal-of-gay-ban-mirrors-its-approach-to-racial-integration ].

© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/02/06/1547471/cnn-host-destroys-supporter-of-boy-scouts-discrimination-for-equating-pedophilia-with-being-gay/ [with comments]


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Boy Scout files on suspected abuse published by The Times

In this June 14, 2012, file photo, attorney Kelly Clark speaks in front of former court case illustrations and boxes full of records from the Boy Scouts of America in Portland, Ore.
December 25, 2012
The Times on Tuesday released about 1,200 previously unpublished files kept by the Boy Scouts of America [ http://www.latimes.com/topic/social-issues/social-organizations/youth-organizations/boy-scouts-of-america-ORCIG000073.topic ] on volunteers and employees expelled for suspected sexual abuse.
The files, which have been redacted of victims' names and other identifying information, were opened from 1985 through 1991. They can be found in a database ["Tracking decades of allegations in the Boy Scouts", http://spreadsheets.latimes.com/boyscouts-cases/ ] along with two decades of files released by order of the Oregon Supreme Court in October. The database also contains summary information on about 3,200 additional files opened from 1947 to 2005 that have not been released publicly.
Together, the material in the database represents the most complete accounting of suspected sexual abuse in the Scouts that has been made public. All of the material was obtained as a result of lawsuits against the Scouts by alleged abuse victims or by media organizations. The Boy Scouts kept the files for nearly a century for internal use only, ...
[...]
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-scouts-data-20121226,0,6477648.story [with comments]


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Video: Inside the 'perversion files'
http://www.latimes.com/videogallery/73850121/News/Inside-the-perversion-files ; http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-boy-scouts-inside-the-perversion-files-20130123,0,144438.story [no comments yet]


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Boy Scouts To Release Sex Abuse Allegation Files After Order From California Supreme Court


The Boy Scouts of America will release two decades of sex abuse allegation files.

01/08/13 07:20 PM ET EST

LOS ANGELES — The Boy Scouts of America must release two decades of files detailing sexual abuse allegations after the California Supreme Court refused the organization's bid to keep the records confidential.

A Santa Barbara County court ruled last year that the files must be turned over to attorneys representing a former Scout who claims a leader molested him in 2007, when he was 13. That leader later was convicted of felony child endangerment.

Last week, the state Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the Boy Scouts to halt the files' release.

The former Scout's lawsuit claims the files, which date to 1991 and involve allegations from across the nation, will expose a "culture of hidden sexual abuse" that the Scouts had concealed.

The Boys Scouts of America has denied the allegations and argued that the files should remain confidential to protect the privacy of child victims and of people who were wrongly accused.

"The BSA will comply fully with the order, but maintains that the files are not relevant to this suit" and won't be made public unless used as evidence in the case, spokesman Deron Smith told the Los Angeles Times ( http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/01/california-supreme-court-denies-scouts-bid-to-halt-files-release.html [ http://lat.ms/WqDUkK ]).

It's not clear how soon the files will become public. The documents are covered by a judge's protective order and can't be revealed until they become part of the open court record in the former Scout's lawsuit.

"Our hands are tied, and we are forbidden to publicize the files," Timothy Hale, an attorney for the former Scout, said in an email to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

A pretrial conference is scheduled next week in Santa Barbara. Hale said lawyers for the two sides likely will discuss how long the Boy Scouts need to turn over the files and then how much review time he and his colleagues will need before the case can go to trial.

Hale surmised it could be fall or later before that happens. He urged the Scouts to turn over the files to law enforcement and publicly identify people accused of abuse.

The Boy Scouts kept internal files on alleged sexual abuse for nearly a century. Through other court cases, the Scouts were forced to reveal files dating from 1960 to 1991.

They detailed numerous cases where abuse claims were made and Boy Scout officials never alerted authorities and sometimes actively sought to protect the accused.

The organization has improved youth protection policies in recent years. It has conducted criminal background checks on volunteers since 2008 and in 2010 mandated any suspected abuse be reported to police.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/boy-scouts-sex-abuse-files_n_2434936.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Boy Scout Files To Be Released: Minn. Judge Orders Release Of More 'Perversion Files'


In this April 13, 2010 file photo, Kerry Lewis, left, leans into his lawyer, Paul Mones, in a Portland, Ore., courtroom after a jury found the Boy Scouts of America negligent for repeated sexual abuse by an assistant Scoutmaster in the 1980s. Local Boy Scout leaders and town officials helped hush up numerous child sex abuse allegations against scoutmasters and other volunteers, according to details in a trove of nearly 15,000 pages of so-called "perversion files" compiled by the Scouts from 1959.

By STEVE KARNOWSKI
01/29/13 08:57 PM ET EST

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota judge on Tuesday ordered the handover of confidential national Boy Scout records on sexual abuse from 1999 to 2008 in a move attorneys said could add to the body of evidence showing that the organization failed to take adequate steps to protect young people from molesters in its ranks.

Ramsey County District Judge Elena Ostby issued the order in a lawsuit involving former suburban Minneapolis scoutmaster Peter Stibal II, who is serving a 21-year prison sentence for molesting four scouts in his troop. The lawsuit was filed by one of his victims.

That victim's attorney, Jeff Anderson, said these files are from internal Boy Scouts of America records on adult volunteers suspected of molestation that are widely known as the "perversion files," but they cover a later period than records made public last October by court order in Oregon, which covered from 1965 to 1985. He called the order a triumph over institutional secrecy.

Attorneys for the Boy Scouts of America and the local Northern Star Council did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Ostby ordered that identifying information in the files be blacked out, but Anderson's co-counsel, Paul Mones, said the material would still be valuable for establishing what scouting officials knew about the problem of abuse and when because they cover more recent times, when Stibal was a leader. Defense attorneys have two weeks to produce them. Mones said this order also follows similar orders by state courts in Texas and California for the Scouts to produce files covering 1985 through 2011 to plaintiffs suing in other pending abuse cases.

"The significance of this decision is that it is the third state court decision in less than one year in which the Boy Scouts have been ordered to turn over the `perversion files' to a plaintiff who was a victim of Scout leader sexual abuse," Mones said, adding that in each case judges determined the files were important for these victims to demonstrate that the Scouts knew about the abuse problem before these boys were molested.

The Minnesota lawsuit names the national and local scouting bodies, Stibal and the church that sponsored the troop. It's scheduled to go to trial this spring.

Stibal, now 47, was sentenced in June 2011 to more than 21 years in prison for molesting four scouts in his troop at River Hills United Methodist Church in Burnsville. A jury first convicted Stibal of molesting one scout. He then agreed to a deal in the cases of three other boys, in which he maintained his innocence but acknowledged the prosecution likely had enough evidence to convict him. The crimes happened from 2003 to 2008, when the boys were 11 to 15.

Anderson's firm filed the lawsuit just a few days before Stibal's sentencing. It says the national and local organizations had known for decades that pedophiles had infiltrated scouting, and that they should have known the danger Stibal presented. The lawsuit alleged that Stibal molested the unidentified Scout at least 10 times in 2008. It's seeking unspecified damages in excess of $50,000.

The Scouts have been sued multiple times over allegations of sexual abuse by adult leaders, including those chronicled in the long-confidential internal records that were released by an Oregon Supreme Court order last October in a case Mones handled. Stibal was not listed in those files, but the Minnesota lawsuit says they revealed that scouting was a "pedophile magnet and sanctuary for child molesters" and that its screening system was ineffective.

The files from the Oregon case are the only ones that have been made public so far because they were actually introduced as evidence in a trial, Mones said. The Texas order has been appealed and those files remain sealed. Mones said it's too early to know whether the documents sought in the Minnesota case will become public and it might depend on whether they're used at trial.

The Boy Scouts of America has apologized for past lapses and cover-ups and strengthened its youth protection policy. The organization now mandates that any suspected abuse be reported to police.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/30/boy-scout-files-released_n_2581300.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Mary McAngus, Ohio Mayor, Allegedly Called Gay Officer 'Queer,' Tried To Get Him Fired

[ http://woub.org/2013/02/09/pomeroy-mayor-resigns-accused-anti-gay-comments ]
02/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/09/mary-mcangus-ohio-mayor-anti-gay-remarks-police-officer_n_2653273.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Ohio mayor resigns after alleged anti-gay slurs


Mary McAngus was sworn in as mayor of Pomeroy by Meigs County Probate Judge Scott Powell 14 months ago.
The Pomeroy Daily Sentinel



Police chief defended recently hired officer in Pomeroy

By Holly Zachariah
The Columbus Dispatch
Saturday February 9, 2013 6:01 PM

The mayor of a southeastern Ohio village who was accused earlier this week of degrading a gay police officer and refusing to allow his partner to visit the police station has resigned.

Pomeroy Mayor Mary McAngus hand-delivered a resignation letter to a village council member today, said Council President Jackie Welker.

The letter was only a few sentences. McAngus did not acknowledge that she had treated Police Officer Kyle Calendine poorly. She wrote that “due to circumstances,” she was resigning and that it had been a pleasure to serve as mayor the past 14 months.

McAngus has not publicly commented since Police Chief Mark E. Proffitt came forward with his concerns about how Calendine was being treated. She could not immediately be reached for comment today.

She was accused of calling Calendine a queer and using other slurs. Others said she didn’t want Calendine’s partner stopping by the police department, though family members of other officers routinely drop by with lunch or before or after a shift.

Calendine, who was hired as a part-time officer in this Ohio River community in September, said he was disappointed in how he has been treated. He was on duty today when he got word that McAngus had resigned.

The resignation pleases him, although he wishes the mayor had also apologized, he said.

He said he’s been overwhelmed by the widespread support he’s received and hopes now that tensions in the community will ease.

“I am who I am, and I won’t apologize for how I live my life,” Calendine said. “I just want to do my job.”

Proffitt said that Calendine is a terrific and dedicated police officer, one who didn’t deserve this kind of treatment.

“Kyle Calendine would lay down his life for anyone in need,” said Proffitt, who has been police chief since 2000 in Pomeroy, about 100 miles southeast of Columbus. “This is a win for Kyle, for our department and for the gay community. It lets people know that no matter what, we’re all in this together.”

Welker said it has been a difficult week and that the mayor’s resignation was welcomed.

He expects council will formally accept it as an already-scheduled public meeting Monday night. Welker will then temporarily take over the duties.

“We look forward to getting this behind us,” Welker said. “We support our police chief and his department and have all the confidence in the world in what they do. We’re sorry this all happened.”

The trouble had been brewing for a few weeks.

The police chief had last month submitted to the village council an information packet that included his six-page sworn statement. He warned the council that the mayor's behavior could get the village of 2,000 residents sued. Proffitt wrote that McAngus called him into her office about two weeks after Calendine was hired. She said she heard “that Kyle was a queer” and asked what the chief was going to do about it. Nothing, he replied, because that would be discrimination.

“She stated ‘I don't like a Queer working for the Village, I might be old-fashioned, but I don't like it.’” Proffitt wrote in the statement.

The mayor persisted in making crude comments about the officer and his partner to police department employees, Proffitt said.

It created a hostile work environment for everyone, the chief said today. Now, he hopes the community can focus on healing.

He is not so naïve, however, as to believe this is the end of it. In fact, he said he’s long been a victim of discrimination himself; his wife is Filipino.

“The sad thing is that while we support Kyle, there will be someone else someplace else tomorrow.”

He said that when he called Calendine earlier today to tell him the mayor had resigned, he tried to make his message clear: “His partner, Harold, is welcome to stop by our department and have lunch anytime.”

© 2013 The Dispatch Printing Company

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/02/09/pomeroy-ohio-mayor-resigns-after-alleged-anti-gay-slurs.html [with comments]


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Richard Hodo, Arkansas Restaurant Owner, Compares Gay Group To KKK, Nazis Before Canceling Event
02/09/2013
[...]
... "We’ve got fine dining and this is a private club and we have the right to refuse service to anyone," he said. "I’m not gonna have a fundraiser here for that or, like I said, for the KKK or the Nazis or, you know, any group that would be a controversial group.”
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/09/richard-hodo-arkansas-restaurant-owner-gay-rights-kkk-nazis_n_2652665.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Sullivan High School Students, Teacher Fighting For 'Traditional' Prom That Would Ban Gays

Posted: 02/11/2013 10:54 am EST | Updated: 02/12/2013 2:04 pm EST

A group of Indiana-based parents, teens and even a teacher is fighting for a separate "traditional" prom that would ban gay students.

As NBC 2/My Wabash Valley is reporting [ http://mywabashvalley.com/fulltext?nxd_id=292862 ], special education teacher Diana Medley is defending a group of Sullivan High School students who are arguing in favor of the alternate prom.

"Homosexual students come to me with their problems, and I don't agree with them, but I care about them," Medley told the news station. "It's the same thing with my special needs kids; I think God puts everyone in our lives for a reason."

When asked whether or not gay people have a "purpose" in life, Medley added, "No, I honestly don't. Sorry, but I don't ... A gay person isn't going to come up and make some change unless it's to realize that it was a choice and they're choosing God."

Medley was just one of several parents, students and others who reportedly met Feb. 10 at the Sullivan First Christian Church demanding that gay students be barred from attending the dance. "We want to make the public see that we love the homosexuals, but we don't think it's right nor should it be accepted," one local student is quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, a Facebook page, "Support The Sullivan High School Prom For All Students [ https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-the-Sullivan-High-School-Prom-for-All-Students/611335158883992 ]," has sprung up in defense of the school's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender student body. At present, the page has over 1,000 likes.

Among those to sound off on the news is LGBT activist Dan Savage [ http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/02/10/anti-gay-bigots-at-high-school-in-indiana-cant-ban-gay-kids-from-prom ], who wrote in his blog:

"There's no way to stop the haters at Sullivan High School from holding an independent prom for the special bigoted kids. But here's what we can do: we can make a noise so loud enough that all the queer kids at Sullivan High School hear it. Those kids need to know that there are people -- a lot of people -- who think this sh*t is wrong."

In 2010, a Mississippi-based lesbian teen was awarded $35,000 after her high school opted to cancel its prom rather than permitting her to attend the dance with her girlfriend.

Eighteen-year-old Constance McMillen told the Associated Press [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/20/constance-mcmillen-settlement_n_653331.html ], "I knew it was a good cause, but sometimes it really got to me. I knew it would change things for others in the future and I kept going and I kept pushing."

Take a look at our slideshow of LGBT prom couples below:

[slideshow embedded]

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/diana-medley-gay-student-prom-ban-sullivan-high_n_2661919.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Zen Groups Distressed by Accusations Against Teacher


Joshu Sasaki in New Mexico in 2007. Some former students say they were encouraged to believe that being groped by him was part of their Zen training.
Rick Scibelli, Jr. for The New York Times


Mr. Sasaki's Rinzai-ji center in Los Angeles. His senior priests are conducting their own inquiry.
Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times


Nikki Stubbs, who studied at a Zen center with Joshu Sasaki from 2003 to 2006, said he would touch her inappropriately.
Martin Tessler for The New York Times

By MARK OPPENHEIMER and IAN LOVETT
Published: February 11, 2013

Since arriving in Los Angeles from Japan [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/japan/index.html ] in 1962, the Buddhist teacher Joshu Sasaki, who is 105 years old, has taught thousands of Americans at his two Zen centers in the area and one in New Mexico [ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/us/09zen.html?pagewanted=all ]. He has influenced thousands more enlightenment seekers through a chain of some 30 affiliated Zen centers from the Puget Sound to Princeton to Berlin. And he is known as a Buddhist teacher of Leonard Cohen, the poet and songwriter.

Mr. Sasaki has also, according to an investigation [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/12/us/Joshu-Sasaki-investigation-report.html ] by an independent council of Buddhist leaders, released in January, groped and sexually harassed female students for decades, taking advantage of their loyalty to a famously charismatic roshi, or master.

The allegations against Mr. Sasaki have upset and obsessed Zen Buddhists across the country, who are part of a close-knit world in which many participants seem to know, or at least know of, the principal teachers.

Mr. Sasaki did not respond to requests for interviews made through Paul Karsten [ http://siom.edu/core-faculty/26-paul-karsten-med-lac ], a member of the board of Rinzai-ji, his main center in Los Angeles. Mr. Karsten said that Mr. Sasaki’s senior priests are conducting their own inquiry. And he cautioned that the independent council took the accounts it heard from dozens of students at face value and did not investigate any “for veracity.”

Because Mr. Sasaki has founded or sponsored so many Zen centers, and because he has the prestige of having trained in Japan, the charges that he behaved unethically — and that his supporters looked the other way — have implications for an entire way of life.

Such charges have become more frequent in Zen Buddhism. Several other teachers have been accused of misconduct recently, notably Eido Shimano, who in 2010 was asked to resign from the Zen Studies Society in Manhattan over allegations that he had sex with students. Critics and victims have pointed to a Zen culture of secrecy, patriarchy and sexism, and to the quasi-religious worship of the Zen master, who can easily abuse his status.

Disaffected students wrote letters to the board of one of Mr. Sasaki’s Zen centers as early as 1991. Yet it was only last November, when Eshu Martin, a Zen priest who studied under Mr. Sasaki from 1997 to 2008, posted a letter [ http://sweepingzen.com/everybody-knows-by-eshu-martin/ ] to SweepingZen.com [ http://sweepingzen.com/ ], a popular Web site, that the wider Zen world noticed.

Mr. Martin, now a Zen abbot in Victoria, British Columbia, accused Mr. Sasaki of a “career of misconduct,” from “frequent and repeated non-consensual groping of female students” to “sexually coercive after-hours ‘tea’ meetings, to affairs,” as well as interfering in his students’ marriages. Soon thereafter, the independent “witnessing council” of noted Zen teachers began interviewing 25 current or former students of Mr. Sasaki.

Some former students are now speaking out, including seven interviewed for this article, and their stories provide insight into the culture of Rinzai-ji [ http://www.rinzaiji.org/ ] and the other places [ http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2013/02/03/news/zen-master-molested-students-in-nm.html ] where Mr. Sasaki taught. Women say they were encouraged to believe that being touched by Mr. Sasaki was part of their Zen training.

The Zen group, or sangha, can become one’s close family, and that aspect of Zen may account for why women and men have been reluctant to speak out for so long.

Many women whom Mr. Sasaki touched were resident monks at his centers. One woman who confronted Mr. Sasaki in the 1980s found herself an outcast afterward. The woman, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy, said that afterward “hardly anyone in the sangha, whom I had grown up with for 20 years, would have anything to do with us.”

In the council’s report on Jan. 11, the three members wrote of “Sasaki asking women to show him their breasts, as part of ‘answering’ a koan” — a Zen riddle — “or to demonstrate ‘non-attachment.’ ”

When the report was posted to SweepingZen, Mr. Sasaki’s senior priests wrote in a post that their group “has struggled with our teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi’s sexual misconduct for a significant portion of his career in the United States” — their first such admission [ http://www.rinzaijioshos.org/ ].

Among those who spoke to the council and for this article was Nikki Stubbs, who now lives in Vancouver, and who studied and worked at Mount Baldy, Mr. Sasaki’s Zen center 50 miles east of Los Angeles [ http://www.mbzc.org/ ], from 2003 to 2006. During that time, she said, Mr. Sasaki would fondle her breasts during sanzen, or private meeting; he also asked her to massage his penis. She would wonder, she said, “Was this teaching?”

One monk, whom Ms. Stubbs said she told about the touching, was unsympathetic. “He believed in Roshi’s style, that sexualizing was teaching for particular women,” Ms. Stubbs said. The monk’s theory, common in Mr. Sasaki’s circle, was that such physicality could check a woman’s overly strong ego.

A former student of Mr. Sasaki’s now living in the San Francisco area, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her privacy, said that at Mount Baldy in the late 1990s, “the monks confronted Roshi and said, ‘This behavior is unacceptable and has to stop.’ ” However, she said, “nothing changed.” After a time, Mr. Sasaki used Zen teaching to justify touching her, too.

“He would say something like, ‘True love is giving yourself to everything,’ ” she explained. At Mount Baldy, the isolation could hamper one’s judgment. “It can sound trite, but you’re in this extreme state of consciousness,” she said — living at a monastery in the mountains, sitting in silence for many hours a day — “where boundaries fall away.”

Joe Marinello is a Zen teacher in Seattle who served on the board of the Zen Studies Society in New York. He has been openly critical of Mr. Shimano, the former abbot who was asked to resign from the society. Asked about teachers who say that sexual touch is an appropriate teaching technique, he was dismissive.

“In my opinion,” Mr. Marinello said in an e-mail, “it’s just their cultural and personal distortion to justify their predations.”

But in Zen Buddhism, students often overlook their teachers’ failings, participants say. Some Buddhists define their philosophy in contrast to Western religion: Buddhism, they believe, does not have Christian-style preoccupations about things like sex. And Zen exalts the relationship between a student and a teacher, who can come to seem irreplaceable.

“Outside the sexual things that happened,” the woman now in San Francisco said, “my relationship with him was one of the most important I have had with anyone.”

Several women said that Zen can foster an atmosphere of overt sexism. Jessica Kramer, a doula in Los Angeles, was Mr. Sasaki’s personal attendant in 2002. She said that he would reach into her robe and that she always resisted his advances. Surrounded almost entirely by men, she said she got very little sympathy. “I’d talk about it with people who’d say, ‘Why not just let him touch your breasts if he wants to touch your breasts?’ ”

Susanna Stewart began studying with Mr. Sasaki about 40 years ago. Within six months, she said, Mr. Sasaki began to touch her during sanzen. This sexualizing of their relationship “led to years of confusion and pain,” Ms. Stewart said, “eventually resulting in my becoming unable to practice Zen.” And when she married one of his priests, Mr. Sasaki tried to break them up, she said, even encouraging her husband to have an affair.

In 1992, Ms. Stewart’s husband disaffiliated himself and his North Carolina Zen Center [ http://www.nczencenter.org/ ] from Mr. Sasaki. Years later, his wife said, he received hate mail from members of his old Zen group.

The witnessing council, which wrote the report, has no official authority. Its members belong to the American Zen Teachers Association but collected stories on their own initiative, although with a statement of support from 45 other teachers and priests. One of its authors, Grace Schireson, said that Zen Buddhists in the United States have misinterpreted a Japanese philosophy.

“Because of their long history with Zen practice, people in Japan have some skepticism about priests,” Ms. Schireson said. But in the United States many proponents have a “devotion to the guru or the teacher in a way that could repress our common sense and emotional intelligence.”

Last Thursday morning, at Rinzai-ji on Cimarron Street in Los Angeles, Bob Mammoser, a resident monk, said that Mr. Sasaki’s “health is quite frail” and that he has “basically withdrawn from any active teaching.” Mr. Mammoser said there is talk of a meeting at the center to discuss what, if any, action to take.

Mr. Mammoser said he first became aware of allegations against Mr. Sasaki in the 1980s. “There have been efforts in the past to address this with him,” Mr. Mammoser said. “Basically, they haven’t been able to go anywhere.”

He added: “What’s important and is overlooked is that, besides this aspect, Roshi was a commanding and inspiring figure using Buddhist practice to help thousands find more peace, clarity and happiness in their own lives. It seems to be the kind of thing that, you get the person as a whole, good and bad, just like you marry somebody and you get their strengths and wonderful qualities as well as their weaknesses.”

© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/asia/zen-buddhists-roiled-by-accusations-against-teacher.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/asia/zen-buddhists-roiled-by-accusations-against-teacher.html?pagewanted=all ]


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Ex-congressman seeks end to child support duties

Updated 6:33 pm, Monday, February 11, 2013

CHICAGO (AP) — Former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh wants to stop making child support payments because he is unemployed.

Walsh insisted throughout his failed bid for re-election that he wasn't a "deadbeat dad" as asserted by opponents. However, according to his ex-wife's attorney, Walsh skipped the $2,134 support payment owed in January.

Lawyer Jack Coldarci told the Chicago Sun-Times ( http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Ex-congressman-seeks-end-to-child-support-duties-4269695.php [ http://bit.ly/YmNXZN ]) that Walsh on Feb. 1 filed his request in Cook County Circuit Court to terminate his child support obligation.

The filing states Walsh's employment was "terminated through no voluntary act of his own" and he is without sufficient income or assets with which to continue to pay. Walsh of McHenry was paying for one child.

Walsh, a conservative Republican, was defeated in November by Democrat Tammy Duckworth in the newly redrawn 8th District.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Ex-congressman-seeks-end-to-child-support-duties-4269695.php [no comments yet]


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Shadrack McGill, Alabama Lawmaker, Compares Abortion To 'Destroying An Eagle Egg'


Alabama state Sen. Shadrack McGill.

Posted: 02/06/2013 4:01 pm EST | Updated: 02/07/2013 4:06 am EST

Alabama State Sen. Shadrack McGill (R-Macedonia) said this week that he plans to reintroduce a bill this year that would grant legal personhood rights to a human fertilized egg and ban abortion at all stages.

“Did you know you can be charged up to $250,000 for destroying an eagle egg, but you can destroy babies in the womb?” McGill asked a reporter for the Times-Journal [ http://thedailysentinel.com/news/article_fa136fdc-6fa7-11e2-bcd6-0019bb2963f4.html ].

Fetal personhood bills have gained notoriety since 2011 because they could ban some forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization in addition to outlawing abortion. Mississippi voters rejected a personhood measure in 2011, and a similar measure has repeatedly failed to make it onto the ballot in Colorado. North Dakota lawmakers are scheduled to vote on a version of the bill on Thursday.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who reportedly has 2016 presidential ambitions, has also cosponsored a fetal personhood bill [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/paul-ryan-personhood-bill_n_2440365.html ] in Congress. The Sanctity of Human Life Act, reintroduced this year by Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), specifies that a "one-celled human embryo," even before it implants in the uterus to create a pregnancy, should be granted "all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood."

McGill said passing a personhood law would be a no-brainer for him because of his religious beliefs. "Just based on the scripture alone, the psalm that talks about God knowing us before he placed us in our mother’s womb, is enough for me to know that that is a life inside of a mother,” McGill told the Times-Journal. “So my question concerning aborted babies is, where do they go, heaven or hell? I just want to know what [people’s] perspective is.”

In response to the bill's critics who say that it could affect the legality of in vitro fertilization, McGill said he believes a fertilized egg is a child whether it is conceived inside a woman's body or "creatively outside the mother's womb," according to the Times-Journal.

State Sen. Roger H. Bedford Jr. (D), who served as Alabama Senate minority leader until several weeks ago, could not be reached for comment. ACLU Alabama also could not be immediately reached for comment.

Alabama legislators will consider several other anti-abortion bills in addition to McGill's personhood bill in its current legislative session, which began on Tuesday.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/shadrack-mcgill-abortion_n_2631873.html [with comments]


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The Not-So-Lofty Origins of the Evangelical Pro-Life Movement


Parents shop for shrink-wrapped children in a scene from Schaeffer and Koop's 1979 "Whatever Happened to the Human Race."

By Jonathan Dudley
February 4, 2013

As the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade passed, evangelical leaders marked the occasion with histories of how their community took up the anti-abortion cause. Mark Galli, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, (with whom I engaged in a discussion-via-blog-post [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-dudley/how-evangelicals-decided-that-life-begins-at-conception_b_2072716.html?view=screen ] this past fall) has suggested the movement formed out of grassroots reflection on “the terrible and inevitable consequences of legalized abortion.” Albert Mohler, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president, insisted it arose from moral outrage triggered by Roe v. Wade.

Both histories provide pristine portraits of the origins of the evangelical right, suggesting its founders based their advocacy on scholarly assessments and aspired to noble political ends. But a history can be told that is significantly less flattering.

The right-wing evangelical movement was not an immediate backlash to Roe v. Wade. The evangelical community, unlike Roman Catholicism, showed little interest in combating abortion until almost 1980. As Jerry Falwell lamented in 1979, “The Roman Catholic Church for many years has stood virtually alone against abortion. I think it’s an indictment against the rest of us that we’ve allowed them to stand alone.”

Although evangelicals were mostly silent on abortion after Roe v. Wade, they were not silent on other political issues. Paul Weyrich, one of the evangelical right’s most influential founders, recalls that the movement initially emerged to defend racially segregated Christian schools from government intrusion:

[W]hat galvanized the Christian community was not abortion, school prayer, or the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment]. I am living witness to that because I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed. What changed their minds was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.

In other words, as Randall Balmer [ http://www.religiondispatches.org/contributors/randallbalmer/ ] has succinctly put it [ http://books.google.com/books?id=LSO5YDifWz8C&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=the+religious+right+of+the+late+twentieth+century+organized+to+perpetuate+racial+discrimination&source=bl&ots=PlSB04yzDZ&sig=tuoDQ6GefpLHpdhVpiI7u4Wxa7c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ns0YUeYoyKLYBcfWgLgM&sqi=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20religious%20right%20of%20the%20late%20twentieth%20century%20organized%20to%20perpetuate%20racial%20discrimination&f=false ]: “the religious right of the late twentieth century organized to perpetuate racial discrimination.”

Only after the movement was underway did it begin advocacy on abortion. It did so, in large part, based on highly dubious arguments advanced by the popular writer Francis Schaeffer.

Schaeffer held a master’s degree from Westminster Theological Seminary (though he went by “Dr. Schaeffer”) and argued, in 1979’s Whatever Happened to the Human Race? [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uoFkVroRyY (next below)]

(co-written with the surgeon C. Everrett Koop, and offered as both book and film series), that legalized abortion represented an abandonment of the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage. He is introduced in the film as “one of the world’s most respected thinkers”—a generous title given that Schaeffer plays loose with history, neglecting to mention that abortion was in fact legal when the nation was founded.

Schaeffer and Koop advance the argument that if evangelicals don’t mobilize to stop abortion, infanticide and involuntary euthanasia will soon become widespread.

They have to go back to Roman theologian Tertullian to reinforce their claim that the “orthodox position” is that life begins at conception, conveniently leaving out the fact that Church fathers Augustine and Aquinas—and most evangelicals up until the 1970s—are on the other side of the argument. As Aquinas put it (in a view that remained the official position of the Catholic Church from the medieval era to the mid-1800s), “The rational soul ought to be united to a body which may be a suitable organ of sensation... before the body has organs in any way whatever, it cannot be receptive of the soul.”

More sophisticated anti-abortion arguments were advanced once the movement was already underway, notably the 1982 publication of Michael Gorman’s Abortion and the Early Church or the 1984 publication of John Jefferson Davis’ Abortion and the Evangelical. But Schaeffer’s arugments are often cited by the founders of the evangelical right as what convinced them to take up the cause against abortion.

Just as influential, however, was pressure from Republican party operatives to form a movement that could steal socially conservative voters from Democrats. As Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel have written [ http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal/feature/before-(and-after)-roe-v.-wade:-new-questions-about-backlash/ ]:

[F]eminist support for abortion rights had imbued the abortion issue with associations that could be tapped to mobilize a wide array of cultural conservatives... Strategists for the Republican Party approached Falwell and encouraged him to organize evangelicals as a ‘Moral Majority’ that would promote a ‘pro-family’ politics.

Once formed, the Moral Majority and its allies mobilized evangelicals to join Catholics in the fight against abortion by advancing a novel and tendentious interpretation of the Bible.

“The Bible clearly states that life begins at conception,” Falwell declared, referencing Luke 1:39–44 and Psalm 139:13–16.

“Abortion is not birth control nor family planning. It is murder according to the Word of God… It is time that medical students as well as every other person in our United States put those words ‘from the time of conception’ back into their thinking.”

Falwell and his array of allies disseminated this interpretation of the Bible, in a top-down political campaign, to millions of evangelicals across America, with mailers sporting titles like “Scriptures for Life.”

Given that the Bible, does not, in fact, teach that life begins at conception, evangelical scholars understandably emerged to challenge these views. The evangelical pro-life movement maintained momentum by actively suppressing such scholarship.

David Gareth Jones’ Brave New People was published by InterVarsity Press in 1984. The book, subtitled “Ethical Issues at the Commencement of Life,” argued for a moderate position on abortion, seeing embryos as morally valuable but not equivalent to children. Popular evangelical leaders across the country condemned the publication as a “monstrous book,” describing its author as on a “bandwagon bound for hell.” Evangelical outrage forced InterVarsity Press to withdraw a book for the first time in its history [ http://books.google.com/books/about/Heart_Soul_Mind_Strength.html?id=x3WYUEQJv48C ].

In 1989, Hessel Bouma III of the evangelical Calvin College teamed with several other Christian scholars to write Christian Faith, Health, and Medical Practice. They argued that the Bible does not actually teach that life begins at conception and that the new anti-abortion advocacy was unsupported by science, concluding while abortion may be morally wrong, “We should not support a right-to-life amendment that would grant personhood to fetuses from conception... personhood should be morally and legally granted to fetuses at the end of the second trimester.”

After the publication, Bouma was tarred a “pro-abortion” professor and Calvin College received a stream of demands that he resign. He later noted that many other evangelical scholars shared his view but were afraid to speak publicly about it in light of such reactions.

As the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade passes, it’s important to remember both sides of the evangelical anti-abortion movement’s history. Yes, it did involve legitimate moral concerns about abortion, it did occasion serious reflection on the issue by evangelical scholars and pastors, and it did bring a formerly apolitical segment of America into the political process.

But its founding moral outrage stemmed not from Roe v. Wade, but from the prospect of government-imposed desegregation; it rest its intellectual foundation on highly dubious, non-scholarly arguments advanced by Francis Schaeffer; it mobilized lay evangelicals to action by telling them the Bible teaches something it does not actually teach; and it actively suppressed the scholarship of evangelicals who held alternative viewpoints.

Although it may be tempting to conclude with Mark Galli that “God uses the messiness of history to accomplish his will,” just because these strategies worked does not mean the movement has God’s endorsement.

Given the dubious origins of the evangelical pro-life movement, and the intractable nature of the conflict, perhaps the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade should serve as an occasion for evangelicals to reconsider their commitment to criminalizing abortion.

© Religion Dispatches 2013

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/6801/the_not_so_lofty_origins_of_the_evangelical_pro_life_movement_/ [with comments] [also at http://www.salon.com/2013/02/09/the_founding_of_evangelical_anti_abortion_campaign_wasnt_pretty_partner/ (with comments)]


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North Dakota Personhood Measure Passes State Senate


Tammi Kromenaker, director of Fargo’s Red River Women’s Clinic, testifies before the House Human Services Committee on Wednesday Jan. 31, 2013 in Bismarck, N.D. Kromenaker says proposed legislation that would impose more stringent restrictions on abortions in North Dakota are aimed at shutting down her clinic, which is North Dakota’s sole abortion provider.
(AP Photo/James MacPherson)

By Laura Bassett
Posted: 02/07/2013 5:24 pm EST | Updated: 02/08/2013 3:42 pm EST

North Dakota has only one abortion clinic and has been rated the worst state in the country [ http://prospect.org/article/worst-state-women ] for women, but the State Senate passed two bills on Thursday will make it even more difficult for women in the state to access abortion care.

North Dakota lawmakers passed a Personhood Constitutional Amendment initiative [ http://legiscan.com/ND/bill/4009/2013 ] on Thursday that would amend the state's constitution to give legal rights and protections to human embryos. If the ballot initiative passes the House, North Dakota voters will decide on it during the 2014 elections.

"We are intending that it be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, since Scalia said that the Supreme Court is waiting for states to raise a case," state Sen. Margaret Sitte (R), the sponsor of the personhood initiative, told HuffPost.

The Senate also passed a bill on Thursday that could shut down the North Dakota's one abortion clinic, the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, by requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. A similar law in Mississippi is currently threatening to close the only clinic in that state [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/mississippi-abortion-clinic_n_2205153.html ] because the hospitals near the Jackson clinic are all refusing the applications of doctors who perform abortions.

Sitte said that while the bill could effectively end abortion in North Dakota, she supports the bill because it would protect women who experience medical complications after the procedure. "Yes, this bill could possibly close the abortion clinic [in Fargo]," she said. "I'm not saying that's the intention of the law. The intention of the law is to ensure that women have adequate health care and the follow-up care that they need."

The State Senate rejected a second personhood bill introduced by Sitte that would have made it difficult for women to use in vitro fertilization. The bill would have prohibited doctors from disposing of unused embryos after an in vitro cycle, which would force families to pay hundreds of dollars each year to keep the embryos frozen indefinitely. It would have also prevented women with cancer or other illnesses from using a sperm or egg donor to conceive through in vitro fertilization.

"It's like a bad episode of the twilight zone," said Rania Batrice, communications director the North Dakota Democratic Party. "These bills just open the door for every other state in the country to interject themselves into everybody's bedroom."

Sitte said she fully expects North Dakotans to pass the personhood measure in 2014, which declares “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and defended.”

"We know North Dakotans are pro-life," she said. "This just puts a statement of fact into the Constitution."

Sarah Stoesz, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, expressed her disappointment on Thursday with the Senate's votes.

“Politicians in North Dakota are wasting taxpayer time advancing what would no doubt become another divisive constitutional amendment with dangerous unintended consequences for North Dakota families," she said in a statement. "Planned Parenthood will continue to fight these legislative attacks on women’s health in partnership with a broad coalition of doctors, patients, teachers, lawyers and other concerned North Dakotans who do not want to see politicians inserting themselves into the private medical decision-making of women and families in our state.”

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/north-dakota-personhood_n_2640380.html [with embedded video report, and (over 18,000) comments]


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'Dafne,' 9-Year-Old Girl, Gives Birth To Baby Girl In Mexico
02/08/2013
[...]
The new mother is one of 11 children [ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/02/06/girl-9-gives-birth-in-mexico/ ], according to ABC, and her parents were unable to watch her while they worked.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/dafne-9-year-old-girl-gives-birth-mexico-baby-girl_n_2632631.html [with embedded video report, and comments] [and see http://articles2.mamaslatinas.com/in_the_news/150922/9yearold_who_gave_birth_reportedly (with comments)]


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9-Year-Old Mother Is At Least 12, Mexican Officials Say



02/13/13 07:23 PM ET EST

MEXICO CITY -- Authorities in the Mexican state of Jalisco say tests have revealed that a girl who gave birth two weeks ago is between 12 and 13 years of age, not 9 as the parents had claimed.

Jalisco state prosecutors also say the girl was impregnated by her stepfather and not her alleged 17-year-old boyfriend.

Authorities announced last week that a 9-year-old had given birth to a baby girl and that they were looking for her boyfriend.

But prosecutors said Wednesday that DNA tests revealed the baby's father is the girl's 44-year-old stepfather and that he is under arrest.

They said an anthropological study of the girl showed she is between 12 and 13 [ah, much better (. . .)]. The girl's parents didn't have a birth certificate for her and initially told authorities she was 9.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/9-yearold-mother_n_2682652.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Arizona Planned Parenthood Law Overturned By Federal Judge



By Laura Bassett
Posted: 02/11/2013 5:39 pm EST | Updated: 02/11/2013 6:06 pm EST

A federal judge overturned a state law in Arizona on Friday that banned Planned Parenthood from contracting with Medicaid.

"A state may not restrict a beneficiary's right to select any qualified provider for reasons wholly unrelated to the provider's ability to deliver Medicaid services," U.S. District Judge Neil Wake wrote in the ruling.

The law, passed by Republican legislators in Arizona in May 2012 [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/05/jan-brewer-s-abortion-grenade-defunding-planned-parenthood.html ], blocked Medicaid family planning funds from flowing to any health organization that provides abortions. It effectively prevented thousands of low-income Medicaid recipients in Arizona from choosing Planned Parenthood as a health and family planning provider.

A nearly identical law in Indiana was struck down by a federal appeals court [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/indiana-planned-parenthood-ruling_n_2005832.html ] in October, because federal Medicaid law says that states cannot discriminate against an otherwise qualified provider because it offers a legal medical service.

Susan B. Anthony List, a national anti-abortion organization, expressed deep disappointment with the judge's decision in Arizona.

“Judge Wake’s ruling thwarts the will of Arizona taxpayers to stop funding big abortion businesses such as Planned Parenthood," SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement Monday. "As a result, funds will be reduced for agencies that provide whole women’s health care."

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/arizona-planned-parenthood-_n_2664671.html [with comments]


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The Internal Memo That Allowed IBM's Female Employees to Get Married

When Eleanor Kolchin worked at IBM in the late 1940s she had to keep her marriage a secret.
Feb 4 2013

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/the-internal-memo-that-allowed-ibms-female-employees-to-get-married/272832/ [with comments]


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A Pop Star Shouldn't Shave Her Head in Shame for Having a Boyfriend

What Minami Minegishi's fall from grace says about gender relations in Japan
Feb 8 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/a-pop-star-shouldnt-shave-her-head-in-shame-for-having-a-boyfriend/272907/ [with comments]


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Accused 'Witch' Kepari Leniata Burned Alive By Mob In Papua New Guinea


A photo taken on Feb. 6 shows a young mother accused of sorcery who was stripped naked, reportedly tortured with a branding iron, tied up, splashed with fuel and set alight on a pile of rubbish topped with car tyres, in Mount Hagen city in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. According to the Post-Courier newspaper she was torched by villagers who claimed she killed a 6-year-old boy through sorcery, with police outnumbered by onlookers and unable to intervene.
(AFP / Getty Images)

By Meredith Bennett-Smith
Posted: 02/07/2013 4:46 pm EST | Updated: 02/09/2013 1:46 pm EST

A young mother was burned alive in Papua New Guinea ["96% of citizens identified themselves as members of a Christian church" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea#Religion )] this week after townspeople accused her of being a witch.

According to multiple reports, Kepari Leniata, 20, was tortured and killed in front of a mob [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21363894 ] of hundreds in the town of Mount Hagen. The woman, stripped naked and covered in gasoline, was burned alive on a pile of trash [ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-07/woman-burned-alive-for-sorcery-in-png/4506452 ] by relatives of a young boy who had died earlier in the week. The relatives had accused Leniata of killing him with sorcery.

Police and firefighters who tried to save Leniata were chased away by an overwhelming crowd [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/07/new-guinea-woman-tortured-burned-alive-in-sorcery-case/ ]. Agence France-Press writes that the woman "admitted to killing the boy, who died after being [hospitalized] with stomach and chest pains on Tuesday."

According to the BBC, police chief Supt Kaiglo Ambane told local media that those responsible for Leniata's murder [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21363894 ] would be brought to justice.

The U.S. Embassy and Australia's high commissioner have condemned the murder. In a statement featured in a report by the Australian Associated Press, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill said that "no one commits such a despicable act [ http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/png-woman-burned-alive/story-e6frf7k6-1226572679631 ]."

"Barbaric killings connected with alleged sorcery. Violence against women because of this belief that sorcery kills," O'Neill said, according to the AAP. "These are becoming all too common in certain parts of the country. It is reprehensible that women, the old and the weak in our society should be targeted for alleged sorcery or wrongs that they actually have nothing to do with."

AFP notes that many people in the island nation believe in sorcery [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/07/new-guinea-woman-tortured-burned-alive-in-sorcery-case/ ] rather than accept natural causes of death. While the 1971 Sorcery Act technically outlaws the burning of alleged witches, the practice persists. In 2009, another woman was burned alive for alleged sorcery, the news outlet points out.

In a 2009 blog for The Huffington Post, Zama Coursen-Neff, the director of Human Rights Watch's Children's Rights Division, said that this incident and other similar killings have become indicative of a larger, more troubling trend [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zama-coursenneff/where-violence-against-wo_b_161339.html ].

She wrote:

In Papua New Guinea, research indicates, two-thirds of women experience domestic violence, and 50 percent of women have experienced forced sex. The Australian development agency AUSAID just issued a new report identifying violence against women as a major barrier to Papua New Guinea's development.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/kepari-leniata-young-mother-burned-alive-mob-sorcery-papua-new-guinea_n_2638431.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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New Hampshire Domestic Violence Bill Would Weaken Existing Laws


New Hampshire State Rep. Dan Itse (R) sponsored two bills that would roll back the state's domestic violence laws.

By Laura Bassett
Posted: 02/04/2013 5:41 pm EST | Updated: 02/05/2013 2:16 am EST

The New Hampshire House Criminal Justice Committee will hear two bills on Tuesday that would prevent a law enforcement officer from arresting a domestic abuser unless the officer witnesses the abuse occurring, or a victim files a formal criminal complaint with the court.

Under existing law in New Hampshire, if an officer arrives at a home and sees a victim who displays clear signs of having been battered, the officer is allowed to arrest the perpetrator based on probable cause. State Rep. Dan Itse (R), the sponsor of two new bills [ http://openstates.org/nh/bills/2013/HB502/ and http://openstates.org/nh/bills/2013/HB503/ ] (HB 502 and 503) that would modify that law, wants to require the victim to file a complaint before an arrest can take place.

"My proposed change requires a criminal complaint to be filed, so it doesn't even meet constitutional muster, but it moves in that direction," he told HuffPost. "Until we change the Constitution, I don't see a justification for circumventing it."

Itse argues that that it is unconstitutional to arrest anyone without a warrant, and tried to pass a stronger bill in 2012 that would have prevented officers from arresting an abuser without obtaining one. That bill received too much backlash from the community, he said, and so he revised it. His new version [HB 503], which has eight Republican cosponsors, would install protections for people who have been falsely accused of domestic violence.

"It gives the accused something to act against," he said. "If a domestic violence complaint is lodged and it turns out to be a false complaint, then lodging the false complaint is itself a crime. This allows for somebody to defend themselves if somebody's using the domestic violence laws inappropriately."

Domestic violence workers are worried that the law will roll back protections for domestic violence victims and increase the rate of lethality. New Hampshire Attorney General Michael Delaney recently released data [ http://www.unionleader.com/article/20121023/NEWS/710239977 ] that shows that most victims of domestic violence in New Hampshire don't report the abuse, and roughly half of the murders in the state since 2001 have been domestic violence-related homicides.

"Domestic violence is one of the most under-reported crimes, and this bill would bring us back to a time in the 70s whens we had no victim protections in place under the law," said Amanda Grady Sexton, a spokesperson for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic Violence. "The increase in lethality risk for victims and their children would be through the roof. We should be doing everything in our power to reduce those homicides, not increase them."

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/new-hampshire-domestic-violence_n_2618152.html [with comments] [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=83821360 and preceding (and any future following)]


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VAWA Vote Prompts False Information From Conservative Groups

Jim DeMint, a former Republican senator, is now the president of the Heritage Foundation, which is lobbying Republicans ahead of the VAWA vote.
02/11/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/vawa-vote-senate_n_2664224.html [with comments]


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East Tennessee man kills wife, 2 children, self
Feb 2, 2013
http://www.tennessean.com/viewart/20130202/NEWS21/130202012/East-Tennessee-man-kills-wife-2-children-self [with comment]


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Oscar Pistorius to face murder charge over girlfriend's shooting

Pistorius pictured with Steenkamp in Johannesburg in January.

Oscar Pistorius competing for South Africa.
South African sprint star expected to apply for bail after allegedly shooting dead Reeva Steenkamp at his Pretoria home
14 February 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/14/oscar-pistorius-murder-girlfriends-shooting [with embedded video report] [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=78228145 and preceding and following]


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Fayhan Al Ghamdi, Saudi Cleric, Reportedly Beats 5-Year-Old Daughter To Death, Receives Only Light Sentence


House windows are latticed to shield the women inside from view, Jidda, Saudi Arabia
(Photo by Jodi Cobb/National Geographic/Getty Images)

02/03/13 08:39 AM ET EST

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Online activists in Saudi Arabia are calling for harsher punishments for child abuse after reports that a prominent cleric received only a light sentence after confessing to the beating death of his 5-year-old daughter.

The social media campaign gaining momentum Sunday is the latest attempt to use the Internet to pressure the kingdom's ultraconservative rulers.

Saudi media reports say Fayhan al-Ghamdi, a frequent guest on Islamic TV programs, was arrested in November on charges of killing the girl. The reports said he questioned the child's virginity.

Saudi media say he was freed last week after serving a short prison term and agreeing to pay $50,000 in "blood money" to avoid a possible death sentence.

The money was presumably offered to the girl's mother or other relatives.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/fayhan-al-ghamdi-_n_2610841.html [with comments]


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California Preschool Closing After Alleged Sexual Activity Between Students

Video [embedded]

A Carson, Calif., preschool is shutting down as allegations of sexual activity between students surfaced.
(ABC News)

By ALYSSA NEWCOMB
Feb. 2, 2013

A Carson, Calif., preschool is closing after parents learned of alleged sexual activity [ http://abcnews.go.com/US/los-angeles-school-closed-teacher-abuse-scandal/story?id=15525125 ] between 4- and 5-year-olds, according to an attorney representing the alleged victims.

Some students in the preschool class at the First Lutheran Church of Carson School would engage in oral sex during naptime, in the tunnel slide on the playground and in an outside bathroom, attorney Greg Owen told ABCNews.com.

"It all boils down to a lack of supervision," Owen said. "There were times when teachers would let aides in the room for hours at a time to watch the kids. During naptime, the aides would be sleeping and the children would have been molesting each other during this time."

Church leaders said the closing was related to the school director's resignation for personal reasons and insisted the alleged sexual incidents had nothing to do with the closure, ABC News' Los Angeles station KABC-TV reported.

The California Department of Social Services cited the school for at least one of the sexual encounters and an improper student-teacher ratio.

Owen, who is representing four alleged victims, said he plans to file a lawsuit on Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the school, the church, the principal, the teacher and an alleged child perpatrator.

The unnamed child cannot be identified by his or her alleged acts, according to the law, Owen said.

A father told ABC station KABC-TV in Los Angeles that his 4-year-old son often received oral sex from a 5-year-old girl at school.

"He told me about all the bad things that girl had been doing to him," the father said. "It went down in the classroom, it went down in the bathroom and it went down out on the playground."

At least one other boy said he received oral sex from the same 5-year-old girl, KABC-TV reported.

"Their lives will be ruined in many ways," Owen said. "And we know there are many more [victims]."

With the mid-semester closing of the school, parents are scrambling to find alternatives, but they say it hasn't been easy.

The father who spoke to KABC said he's having trouble sending his son to a new school.

"There's no way I can just take him to another school and be that parent that just lets a predator loose," he said. "How else do you explain it?"

Owen said he has talked to several other parents who have the same worry.

"Parents are saying, 'My child is now a predator. Now how can I let him go to another school?" he said. "I have talked to three of the parents who have not been able to, but I would think there are schools around.

"There were many children lying there and they watched these acts. In our business and in psychologicial terms, that's sexualizing a child at a young age," he said.

Copyright © 2013 ABC News Internet Ventures. Yahoo! - ABC News Network

http://abcnews.go.com/US/california-preschool-closing-alleged-sexual-activity-students/story?id=18386588 [with comments]


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Rev. Rob Morris, Lutheran Pastor, Apologizes For Praying At Newtown Interfaith Vigil


Rev. Rob Morris speaks at an interfaith vigil for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012, at Newtown High School in Newtown, Conn. A gunman walked into the elementary school Friday and opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children.
(AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

By Caleb Bell
Posted: 02/07/2013 8:40 am EST | Updated: 02/07/2013 1:05 pm EST

(RNS) A Lutheran pastor in Newtown, Conn., has apologized after being reprimanded for participating in an interfaith vigil following the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The Rev. Rob Morris, pastor of Christ the King Lutheran Church, prayed at the vigil the Sunday following the Dec. 14 shootings alongside other Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Baha'i clergy.

Morris' church is a member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the denomination's constitution prohibits ministers from participating in services with members of different faiths.

It's not the first time a Missouri Synod pastor has been reprimanded for joining an interfaith prayer service; a New York pastor also was suspended for participating in an interfaith service after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

LCMS president Matthew Harrison wrote in a letter to the Synod that "the presence of prayers and religious readings" made the Newtown vigil joint worship, and therefore off-limits to Missouri Synod ministers. Harrison said Morris' participation also offended members of the denomination.

"After consultation with my supervisors and others, I made my own decision," Morris wrote in his apology letter. "I believed my participation to be, not an act of joint worship, but an act of community chaplaincy."

The Newtown Interfaith Clergy Association hosted the Dec. 16 vigil, which was attended by Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy and President Obama.

In his opening statements at the vigil, the Rev. Matt Crebbin of the Newtown Congregational Church made clear that the participating religious leaders were not endorsing one another.

"We are not here to ignore out differences or to diminish the core beliefs which define our many different faith traditions," Crebbin said, according to a CNN transcript of the event.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Missouri Synod pastor David Benke participated in the Prayer for America interfaith service at Yankee Stadium. Although had the approval of then-LCMS president Gerald Kieshnick, the Synod's Dispute Resolution Panel suspended Benke.

He was reinstated in 2003 by Kieshnick and returned to his post as president of the denomination's Atlantic District.

Harrison wrote in his letter that despite his reprimand of Morris, the Missouri Synod does not unanimously agree on what joint worship is. The denomination is still attempting to define it.

"I am looking forward to working together with (Morris) and others in the Synod to strive for greater unity and consensus among us," Harrison wrote.

The St. Louis-based Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is the smaller of the two largest branches of Lutheranism in the U.S., with almost 2.3 million members. The more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church of America has 4 million members.

Harrison was unavailable for comment, and Morris declined to comment.

Copyright 2013 Religion News Service

*

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/rev-rob-morris-apologizes-praying-at-newtown-interfaith-vigil_n_2635576.html [with comments; the YouTube, as embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pn-hkOkRmo ]


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Dangerous Gun Myths

Editorial
Published: February 2, 2013

The debate over what to do to reduce gun violence in America hit an absurd low point on Wednesday when a Senate witness tried to portray a proposed new ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines as some sort of sexist plot that would disproportionately hurt vulnerable women and their children.

The witness was Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a right-wing public policy group that provides pseudofeminist support for extreme positions that are in fact dangerous to women. She told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the limits on firepower proposed by Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, would harm women because an assault weapon “in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon.” She spoke of the “peace of mind” and “courage” a woman derives from “knowing she has a scary-looking gun” when she’s fighting violent criminals.

It is not at all clear where Ms. Trotter gained her insight into confrontations between women and heavily armed intruders, since it is not at all clear that sort of thing happens often. It is tempting to dismiss her notion that an AR-15 is a woman’s best friend as the kooky reflex response of someone ideologically opposed to gun control laws and who, in her case, has also been a vociferous opponent of the Violence Against Women Act, the 1994 law that assists women facing domestic violence.

But it is important to note that Ms. Trotter was chosen to testify by the committee’s Republican members, who will have a big say on what, if anything, Congress does on guns; and that her appearance before the committee was to give voice to the premise, however insupportable and dangerous it may be, that guns make women and children safer — and the more powerful the guns the better.

Ms. Trotter related the story of Sarah McKinley, an 18-year-old Oklahoma woman who shot and killed an intruder on New Year’s Eve 2011, when she was home alone with her baby. The story was telling, but not in the way she intended, as Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, pointed out. The woman was able to repel the intruder using an ordinary Remington 870 Express 12-gauge shotgun, which would not be banned under the proposed statute. She did not need a military-style weapon with a 30-round magazine.

But there is a more fundamental problem with the idea that guns actually protect the hearth and home. Guns rarely get used that way. In the 1990s, a team headed by Arthur Kellermann of Emory University looked at all injuries involving guns kept in the home in Memphis, Seattle and Galveston, Tex. They found that these weapons were fired far more often in accidents, criminal assaults, homicides or suicide attempts than in self-defense. For every instance in which a gun in the home was shot in self-defense, there were seven criminal assaults or homicides, four accidental shootings, and 11 attempted or successful suicides.

The cost-benefit balance of having a gun in the home is especially negative for women, according to a 2011 review by David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Far from making women safer, a gun in the home is “a particularly strong risk factor” for female homicides and the intimidation of women.

In domestic violence situations, the risk of homicide for women increased eightfold when the abuser had access to firearms, according to a study published in The American Journal of Public Health in 2003. Further, there was “no clear evidence” that victims’ access to a gun reduced their risk of being killed. Another 2003 study, by Douglas Wiebe of the University of Pennsylvania, found that females living with a gun in the home were 2.7 times more likely to be murdered than females with no gun at home.

Regulating guns, on the other hand, can reduce that risk. An analysis by Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that in states that required a background check for every handgun sale, women were killed by intimate partners at a much lower rate. Senator Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, has used this fact to press the case for universal background checks, to make sure that domestic abusers legally prohibited from having guns cannot get them.

As for the children whose safety Ms. Trotter professes to be so concerned about, guns in the home greatly increase the risk of youth suicides. That is why the American Academy of Pediatrics has long urged parents to remove guns from their homes.

The idea that guns are essential to home defense and women’s safety is a myth. It should not be allowed to block the new gun controls that the country so obviously needs.

© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/dangerous-gun-myths.html [with comments]


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Gayle Trotter Should Reconsider Armed Guards In Schools
February 01, 2013
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/rethinking-armed-guards-schools-solution [with embedded video, and comments]


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LaPierre Reveals True Purpose Behind Assault Weapons

By Josh Horwitz
Executive Director, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Posted: 02/04/2013 8:58 am

Following last week's high-profile Senate Judiciary hearing in response to the tragedy at Newtown, the media paid extensive attention to National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre's flip-flop [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/01/30/1515911/senator-catches-nra-head-in-epic-flip-flop/ ] on the issue of closing the Gun Show Loophole and witness Gayle Trotter's ridiculous assertion [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/01/30/gayle_trotter_s_fantasies_of_fighting_off_violent_men_don_t_have_anything.html ] that "guns make women safer [ http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/30/guns-make-women-safer-says-gayle-trotter-at-senate-hearing/ ]."

What went largely unnoticed was perhaps the most telling moment of the hearing, which involved this exchange [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-judiciary-committee-hearing-on-gun-violence-on-jan-30-2013-transcript/2013/01/30/1f172222-6af5-11e2-af53-7b2b2a7510a8_story_4.html ] between LaPierre and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin:

DURBIN: Mr. LaPierre, I run into some of your members in Illinois and here's what they tell me, "Senator, you don't get the Second Amendment." Your NRA members say, "You just don't get it. It's not just about hunting. It's not just about sports. It's not just about shooting targets. It's not just about defending ourselves from criminals," as Ms. Trotter testified. "We need the firepower and the ability to protect ourselves from our government--from our government, from the police--if they knock on our doors and we need to fight back." Do you agree with that point of view?

LAPIERRE: Senator, I think without any doubt, if you look at why our founding fathers put it there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny.

During a hearing in which Republican Senators actively tried to portray assault weapons as merely "scary-looking [ http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2013/01/sen-ted-cruz-mocks-proposed-ban-on-scary-looking-guns/ ]" pieces of plastic with no real functional purpose, LaPierre's statement revealed that they are in fact weapons of choice for individuals ready to wage war on our government. This was certainly not the first time LaPierre had made such a declaration -- remember, this is the guy who told us "the guys with the guns make the rules [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqAWQ-TMF3I (next below)]"

at a CPAC conference -- but his statement on Wednesday was nonetheless remarkable because it so clearly articulated the insurrectionist idea [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-horwitz/in-wake-of-tucson-nra-adv_b_823275.html ] on a national stage, linking it directly to the need for unfettered access to assault weapons. Now, no doubt remains about the type of "firepower" citizens would need in order to fight LaPierre's "tyranny" ... The same type of firepower that Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary.

And Baltimore Police Chief James Johnson, the Chair of the National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence, who was sitting at the witness table with LaPierre, was more than happy to explain [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-judiciary-committee-hearing-on-gun-violence-on-jan-30-2013-transcript/2013/01/30/1f172222-6af5-11e2-af53-7b2b2a7510a8_story_4.html ] the true purpose of a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle:

We use that weapon in police because of its technical capability, it's ability to cool down and handle round after round after round ... It's rugged...it's meant for a combat or environment that one would be placed in facing adversaries, human beings, people. That weapon can be retrofitted with other devices to enhance your offensive capability. The weapon itself has features to adjust it -- optics sights, for example -- that can cost hundreds of dollars, and I've shot this weapon many times -- that would enhance our capability in various tactical maneuvers, whether [you're firing] from the shoulder or the hip or whether you choose to spray fire that weapon or individually shoot from the shoulder.

A cosmetically different version of Grandpa's hunting rifle? I don't think so. A vigorous public debate over the true purpose of assault weapons is one that the gun lobby wants to avoid at all costs. Such a debate would belie their claim that AR-15s are "modern sporting rifles [ http://www.nssf.org/MSR/ ]" with no military application whatsoever and invigorate the push for a renewal of the assault weapons ban. Once average Americans understand the interplay [ http://www.smith-wesson.com/wcsstore/SmWesson/upload/images/firearms/811000_spec_sm.jpg (next below)]

between the militarization of civilian weaponry and the gun lobby's devotion to insurrectionist rhetoric, the gig is up for Wayne & Co.

That awakening is happening before our eyes, in large part because President Obama has begun to speak out strongly [ http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-16/politics/36384426_1_gun-rights-gun-ownership-gun-advocates ] about how the NRA's radical reading of the Second Amendment threatens other basic American freedoms. During a White House press conference on January 16 announcing his new package of gun policy reforms, the president said [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2013/01/16/president-obama-introduces-plan-reduce-gun-violence#transcript ] this:

The right to worship freely and safely, that right was denied to Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The right to assemble peaceably, that right was denied shoppers in Clackamas, Oregon, and moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado. That most fundamental set of rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- fundamental rights that were denied to college students at Virginia Tech, and high school students at Columbine, and elementary school students in Newtown, and kids on street corners in Chicago on too frequent a basis to tolerate, and all the families who've never imagined that they'd lose a loved one to a bullet -- those rights are at stake. We're responsible.

These words were invoked with horror by NRA ally and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley at the Senate Judiciary hearing. Grassley, too, senses the potential power of this new, anti-insurrectionist idea and he countered [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-judiciary-committee-hearing-on-gun-violence-on-jan-30-2013-transcript/2013/01/30/1f172222-6af5-11e2-af53-7b2b2a7510a8_story_4.html ] aggressively:

I was taken aback when [President Obama] cited the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as sources of government power to restrict gun ownership rights ... The right to peacefully assemble protects individual rights to organize, to protest, and seek to change to government action. That right is trivialized and mischaracterized as protecting shopping and watching movies ... No wonder millions of Americans fear that the president might take executive action and Congress may enact legislation that could lead to tyrannical federal government. So, I cannot accept the president's claim that, quote, "There will be politicians and special interest lobbyists publicly warning of tyrannical all-out assault on liberty, not because that's true, but because they want to gin up fear."

The senator is out of touch if he believes that gun policy proposals that enjoy overwhelming popular support [ http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/01-14-13%20Gun%20Policy%20Release.pdf ] (even among gun owners) constitute a "tyrannical all-out assault on liberty." He seems to personally validate the president's notion that the gun lobby (and its allies) will engage in fear mongering to protect industry profits.

Those whose families and lives were destroyed by the mass shooting in Newtown certainly aren't buying it. On the same day that LaPierre and Grassley were disseminating venomous falsehoods about the intent behind the Second Amendment, David Wheeler -- the father of 6 year-old Sandy Hook victim Benjamin Wheeler-- gave the following remarkable testimony [ http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/30/a-sandy-hook-parent-gives-testimony-the-senate-should-have-heard/ ] in front of the Connecticut legislature's Bipartisan Task Force on Violence and Public Safety:

Thomas Jefferson described our inalienable rights as life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness; the rights with which we are endowed for the protection of which we have instituted governments. I do not think the composition of that foundational phrase was an accident. I do not think the order of those important words was haphazard or casual. The liberty of any person to own a military-style assault weapon and a high-capacity magazine and keep them in their home is second to the right of my son to his life, his life, to the right to live of all of those children, and those teachers. To the right to the lives of your children, of you, of all of us, all of our lives, it is second. Let's honor the founding documents and get our priorities straight.

Indeed. And getting our priorities straight means rejecting the notion that we have some type of fundamental right to take up assault weapons against the government our Founders created.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-horwitz/lapierre-reveals-true-pur_b_2614348.html [with comments]


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Wayne LaPierre: More Guns Needed For 'Hellish World' Filled With Hurricanes, Kidnappers, Drug Gangs


Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, speaks before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 30, 2013, in Washington.
(Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

By Christina Wilkie
Posted: 02/13/2013 7:18 pm EST | Updated: 02/13/2013 7:38 pm EST

WASHINGTON -- Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, adopted on Wednesday a significantly more ominous and expansive line of reasoning than he has before in order to make the case that newer, more dangerous threats require Americans to buy more guns, join the NRA and organize opposition to gun control measures.

"Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are perils we are sure to face -- not just maybe," LaPierre wrote in a commentary published by The Daily Caller [ http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/13/stand-and-fight/ (next item below)], a conservative news site. "It's not paranoia to buy a gun. It's survival. It's responsible behavior, and it's time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that."

"Tens of millions of Americans are already preparing to Stand And Fight to protect their families and homes," LaPierre declared, but the threats are growing "during the second Obama term."

In dramatic language, LaPierre wrote that "the American people clearly see the daunting forces we will undoubtedly face: terrorists, crime, drug gangs, the possibility of Euro-style debt riots, civil unrest or natural disaster. Gun owners are not buying firearms because they anticipate a confrontation with the government. Rather, we anticipate confrontations where the government isn't there -- or simply doesn't show up in time."

New York City in the wake of Hurricane Sandy was LaPierre's prime example of just such a disaster: "After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all."

The facts, however, indicate the opposite [ http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/02/14884281-new-york-city-sees-no-homicides-for-days-after-superstorm-sandy ] was true. In the five days following Hurricane Sandy, there were no homicides at all in New York City -- which is unusual, considering historical data.

The Daily Caller commentary marks a strong departure from the measured tone the NRA took in an ad released less than a day earlier. In the ad, NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox calmly laid out the case that gun control measures currently being proposed in Congress will not work and cited doubts by a member of the Obama Justice Department as to their overall effectiveness.

New York and its staunchly pro-gun-control mayor, Michael Bloomberg, together represent a bogeyman that LaPierre referenced throughout his diatribe. "Michael Bloomberg and [progressive mega-donor] George Soros are each, individually, far wealthier than the entire National Rifle Association," LaPierre wrote. "The hard truth is that due to Bloomberg, Soros, and the rest of their ilk, the dangers require that we increase our presence all across the country -- in Congress, the state capitols, and in your city and towns."

Besides New York, LaPierre singled out the U.S.-Mexican border -- and Phoenix in particular -- as the other greatest source of danger to Americans. People need "semi-autos," he wrote, in order to protect themselves from "Latin American drug gangs [who have] invaded every city of significant size in the United States."

The border, he said, "remains porous not only to people seeking jobs in the U.S., but to criminals whose jobs are murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping." Phoenix, LaPierre added, "is already one of the kidnapping capitals of the world."

Here, too, statistics contradict his claim. A 2010 report by the FBI revealed that the U.S.-Mexican border is one of the safest areas in the United States [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/03/us-mexico-border-safety-a_n_598825.html ], and among the nation's big cities, the four with the lowest violent crime rates were all in Mexican-border states: San Diego; Phoenix; El Paso, Texas; and Austin, Texas. In 2011, an investigation revealed that Phoenix police had grossly inflated the city's kidnapping statistics [ http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_phoenix_metro/central_phoenix/federal-audit%3A-major-problems-in-phx-statistics ] in order to get federal grant money.

LaPierre also invoked Islamic extremist groups: "Ominously, the border also remains open to agents of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations [and] when the next terrorist attack comes, the Obama administration won't accept responsibility. Instead, it will do what it does every time: blame a scapegoat and count on Obama's 'mainstream' media enablers to go along."

Not surprisingly, in order to combat these threats, LaPierre urged Americans to purchase firearms and join the NRA. "We must reach out to the tens of millions of gun owners who are not yet NRA members -- to the gun owners who care about their own rights but who have been duped by Obama and the national media into believing that the Obama and Bloomberg gun controls will only affect other people. They are naively sitting on the sidelines, imagining themselves immune from the coming siege."

LaPierre said that the NRA will keep punching away -- attempting to influence elections and fight gun control laws in court -- but that the situation has never been more urgent.

"We will not surrender. We will not appease. We will buy more guns than ever. We will use them for sport and lawful self-defense more than ever," he vowed.

LaPierre is scheduled to give his formal response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Thursday at the National Wild Turkey Federation's annual show. The speech is set to be streamed live online for those who can't get to Nashville.

Matt Sledge contributed reporting.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/wayne-lapierre-more-guns_n_2681260.html [with embedded video "Wayne LaPierre: Obama Is Trying To Take Away Guns", and (over 10,000) comments]


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Stand and Fight



By Wayne LaPierre
4:32 PM 02/13/2013

Before I tell you how the NRA and our members are going to Stand And Fight politically and in the courts, let’s acknowledge that all over this country, tens of millions of Americans are already preparing to Stand And Fight to protect their families and homes.

These good Americans are prudently getting ready to protect themselves.

It has always been sensible for good citizens to own and carry firearms for lawful protection against violent criminals who prey on decent people.

During the second Obama term, however, additional threats are growing. Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States. Phoenix is already one of the kidnapping capitals of the world, and though the states on the U.S./Mexico border may be the first places in the nation to suffer from cartel violence, by no means are they the last.

The president flagrantly defies the 2006 federal law ordering the construction of a secure border fence along the entire Mexican border. So the border today remains porous not only to people seeking jobs in the U.S., but to criminals whose jobs are murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping. Ominously, the border also remains open to agents of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Numerous intelligence sources have confirmed that foreign terrorists have identified the southern U.S. border as their path of entry into the country.

When the next terrorist attack comes, the Obama administration won’t accept responsibility. Instead, it will do what it does every time: blame a scapegoat and count on Obama’s “mainstream” media enablers to go along.

A heinous act of mass murder—either by terrorists or by some psychotic who should have been locked up long ago—will be the pretext to unleash a tsunami of Gun Control.

No wonder Americans are buying guns in record numbers right now, while they still can and before their choice about which firearm is right for their family is taken away forever.

After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.

Anti-gun New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had already done everything he could to prevent law-abiding New Yorkers from owning guns, and he has made sure that no ordinary citizen will ever be allowed to carry a gun. He even refused to allow the National Guard into the city to restore civil order because Guardsmen carry guns!

Meanwhile, President Obama is leading this country to financial ruin, borrowing over a trillion dollars a year for phony “stimulus” spending and other payoffs for his political cronies. Nobody knows if or when the fiscal collapse will come, but if the country is broke, there likely won’t be enough money to pay for police protection. And the American people know it.

Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are perils we are sure to face—not just maybe. It’s not paranoia to buy a gun. It’s survival. It’s responsible behavior, and it’s time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that.

Since the election, millions of Americans have been lining up in front of gun stores, Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops exercising their freedom while they still have it. They are demonstrating they have a mass determination to buy, own and use firearms. Millions of Americans are using market forces like never before to demonstrate their ardent support for our firearm freedoms. That’s one of the very best ways we can Stand And Fight.

Inevitably, the anti-gun media and the gun-ban lobbies are demonizing the purchase of firearms. They call us “extremists” because we wonder whether we will be able to buy a semi-auto in three years or, even in some states, later this year. That’s despite the fact that President Obama long ago made clear that he wants to ban them all!

The media try to make rank-and-file Americans feel guilty about buying a gun. The enemies of freedom demonize gun buyers and portray us as social lepers. But we know the truth. We know that responsible gun ownership exemplifies what is good and right about America.

Responsible Americans realize that the world as we know it has changed. We, the American people, clearly see the daunting forces we will undoubtedly face: terrorists, crime, drug gangs, the possibility of Euro-style debt riots, civil unrest or natural disaster.

Gun owners are not buying firearms because they anticipate a confrontation with the government. Rather, we anticipate confrontations where the government isn’t there—or simply doesn’t show up in time.

To preserve the inalienable, individual human right to keep and bear arms—to withstand the siege that is coming—the NRA is building a four-year communications and resistance movement. The enemies of the Second Amendment will be met with unprecedented defiance, commitment and determination. We will Stand And Fight.

First, we are going to devise legal capability like never before. I fervently hope that President Obama does not get to appoint another anti-gun Supreme Court justice like Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan. But he probably will, and we must meet that challenge. His chances of appointing a replacement for one of the five pro-rights justices in the 5-4 Heller and McDonald majorities are high. And there’s no doubt he is going to appoint a huge number of new judges to lifetime positions in the lower federal courts.

That means the federal courts are going to get worse and worse. So some cases, on which we might have improved our chances of victory by waiting a while, are going to have to be brought now.

Besides bringing affirmative pro-rights cases, we will also have to litigate against the flood of new anti-gun federal regulations that are coming, and against anti-gun laws that are going to be enacted in some of the states.

Second, we must strengthen the NRA like never before. We are, and always have been, a genuine grassroots organization. And never has your membership been more important. Never has the nra been more in need of your support.

The national media, with its slanted and inaccurate “news” coverage of the gun issue, has given the gun-ban groups the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars of free advertising.

Now, the threat is even greater. Michael Bloomberg and George Soros are each, individually, far wealthier than the entire National Rifle Association. When the NRA spends money on political advertising, we have to raise those funds from you—$20, $50, $250, or $1,000 at a time. In the last election, Bloomberg alone spent $16 million and that doesn’t even count the indirect spending by groups funded by Soros and his fellow billionaires.

The hard truth is that due to Bloomberg, Soros, and the rest of their ilk, the dangers require that we increase our presence all across the country—in Congress, the state capitols, and in your city and towns.

As we Stand And Fight, the third, and most important, part of our action plan demands that we organize like never before. That’s the most important part of all.

Every gun owner should be an active member of the NRA. Every gun owner should be sure that every member of his or her family is an active member.

For most of the last hundred years, a strong NRA has been the indispensable shield against the destruction of our nation’s Second Amendment rights. Now, an even stronger nra is the only chance gun owners have to withstand the coming siege.

This begins with remembering to keep your own membership active, or reactivate it if it has lapsed. It means reminding yourself, “I have a son and daughter who aren’t members and should be.” It means reaching out to your hunting and shooting friends and personally telling them why it’s so important that they join the NRA now, during this time of peril.

The NRA is launching a nationwide, full-court initiative to urge every gun owner, and every non-gun-owning lover of freedom, to join the NRA and fight this battle. I will personally be traveling all over America enlisting new members.

We must reach out to the tens of millions of gun owners who are not yet NRA members—to the gun owners who care about their own rights but who have been duped by Obama and the national media into believing that the Obama and Bloomberg gun controls will only affect other people. They are naively sitting on the sidelines, imagining themselves immune from the coming siege.

Yet no matter how much I travel, I can’t be everywhere. NRA members, though, can be everywhere. We already are. The 4 million of us belong to every community in the United States. We are the largest civil rights organization in the world, and we have been part of the fabric of America ever since 1871. So it is you, proud NRA members, who are the key to enlisting new members in the ranks of our army of freedom.

NRA grassroots has always been our Association’s greatest strength. To compete with Bloomberg and his gang, it must be much stronger still. Historically, we have always been able to rely on volunteers, and I’m going to ask you and need you to answer the call to help throughout the next four years.

Every year, shooting is becoming more and more popular, with more people engaging in the shooting sports for fun. More people are buying guns and trying new disciplines, such as 3-gun competitions, sporting clays, practical shooting and so on.

As we Stand And Fight, let’s continue to make the shooting sports one of the fastest-growing recreational activities in America. By doing so, and by telling others about it, we’ll popularize and make gun owning and shooting more mainstream than ever before. That will be even more effective if we remember to invite new people to participate and provide them with the responsible mentorship and guidance that the NRA has exemplified for over 140 years.

We can’t win the political war if we lose the cultural war. One of the great protectors of the Second Amendment is the popular, active, responsible use of firearms for shooting and hunting.

We don’t want America to become like England, where some of that nation’s outstanding rifle competitors keep their hobby a dark secret from their neighbors for fear of social disapproval. We’re not going to let the anti-gunners push us into that zone. As I remind people every day, we are the majority.

We have so much to be proud of as gun owners, shooters and freedom lovers. That pride, especially when it’s not hidden in the closet, is itself a form of protection for the Second Amendment.

We will not surrender. We will not appease. We will buy more guns than ever. We will use them for sport and lawful self-defense more than ever. We will grow the NRA more than ever. And we will be prouder than ever to be freedom-loving NRA patriots. And with your help, we will ensure that the Second Amendment remains America’s First Freedom.

We will Stand And Fight.

Copyright 2013 The Daily Caller

http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/13/stand-and-fight/ [with comments]


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NRA Brands Obama State Of The Union Speech 'Fraudulent Manipulation'

National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre responds to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address at the National Wild Turkey Federation annual meeting in Nashville, Tenn.
02/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/nra-state-of-the-union_n_2690601.html [with comments]


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Ted Nugent Headed To State Of The Union As Guest Of Texas Congressman Steve Stockman

[ http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/should-ted-nugents-words-be-taken-seriously/question-2597793/?link=ibaf&q=&esrc=s ]
02/11/2013
A Texas GOP congressman who has floated the possibility [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/steve-stockman-obama_n_2478913.html ] of impeaching President Barack Obama announced Monday that controversial rocker Ted Nugent would be his guest at Tuesday's State of the Union address.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas), who claimed earlier this year that he'd be willing to file articles of impeachment over Obama's gun control push, addressed the development in a statement [ http://stockman.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/ted-nugent-to-join-stockman-at-state-of-the-union ], stressing that Nugent would be available for media interviews after Obama's speech.
"I am excited to have a patriot like Ted Nugent joining me in the House Chamber to hear from President Obama," the congressman said. "After the address I'm sure Ted will have plenty to say."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/ted-nugent-state-of-the-union_n_2663651.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Nancy Pelosi On Ted Nugent: 'I Don't Think That Highly' Of Congressman Who Invited Him

02/12/2013
[...]
"I am more concerned about Steve Stockman being here than Ted Nugent," she said. "Ted Nugent will leave. Steve Stockman will still be here."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/nancy-pelosi-ted-nugent_n_2672451.html [with comments]


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The Latest Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory: Obama Death Squads Targeting Gun Rights Activists


John Noveske, one of the alleged victims of Obama's alleged death squads

By Stephanie Mencimer
Tue Feb. 5, 2013 7:55 AM PST

What do you get when you combine the president's ability to secretly kill American citizens [ http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/07/aclu-sues-awlaki-khan-death ] and the recent push to restrict gun access? One of the most bizarre anti-Obama conspiracy theories ever—and it takes a lot to win that prize [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/chart-obama-conspiracy-theories ].

Various tea party activists, libertarian websites [ http://www.tennesseesonsofliberty.com/2013/01/is-obama-ordering-death-squads-to.html ] and other conspiracy-minded Obama haters are claiming that Russian security forces have discovered that Obama is about to unleash "death squads" across America to assassinate defenders of the Second Amendment. According to Liberty.com [ http://www.liberty.com/blog/russians-warns-obama-death-squads-are-fanning-out-across-america-unconfirmed ], one of the sites perpetuating this latest story, Russian intelligence has outlined the whole nefarious plot in a memo for President Vladimir Putin, detailing the Obama's administration's dispatch of "VIPER teams...which is the acronym for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response Team, a programme run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and whose agents terrify millions of Americans with Nazi-like Gestapo tactics on a daily basis at airports and who report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)."

Liberty.com (run by a Florida tea party leader), which echoes the theory promoted by similar sites, maintains that these teams—800 of them, to be precise—are set to "disperse throughout his country in preparation for what Russian intelligence analysts are predicting to be a series of high-profile killings of dissident Americans set to begin as soon as February 22nd." Obama has apparently been emboldened to launch such an operation by the recent federal court ruling [ http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/quote-day-american-law-allows-government-engage-unconstitutional-behavior-without ] upholding his right to kill American citizens with drone strikes without explaining why.

This supposed Russian memo purportedly identifies two gun rights activists who already have been murdered by Obama's death squads: John Noveske, the owner of Noveske Rifleworks [ http://www.noveskerifleworks.com/ ], which makes assault weapons, and Keith Ratliff, a cult sensation for his work on FPSRussian, a popular YouTube video channel devoted to high-power weapons and explosives.

Both men were, in fact, killed last month in separate incidents. Noveske died after his 1984 Land Rover [ http://community.statesmanjournal.com/blogs/hookandbullet/2013/01/07/noveske-rifleworks-owner-dies-in-single-car-crash ] crossed the center line in Grants Pass, Oregon and hit some boulders. He wasn't wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the vehicle.

Ratliff's body was found at a weapons testing and developing facility he operated in rural Georgia, among piles of firearms, with a single gunshot to the head [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/keith-ratliff-gun-advocate-dead_n_2448175.html ]. His death has indeed been ruled a homicide. A European site promoting this conspiracy theory reports [ http://www.eutimes.net/2013/01/obama-death-squads-kill-top-gun-activists-as-new-massacre-fears-rise/ ]:

By assassinating Noveske and Ratliff, FSB [Russian] intelligence analysts in this report say, the Obama regime is sending a "chilling message" to all who oppose their plan to totally disarm the American people that they "will stop at nothing" to see their master plan implemented.

Even worse, this report warns, is "new evidence" coming from the United States that the Obama regime is planning another "mass carnage" type event to occur within the next few weeks to bolster their spurious claim that Americans need to be disarmed.

After reading these shocking reports, I called the Russian embassy in Washington, DC, to investigate further. The press office did not return my call, so clearly it all must be true.

Or here's another option: The conspiracy theorists and anti-Obama activists warning of impending death squads could have fallen for a pretty obvious hoax. They don't, after all, seem to have an actual copy of the alleged Russian security memo to Putin. And there's this: WhatDoesItMean.com was one of the earliest promoters of this "story," and it's an infamous conspiracy and "alternative news" site that is the source of hundreds of fictional [ http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index677.htm ] doomsday reports. (It once published a story claiming that the earthquake in Haiti was caused by erroneous weapons testing by the US Navy [ http://islamicinsights.com/features/technology/cyber-misinformation-think-before-you-hit-forward.html ].) Liberty.com and other sites have been quoting directly from WhatDoesItMean.com. So perhaps gun-rights activists should relax; they've got nothing more menacing to worry about than the pending legislation on Capitol Hill.

Copyright ©2013 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/obama-sending-death-squads-after-gun-rights-activists [with comments]


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It's Only Monday, but Here's This Week's Craziest Conspiracy Theory


Pete Souza/The White House

A disgraced former FBI agent claims that CIA director-nominee John Brennan is a convert to Islam. That's false -- and it doesn't matter anyway.

By David A. Graham
Feb 11 2013, 2:15 PM ET

So you thought that with Barack Obama's reelection, scurrilous whisper campaigns about secret Muslims would finally die out?

No dice.

Josh Marshall calls our attention to a new, wacky, baseless conspiracy theory: that John Brennan, President Obama's nominee for CIA director, is a Muslim convert. Here, from former birther clearinghouse WorldNetDaily [ http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/shock-claim-obama-picks-muslim-for-cia-chief/ ], is the tale:

One of the FBI's former top experts on Islam has announced that President Obama's pick to head the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, converted to Islam years ago in Saudi Arabia.

As WND has reported, former FBI Islam expert John Guandolo has long warned that the federal government is being infiltrated by members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. But Guandolo now warns that by appointing Brennan to CIA director, Obama has not only chosen a man "naïve" to these infiltrations, but also picked a candidate who is himself a Muslim.

"Mr. Brennan did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on the behalf of the United States in Saudi Arabia," Guandolo told interviewer and radio host Tom Trento.

It's only Monday, but this has to be the least sensible conspiracy theory of the week. It's essential to point out that there is exactly zero evidence for this claim. Nor is Guandolo a reliable source. He resigned from the FBI [ http://www.ticklethewire.com/2009/09/23/therapist-asked-married-fbi-agent-to-write-down-extramarital-affairs/ ], apparently after the agency opened an investigation into his multiple affairs [ http://www.ticklethewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/fbi-court-document.pdf ]. Since then, he's made a career on the anti-Islam circuit.

Moreover, as with the false Obama claims, there's the question of, So what? There can be little doubt about Brennan's zeal for fighting Islamist terror. Though he has reportedly been an internal voice calling for controls over drone killings, he has overseen White House counterterror strategy over the last four years, as drones have become the hallmark of the War on Terror and the top ranks of terrorist organizations -- including Osama bin Laden -- have been killed. In fact, most critiques of the Obama terror strategy that Brennan has spearheaded have focused on whether it's too focused on targeted killing.

But actually, the greatest irony of the whole thing is that the man who actually leads the CIA's fight against Al Qaeda, and who would be Brennan's employee, is in fact a convert to Islam. As The Washington Post's Greg Miller reported [ http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-03-24/world/35447818_1_cia-officials-robert-grenier-ctc ] last year:

As chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center for the past six years, he has functioned in a funereal capacity for al-Qaeda. Roger, which is the first name of his cover identity, may be the most consequential but least visible national security official in Washington -- the principal architect of the CIA's drone campaign and the leader of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In many ways, he has also been the driving force of the Obama administration's embrace of targeted killing as a centerpiece of its counterterrorism efforts.

Colleagues describe Roger as a collection of contradictions. A chain-smoker who spends countless hours on a treadmill. Notoriously surly yet able to win over enough support from subordinates and bosses to hold on to his job. He presides over a campaign that has killed thousands of Islamist militants and angered millions of Muslims, but he is himself a convert to Islam.

It's worth discussing whether the government strategy for fighting Al Qaeda needs recalibration. It's reasonable to question how American laws should apply to targeted killing, and whether drone strikes are effective at killing but bad at winning hearts and minds. But whether Muslims are competent to kill bad guys? The record speaks for itself.

Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group (emphasis in original)

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/its-only-monday-but-heres-this-weeks-craziest-conspiracy-theory/273050/ [with comments]


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Matthew Aaron Llanez Charged In Oakland Car Bomb FBI Terror Sting


The FBI has charged another terrorism suspect as part of an undercover sting operation.

By Ryan J. Reilly
Posted: 02/08/2013 3:50 pm EST | Updated: 02/08/2013 6:11 pm EST

WASHINGTON -- A 28-year-old man tried to set off what he thought was a car bomb outside of a bank in Oakland, Calif., Friday morning, federal authorities said. Matthew Aaron Llaneza was arrested as part of an undercover FBI terror sting and charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Federal authorities allege that Llaneza, of San Jose, Calif., is a Taliban sympathizer who wanted to conduct a terrorist attack in the United States. Previously incarcerated for possessing an AK-47 assault rifle, he was released from state prison in November 2011. Authorities alleged he first met an undercover FBI agent he believed was connected with the Taliban and mujahideen in Afghanistan on Nov. 30, 2012.

FBI agent Christopher Monika said in an affidavit that Llaneza initially proposed structuring his attack to make it appear that an "umbrella organization for a loose collection of anti-government militias and their sympathizers" was behind the attack.

"Llaneza's stated goal was to trigger a governmental crackdown, which he expected would trigger a right-wing counter-response against the government followed by, he hoped, civil war," Monika wrote.

Authorities said Llaneza initially wanted to attack the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco but determined there was too much security around that location. Instead, he proposed attacking a Bank of America branch in Oakland and worked with the undercover agent to develop a plan to construct a car bomb, they said. Llaneza allegedly selected a Bank of America location at 303 Hegenberger Road, and planned to set off the car bomb by a support column in hopes of bringing the entire bank down.

The FBI provided the SUV that Llaneza would use for the car bomb. He allegedly laughed and hugged the undercover agent after the agent showed him the SUV in a storage unit rented by the FBI. Llaneza also stated he wanted to travel to Afghanistan so he could train Taliban fighters, according to authorities.

Later, Llaneza and the FBI agent allegedly loaded 12 five-gallon buckets containing chemicals obtained and prepared by the FBI to simulate an explosive mixture into the back of the SUV on Jan. 26. Authorities said Llaneza also purchased two cellphones to use as trigger devices and gave them to the undercover agent.

Llaneza allegedly drove the SUV to the Oakland bank early Friday morning before walking to meet the undercover agent. He was arrested after allegedly placing two calls he believed would set off the trigger device attached to the fake car bomb.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/08/matthew-aaron-llanez-fbi-terror-sting_n_2648168.html [with comments]


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Three dead in murder-suicide


A clean-up crew removes furniture from the Forest Meadows residence where investigators say Philip Marshall, 54, killed his son, Alex, 17, daughter, Macaila, 14, the family dog and himself.
Sean Janssen/Union Democrat

Written by Union Democrat staff
February 04, 2013 11:30 am

Two Murphys teens and their father are dead in an apparent murder-suicide that has both shocked and saddened residents of their gated community and the high school the youths attended.

At Bret Harte High in Angels Camp this morning, Principal Mike Chimente led students in a somber moment of silence and the Pledge of Allegiance. He said counselors would be on hand at the school all week for grieving staff and students.

The teen victims — Alex Marshall, 17, who played varsity football for the Bullfrogs, and his sister Macaila Marshall, 14 — were widely known and popular on campus.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” said Assistant Principal Kelly Osborn.

Residents of the small, normally quiet Highway 4 golf course development were also stunned.

“I would never have guessed anything like this,” said Bob Freels, Forest Meadows’ security guard, who was turning back news reporters and TV vans at the gate Sunday. “They were a normal family as far as I know.”

The slayings were reported about 3:10 p.m. Saturday, on the 1200 block of Sandalwood Drive.

The alleged assailant was the teens’ father, Philip Marshall, 54, a commercial pilot and author, according to the Calaveras County Sheriff’s office.

The shootings are believed to have occurred between Thursday and Saturday afternoon. No neighbors heard gunshots, Freels said.

Friends of the Marshall teens became concerned when the siblings failed to meet them as planned Friday.

They went to the Marshall residence about 3 p.m. Saturday to check up and, through a window, saw Philip Marshall lying on the floor in a pool of blood, according to a sheriff’s report.

Sheriff’s deputies were called. Upon entering the home, the deputies found the bodies of Marshall and his children. The two teens were lying on the couch, said Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Chris Hewitt.

The victims and their father apparently each died of a single gunshot to the head. The weapon was a Glock semi-automatic handgun, Hewitt said.

The handgun was under the father, who was lying face up on the floor, Hewitt said.

The family dog was found dead in a bedroom.

The victim’s mother, Philip Marshall’s estranged wife, Sean Marshall, was out of the country, traveling in Turkey, at the time of the incident.

She was notified of the deaths, the Sheriff’s Office reported.

Additional details in the investigation were unavailable. A motive was unknown.

Philip Marshall appeared to be well-respected in the community. He was well known about Forest Meadows and coached his son’s Ebbetts Pass Little League team a few years ago.

“He wasn’t your typical (criminal) you deal with up here,” Hewitt said. “They are upstanding members of the community.”

Merita Callaway, who represents Murphys and Arnold on the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors, lives several doors down from the Marshalls.

She said Marshall was “very involved” in his kids’ lives.

“I think that’s why I can’t get my head around this,” she said, recalling that Philip Marshall attended an Inauguration Day viewing party at her home last month.

Callaway said she happened to be midway through a book written by Marshall called “Lakefront Airport,” described in promotional material as “a contemporary historical fiction based on actual events including his early flying experience … his relationship with the CIA, Barry Seal, Pablo Escobar and the notorious Medellin Cocaine Cartel.”

Neighbor Mike Brown also knew Marshall as a dedicated father, “accomplished writer” and decent neighbor.

He too attended the Inauguration Day event at Callaway’s.

“I saw Phil (there). I suppose that’s what I will remember for a very long time,” Brown said. “Phil was a very nice man, a good neighbor. … I know Phil was very proud of both of his children, which makes it impossible to understand.”

Brown said he also read two books by Marshall. Callaway said she knew his “False Flag 911: How Bush, Cheney and the Saudis Created the Post-9/11 World” dabbled in “conspiracy stuff” but had not read it.

In a brief biography written to accompany that work, Marshall is said to have begun a 20-year career as a commercial pilot in 1985, first flying for Eastern Airlines and later United Airlines.

“During his career, Marshall served as captain on seven different types of Boeings, including the Boeing 757 and Boeing 767, both used in the attacks on September 11, 2001,” the biography reads. “In 1992, Philip Marshall began studying America’s ‘covert government’ while researching his first book.”

“Even more astonishing is Marshall’s involvement in the Iran-Contra secret missions back in the Reagan/Bush years,” the promotional description adds. “A great read about a horrible crime — one perpetrated not by the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but by the seediest elements of our very own government.”

A link on Macaila Marshall’s Facebook page points to her father’s 9/11 book. However, not all was black ops and government malfeasance at the Marshall home.

“When they first moved here, (Macaila) was so full of vim and vigor,” Brown said. “She would always dress in her mother’s clothing. She must have been about 9 years old … my wife and I used to just smile whenever she came over to visit.”

Callaway said Philip Marshall strolled the neighborhood often and, being raised in the New Orleans area, was a passionate fan of the Saints football team.

Despite his 5-foot-8, 140-pound frame, Alex Marshall was featured as a wide receiver and defensive back for the Bullfrogs’ varsity football team and was a productive slugger last spring for the junior varsity baseball team.

“The community’s thoughts are with Alex and Macaila’s mom, the rest of the family and friends,” Callaway said. “We do not understand and hope that time brings some peace.”

© Copyright 2013 Western Communications, Inc.

http://www.uniondemocrat.com/News/Local-News/Three-dead-in-murder-suicide


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Ex-wife gives insight into killer’s mind

Written by Sean Janssen, The Union Democrat
February 08, 2013 08:55 am

Almost 30 years ago, Philip Marshall had an uneven temper, an attention-seeking nature and trouble with authority figures, according to a former spouse who contacted The Union Democrat this week.

Ann Kallauner, a Louisiana nurse, spoke in a half-hour interview Wednesday with The Union Democrat, both dispelling and confirming information spread about Marshall,who allegedly shot and killed his two sleeping teen children before shooting himself sometime last week.

The bodies of Marshall, son Alex, 17, and daughter Macaila, 14, were found Saturday afternoon in the family’s Forest Meadows home.

Marshall’s death has fueled conspiracy theories online that he and his children were murdered by the government.

He wrote a handful of books and gave interviews to fringe media outlets, claiming to have been a CIA contract pilot during the Iran-Contra affair, and claiming to have uncovered a plot by the Saudi Arabian and U.S. governments to commit the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

“He wasn’t any Contra pilot,” said Kallauner. “That was all just a fantasy.”

Kallauner was wed to Marshall in 1985. They divorced about three years later.

She said Marshall did provide a kind of taxi service for notorious drug smuggler-turned-informant Barry Seal, who had been linked to the CIA prior to his February 1986 assassination by a trio of Medellin Cartel henchmen from Colombia.

A CIA spokesman said Tuesday that the agency could not substantiate Marshall’s claims.

Kallauner said Marshall met Seal through “a friend of a friend” while teaching other pilots to fly from Lakefront Airport in New Orleans.

After Seal had his pilot’s license revoked, he hired Marshall to fly with him between New Orleans and Miami or Fort Lauderdale. Seal often flew while Marshall remained in the jump seat, but Marshall never went with him into Nicaragua, she said.

“Barry would go off for days or a week and put Phil up in a hotel,” Kallauner said.

She said she never read any of the books Marshall later wrote but that her mother told her that she had.

Though not a writer during their years together, Marshall loved the book, “A Confederacy of Dunces,” written by fellow Louisiana native John Kennedy Toole, Kallauner said. The novel gives a rich depiction of 1960s New Orleans. It was published in 1980, 11 years after the author committed suicide.

Marshall grew up just across Lake Pontchartrain from the city during that era, attending Mandeville High School and going to New Orleans Saints football games with his father.

Kallauner said she avoided contact with Marshall after their divorce.

“He was the kind of person, he was very attention-seeking … he was very egotistical and he set himself up to be around people who would idolize him or put him on a pedestal,” Kallauner said. “He was always conscientious about his looks … kind of a ladies’ man.”

She said that is largely what led to the end of their marriage.

“He’d be in one city, tell me he was in another. He didn’t want children at the time and I did,” Kallauner said. “He said he wasn’t meant to be married. He couldn’t be faithful.”

Marshall began flying at age 15 and took pride in having become a commercial pilot “all by himself” rather than doing a stint in the military first, she said.

He started with Miami-based Eastern Air Lines and moved to United Airlines after union-busting Texan Frank Lorenzo purchased the carrier, she said.

“He didn’t want to be a scab,” she said.

United Airlines has not responded to attempts by The Union Democrat to ascertain when Marshall worked for the carrier and why he left the company several years ago.

Kallauner said Marshall struggled with alcoholism during their marriage, as his father had, and that his mother suffered from bipolar disorder.

She said he received counseling for his alcohol problems “but he wouldn’t go to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous).”

Kallauner said Marshall could be “mean” to her and “had a temper” but she did not see him as violent.

“He had a problem with authority figures in his life,” she said. “One time he wanted me to roll down the (car) window to yell at a police officer.”

She refused.

“He kind of got mad and smacked me back against the seat,” she recalled.

Marshall also was nearly fired after yelling at a superior at Eastern Air Lines “and got mad and would throw clubs in the water” while golfing, she said.

Kallauner said he aspired to live in a home next to a golf course, like the Forest Meadows home where his life violently ended.

Based on his vanity in his younger days, Kallauner said it was a surprise to see photos of Marshall this week in which he had aged and gained weight.

Kallauner said the news reports of how Marshall died and what he did to his own children came as a shock.

“It is (surprising) that he would kill his children,” she said. “I don’t see him doing that without being in an altered state … I pray for him and his children.”

She said the reports of the Murphys tragedy have been haunting, given what alternate twists of fate may have wrought.

“It could easily have been me,” Kallauner said.

© Copyright 2013 Western Communications, Inc.

http://www.uniondemocrat.com/News/Local-News/Ex-wife-gives-insight-into-killers-mind


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A Loaded Gun

Amy Bishop alongside her parents, Judy and Sam, in 1987. Judy calls Amy a “brilliant girl” who “just snapped.”
A mass shooter’s tragic past.
February 11, 2013 [issue of]
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/02/11/130211fa_fact_keefe [ http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/02/11/130211fa_fact_keefe?currentPage=all ]


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Thomas Matusiewicz Identified As Delaware Courthouse 'Shooter' (UPDATE)
02/11/2013
For the full story on the shooting, click here [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/new-castle-county-courthouse-shooting_n_2661604.html ].
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/david-matusiewicz-delaware-courthouse-shooter_n_2662357.html [with comments]


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Steven Seagal Takes Down Bad Guys, Protects Kids

Sheriff Arpaio, right, talks with actor Steven Seagal following a news conference on counter illegal immigration tactics, in 2011. Arpaio's press office has billed Seagal as a law enforcement expert who will help train volunteer posse members who have already signed up to patrol school neighborhoods in the wake of the Newtown shootings.
Teaming up with notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the action hero is part of a ‘posse’ to protect schools in Phoenix.
Feb 8, 2013
[...]
In 2011, Seagal accompanied Arpaio on a raid of an alleged cockfighting operation, camera crew in tow. Their show of force ultimately made national headlines after the alleged ringleader, Jesus Llovera claimed they battered his gate with a tank, deployed diversionary bombs, knocked down his door and crashed through his windows. ... [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=61380491 (and preceding and following) and (last item) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=66822383 (and preceding and following)]
[...]
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/08/steven-seagal-takes-down-bad-guys-protects-kids.html


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Arpaio Taps Steven Seagal To Train Volunteer Posse at Fake School Shooting

Members of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's volunteer posse participate in a simulated school shooting on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013 near Phoenix, Arizona.
Feb. 10, 2013
[...]
"I want everybody to know that we're going to be around those schools, that if you do something we will be armed, and we're going into the schools to save our kids," Arpaio told reporters on Saturday, pounding a podium to emphasize each point.
While the volunteers are assigned to monitor around the perimeter of schools, a spokeswoman for Arpaio said that if an emergency arose, the posse would be permitted to enter school grounds.
However, as ABC/Univision previously noted, according to a local CBS affiliate, some of Arpaio's posse members have criminal records.
Their investigation "uncovered a number of posse members with arrests for assault, drug possession, domestic violence, sex crimes against children, disorderly conduct, impersonating an officer - and the list goes on."
Seagal, a friend of the sheriff's, led the training along with members of the sheriff's SWAT team.
According to a statement from the sheriff's office, "While his qualified armed posse volunteers are already well trained to handle emergency situations, Arpao says that school shootings pose unique circumstances which require more mission specific training modalities."
Not everyone agrees however. Members of Respect Arizona Recall Arpaio, a group that opposes the sheriff's actions, carried signs and protested outside of the school on Saturday. They told Univision the training was politically motivated and designed to garner attention. They said the fact that an actor was leading a training for such a serious topic was absurd.
But Seagal told reporters on Saturday that he was qualified for the job. He already volunteers as part of Arpaio's posse, and he has been deputized with sheriff's offices in three other states. The star of Under Siege and Above the Law also filmed a reality show, Steven Segal: Lawman, where he served as a reserve deputy in Louisiana.
"I've put hundreds of thousands if not millions of hours into my weapons training," the actor told reporters on Saturday [1 million hours = 114.08 years].
Seagal added that he would do anything to protect students.
"They are our most precious asset," he said. "They are our treasures and we have to protect them."
[...]
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/sheriff-arpaio-steven-seagal-train-posse-simulated-school/story?id=18453485 [with comment]


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Joe Arpaio, Steven Seagal Train Posses To Guard Schools

02/09/13
[...]
Seagal is already a volunteer posse member in Maricopa County and has been deputized with sheriff's offices in New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana, where a film crew followed the actor on ride-alongs with Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies for the reality TV show "Steven Seagal: Lawman."
Arpaio says other notable people also have joined his more than 3,000-strong volunteer armed posse, including "The Incredible Hulk" star Lou Ferrigno and actor Peter Lupus of TV's "Mission: Impossible."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/09/joe-arpaio-steven-seagal-_n_2653125.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Joe Arpaio hired a child-sex offender for armed “posse”


(Credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott)

After Sandy Hook, the Arizona sheriff sent his poorly vetted, gun-toting group to patrol local schools

By Katie Mcdonough
Wednesday, Feb 13, 2013 10:30 AM CST

Responding to calls from the National Rifle Association to arm teachers [ http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/us/connecticut-school-shooting ] and school officials, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio vowed to deploy his gun-toting volunteers to monitor Arizona schools. Members of the 3,450-strong group began patrolling in January, and the sheriff’s office announced recently that the program will continue into next year. But the thing is, no schools have actually requested this service from Sheriff Joe, and it’s easy to understand why.

Local news affiliate KPHO reported [ http://www.kpho.com/story/17159125/criminal-pasts-dont-disqualify-members-of-arpaio-posse ] on Arpaio’s “posse” and found that, in the past, the sheriff has hired sex offenders, domestic abusers and other members with criminal records to “serve and protect” the Phoenix-area.

Let’s start with Dominic Boulter, a former member who was arrested — and convicted — for crimes against children.

According to a 2009 article [ http://www.azcentral.com/community/swvalley/articles/2009/08/10/20090810mcsodo0810-ON.html ] on his arrest:

“Boulter began using an online service called Phonezoo.com in early 2005 to meet young girls between 13 and 17 years old. Boulter ultimately exchanged nude photos and text messages with at least eight underage girls from around the country. Boulter also suggested that he meet the girls in person to engage in sex acts and to get married, according to court documents.

During the encounters, Boulter told the girls he was 15 years old, 27 years old and 32 years old, according to the document.

Boulter admitted to detectives that he had sent harmful images to one underage girl and that he chatted with another via text message and Web cam as he encouraged the child to masturbate, according to court documents.”

And Jacob Cutler, another member of the group Arpaio organized to “save our kids,” has been charged with domestic violence, according to [ http://www.kpho.com/story/17159125/criminal-pasts-dont-disqualify-members-of-arpaio-posse ] CBS:

“According to a Flagstaff police report, Cutler threw his girlfriend to the ground and choked her while trying to sexually assault her in 2008. When she didn’t cooperate, he allegedly threatened to call police and said they would side with him, because he ‘has a badge.’”

And what if the Phoenix-area community doesn’t want a poorly vetted group that has included child-sex offenders and violent abusers among its ranks hanging around their kids’ schools? Too bad, says Sheriff Joe.

“It doesn’t matter whether they like it or don’t,” he told [ http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/sheriff-arpaio-steven-seagal-train-posse-simulated-school/story?id=18453485 ] ABC News. “I’m still going to do it. I can’t imagine criticism coming when they’re given free protection.”

And, because it’s Arpaio, the story just keeps getting weirder. The sheriff hired washed-up action hack Steven Seagal to provide weapons training to his crew. In a press conference on Saturday, Seagal defended his qualifications to a room of baffled reporters:

“I’ve put hundreds of thousands if not millions of hours into my weapons training [again, 1 million hours = 114.08 years],” adding he would do “anything” to protect Arizona’s children.

“They are our most precious asset,” he said. “They are our treasures and we have to protect them [excerpt included in the video report, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJQNOoKXwL8 , next below as embedded].”

Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/13/joe_arpaio_hired_a_convicted_child_sex_criminal_for_armed_school_%e2%80%9cposse%e2%80%9d/ [with comments]


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Target Sports, Michigan Gun Store, Agrees To Stop Selling Targets Wearing Muslim Garb

02/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/09/gun-store-muslim-target_n_2653355.html [with comments]


===


Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers

By Brendan DeMelle
Posted: 02/11/2013 1:26 pm

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party [ http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/02/11/tea-party-tobacco-everywhere-always ] movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry's role in driving climate disruption.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health [ http://www.cancer.gov/ ], traces the roots of the Tea Party's anti-tax movement back to the early 1980s when tobacco companies began to invest in third party groups to fight excise taxes on cigarettes, as well as health studies finding a link between cancer and secondhand cigarette smoke.

Published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Tobacco Control [ http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/ ], the study titled, 'To quarterback behind the scenes, third party efforts': the tobacco industry and the Tea Party [ http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2013/02/07/tobaccocontrol-2012-050815.abstract ], is not just an historical account of activities in a bygone era. As senior author, Stanton Glantz [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanton_Glantz ], a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) professor of medicine, writes:

"Nonprofit organizations associated with the Tea Party have longstanding ties to tobacco companies, and continue to advocate on behalf of the tobacco industry's anti-tax, anti-regulation agenda."

The two main organizations identified in the UCSF Quarterback study are Americans for Prosperity [ http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity ] and Freedomworks [ http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/FreedomWorks ; http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/01/25/freedomworks-continues-dick-armey-s-defense-big-tobacco ]. Both groups are now "supporting the tobacco companies' political agenda by mobilizing local Tea Party opposition to tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws." Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity were once a single organization called Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) [ http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Citizens_for_a_Sound_Economy ]. CSE was founded in 1984 by the infamous Koch Brothers, David and Charles Koch, and received over $5.3 million from tobacco companies, mainly Philip Morris, between 1991 and 2004.

In 1990, Tim Hyde, RJR Tobacco's head of national field operations, in an eerily similar description of the Tea Party today, explained why groups like CSE were important to the tobacco industry's fight against government regulation. Hyde wrote:

"... coalition building should proceed along two tracks: a) a grassroots organizational and largely local track,; b) and a national, intellectual track within the DC-New York corridor. Ultimately, we are talking about a "movement," a national effort to change the way people think about government's (and big business) role in our lives. Any such effort requires an intellectual foundation - a set of theoretical and ideological arguments on its behalf."

The common public understanding of the origins of the Tea Party [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement ] is that it is a popular grassroots uprising that began with anti-tax protests in 2009.

However, the Quarterback study reveals that in 2002, the Kochs and tobacco-backed CSE designed and made public the first Tea Party Movement website under the web address www.usteaparty.com [ http://web.archive.org/web/20020913052026/http://www.usteaparty.com/ ]. Here's a screenshot of the archived U.S. Tea Party site [id.], as it appeared online on Sept. 13, 2002:



CSE describes the U.S. Tea Party site [ http://web.archive.org/web/20021013125238/http://www.cse.org/tea/about.php ], "In 2002, our U.S. Tea Party is a national event, hosted continuously online, and open to all Americans who feel our taxes are too high and the tax code is too complicated." The site features a "Patriot Guest book [ http://web.archive.org/web/20021013173359/http://www.cse.org/tea/xeobook/index.php ]" where supporters can write a message of support for CSE and the U.S. Tea Party movement.

Sometime around September 2011, the U.S. Tea Party site was taken offline. According to the DNS registry, the web address www.usteaparty.com is currently owned by Freedomworks [ http://who.godaddy.com/whois.aspx?k=2GpUJmhQ25TBfBu/kJSuqLnRM93tJYx4pP01v6qFV0lHo1EnXZNay4DKt33Olpno&domain=usteaparty.com&prog_id=GoDaddy ].

The implications of the UCSF Quarterback report are widespread. The main concern expressed by the authors lies in what they see happening overseas as the Tea Party movement expands internationally, training activists in 30 countries including Israel, Georgia, Japan and Serbia.

As the authors explain:

"This international expansion makes it likely that Tea Party organizations will be mounting opposition to tobacco control (and other health) policies as they have done in the USA."

Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity are both multi-issue organizations that have expanded their battles to include other policies they see as threats to the free market principles they claim to defend, namely fighting health care reform and regulations on global warming pollution. The report's warning about overseas expansion efforts by Freedomworks should therefore also be heeded by groups in the health and environment arenas.

Finally, this report might serve as a wake-up call to some people in the Tea Party itself, who would find it a little disturbing that the "grassroots" movement they are so emotionally attached to, is in fact a pawn created by billionaires and large corporations with little interest in fighting for the rights of the common person, but instead using the common person to fight for their own unfettered profits.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/study-confirms-tea-party-_b_2663125.html [with comments] [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=16807573 and preceding (and any future following)]


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FreedomWorks Made Video of Fake Giant Panda Having Sex With Fake Hillary Clinton


Hillary: Spirithalloween; Panda: Partysuperstore

The investigation at the influential tea party group could get weird.

By David Corn
Thu Feb. 14, 2013 3:06 AM PST

An internal investigation [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/dick-armey-freedomworks-hostile-takeover-memo ] of FreedomWorks—the prominent conservative advocacy group and super-PAC—has focused on president Matt Kibbe [ http://www.freedomworks.org/matt-kibbe ]'s management of the organization, his use of its resources, and a controversial book deal he signed [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/dick-armey-freedomworks-kibbe-book-contract-smoking-gun ], according to former FreedomWorks officials who have met with the private lawyers conducting the probe. One potential topic for the inquiry is a promotional video produced last year under the supervision of Adam Brandon [ http://www.freedomworks.org/adam-brandon ], executive vice president of the group and a Kibbe loyalist. The video included a scene in which a female intern wearing a panda suit simulates performing oral sex on Hillary Clinton. [Author's note: The previous sentence contains no typos.]

In December, after months of bitter in-fighting, two members of FreedomWorks' board of trustees—C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel for President George H.W. Bush, and James Burnley IV, a secretary of transportation during the Reagan years—notified [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/dick-armey-freedomworks-hostile-takeover-memo ] Kibbe that they had received "allegations of wrongdoing by the organization or its employees" and had hired two lawyers, Alfred Regnery and David Martin, to investigate. Soon after, Regnery and Martin began interviewing past and present FreedomWorks employees and officials. This list included Dick Armey, the former House majority leader who in November resigned [ http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/12/dick-armey-resigns-freedomworks-tea-party ] as chairman of the group (and pocketed an $8 million payout [ http://bigstory.ap.org/article/tea-party-group-chief-quits-cites-internal-split ]), citing concerns about the management of the organization. The investigating lawyers, Armey says, "picked my brain. I told them a forensic audit would be imperative because so much is hidden there."

One former FreedomWorks official says three "investigative themes" emerged when he was interviewed by Regnery and Martin. The two attorneys indicated they were examining the book deal [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/dick-armey-freedomworks-kibbe-book-contract-smoking-gun ] that awarded Kibbe the profits from a book whose production, several former FreedomWorks officials say, involved extensive use of the organization's resources. Kibbe has contended that he wrote the book without significant help from FreedomWorks. (Armey and two former officials have also told Mother Jones that the nonprofit bought thousands of copies of Kibbe's book from retail sources in an attempt to land it on bestsellers lists. FreedomWorks, one former staffer says, "used tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, to promote this book.")

The investigative team has also discussed with former staffers Kibbe's use of his expense account. "The question is whether Matt Kibbe used FreedomWorks resources and donor funds to live the high life," one past staffer says. And Regnery and Martin have questioned FreedomWorks sources about management and personnel matters. A former FreedomWorks official says Kibbe and Brandon ran the group as a "cult of personality" geared toward promoting Kibbe, and that Kibbe at times issued crude guidelines for hiring women based on their appearance. The investigators, according to a witness interviewed by them, have "asked about a hostile work environment that also included Adam [Brandon] pitting people against each other."

"I heard complaints of insensitive, boorish behavior and of obnoxious references to the condition of pregnancy," Armey says. "Such comments put you in jeopardy of lawsuits." A former FreedomWorks official says, "There was a pattern of misbehavior and inappropriateness that rubbed people the wrong way."

Some FreedomWorks staffers worried last year about a promotional video created ahead of FreePAC, a FreedomWorks conference held on July 26, 2012, where thousands of conservative grassroots activists nearly filled [ http://ow.ly/i/NJ2l ] the American Airlines Center in Dallas to hear from tea party favorites, including Glenn Beck and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). The short film hailing FreedomWorks was intended to play on the large video screens inside the arena.

In one segment of the film, according to a former official who saw it, Brandon is seen waking from a nap at his desk. In what appears to be a dream or a nightmare, he wanders down a hallway and spots a giant panda on its knees with its head in the lap of a seated Hillary Clinton and apparently performing oral sex on the then-secretary of state. Two female interns at FreedomWorks were recruited to play the panda and Clinton. One intern wore a Hillary Clinton mask. The other wore a giant panda suit that FreedomWorks had used at protests to denounce progressives as panderers. (See here [ http://www.freedomworks.org/images/panda-monium-from-freedomworks-north-carolina-4 ], here [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdYFC-mkhEk (next below)],

and here [ http://www.redstate.com/tabithahale/2011/02/23/union-thuggery-descends-on-freedomworks/ ].) Placing the panda in the video, a former FreedomWorks staffer says, was "an inside joke."

Another FreedomWorks staffer who worked there at the time confirms that "Yes, this video was created."

Days before the FreePAC event, the video was screened for staff. "My mouth was wide open," a former official recalls. "'What the hell is this?'" Several FreedomWorks staffers were outraged and stunned that Brandon, the group's second-in-command after Kibbe, had overseen the video's production, appeared in it, and intended to show this film at the conference, which would be attended by many social-conservative activists. They raised objections to the film.

"How was that not some form of sexual harassment?" a former FreedomWorks official asks, noting that two female interns had been requested to act out a pretend sex scene. "And there were going to be thousands of Christian conservatives at this thing. This was a terrible lack of judgment."

Brandon, a former FreedomWorks official says, defended the film, insisting it was creative and funny. But eventually a decision was made not to show the video at FreePAC.

Armey says he didn't became aware of the film until months later: "I heard they had made an obscene video mocking Hillary Clinton." He says he was told the video showed Clinton having sex with an intern. "I asked another [FreedomWorks] guy if he had seen it," Armey recalls. "He said, 'I heard about it. I was traveling at the time. It was shown around the office.'" Armey adds, "There was a concern that this kind of behavior could land you in court. I was shocked at the ugly and bad taste."

Former FreedomWorks officials who have been interviewed by Regnery and Martin say they do not know if the Clinton-panda video is under scrutiny by the investigators. But they say the episode was symptomatic of problems within the group.

Kibbe, Brandon, and Jackie Bodnar, director of communications for FreedomWorks, did not respond to requests for comments. Nor did they respond to emails containing a list of questions regarding the video and the internal investigation. Asked to comment on the film, Burnley did not indicate whether the lawyers were examining this matter or whether the board of trustees was aware the video had been made. In an email, he noted, "I'm not comfortable being drawn into a dialogue with you about such allegations. I believe this is a situation in which a 'middleman' doesn't make sense. If those who say they have such information about such matters will communicate directly with me, I would be most appreciative…Of course, if the allegations are plausible, I will have to follow up appropriately."

The ongoing internal investigation, one former staffer notes, could end badly for FreedomWorks, which for years has been a powerhouse organization of the right. "I think the whole thing will implode," this person says, "and it will be destroyed out of mismanagement and hubris."

UPDATE: As several readers have noted, the obscene scene in the video was likely based on a bizarre scene [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmOoekbK6YI (next below)] in Stanley Kurbick's The Shining.

Copyright ©2013 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress (emphasis in original)

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/panda-hillary-clinton-sex-tape-freedomworks-matt-kibbe-dick-armey [with comments]


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The GOP at War With Itself -- and Us

By Jonathan Weiler
Director of Undergraduate Studies in Global Studies, UNC Chapel Hill
Posted: 02/01/2013 3:03 pm

The polarization that has characterized American politics over the past two decades has been driven primarily by a sorting process. As examined in detail in the book I co-wrote with Marc Hetherington, Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics [ http://www.amazon.com/Authoritarianism-Polarization-American-Politics-Hetherington/dp/052171124X ], Americans have increasingly sorted themselves into the Democratic or Republican party based on what we call worldview differences -- basic differences in how people think about information, hierarchy, diversity and change. More authoritarian-minded individuals who tend, in general, to think in black and white terms about a world of good and evil, are more likely to reject empiricism in formulating opinions and who are less comfortable with out groups and cultural change have gravitated to the Republican Party. Less authoritarian-minded folks who are, on average, more comfortable with nuance and ambiguity and less inclined to be disdainful of traditional minorities, have substantially made their way into the Democratic camp. The result, we've argued, and the political landscape in recent years has amply illustrated, is intense acrimony and seemingly irreconcilable differences between two warring camps, as political differences become so intense and personal that there appears to be no common ground for agreement.

In reality, of course, the picture is a little more complicated. Though conflict and dysfunction seem to be the order of the day on Capitol Hill, congressional negotiators and the president have managed to build jerry-rigged compromises on a range of issues. Furthermore, while rhetorical and ideological differences between partisans seem worse than ever, plenty of critics have rightly pointed to underlying consensus on a host of important issues -- including the ever-expanding national security state and the bailout of Wall Street.

Still, though, the nature of contemporary polarization is not a mere mirage -- it is a reality that has had profound consequences for ordinary Americans. The decision by a number of right-wing governors to reject Medicaid expansion (and their need to rely on bogus data to claim that they are doing so for reasons of fiscal prudence) -- is one example of how ideological extremism and what appears to be spite and contempt will adversely affect significant numbers of Americans.

But this sorting process is beginning to run headlong into another reality. Demographic changes pose a growing challenge to a Republican electoral approach increasingly predicated on winning as many white votes as possible. A political party that has, partly by accident, cultivated an increasingly monochromatic and angry base resentful of significant cultural change is poorly equipped to compete nationally in a country that is becoming more diverse by the day.

Obama's victory in November has not, contrary to the wishful thinking of many, broken this authoritarian-inspired fever. But it has prompted intensified hand-wringing among some elements of the party about the GOP's future prospects. Lindsey Graham -- remarkably now regarded as a "moderate" in the current GOP -- said just before the election, "If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn't conservative enough I'm going to go nuts... We're not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we're not being hard-ass enough." Of course, arrayed against those occasional bouts of reality recognition, are countless statements and actions [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-weiler/todd-akin-republican-party_b_1812564.html ] -- especially by the increasingly extreme House GOP delegation and by state-level politicians -- from bizarre and offensive "theories" about women and rape, science rejectionism, a growing movement to abolish income taxes in service of a retrograde fantasy about how we were all (read propertied white men) better off before the cursed New Deal.

Nowhere are these tensions more evident than in the current debate over immigration reform. A range of GOP leaders, particularly in the Senate, has come to grips with the impossibility of remaining nationally viable while continuing to antagonize and demonize rapidly growing minority populations. That recognition has helped jump-start long-stalled proposals aimed at providing a path to citizenship for the millions of individuals, predominantly Latino, who reside in the country illegally. On other hand, however, the party's base is only growing more hostile to people who look different than they do. Standard measures of racial resentment show a sharp uptick among self-identified Republicans in recent years. And key party opinion-makers, including Rush Limbaugh, are adamantly opposed to any reform that involves amnesty, reflecting a Tea Party base [ http://www.texastribune.org/2013/01/29/republicans-sticky-immigration-problem/ ] broadly hostile to immigrants (including legal ones). While many opponents of immigration reform cite pragmatic considerations -- they say immigrants will be a drain on the economy, for instance -- reality tends not to support such arguments [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/11/09/immigrants_revitalize_small_towns_broad_reform_would_be_good_for_america.html ]. It is quite apparent, that the hostility of much of the right to immigration reform is [ http://prospect.org/article/can-conservatives-change-how-they-talk-about-immigrants ], in fact, "cultural." At the Daily Caller last week, Mickey Kaus articulated [ http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/27/6-simple-questions-on-immigration/ ] six reasons to be skeptical of reform. About one such issue, assimilation, Kaus wrote:

Yes, American culture is powerful. But now there is an entrenched lobby for bilingual education, and identity politics curricula that teach young people they're right to resist assimilation. Formal and informal race preferences reward Americans for maintaining separate ethnic identities. And then there's Univision, which would go out of business if too many people spoke the common language.

Kaus, it should be noted, is far from the extreme end of the spectrum on these issues. But here he embodies the visceral discomfort of many on the right to the idea of reform -- that it threatens our "way of life," whatever the authoritarian right imagines that to be. The pragmatic considerations of party leaders concerned with hunting where the ducks are exist in clear tension with a party built increasingly on a narrow view of what American culture is and who should be invited to share in the opportunity to pursue its just rewards.

If you've run out of people to recruit -- as many GOP strategists have themselves acknowledged is the case -- and there are fewer moderating forces to temper your increasingly extreme worldview, the likely outcome is not stasis. Instead, for current and aspiring GOP leaders, it's a choice between being seen as a traitorous compromiser or embrace of further extremism (and for reasons I and others have previously noted, this dynamic is not symmetrical [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-weiler/olympia-snowe-common-ground_b_1312757.html ] between the two parties). These tensions have also been on stark display evident in the extraordinary debate about guns that has unfolded since the Newtown massacre in December. The vast majority of majority of Americans have come to embrace some restrictions on the availability of certain kinds of weapons and almost universally support expanded background checks.

But the NRA has doubled, tripled and then quadrupled down on its intransigence. Prominent conservative commentators routinely insist that the Second Amendment means what no credible jurist believes -- that there are no constitutionally acceptable limits on what kinds weaponry individuals may possess. Ronald Reagan is mocked as senile [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/16/1458611/prominent-gun-advocate-suggests-reagan-only-supported-gun-safety-because-he-was-senile/ ] for his support for some of these common sense policies. Repeated warnings are issued that any form of gun control is tantamount to the imposition of a Third Reich in America. In an ecosystem like this [ http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Father-of-Newtown-victim-heckled-at-hearing-4228992.php ], staking out an increasingly extreme niche becomes a viable path to political survival and relevance, including in a growing number of House districts that reward such behavior.

This is a pattern we're likely to see for a while -- a haphazard, unpredictable toggling back and forth among GOP leaders. Occasionally, they will capitulate to the reality of actually governing a large, complex society, in which their views are, on most issues, increasingly unpopular. But key elements in the party, particularly in the House and at the state level will continue to push an extreme agenda. They will continue to carry water for the super wealthy while trying to burnish their "populist" credentials in the only way they know how -- by obstructing voting, undermining economic recovery and standing in the way of a more inclusive citizenry, the better to foment the resentment and fear of change that remain the party's cornerstones.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-weiler/post_4381_b_2599146.html [with comments]


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Republican Leaders Worry Their Party Could Divide in Two


Republicans worry that Rand Paul or a candidate like him will mount a third-party presidential campaign that divides the GOP. At least one leading Democrat says his party should also worry about disaffected voters and the rise of third and even fourth parties.
(AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

As Rand Paul mulls a presidential campaign, GOP frets over impact of disaffected voters and shifting coalitions. Democrats should worry, too.

By Ron Fournier
Updated: February 14, 2013 | 6:41 a.m.
February 14, 2013 | 5:00 a.m.

Inside the cozy enclaves of GOP bonhomie—hunkered at the tables of see-and-be-seen Washington restaurants—Republican leaders are sourly predicting a party-busting independent presidential bid by a tea-party challenger, like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in 2016.

To them, the GOP apocalypse looms larger than most realize. Dueling State of the Union rebuttals and Karl Rove’s assault on right-wing candidates are mere symptoms of an existential crisis that is giving the sturdiest Republicans heartburn.

And yet, the heart of the matter extends beyond the GOP. My conversations this week with two Republican officials, along with a Democratic strategist's timely memo, reflect a growing school of thought in Washington that social change and a disillusioned electorate threaten the entire two-party system.

Seem like a lot to swallow? Allow me to describe my last few days at work.

Between bites of an $18.95 SteakBurger at the Palm, one of Washington’s premier expense-account restaurants, Republican consultant Scott Reed summed up the state of politics and his beloved GOP. “The party,” he told me, “is irrelevant.”

He cited the familiar litany of problems: demographic change, poor candidates, ideological rigidity, deplorable approval ratings, and a rift between social and economic conservatives.

“It’s leading to some type of crash and reassessment and change,” said Reed, who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign and remains an influential lobbyist and operative. “It can’t continue on this path.”

Reed sketched a hypothetical scenario under which Paul runs for the Republican nomination in 2016, loses after solid showings in Iowa and other states run by supporters of his father (former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul), bolts the GOP, and mounts a third-party bid that undercuts the Republican nominee.

Paul, a tea-party favorite who was elected to the Senate in 2010, told USA Today [ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/02/13/rand-paul-threatens-hold-brennan-cia-drones/1916357/ ] on Wednesday that he was interested in running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. "I do want to be part of the national debate," he said.

What are the odds of Paul or another GOP defector splitting the party? Reed asked me to repeat the question—and then grimaced. “There’s a real chance,” he replied.

The next morning, Rep. Reid Ribble of Wisconsin dipped his spoon into a bowl of strawberries, sugar, and pink milk—and declared the era of two major parties just about over. “I think we’re at the precipice of a breakdown of the two-party system,” said the Wisconsin Republican.

Voters are tired of partisan rancor and institutional incompetence, Ribble said, pointing to polls that suggest the number of independent voters is rising.

“Ross Perot was a goofy guy,” he said of the deficit hawk who mounted two independent presidential bids in the 1990s. “If he was packaged as a different guy and had the Internet, he would have emerged [as president]. The warning bell he was sounded then is getting louder today.”

Ribble represents one of the few House districts still divided almost equally between Republican and Democratic voters. Many of the rest are gerrymandered, drawn to easily elect a conservative Republican or liberal Democrat. It's one cause of gridlock, what voters loathe about Washington. “I think over a period of time we could watch third and even fourth parties emerging,” Ribble said.

A third voice joined the conversation when Democratic consultant Doug Sosnik released his State of the Union memo [ http://images.politico.com/global/2013/02/12/ds_sou_memo_2112013_final.html ( http://bit.ly/YczyjX )], a remarkable document warning both Democrats and Republicans about the increasing likelihood of a third-party presidential bid.

“And even though the Republican Party is in free fall, the Democratic Party’s position among the electorate has only marginally benefited from its misfortune,” Sosnik wrote. “The broad sense of alienation leaves a very wide door open for a third party presidential candidate in the future.” (Disclosure: I coauthored a book with Sosnik and GOP consultant Matthew Dowd about the effect that social change has on politics [ http://www.amazon.com/Applebees-America-Successful-Political-Religious/dp/B001O9CF9U ].)

Sosnik noted “the staggering pace of economic, demographic, and technological change,” a period of social tumult that rivals the first years of the industrial revolution. “All the upheaval and uncertainty have taken a toll on Americans’ confidence in their government and institutions to solve the nation’s problems,” Sosnik wrote, touching on a topic I explored in a 2012 National Journal magazine feature, “In Nothing We Trust [ http://www.nationaljournal.com/features/restoration-calls/in-nothing-we-trust-20120419 ].”

“This disaffection shows no signs of dissipating any time soon,” Sosnik continued. “There’s little doubt that it will continue to be a major challenge for both political parties and future presidential aspirants as the clock continues to tick on President Obama’s presidency.”

In a telephone interview last week, Sosnik said voters are wary of the leadership pool in U.S. politics. Business or even religious leaders could find traction in future presidential races.

“I think we will have a great debate with third and even fourth parties” vying for traditional GOP voters as well as Democrats now aligned with Obama, he said.

The Democratic Party will have trouble transferring Obama’s popularity to its next presidential nominee unless Hillary Rodham Clinton runs, Sosnik told me.

“I’m not surprised Republicans in this town are telling you they’re worried about the declining influence of their party and the potential for a third-party bid,” Sosnik said, adding with a chuckle: “Democrats should worry, too.”

He wasn't joking.

Copyright © 2013 by National Journal Group Inc.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/republican-leaders-worry-their-party-could-divide-in-two-20130214 [with comments]


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Mitch McConnell Had Previously Floated Karl Rove Idea To Target Weak Tea Party Candidates

Mitch McConnell would rather be majority leader
02/10/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/09/mitch-mcconnell-karl-rove_n_2652927.html [with comments]


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Movement Conservatives and Tea Partiers Rise Up Against Rove

An impressive array of movement leaders rallies to defend Brent Bozell after Crossroads GPS spokesman Jonathan Collegio called him a "hater."

By Garance Franke-Ruta
Feb 7 2013, 1:42 PM ET

A spokesman for Karl Rove's American Crossroads got a very public thumping Wednesday when some of the most prominent Tea Party leaders and movement conservative activists in the country signed onto a letter calling for him to be fired. Jonathan Collegio's offense: He dipped into hip-hop slag and called movement-conservative writer L. Brent Bozell III [ http://archive.mrc.org/bios/lbb/lbb.aspx ] a "hater" during a talk-radio interview that morning.

"An apology is not acceptable," the signatories wrote, and would in no way make up for the "unjust, personal broadside" against the president of the 25-year-old Media Research Council. Signatories included Richard Viguerie, Morton Blackwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and Ginni Thomas, a conservative consultant who is also the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Bozell "is not a hater. He's a patriot and someone who loves this country," said Jenny Beth Martin, also a signatory and co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots.

Collegio apologized [ http://spectator.org/blog/2013/02/06/rove-spokesman-apologizes-to-b ], saying: "Bozell called us 'fake conservatives' -- which is language that perniciously and unfairly judges the motives of others, and fails to acknowledge that there might be honest differences on strategy within the conservative movement... I regret contributing to the vitriol, and I apologize to Mr. Bozell if it offended him. Believe it or not, I'm a big fan of both him and MRC."

It's just the latest outbreak in an ongoing series of skirmishes over the future of a Republican Party. The GOP is caught between a grassroots that's willing to roll the dice and risk some high-profile electoral losses in order to win other races with out-of-the-box candidates, and an establishment up in arms over the loss of what should have been safe Republican seats -- including some held by incumbents -- thanks to the new grassroots powers. Against that backdrop, a New York Times story [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/politics/top-gop-donors-seek-greater-say-in-senate-races.html?pagewanted=all ] about a Rove-backed super PAC's plans for a new project to help incumbents fend off primary challenges raised major hackles among movement conservatives, who felt it was tantamount to declaring war on some of their most cherished members while diminishing their role in the last election cycle that saw substantial GOP gains, 2010.

"The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party's efforts to win control of the Senate," the Times reported on Tuesday. The effort is being led by Steven J. Law, president of Rove's American Crossroads group. That evening Rove appeared on Hannity [ http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/05/Rove-I-do-not-want-fight-tea-party ] to try to undo some of the damage from the Times piece.

But that didn't stop Bozell, who wrote critically of Rove's decision to give the New York Times, which Bozell considers a biased bastion of liberalism, the story in the first place [ http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2013/02/05/bozell-column-karl-rove-vs-far-right ]:

If I were launching a new conservative venture, the last venue I'd choose for the announcement would be the New York Times. Karl Rove has gone to the Times to announce that he has created a new "conservative" entity "to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts."...

In the end, this is not a fight between Democrats and Republicans. This is between the Reaganites and the same old moderate Republicans who insisted Ronald Reagan was far too extreme to be elected in 1976 and then in 1980, when Rove worked for George H. W. Bush. They thought the Doles and McCains were always the smart money against the Democrats. It's a fight between Republicans who want to not only run as conservatives, but govern as conservatives, versus the Bush-Boehner-McConnell never-mind approach.

Rove's groups already had a "horrific" reception among conservatives, according to the American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord [ http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/07/conservative-fury-at-rove-erup/ ], on account of their dismal track record in 2012 and Rove's frank public criticism of conservative and Tea Party candidates he believed had gone off the electability rails dating to 2010.

Collegio's comments came in response to questioning during an interview [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM7EwHuSaeU (below, as embedded)] on a Washington talk-radio show, WMAL's Mornings on the Mall [ http://www.wmal.com/common/more.php?m=102&is_corp=0&r=11&title=mornings ] with Brian Wilson & Larry O'Connor.

Collegio was pretty clear that American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS did not see themselves as the ones declaring intra-party war. "Look," he said, "American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS ... spent more than $30 million over the past two years supporting Tea Party candidates .... We need better candidates across the board."

"We want to elect the most conservative candidates possible," he said, adding later, "The headline on the Breitbart website [ http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/03/Rove-declares-war-Tea-Party ] that we're declaring war -- that's absolutely false."

Collegio contrasted Rove's support for Marco Rubio with his concerns about Christine O'Donnell and Todd Akin as the sorts of distinctions the group would make.

"I don't know why that headline came up," Collegio said. "This is not a war on the Tea Party. Brent Bozell is a hater. He has a long personal history of hating Karl Rove, too -- he has like weird personal axes to grind."

Collegio declined to comment for this story.

The full letter is below.

February 6, 2013

Mr. Steven Law
President & Chief Executive Officer
American Crossroads
P.O. Box 34413
Washington, DC 20043

Dear Mr. Law,

We, the free men and women of this great nation, affirm everyone's natural right to speak their mind, but we cannot and will not abide the unjust, personal broadside your aide Jonathan Collegio leveled against a man whose family has dedicated itself to advancing the cause of liberty for over half a century.

This morning Mr. Collegio attacked L. Brent Bozell, III and labeled him as a "hater" twice in an interview. His attack was not grounded in reason or principle; its justification was nothing more than disagreement with your newly formed organization.

Mr. Bozell is what we call in our movement a "legacy." He has devoted his life to the cause of American conservatism as did his father, Brent Bozell II, who wrote "Conscience of a Conservative" for Barry Goldwater.

Maybe you've heard of Brent's uncle, Bill Buckley, whose words you misquote and twist as the basis for your organization enough to falsely suggest you know something about him.

You may have heard of his other uncle, Jim Buckley, a former U.S. Senator, or Brent's mother, Patricia Buckley Bozell--both important figures and writers in our conservative movement.

Ronald Reagan often saluted the contributions of the Bozell and Buckley families to the cause of American conservatism.

Mr. Collegio calling Mr. Bozell a "hater" publicly on WMAL radio this morning reflects the language of the establishment Republicans. It is the divisive language of the Left.

Rather than engaging in an intellectual debate, you, Mr. Collegio, Mr. Rove, and others in the consultant class attack good conservatives and Tea Party leaders and members.

On behalf of the conservative movement, we are demanding you terminate Mr. Collegio. An apology is not acceptable.

American Crossroads and the so-called Conservative Victory Project have already been severely marginalized. The sheer audacity of political consultants maligning a beloved and critically important player in American history is simply a bridge too far.

You obviously mean to have a war with conservatives and the Tea Party.

Let it start here.

Craig Shirley
Reagan Biographer

Diana Banister
Director
Citizens for the Republic

Mark Levin
Author
Patriots

Jenny Beth Martin
Co-Founder and National Coordinator
Tea Party

Morton Blackwell
Chairman
The Weyrich Lunch

Mathew D. Staver
Founder and Chairman
Liberty Counsel

Tony Perkins
President
Family Research Council

Austin Ruse
President
Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute

Richard Viguerie
Chairman
ConservativeHQ.com

Manuel Miranda
Third Branch Conference

Phyllis Schlafly
President
Eagle Forum

Robert Fischer
President
Fischer Furniture, Inc.

Mark Fitzgibbons
President of Corporate Affairs
American Target Advertising

David N. Bossie
President
Citizens United

Troy Newman
Pro-Life Nation

Richard F. Norman
Founder and President
The Richard Norman Company

Tricia Erickson
President
Crisis Management, Inc.

Ginni Thomas
Liberty Consulting

Angelo M. Codevilla
Professor emeritus
Claremont Institute

William Wilson
Americans for Limited Government

Rick Scarborough
Vision America

Peter J. Thomas
Chairman
The Conservative Caucus Inc.

Colin Hanna
Let Freedom Ring

Andrea Lafferty
President
Traditional Values Coalition

Frank Gaffney
President
Center for Security Policy

Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/movement-conservatives-and-tea-partiers-rise-up-against-rove/272952/ [with comments]


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Maine Gov. LePage's 'greatest fear in the state of Maine: newspapers'


Wikimedia


Gov. Paul LePage reads "Baxter at the Blaine House" to the student body as part of the 2013 Catholic Schools Week celebration at St. John Regional Catholic School on South Garand Street in Winslow on Friday morning.
[ http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/lepagereads-to-students_2013-02-01.html ]

by Laura Clawson
Mon Feb 04, 2013 at 02:35 PM PST

Maine Gov. Paul LePage has stood out from the crop of far-right Republican governors elected in 2010 not for being less extremist than his peers like Ohio's John Kasich and Wisconsin's Scott Walker, but for being the biggest buffoon of the lot. So no wonder, when a student asked him about his greatest fear [ http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/lepagereads-to-students_2013-02-01.html ] as governor, LePage answered:

"My greatest fear in the state of Maine: newspapers," he said to laughter from the children. "I'm not a fan of newspapers." [...]

"There's a lack of objectivity," he said. "If they were fair and balanced, I would be a supporter."

Right. Fair and balanced. Of course a governor who signed a law weakening child labor laws [ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/01/981079/-Maine-s-LePage-signs-law-easing-child-labor-restriction ] not long after making clear he didn't really know [ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/26/970156/-Maine-Gov-LePage-doesn-t-know-what-s-in-child-labor-law-he-supports ] what was in the law has reason to fear newspapers or anything other than "fair and balanced" (wink wink) news coverage. Of course a governor who said the IRS was headed toward being like the Gestapo [ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/13/1109292/-Daily-Kos-Elections-Morning-Digest-Paul-LePage-says-the-IRS-is-going-to-kill-people-seriously ] has reason to fear reporting lacking that special "fair and balanced" flavor being read by the people of his state.

LePage also said that education unions "are doing an awful, awful thing to future generations of Mainers," assailing the state's public education system and pushing charter schools as an alternative. For the record, Maine is above the U.S. average on every category [ http://nces.ed.gov/programs/stateprofiles/sresult.asp?mode=short&s1=23 ] of National Assessment of Educational Progress testing and has a high school graduation rate [ http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=23 ] well above the national average.

Basically, LePage hates and fears anyone who stands against his extremist agenda. And because in his case the perpetual debate over whether Republican politicians are stupid, evil, or both is answered with a resounding "probably both, but definitely stupid," you get a buffoon elected with 38 percent of the vote [and now with a 39% approval rating ( http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/01/unpopular-lepage-in-danger-for-2014-re-election.html )] lashing out at a lot of targets much more respected than he is.

© Kos Media, LLC

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/04/1184613/-Maine-Gov-LePage-s-greatest-fear-in-the-state-of-Maine-newspapers [with comments]


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Lou Barletta: Immigration Reform Risks Flood Of The Undocumented

By Elise Foley
Posted: 02/03/2013 1:35 pm EST | Updated: 02/03/2013 4:14 pm EST

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) said Sunday that he cannot support providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants because he doesn't think President Barack Obama has any desire to enforce existing immigration laws. Barletta dismissed the record number of deportations already taking place.

"You wouldn't replace your carpet at home if you still had a hole in the roof," he said on ABC's "This Week [video embedded]." "We're talking about any time you start waving a carrot such as American citizenship without securing the borders, that number [of undocumented immigrants] that we have today I believe will double or triple."

Barletta has been an outspoken opponent of any immigration reform that involves citizenship. Last week, he insisted Republicans will not win over Latino voters by passing immigration reform because undocumented immigrants are, according to him, uneducated and therefore unlikely to support the GOP.

"I hope politics is not at the root of why we're rushing to pass a bill. Anyone who believes that they're going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken," Barletta said, according to Lehigh Valley's Morning Call [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/lou-barletta-latinos_n_2573906.html ]. "The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they'll depend on."

He did not make the same argument on Sunday, instead focusing on the idea that a pathway to citizenship would swell the undocumented population. "This is 1986 all over again," Barletta said, referring to a law signed by President Ronald Reagan that allowed some undocumented immigrants to become citizens but did not successfully curtail future unauthorized immigration.

Since then, deportations have also increased greatly, including under Obama. His administration deported more than 400,000 people [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/obama-deportation_n_2594012.html ] in the 2012 fiscal year and is on track to deport many more in 2013.

However, the Obama administration also sued to block Arizona's controversial SB 1070 immigration law and has put in place policies that allow some undocumented immigrants to stay, which Barletta said Sunday discounts its deportation numbers.

"We can argue about that all day long," he said of Obama's immigration enforcement. "I don't know how anyone can argue that this administration is serious about enforcing our laws when they're suing the state of Arizona -- because the federal government has caused the problem and Arizona wants to defend itself."

A number of other Republicans have likewise accused the president of being weak on immigration enforcement as an argument against comprehensive immigration reform. A reform framework put out last week [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/immigration-reform-framework_n_2566494.html ] by a bipartisan "gang of eight" in the Senate attempted to address those concerns by tying green cards to stronger border security, granting undocumented immigrants only provisional status until certain border metrics are met.

But some Republicans were still skeptical [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/immigration-reform_n_2576999.html ]. On Wednesday, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) called Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the gang of eight, "amazingly naïve" to support such a framework.

"Look, I love and respect Marco," Vitter said on Laura Ingraham's radio show [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/30/david-vitter-marco-rubio-_n_2582927.html ]. "I just think he’s amazingly naïve on this issue. This is the same old formula we've dealt with before, including when it passed in 1986, and that is the promise of enforcement and immediate amnesty. And of course, the promises of enforcement never materialize. The amnesty happens immediately, the millisecond the bill is signed into law. And the same is true here."

Despite GOP opposition, Jorge Ramos, a Univision anchor and supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, said on "This Week" that he is more optimistic than ever before that reform can pass.

"I don't remember ever seeing the president and both parties rushing to beat the other to present an immigration proposal," Ramos said. "I haven't seen that. It's the most important immigration news in the last 30 years."

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/lou-barletta-immigration-_n_2611475.html [with embedded video, and comments]


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5 reasons GOP should avoid immigration trap


The author says Republicans should not buy into Obama's plan.
AP Photo

By REP. LAMAR SMITH | 2/13/13 10:00 PM EST

Before deciding what to do about immigration, Republicans should first decide what not to do. They should not buy in to the Obama/liberal Democrats’ plan to legalize every person who is in the country illegally.

Republicans do need to make progress with Hispanic voters. But immigration is exactly the wrong subject to use to attract Hispanic support.

For five reasons, Republicans should avoid the immigration trap.

First, when Hispanics themselves are asked what issues they care most about, they usually list immigration fifth. The economy and jobs both rate much higher.

Some argue that how Republicans talk about immigration scares away Hispanic voters. Regrettably, they are right. But the answer is to discuss immigration in a different way, not give amnesty to millions of people in the country illegally.

Republicans should emphasize that America already admits 1 million legal immigrants every year, more than all other countries combined. That generosity should continue. Immigrants strengthen our nation, contribute to our economy and set a daily example for how to achieve the American dream.

Second, Republicans should focus on what Hispanics care about: better financial security — more take-home pay, more job opportunities and a stronger economy. That also happens to be a winning formula for all Americans.

Under the Obama administration, Hispanics’ family income has dropped and unemployment is higher than the national average and economic growth has slowed to a crawl. Republicans should address these issues by favoring low taxes, reducing the government’s debt and creating more private-sector jobs.

Third, legalizing everyone who is in the country illegally (amnesty) sends the wrong message to legal immigrants and to would-be immigrants waiting in line. They played by the rules, waited their turn (sometimes years) and came in the right way.

To reward those who broke the law says to the law-abiding, “You were dumb to wait. Why didn’t you enter illegally?” That’s why a legalization program would increase illegal immigration.

Fourth, some say a legalization program would enable Republicans to “put the immigration issue behind us.” But Republicans are never going to see it in the rear-view mirror. Does anyone really think Republicans are going to outbid Democrats on giving benefits to illegal immigrants?

And fifth, you have to be a little suspicious when liberal Democrats tell Republicans they have to support amnesty to win elections. Do Republicans really think they have the best interests of the GOP at heart?

Immigration is the field Democrats want to lure Republicans to play on. Why? Because Democrats know they’ll win.

Democrats have done the math and realize that legalization inevitably would give them millions of votes, meaning more victories in congressional and presidential elections.

Republicans should put Americans’ interests first. Where do we need immigrants? Which immigrants would contribute most to our economy? Immigrants have made our country great. They work hard, start businesses and generate economic growth. So, besides border security, what kind of immigration policies should Republicans support?

A guest-worker program

Especially in the agriculture industry, more workers are needed. Immigrants can be admitted to go to specific areas for a certain period of time and then return home.

Highly skilled immigrants

Foreign students in the U.S. who receive advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math should be allowed to stay and contribute their talents.

Other skilled immigrants

Reduce the number of extended family members (chain migration) and admit more immigrants on the basis of skills that America needs.

Children

Unlike adults who may have knowingly violated our immigration laws, children brought into our country at a young age should not be blamed for their parents’ actions. A new visa, not conducive to fraud or chain migration, should be created for them.

Spouses

If a legal immigrant is waiting for a husband or wife with minor children outside the country to receive a visa, the spouse should be allowed to wait for the visa in the U.S., rather than remain separated from the family.

These proposed changes are justified and fair. Republicans could endorse them because they would serve America’s best interests. But Republicans should not fall into the trap of legalizing everyone in the country illegally.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and serves on the immigration subcommittee.

© 2013 POLITICO LLC

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/five-reasons-gop-should-avoid-immigration-trap-87623.html [with comments]


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Business and Labor Unite to Try to Alter Immigration Laws

Migrant workers harvesting tomatoes in Florida.
February 7, 2013
After decades of friction over immigration [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration_and_refugees/index.html ], the nation’s labor unions and the leading business association, the Chamber of Commerce, have formed an unusual alliance that is pushing hard to revamp American immigration laws.
These oft-feuding groups agree on the need to enact a way for the 11 million immigrants illegally in the United States to gain citizenship. And they are also nearing common ground on a critical issue — the number of guest workers allowed into the country — that has deeply divided business and labor for years and helped to sink President George W. Bush’s push for an immigration overhaul in 2007.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/business/business-and-labor-unite-to-try-to-alter-immigration-laws.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/business/business-and-labor-unite-to-try-to-alter-immigration-laws.html?pagewanted=all ]


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Who Needs to Win to Win?





Can a party rule by capturing most of the country but less than half of the people? We might be about to find out.

By Jonathan Chait
Published Feb 3, 2013

In the immediate aftermath of last November’s election, the Republican Party, snapped suddenly out of the self-delusion of imminent victory promulgated by the Karl Roves and Dick Morrises of their party, came face-to-face with grim reality: Most of America hated them. And the Americans who didn’t hate them were dying off at a disconcerting pace. Something, nearly everybody both inside and outside the party agreed, would have to be done to rehabilitate the party brand. These were the choices: change, or continue to lose.

Since the New Year, though, a third possibility has emerged. What if Republicans don’t compromise with public opinion, but also don’t lose?

A glimpse of such a future came slowly into view in the weeks following the election, when Republican legislators in Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio floated, with varying levels of commitment, a plan to rig the Electoral College. Each of those states voted for Obama, yet Republicans controlled each of their state governments. The plan would entail allocating the electoral vote in each state not in a lump sum to the candidate who gets more votes, but piecemeal, to the winner of each congressional district.

As it happens, Republicans in those states had already stacked the congressional districts in their party’s favor, so that roughly two thirds of the districts supported Mitt Romney in the last election even though all the states went for Obama. Allocating blue-state electors by congressional district would hand the GOP a massive advantage in the presidential election. Had those states allocated electors this way in 2012, Wisconsin, where Obama won by 7 percent, would have split its electoral votes 5-5. Michigan, which Obama carried with 54 percent of the vote, would have given Romney nine of its sixteen electoral votes. Romney would have needed only to flip his razor-thin loss in Florida to win the presidency despite losing the national vote by four percentage points.

“It’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at,” asserted Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Republican officials in the states conspicuously left the door open. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has called it “an interesting idea” and “worth looking at.” Michigan governor Rick Snyder said, “It could be done in a thoughtful [way] over the next couple years, and people can have a thoughtful discussion.” Republicans in all these states, being blue states, left themselves room to retreat in the face of a backlash, as most of them did once national reporters grasped the implications of the proposal.

That a party would even contemplate such a blatant scheme to rig the rules so that it might win elections, when any remotely fair standard dictates it ought to lose, boggles the mind. But this plot did not come out of nowhere, and it is not merely an exercise in momentary partisan opportunism. It is the expression of a durable American political tradition of skepticism of democracy (or, to put it more charitably, skepticism of majoritarian democracy). And as the Republican Party comes to grips with an increasingly hostile public, this tradition is coming to the fore.

If you listen closely to the arguments by the Republican vote riggers, you can hear rationalizations, yes, but also a real idea: Rural Americans deserve disproportionate political representation. Charles W. Carrico, a small-town Republican state senator from Virginia who sponsored his state’s Electoral College–alteration bill, said, “People in my district—they feel discouraged by coming out because their votes don’t mean anything if they’re outvoted in metropolitan districts.” Jase Bolger, speaker of the state House of Representatives in Michigan, likewise fretted over the voting power of the urban hordes: “I hear that more and more from our citizens in various parts of the State of Michigan, that they don’t feel like their vote for president counts, because another area of the state may dominate that or could sway their vote.”

To believers in majoritarian democracy, this idea is silly. People in urban areas outvote people in small towns because there are more of them. If you have more voters, you’re supposed to win. It would be unfair if you didn’t.

Intuitive as it sounds, that definition of democracy has never completely prevailed in the United States. The Constitution itself was a compromise between advocates of majority rule and interests like slave-owners and small-state residents who demanded disproportionate representation. When we consider the dire position of the Republican Party—which, since November, has sunk even lower in opinion polls—we automatically equate political power with majority approval. The two things are not the same, and the discrepancy helps explain why the party, even in its reviled standing and without additional vote-rigging schemes, is in a better position than you might think.

The broadest available measure of public opinion are the votes of the nearly 130 million Americans who cast ballots last fall. That’s an electorate with a steadily growing share of minorities and a large cohort of young and generally liberal voters. One oddity of the current moment, though, is that even as Democrats steadily built a natural majority, the geographic scope of their appeal has sharply constricted. In his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton won 1,524 counties nationwide. Obama’s reelection managed to win just 690—fewer than even Jimmy Carter (900) and Michael Dukakis (819) managed in their landslide defeats. Democrats have won the loyalties of a larger share of the voters, but their voters occupy a progressively smaller share of the land. And in our political system, occupying land matters.

The Senate, with its one-state-one-vote system, gives individuals who reside in low-population states vastly more power than those in high-population states. (California has two senators representing its 38 million citizens, the same number Wyoming has representing its 576,000, which gives Wyoming voters 66 times more voting power per capita.) The chamber doesn’t attempt to represent America, exactly. It represents an approximation of America that is whiter and more rural than the real thing. This makes the Senate naturally more fertile territory for the Republicans, and while the Democrats have managed to hang on to majority control of the Senate since 2007, the way they have done so points to the forbidding odds they face. Republicans have thrown away easily winnable races in states like Delaware, Nevada, Indiana, and Missouri by nominating oddballs or cranks when perfectly loyal, more palatable Republicans were available. Democrats, meanwhile, have managed to hold seats in deep-red states only by carefully husbanding the political capital of their members. If liberals attempted to impose anything close to the sort of partisan discipline on their Senate candidates that tea-party activists deploy against Republicans, the GOP might have a filibuster-proof majority.

After defying the odds in an election cycle they were expected to lose, Senate Democrats face another uphill climb in next year’s races, defending seats in deep-red states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Alaska, South Dakota, and several others. Even if Democrats pull it off, their majority depends on their holding on to constituents who distrust their party. “To the extent that they break with the president,” a Democratic strategist said of the Senate candidates the party needs to hold the chamber, “it could be—I don’t want to say it is—a big advantage for them in deep-red states.” That is to say: The structure of the chamber is such that even a popular Democratic president cannot have a functional majority in the place. Republicans, on the other hand, could win back the Senate without venturing very far into blue territory—all they need to do is get their base to stop throwing virgins into live volcanoes.

The Senate was intended as a brake against majority rule. The House was supposed to be the vessel of populism. But the House also is affected by the lopsided distribution of Democrats across the country. There are roughly the same number of voters in each district—but the Democrats waste many more votes, because many of their voters are packed into urban districts with huge Democratic majorities. In the 2012 elections, the Republicans comfortably held the House even though Democratic House candidates collected more than a million more votes than Republican House candidates. And since Republicans control so many statehouses, they’ve been able to rig the districts to further solidify their advantage. Democrats have the voters, but Republicans have the geography.

In the face of the disproportionate power wielded in our system by white, rural, conservative voters, one might expect a strong wave of support for political reform to make the system better reflect the majority. Instead the prevailing currents have run in the opposite direction, with Republicans erecting new bulwarks to protect themselves from the threat of a hostile majority.

After Obama mobilized large numbers of young and nonwhite voters, Republicans across the country took steps to constrict the electorate. In what was for them a happy accident of timing, they gained power in the House during the 2010 midterm elections, just in time to oversee the redrawing of House districts that occurs every decade following the Census. They were able to circumscribe districts such that they locked in their gains in several states, which means that even Democratic-¬leaning ones like Pennsylvania and Michigan sent staunchly Republican delegations to the House this year (13-5 and 9-5, respectively).

In fact, if the 2012 elections proved anything, even beyond the increasing Democratic tilt of the electorate, it was that Republicans have a mortal lock on the House. Surely losing the House would not be impossible. But the current standard of behavior—holding the economy hostage, screaming at the president during an address to Congress, voting for the Paul Ryan budget—did not come close to doing the trick last fall, and it’s hard to imagine what would. (Passing a mandatory-child-labor law? Voting to replace Martin Luther King Jr. Day with Bull Connor Day?)

The Obama era has also seen Republicans in nearly every state they have controlled impose burdensome identification requirements to vote, bureaucratic obstacles to the registration of new voters, and rolled-back early balloting. (Some of those crackdowns withstood legal challenge; others did not.) The campaign to rig the Electoral College can be seen as a piece of the same broad effort—leveraging Republican control of state governments in order to stop the Obama coalition from exerting its numeric power. The Electoral College itself already compromises the democratic principle (it allows the winner of the popular vote to lose the presidency). But the Republican plan would give its candidates all the electoral votes from states they carry, plus some electoral votes from states they lose. Even worse, thanks to gerrymandered redrawing of congressional districts, some states in which Republicans lose the popular vote (as Romney did in Michigan, say) would split their electoral votes in the Republican candidate’s favor.

In Washington, too, the Republican minority has flexed its muscles by creating new powers for itself that previous minorities never imagined. The Senate filibuster has evolved over the past three decades from a rare tool of unusually strong dissent into a routine tactic requiring a supermajority to foil. Under Obama, Senate Republicans have adopted the extraordinary new stratagem of using their blocking power to prevent the execution of duly passed laws and to stop presidential nominees not out of any particular objection to the candidates, but out of opposition to the laws those bureaus carry out. The congressional scholars Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann have labeled this technique “the new nullification”—a minority invalidating laws it lacks the votes to overturn. A handful of reform-minded Democrats have sought to rein in minority obstruction, but their efforts petered out.

Of all these efforts, the most potent may ultimately be the concerted operation by legal conservatives to turn the courts into a machine for judicial activism. Since 1937, courts have left economic policy to legislatures and handed down activist rulings to expand social rights for minorities. Some conservatives strove to use the courts to create rights for economic minorities—that is, wealthy people—by reading the Constitution, as the tea party does, not merely as a blueprint for political organization and civil rights but as mandating laissez-faire economic policy. As recently as 2005, this was a fringe movement, known as the “Constitution in Exile” and denounced by mainstream conservatives schooled in the generational Republican distrust of activist judges. (Antonin Scalia called it a “threat to constitutional democracy.”) But the legal case against Obamacare crystallized a shocking change. As the case wound its way through the courts, the entire conservative legal apparatus, including Scalia, endorsed the reasoning and methods of the Constitution in Exile movement. The Supreme Court barely upheld Obamacare while opening the door to strike down sundry taxes, spending, and regulations that conservatives can’t stop in Congress.

The constitution in Exile movement has an explicit historic parallel in mind: The “Lochner era,” a period from the end of the nineteenth century through 1937, when archconservatives ruled the Supreme Court and used it to strike down the income tax, labor laws, and other populist measures. Conservatives cite, and hope to revive, the legal doctrines from this period, along with the Court’s role as a legislative backstop for laissez-faire economics.

The Lochner era also happened to coincide with an era in which, like today, conservatives were stalked by a panic that they were losing the country. The cities were swelling with foreigners pressing for economic and social change. The simple virtues of majority rule suddenly grew far murkier to many Americans. Francis Parkman, a prominent historian, wrote an essay in 1878 titled “The Failure of Universal Suffrage.” In it, Parkman lamented that open democracy worked well in the old small towns, but had grown perverted with the influx of “thousands and ten thousands of restless workmen, foreigners for the most part, to whom liberty means license and politics means plunder.”

A similar dread courses through the right today. It can be heard in the dismayed comments of Mitt Romney, who told donors both before and after the election that Obama’s appeal boiled down to letting his supporters loot the public fisc. Parkman’s fear—“politics means plunder”—had become, 134 years later, Romney’s displeasure at Democrats’ “giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go out to the polls.” The Gilded Age newspaper that argued that the right to vote should belong to those “competent to know what are the rights of his fellow-citizens” has an echo in respectable contemporary figures like George Will, who recently praised filtering “potential voters with the weakest motivations” or else “the caliber of the electorate must decline.”

The tradition of expanding the scope of American democracy commands all the retrospective historical glory. But the counter-democratic tradition—a concerted advocacy not of dictatorship but of restraints to prevent the majority of citizens from exercising political power—runs just as long and deep. It runs through John C. Calhoun, the titanic nineteenth-¬century theorist who defended the rights of the white South against the growing majority in the North. (“The first and leading error … is to confound the numerical majority with the people, and this so completely as to regard them as identical.”) Our history books record the arguments of the crusaders for voting rights for women and blacks and overlook that they were, necessarily, arguing against something. Women’s suffrage, warned former president Grover Cleveland in 1905, would “give to the wives and daughters of the poor a new opportunity to gratify their envy and mistrust of the rich.” In 1908, New York City tried to suppress voting by Jews (who held notoriously left-wing views) by limiting voter registration to Saturdays and Yom Kippur. It took a hotly contested constitutional amendment in 1913 to allow people nationwide to vote for their senators, who previously were appointed by state legislatures.

American history has always tugged back and forth between a more pure democracy and some constricted facsimile thereof. “In the very long run, to be sure, we have become more democratic,” Harvard historian Alexander Keyssar has written, “but there have been numerous moments in our past when the pendulum swung in the opposite direction.” It seems peculiar, though perhaps not bewildering, that the pendulum should swing back, not forward, during—of all times!—the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.

Copyright 2013 New York Magazine

http://nymag.com/news/features/republican-party-2013-2/ [with comments]


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Segregation at All Costs: Bull Connor and the Civil Rights Movement

Uploaded on May 7, 2009

National History Day documentary on Bull Connor, Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety, whose use of police dogs and fire hoses on civil rights demonstrators dramatically backfired and called national attention to the Civil Rights Movement.

Created by Eamon Ronan. If anyone is interested in seeing the bibliography/if anyone has any questions, feel free to contact me at [e-mail]. Thank you for watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9kT1yO4MGg [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84250169 and preceding (and any future following)]


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Virginia Voter ID Bills Would Tighten Strict Voting Laws
02/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/05/virginia-voter-id_n_2625459.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Original Sin
Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people
FEBRUARY 10, 2013
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112365/why-republicans-are-party-white-people [with comments]


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The Persistence of Racial Resentment
February 6, 2013
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/the-persistence-of-racial-resentment/ [with comments]


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The Enlightenment’s ‘Race’ Problem, and Ours
February 10, 2013
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/why-has-race-survived/ [with comments]


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Visualizing a Sham Social Contract



By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Feb 4 2013, 2:36 PM ET

For the past few weeks we've talked about [ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/the-american-case-against-a-black-middle-class/267385/ ] what a broken contract [ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/the-effects-of-housing-segregation-on-black-wealth/272775/ ] means for black America [ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/the-language-of-segregation-under-social-sanction/272795/ ]. As such, these images really hit me hard. I can't think of any better way to capture what we mean than to see children excluded from a world sheerly by dint of skin color. Again, it is worth consider what message the society was attempting to send black people.

The images were taken by Gordon Parks in 1956 in an attempt to depict Jim Crow America. The sad fact is that in the North, similar messages were being sent out. From Gordon Parks' Wikipedia page [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Parks ] -- "When Parks was eleven years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River, knowing he couldn't swim."

Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/visualizing-a-sham-social-contract/272842/ [with comments] [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=80014628 and preceding (and any future following)]


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Duke University Kappa Sigma Fraternity Draws Accusations Of Racism With 'Asia Prime' Party (UPDATE)

Via Asia Students Association (Duke University) Facebook [ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=455895684484346&set=oa.108048352710953&type=1&theater ]
02/07/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/duke-kappa-sigma-party_n_2630598.html [with comments]


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Lawyers Say Surveillance of Muslims Flouts Accord
February 3, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/nyregion/police-department-flouts-surveillance-guidelines-lawyers-say.html


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Spying on Law-Abiding Muslims
Editorial
February 9, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/spying-on-law-abiding-muslim-citizens.html [with comments]


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Why Police Lie Under Oath


Wesley Allsbrook

By MICHELLE ALEXANDER
Published: February 2, 2013

THOUSANDS of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury’s believing their word over a police officer’s are slim to none. As a juror, whom are you likely to believe: the alleged criminal in an orange jumpsuit or two well-groomed police officers in uniforms who just swore to God they’re telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? As one of my colleagues recently put it, “Everyone knows you have to be crazy to accuse the police of lying.”

But are police officers necessarily more trustworthy than alleged criminals? I think not. Not just because the police have a special inclination toward confabulation, but because, disturbingly, they have an incentive to lie. In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.

That may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly. Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm: “Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.”

The New York City Police Department is not exempt from this critique. In 2011, hundreds of drug cases were dismissed after several police officers were accused of mishandling evidence. That year, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn condemned a widespread culture of lying and corruption in the department’s drug enforcement units. “I thought I was not naïve,” he said when announcing a guilty verdict involving a police detective who had planted crack cocaine on a pair of suspects. “But even this court was shocked, not only by the seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed.”

Remarkably, New York City officers have been found to engage in patterns of deceit in cases involving charges as minor as trespass. In September it was reported that the Bronx district attorney’s office was so alarmed by police lying that it decided to stop prosecuting people who were stopped and arrested for trespassing at public housing projects, unless prosecutors first interviewed the arresting officer to ensure the arrest was actually warranted. Jeannette Rucker, the chief of arraignments for the Bronx district attorney, explained in a letter that it had become apparent that the police were arresting people even when there was convincing evidence that they were innocent. To justify the arrests, Ms. Rucker claimed, police officers provided false written statements, and in depositions, the arresting officers gave false testimony.

Mr. Keane, in his Chronicle article, offered two major reasons the police lie so much. First, because they can. Police officers “know that in a swearing match between a drug defendant and a police officer, the judge always rules in favor of the officer.” At worst, the case will be dismissed, but the officer is free to continue business as usual. Second, criminal defendants are typically poor and uneducated, often belong to a racial minority, and often have a criminal record. “Police know that no one cares about these people,” Mr. Keane explained.

All true, but there is more to the story than that.

Police departments have been rewarded in recent years for the sheer numbers of stops, searches and arrests. In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence. Law enforcement has increasingly become a numbers game. And as it has, police officers’ tendency to regard procedural rules as optional and to lie and distort the facts has grown as well. Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland, Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in.

THE pressure to boost arrest numbers is not limited to drug law enforcement. Even where no clear financial incentives exist, the “get tough” movement has warped police culture to such a degree that police chiefs and individual officers feel pressured to meet stop-and-frisk or arrest quotas in order to prove their “productivity.”

For the record, the New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, denies that his department has arrest quotas. Such denials are mandatory, given that quotas are illegal under state law. But as the Urban Justice Center’s Police Reform Organizing Project has documented, numerous officers have contradicted Mr. Kelly. In 2010, a New York City police officer named Adil Polanco told a local ABC News reporter that “our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them.” He continued: “At the end of the night you have to come back with something. You have to write somebody, you have to arrest somebody, even if the crime is not committed, the number’s there. So our choice is to come up with the number.”

Exposing police lying is difficult largely because it is rare for the police to admit their own lies or to acknowledge the lies of other officers. This reluctance derives partly from the code of silence that governs police practice and from the ways in which the system of mass incarceration is structured to reward dishonesty. But it’s also because police officers are human.

Research shows that ordinary human beings lie a lot — multiple times a day — even when there’s no clear benefit to lying. Generally, humans lie about relatively minor things like “I lost your phone number; that’s why I didn’t call” or “No, really, you don’t look fat.” But humans can also be persuaded to lie about far more important matters, especially if the lie will enhance or protect their reputation or standing in a group.

The natural tendency to lie makes quota systems and financial incentives that reward the police for the sheer numbers of people stopped, frisked or arrested especially dangerous. One lie can destroy a life, resulting in the loss of employment, a prison term and relegation to permanent second-class status. The fact that our legal system has become so tolerant of police lying indicates how corrupted our criminal justice system has become by declarations of war, “get tough” mantras, and a seemingly insatiable appetite for locking up and locking out the poorest and darkest among us.

And, no, I’m not crazy for thinking so.

Michelle Alexander is the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [ http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Michelle-Alexander/dp/1595586431 ].”

© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/why-police-officers-lie-under-oath.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/why-police-officers-lie-under-oath.html?pagewanted=all ]


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Ken Anderson Court of Inquiry Shows Prosecutorial Misconduct at its Worst

By Bennett L. Gershman
Posted: 02/12/2013 12:04 pm

Don't cry for former Texas prosecutor, now judge Ken Anderson, who faced a court of inquiry last week [ http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/williamson/anderson-apologizes-to-morton-from-witness-stand ] into whether he deliberately hid evidence that sent an innocent man to prison for 25 years for murder. As the prosecutor in the 1987 trial of Michael Morton, Anderson testified [ http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/another-chapter-closes-michael-morton-case ] that "the system screwed up" and that he did nothing wrong. He appeared more anguished over protecting his own image and "what me and my family have been through for 18 months of false accusations" than the terrible reality that he abused his power as a prosecutor to destroy the life of an innocent man.

Arrogant, defiant, and dishonest, Anderson's alleged misconduct in Morton's trial, and his present attempt to justify his deceit of court, jury, and defense counsel, typifies the worst in prosecutors. Below are some of the highpoints in this unusual state judicial proceeding, presided over by Judge Louis Sturns, that may result in a criminal prosecution against Anderson for contempt of court and tampering with evidence.

Michael Morton was accused of murdering his wife Christine by bludgeoning her to death in their Williamson County home in 1986 before going to work. The killing attracted considerable attention - "It was a big deal" according to former prosecutor Kimberly Gardner who worked under Anderson. The evidence of Morton's guilt was circumstantial and not very strong. Anderson's theory was that Morton killed his wife because she wouldn't have sex with him, and the medical examiner provided an opinion that pinpointed with questionable accuracy the time of death as occurring before Morton left for work. However, there was considerable evidence that strongly supported the defense theory that a stranger entered the home and killed Christine after Michael left. Almost all of this exculpatory evidence was contained in notes, reports, and transcripts gathered by the lead investigator Sgt. Don Wood of the Williamson County Sheriff's Office.

The information collected by Wood, which he shared with Anderson, included the following: reports from neighbors seeing a man in a green van behind the Morton home around the time of Christine's murder; the transcript of an interview by Sgt. Wood of Rita Kirkpatrick, Morton's mother-in-law, stating that her three-year-old grandson Eric told her he saw a "a monster" - not his father - beat his mother to death; evidence that Christine's purse was stolen and her credit card and checkbook fraudulently used several days later; unidentified fingerprints in the Morton home; and an unidentified footprint in the backyard. Armed with this powerful evidence - which they knew nothing about -- it is difficult to believe that Morton's defense lawyers would not have been able to provide the jury with substantial reasonable doubt of Morton's guilt. But the jury never heard this evidence because Anderson hid it from Morton's lawyers and from the trial judge who had ordered Anderson to disclose it.

Among the most egregious actions of Anderson was his decision not to call Sgt. Wood as a witness for the prosecution. As noted, Wood was the chief investigating officer and would have given the jury the background of the case, and all of the evidence he accumulated, including the evidence that was inconsistent with Morton's guilt. But as Anderson well knew, under the rules of trial procedure, calling Wood would have required Wood to divulge all of his case notes, reports, and the transcript of the child's statement describing the killer as a "monster." So, according to the testimony last week of former prosecutor Doug Arnold, Anderson said he wasn't calling Wood because that way "the other side can't have access to those reports."

Equally egregious was Anderson's response to the 1987 order by the trial judge William Lott, since deceased, to disclose all of the evidence the police had collected. Anderson turned over a slender envelope containing only Morton's statements to the police; he did not disclose the mountain of evidence collected by Wood that would have strongly supported Morton's claim of innocence. It is this alleged violation by Anderson of the trial court's disclosure order that is one of the central issues in the court of inquiry, and if Judge Sturns determines that Anderson violated the order, then Anderson will face criminal charges for contempt.

Anderson's perverse trial strategy was either to conceal the transcript of the child's statements to his grandmother, or to obscure the child's description of the killer, which Anderson knew would likely have doomed his prosecution. According to the testimony last week of former prosecutor Gardner, Anderson acknowledged that "The kid thinks a monster killed his mother," and that his father was not present when his mother was killed, as well as describing other details that corresponded to the evidence at the crime scene, including a blue suitcase that the killer placed atop his mother's body. Anderson stated that if the child's story ever gets exposed, Anderson would claim that what the child really saw was his father dressed in a scuba diving suit as a disguise and that's why there was no blood on his clothing.

Gardner recalled that Anderson's concoction of a story of "this guy killing his wife in front of his 3-year old son in a skin diving suit was pretty strange." But why didn't Anderson disclose this information to the defense? Because, as Anderson testified, "He was a traumatized three-year-old child. You can't attach any significance to anything he said." In other words, according to Anderson's view of acceptable prosecutorial practice, if a prosecutor learns that evidence exists that contradicts the prosecution's theory of guilt, that evidence, by definition, is mistaken, erroneous, or false. With such a mindset, tantamount to the fox guarding the henhouse, a prosecutor can always bury troublesome facts.

Interestingly, Anderson in his pre-hearing deposition, repeatedly professed to not having any memory of the factual details of the Morton case, including the child's statement, or Anderson's bizarre scuba diving story to explain it. But Anderson's failure of memory of critical facts in the Morton case appears to be disingenuous, especially given the many references in his book Crime in Texas [ http://www.texastribune.org/2013/02/06/liveblog-ken-anderson-court-inquiry/ ], about which he was questioned, in which he recounts how as a prosecutor he had to master hundreds of details in cases, especially high-profile cases like Morton's.

Judge Sturns reserved his decision until the attorneys file additional papers. His decision will likely be made sometime in the next several months. Meanwhile, Michael Morton can enjoy his freedom, which Anderson's misconduct denied him. Morton asked Judge Sturns to "be gentle with Ken Anderson," a kindness that, as the hearing demonstrated, Anderson hardly deserves.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bennett-l-gershman/ken-anderson-court-of-inq_b_2664315.html [with comments]


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8 Reasons Why Cantor’s Rebranded GOP Looks Just Like The Old GOP

Feb 5, 2013
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/05/1542631/cantor-rebranded/ [with comments]


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The Ignorance Caucus

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 10, 2013

Last week Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, gave what his office told us would be a major policy speech. And we should be grateful for the heads-up about the speech’s majorness. Otherwise, a read of the speech might have suggested that he was offering nothing more than a meager, warmed-over selection of stale ideas.

To be sure, Mr. Cantor tried to sound interested in serious policy discussion. But he didn’t succeed — and that was no accident. For these days his party dislikes the whole idea of applying critical thinking and evidence to policy questions. And no, that’s not a caricature: Last year the Texas G.O.P. explicitly condemned efforts to teach “critical thinking skills,” because, it said, such efforts “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

And such is the influence of what we might call the ignorance caucus that even when giving a speech intended to demonstrate his openness to new ideas, Mr. Cantor felt obliged to give that caucus a shout-out, calling for a complete end to federal funding of social science research. Because it’s surely a waste of money seeking to understand the society we’re trying to change.

Want other examples of the ignorance caucus at work? Start with health care, an area in which Mr. Cantor tried not to sound anti-intellectual; he lavished praise on medical research just before attacking federal support for social science. (By the way, how much money are we talking about? Well, the entire National Science Foundation budget for social and economic sciences amounts to a whopping 0.01 percent of the budget deficit.)

But Mr. Cantor’s support for medical research is curiously limited. He’s all for developing new treatments, but he and his colleagues have adamantly opposed “comparative effectiveness research,” which seeks to determine how well such treatments work.

What they fear, of course, is that the people running Medicare and other government programs might use the results of such research to determine what they’re willing to pay for. Instead, they want to turn Medicare into a voucher system and let individuals make decisions about treatment. But even if you think that’s a good idea (it isn’t), how are individuals supposed to make good medical choices if we ensure that they have no idea what health benefits, if any, to expect from their choices?

Still, the desire to perpetuate ignorance on matters medical is nothing compared with the desire to kill climate research, where Mr. Cantor’s colleagues — particularly, as it happens, in his home state of Virginia — have engaged in furious witch hunts against scientists who find evidence they don’t like. True, the state has finally agreed to study the growing risk of coastal flooding; Norfolk is among the American cities most vulnerable to climate change. But Republicans in the State Legislature have specifically prohibited the use of the words “sea-level rise.”

And there are many other examples, like the way House Republicans tried to suppress a Congressional Research Service report casting doubt on claims about the magical growth effects of tax cuts for the wealthy.

Do actions like this have important effects? Well, consider the agonized discussions of gun policy that followed the Newtown massacre. It would be helpful to these discussions if we had a good grasp of the facts about firearms and violence. But we don’t, because back in the 1990s conservative politicians, acting on behalf of the National Rifle Association, bullied federal agencies into ceasing just about all research into the issue. Willful ignorance matters.

O.K., at this point the conventions of punditry call for saying something to demonstrate my evenhandedness, something along the lines of “Democrats do it too.” But while Democrats, being human, often read evidence selectively and choose to believe things that make them comfortable, there really isn’t anything equivalent to Republicans’ active hostility to collecting evidence in the first place.

The truth is that America’s partisan divide runs much deeper than even pessimists are usually willing to admit; the parties aren’t just divided on values and policy views, they’re divided over epistemology. One side believes, at least in principle, in letting its policy views be shaped by facts; the other believes in suppressing the facts if they contradict its fixed beliefs.

In her parting shot on leaving the State Department, Hillary Clinton said of her Republican critics, “They just will not live in an evidence-based world.” She was referring specifically to the Benghazi controversy, but her point applies much more generally. And for all the talk of reforming and reinventing the G.O.P., the ignorance caucus retains a firm grip on the party’s heart and mind.

© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/opinion/krugman-the-ignorance-caucus.html [with comments]


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A Choice For Corporate America: Are You With America Or The Cayman Islands


Speaking at a Thursday news conference on a new bill to shut down overseas tax havens, Sen. Bernie Sanders gestures toward a photo of a Cayman Islands building used by more than 18,000 companies to avoid paying taxes.

By Sen. Bernie Sanders
Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont
Posted: 02/09/2013 8:35 am

When the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street drove this country into the deepest recession since the 1930s, the largest financial institutions in the United States took every advantage of being American. They just loved their country - and the willingness of the American people to provide them with the largest bailout in world history. In 2008, Congress approved a $700 billion gift to Wall Street. Another $16 trillion in virtually zero interest loans and other financial assistance came from the Federal Reserve. America. What a great country.

But just two years later, as soon as these giant financial institutions started making record-breaking profits again, they suddenly lost their love for their native country. At a time when the nation was suffering from a huge deficit, largely created by the recession that Wall Street caused, the major financial institutions did everything they could to avoid paying American taxes by establishing shell corporations in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens.

In 2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands (which has a corporate tax rate of 0.0 percent) to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It worked. Not only did Bank of America pay nothing in federal income taxes, but it received a rebate from the IRS worth $1.9 billion that year. They are not alone. In 2010, JP Morgan Chase operated 83 subsidiaries incorporated in offshore tax havens to avoid paying some $4.9 billion in U.S. taxes. That same year Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to avoid an estimated $3.3 billion in U.S. taxes. Citigroup has paid no federal income taxes for the last four years after receiving a total of $2.5 trillion in financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

On and on it goes. Wall Street banks and large companies love America when they need corporate welfare. But when it comes to paying American taxes or American wages, they want nothing to do with this country. That has got to change.

Offshore tax abuse is not just limited to Wall Street. Each and every year corporations and the wealthy are avoiding more than $100 billion in U.S. taxes by sheltering their income offshore.

Pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly and Pfizer have fought to make it illegal for the American people to buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and Europe. But, during tax season, Eli Lilly and Pfizer shift drug patents and profits to the Netherlands and other offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Apple wants all of the advantages of being an American company, but it doesn't want to pay American taxes or American wages. It creates the iPad, the iPhone, the iPod, and iTunes in the United States, but manufactures most of its products in China so it doesn't have to pay American wages. Then it shifts most of its profits to Ireland, Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands and other tax havens to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Without such maneuvers, Apple's federal tax bill in the United States would have been $2.4 billion higher in 2011.

Offshore tax schemes have become so absurd that one five-story office building in the Cayman Islands is now the "home" to more than 18,000 corporations.

This tax avoidance does not just reduce the revenue that we need to pay for education, healthcare, roads, and environmental protection, it is also costing us millions of American jobs. Today, companies are using these same tax schemes to lower their tax bills by shipping American jobs and factories abroad. These tax breaks have contributed to the loss of more than 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs and the closure of more than 56,000 factories since 2000. That also has got to change.

At a time when we have a $16.5 trillion national debt; at a time when roughly one-quarter of the largest corporations in America are paying no federal income taxes; and at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time high; it is past time for Wall Street and corporate America to pay their fair share.

That's what the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act (S.250) that I have introduced [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo7qGdA0WwY (above, as embedded)] with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) is all about.

This legislation will stop profitable Wall Street banks and corporations from sheltering profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It will also stop rewarding companies that ship jobs and factories overseas with tax breaks. The Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated in the past that the provisions in this bill will raise more than $590 billion in revenue over the next decade.

As Congress debates deficit reduction, it is clear that we must raise significant new revenue. At 15.8 percent of GDP, federal revenue is at almost the lowest point in 60 years. Our Republican colleagues want to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, the children, the veterans and the most vulnerable by making massive cuts. At a time when the middle class already is disappearing, that is not only a grossly immoral position, it is bad economics.

We have a much better idea. Wall Street and the largest corporations in the country must begin to pay their fair share of taxes. They must not be able to continue hiding their profits offshore and shipping American jobs overseas to avoid taxes.

Here's the simple truth. You can't be an American company only when you want a massive bailout from the American people. You have also got to be an American company, and pay your fair share of taxes, as we struggle with the deficit and adequate funding for the needs of the American people. If Wall Street and corporate America don't agree, the next time they need a bailout let them go to the Cayman Islands, let them go to Bermuda, let them go to the Bahamas and let them ask those countries for corporate welfare.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/a-choice-for-corporate-am_b_2652176.html [with comments]


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The Meaning of Monopoly




The new token chosen by Facebook voters

From American socialism to German hyperinflation to worldwide vulture capitalism, the strange and shifting lessons of a favorite board game.

By Jock O'Connell
February 7, 2013

Monopoly has been much in the news lately—not because the Obama Administration has suddenly assumed the guise of a vigorous anti-trust cop (fat chance!), but because the toy company Hasbro is making a conspicuous change to its flagship board game. In a contest held on Facebook over the past month, Hasbro invited the public to decide the fate of one of Monopoly’s classic tokens—the little metal figurines that represent each player on the game board. After more than 10 million votes poured in from fans in 120 countries around the world, the firm announced yesterday that, by will of the people, the old flat iron would be replaced with a new token in the form of a cat [ http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-monopoly-cat-iron-hasbro-20130206,0,117283.story ].

But what does Monopoly actually mean to all those millions of voters, aside from being a perennial diversion for families forced to endure rainy summer days indoors? Last fall an article [ http://harpers.org/blog/2012/10/monopoly-is-theft/1/ ] in Harper’s magazine by Christopher Ketcham examined the peculiar history of Monopoly, a game that has, over the past 110 years, been periodically repurposed to teach a number of often conflicting lessons about economics.

As Ketcham explains, the earliest version of Monopoly was designed in 1903 by a Maryland actress named Lizzie Magie as a vehicle for popularizing the ideas of Henry George, a now largely forgotten 19th century political economist whose thoughts on remedying inequality in an industrial society were embraced by such contemporaries as Mark Twain, John Dewey, and Leo Tolstoy. In the game’s original version, players could choose to behave like monopolists and drive their adversaries to financial ruin—an outcome whose perniciousness Magie took to be self-evident—or they could agree to cooperate with each other, pay rent into a common pool, and achieve an arguably happier shared prosperity. Monopoly was deeply anti-monopolist.

As the game evolved, though, subsequent iterations cast aside the communitarian cooperative option. This was certainly the case with the version patented by Charles Darrow, “an unemployed steam-radiator repairman and part-time dog walker from Philadelphia” who sold the game to Parker Brothers in the mid-1930s. From that point on, the game came to teach a rather different economic lesson. What had started out as a cautionary tale against the evils of unbridled capitalism became a diversion from the trauma of the Great Depression, and then a parlor game where clever children could end up owning their parents. What’s more, as the game made its way around the world, its message varied.

When I was a college student in Vienna in the late 1960s, my friends and I played a German edition of Monopoly that was of post-World War II vintage. In lieu of Park Place and Boardwalk, the game featured properties ranging from the proletarian Badstrasse to the plutocratic Schlossallee. From time to time, you’d be unlucky enough to draw a card bearing the stern order: Gehen Sie in das Gefängnis (Go to Jail).

What was especially intriguing about this version of the game was a twist in the rules that made it singularly conducive to rampant inflation. By collecting rents and other cash awards (such as for merely passing “Los”), some players inevitably amassed huge fortunes, enough to dry up all the available Deutschmarks.

To continue playing, it became necessary to convert smaller bills into much larger units of currency in order to maintain liquidity. One-mark notes would be re-denominated into scrip as large as 100,000 marks. In effect, the bank lost control of the money supply. It was Weimar all over again [ http://weimar.facinghistory.org/content/german-inflation-chart-1919-1923 ].

I’ve since wondered if we had simply misinterpreted the rules or whether this version of the game had instead been deliberately rigged by postwar German authorities to instill in young players the virtues of conservative economic and fiscal policies. Perhaps this helps explain the exaggerated sense of alarm with which contemporary Germans react at the meagerest hint of inflation.

So what economic lesson does today’s edition of Monopoly impart? For his Harper’s article, Ketcham had a conversation with Richard Marinaccio, the 2009 U.S. national Monopoly champion, who explained the game this way:

“Monopoly players around the kitchen table”—which is to say, most people—“think the game is all about accumulation,” he said. “You know, making a lot of money. But the real object is to bankrupt your opponents as quickly as possible. To have just enough so that everybody else has nothing.” In his view, Monopoly is not about unleashing creativity and innovation among many competing parties, nor is it about opening markets and expanding trade or creating wealth through hard work and enlightened self-interest, the virtues Adam Smith thought of as the invisible hands that would produce a dynamic and prosperous society. Instead, it’s about shutting down the marketplace… The initial phase of competition in Monopoly, the free-trade phase that happens to be the most exciting part of the game to watch, is really all about obliterating free trade and annihilating competition in order to replace it with monopolistic rent-seeking.

Ah, so that’s why it’s so much fun to play on a snowy afternoon.

Jock O'Connell is an international trade economist who lives in Sacramento.

Copyright © 2013 Pacific Standard (emphasis in original)

http://www.psmag.com/culture/the-meaning-of-monopoly-52448/ [with comments] [also at http://www.salon.com/2013/02/09/how_monopoly_turns_us_into_uncreative_capitalist_vultures_partner/ (with comments)]


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University Of Texas, Rick Perry Clash Over Future Of Public Higher Education

02/03/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/university-of-texas-rick-perry_n_2608892.html [with comments]


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Rick Perry Slams California's Business Climate In Ads Airing Across State (UPDATE)

02/07/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/rick-perry-california-business-ads_n_2618171.html [with comments; the YouTube of Brown's reaction, embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUA5ttWcyNE ]


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Lisa Jackson, Outgoing EPA Chief, Convinced Obama Is Serious On Climate Change


Outgoing EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson

By John Shiffman, Valerie Volcovici and Patrick Rucker
Posted: 02/04/2013 3:33 pm EST | Updated: 02/05/2013 1:40 pm EST

WASHINGTON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - The departing chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa P. Jackson, says she cringes whenever she is asked if President Barack Obama is truly serious about confronting climate change.

Of course he is, she tells them. "I don't think you need clues. The president has been really clear ... I'm not sure how much clearer he could be."

And yet even Jackson herself was caught off guard last month, when sitting just steps from Obama during his second-term swearing-in, the president cited the threats posed by climate change so prominently in his inaugural address.

"Surprised? Of course. Because I did not know what he was going to say. But pleased? Absolutely," the EPA administrator told Reuters in a wide-ranging interview before she leaves office later this month.

For Jackson, 50, a former New Jersey state official with no national profile until Obama chose her to lead the EPA during his first term, the lengthy inaugural nod to climate change served as a satisfying coda to a tumultuous tenure marked by clashes with Republican lawmakers and agricultural communities.

Jackson's deepest regret, she said, is that she failed to reach out to rural, often conservative regions of the United States. As a result, she said, opponents were able to generate politically damaging rumors of looming regulatory crackdowns, such as a fictitious EPA plan to treat bovine excretions as dangerous pollutants.

"If I were starting again, I would from day one make a much stronger effort to do personal outreach in rural America," Jackson said. "Had I known that these myths about everything from cow flatulence to spilled milk could be seen as 'The EPA is coming to get you,' I would have spent more time trying to inoculate against that."

CHANGES BY RULE-MAKING, NOT LAWS

Jackson plans to leave office on Feb. 14. She cites among her achievements rules to limit carbon emissions from power plants for the first time, and having struck a deal to make U.S. cars more fuel efficient. Her signature achievement, she said, was the so-called endangerment finding that greenhouse gases pose a danger to human health, a formal declaration that paved the way for the agency to write the carbon-cutting rules.

"I always said we would make common sense steps forward," she said. "We wouldn't try to turn the world on its ear."

Jackson's tenure, though, was marked by repeated conflicts with some conservatives and Republicans who decried the new, more stringent, air and water regulations. The critics argued that these were not based on sound science, were onerous for business and detrimental to the economy.

With Congress polarized and otherwise focused on budgetary issues, lawmakers appear unlikely to consider comprehensive climate change legislation during Obama's second term.

For that reason, the next EPA administrator is likely to continue Jackson's approach, using the endangerment finding and other administrative avenues to further target greenhouse gas emissions, such as those from the country's coal-fired power plants.

Reuters reported on Friday that the White House is leaning toward Gina McCarthy, the current EPA assistant administrator for air and radiation, as Jackson's replacement.

Jackson declined to comment on possible successors, but said that whoever replaces her would at least enjoy a four-year head start on the Democratic regulatory agenda.

"The next administrator will have a bit more luxury, because we are not entirely done with those things, but in terms of working with the administration on climate and clean energy, on other things like clean water and toxins, there will be a little more discretion in terms of how the next administrator sets those priorities," Jackson said.

Jackson declined to discuss her private conversations with Obama on climate change or other pending environmental issues, including the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, which awaits State Department approval.

She also declined to say which of the EPA proposals now awaiting final White House approval - including curbs on smog-causing ozone and rules to lower the sulphuric content of gasoline - might be finalized first.

Jackson, a New Orleans native with degrees in chemical engineering from Tulane and Princeton, was the first African-American to hold the top EPA post and made environmental justice a priority.

She said that after she leaves office, she will spend time with her family in the Washington area, but did not rule seeking political office in either New Jersey, where she is a former commissioner of environmental protection, or Louisiana.

CAUTIOUS SUPPORT FOR FRACKING

One of the largest emerging issues in rural America is the controversial practice of producing natural gas through a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Booming gas production has lifted the economy in several regions and lowered overall carbon emissions by displacing dirtier burning coal, but environmentalists fear that fracking can pollute groundwater and release methane into the air.

Each state is generally responsible for inspecting drilling operations, but EPA waded into the issue in 2011 by issuing a controversial draft report that fracking had contaminated groundwater at a site in Pavillion, Wyoming.

A major EPA research project into fracking's effects on water supplies is due in 2014, as well as final rules on issues including the disposal of waste water and the use of diesel chemicals in the process.

Jackson has cautiously supported fracking, so long as states and the industry follow a sound and safe approach.

"In between all the heat and noise around who should regulate it and how safe it is has come a renewed focus on the part of the industry to recognize that if they don't do this properly they will lose the trust of the American people in the communities where it is happening," she said.

"I don't think the insurance policy has to rest mostly, or entirely, with the federal government... It is not self-regulation. They need to be regulated, because it is an invasive practice. Fighting regulation and saying 'We can take care of ourself here' is...ultimately not a good path forward."

For Jackson, the effects of climate change have hit close to home. Her native New Orleans was shattered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 - Jackson drove her mother, her mother's sister and her stepfather out of the city as the storm hit - and her long-time home state of New Jersey was at the center of Superstorm Sandy's destructive path in late October.

These and other recent events have made it clear that not addressing climate change may be more costly than ignoring the problem, Jackson said.

"It brings home that if you had to deal with this on a more frequent basis, the more cost to our country in dollars and cents, in lives lost, in lost opportunity to move forward because we have to go back and rebuild all the time," she said. "It is horribly familiar for me. I have watched it happen in my hometown." (Editing by Ros Krasny and David Brunnstrom)

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/lisa-jackson-outgoing-epa-chief_n_2617658.html [with comments]


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Being American Is Bad for Your Health

By Marty Kaplan
Posted: 02/04/2013 4:34 pm

"Americans are sicker and die younger than people in other wealthy nations."

That stark sentence appears [ http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1556967 ] in the January 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and it comes from the authors of a landmark report [ http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13497 ; http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DBASSE/CPOP/US_Health_in_International_Perspective/index.htm ; http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/US-Health-in-International-Perspective-Shorter-Lives-Poorer-Health.aspx ] -- "Shorter Lives, Poorer Health" -- on differences among high-income countries.

You probably already know that America spends more on health care than any other country. That was one of the few facts to survive the political food fight pretending to be a serious national debate about the Affordable Care Act.

But the airwaves also thrummed with so many sound bites from so many jingoistic know-nothings claiming that America has the best health care system in the world that today, most people don't realize how shockingly damaging it is to your wellness and longevity to be born in the U.S.A.

This is made achingly clear in the study of the "U.S. health disadvantage" recently issued by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, which was conducted over 18 months by experts in medicine and public health, demography, social science, political science, economics, behavioral science and epidemiology.

Compare the health of the American people with our peer nations -- with Britain, Canada and Australia; with Japan; with the Scandinavian countries; with France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Side by side with the world's wealthy democracies, America comes in last, and over the past several decades, it's only gotten worse.

With few exceptions -- like death rates from breast cancer -- we suck. Our newborns are less likely to reach their first birthday, or their fifth birthday. Our adolescents die at higher rates from car crashes and homicides, and they have the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections. Americans have the highest incidence of AIDS, the highest obesity rates, the highest diabetes rates among adults 20 and older, the highest rates of chronic lung disease and heart disease and drug-related deaths.

There is one bright spot. Americans who live past their 75th birthday have the longest life expectancy. But for everyone else -- from babies to baby boomers and beyond -- your chances of living a long life are the butt-ugly worst among all the 17 rich nations in our peer group.

In case you're tempted to blow off these bleak statistics about American longevity by deciding that they don't apply to someone like you -- before you attribute them to, how shall we put it, the special burdens that our racially and economically diverse and culturally heterogeneous nation has nobly chosen to bear -- chew on this: "Even non-Hispanic white adults or those with health insurance, a college education, high incomes, or healthy behaviors appear to be in worse health (e.g., higher infant mortality, higher rates of chronic diseases, lower life expectancy) in the United States than in other high-income countries." And by the way, "the nation's large population of recent immigrants is generally in better health than native-born Americans."

Why are we trailing so badly? Some of the causes catalogued by the report:

The U.S. public health and medical care systems: Our employer -- and private insurance -- based health care system has long set us apart from our peer nations, who provide universal access. The right loves to rail against "socialized medicine," but on health outcomes, the other guys win.

Individual behavior: Tobacco, diet, physical inactivity, alcohol and other drug use and sexual practices play a part, but there's not a whole lot of evidence that uniquely nails Americans' behavior. The big exception is injurious behavior. We loves us our firearms, and we don't much like wearing seat belts or motorcycle helmets.

Social factors: Stark income inequality and poverty separate us from other wealthy nations, who also have more generous safety nets and demonstrate greater social mobility than we do. In America, the best predictor of good or bad health is the income level of your zip code.

Physical and social environmental factors: Toxins harm us, but our pollution isn't notably worse than in other rich nations. The culprit may be our "built environment": less public transportation, walking and cycling; more cars and car accidents; less access to fresh produce; more marketing and bigger portions of bad food.

Policies and social values: To me, this is the richest, and riskiest, ground broken by the report, which asks whether there's a common denominator -- upstream, root causes -- that help explain why the United States has been losing ground in so many health domains since the 1970s:

Certain character attributes of the quintessential American (e.g. dynamism, rugged individualism) are often invoked to explain the nation's great achievements and perseverance. Might these same characteristics also be associated with risk-taking and potentially unhealthy behaviors? Are there health implications to Americans' dislike of outside (e.g., government) interference in personal lives and in business and marketing practices?

My answer is yes, but I'd plant the problem in recent history and politics, not in timeless quintessentials. Since the 1980s, in the sunny name of "free enterprise," there's been a ferocious, ideologically driven effort to demonize government, roll back regulations, privatize the safety net, stigmatize public assistance, gut public investment, weaken consumer protection, consolidate corporate power, delegitimize science, condemn anti-poverty efforts as "class warfare" and entrust public health to the tender mercies of the marketplace.

The epidemic of gun violence has been fueled by anti-government paranoia stoked by the gun manufacturers' lobby, the NRA. The spike in consumption of high-fructose corn syrup has been driven by the food industry's business decisions and its political (i.e., financial) clout. In the name of fiscal conservatism, plutocrats push for cuts in discretionary expenditures on maternal health, early childhood education, social services and public transportation. The same tactic that once prolonged tobacco's death grip -- the confection of a phony scientific "controversy" -- now undermines efforts to combat climate change, which is as big a danger to public health as any disease.

More accidents may be shortening our lifespans. But we're not getting sicker by accident.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/being-american-is-bad-for_b_2613222.html [with comments] [also at http://www.jewishjournal.com/marty_kaplan/article/being_american_is_bad_for_your_health (with comments)]


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Report: U.S. recovered [record-high] $4.2 billion from healthcare fraud in 2012

Federal officials say they recovered nearly $8 for every dollar spent on healthcare fraud investigations in 2012.
February 11, 2013
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-healthcare-fraud-20130211,0,3844844.story [with comments]


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Feds to Publicize Drug and Device Company Payments to Doctors Next Year

Feb. 1, 2013
After years of anticipation, all of the nation's drug and medical device makers must soon begin publicly reporting payments they make to U.S. physicians, according to final regulations [ https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2013-02572.pdf ] announced this afternoon by the federal government.
The release of payments data in September 2014 would mark a milestone in the push to bring transparency to medicine. Once posted, patients will be able to see if their physicians receive money from any of the companies whose products they prescribe. Studies have shown that such payments, however small, bias physicians towards companies and their products.
Until now, ProPublica's Dollars for Docs tool [ http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/ ] has been the only freely available source for the public to search and analyze the payments made since 2009 by a dozen drug companies. ProPublica gathered the information from the companies' websites into one searchable, sortable database.
Most of these companies were required to post the information on their websites as part of settlements with the federal government over allegations of improper marketing. Companies have paid billions of dollars to settle the lawsuits [ http://www.propublica.org/special/big-pharmas-big-fines ].
ProPublica is working on an update of Dollars for Docs and in the coming weeks will expand the database to include payments from 15 companies through the end of 2012.
Drug companies, lawmakers and consumer advocates have grown increasingly frustrated by the time it has taken the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to release final rules for collecting and publishing the data under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which was a part of the 2010 health reform law [ http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ148/pdf/PLAW-111publ148.pdf ].
[...]
http://www.propublica.org/article/feds-to-publicize-drug-and-device-company-payments-to-doctors-next-year [with comments]


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Drowned in a Stream of Prescriptions


Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. "You keep giving Adderall to my son, you're going to kill him," said Rick Fee, Richard's father, to one of his son's doctors.



By ALAN SCHWARZ
Published: February 2, 2013

VIRGINIA BEACH — Every morning on her way to work, Kathy Fee holds her breath as she drives past the squat brick building that houses Dominion Psychiatric Associates.

It was there that her son, Richard, visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was in the parking lot that she insisted to Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a 24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning, “You’re going to kill him.”

It was where, after becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in 2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days of Adderall. He hanged himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.

The story of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts said.

Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/health/attention-disorder-or-not-children-prescribed-pills-to-help-in-school.html?pagewanted=all ] who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.

[...(much more)]

© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/concerns-about-adhd-practices-and-amphetamine-addiction.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/concerns-about-adhd-practices-and-amphetamine-addiction.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]


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This Is a Fish on (Prescription) Drugs


Photo illustration by 731; Photographs by Getty Images

By Drake Bennett on February 14, 2013

Imagine you are a perch. One day you notice that all the other perch around you are acting different. Previously timid and communal—as the species has been for millennia—they’ve become foolhardy, leaving the safety of the school to search alone for bits of zooplankton to eat, practically daring the birds and bass that prey on them to attack. In short, they’ve gone nuts.

Being a fish, you would not be terribly introspective, and in any event, it would be beyond your abilities to imagine the cause: that another species, one that lives, improbably, on land, suffers from problems called “anxiety” and “depression” because of its enormous brain (among other things). That animal has taken to eating exotic chemicals to change its behavior. It then excretes those chemicals into the water that you breathe so that you, too, are ingesting those chemicals. And they’re changing your behavior.

It’s not news that human beings dump a lot of stuff into lakes and rivers. The evidence is all around us—massive blooms of algae from fertilizer runoff, stunted fish and dead waterfowl from mine tailings, and oil spills. But that is stuff we’re used to thinking about as pollution, and they’re the sort of effects—die-offs and deformity—that we’re used to worrying about. What about the stuff we actually put into our own bodies? What effect does that have when it gets out into the world? And what happens to a species—or, for that matter, an entire ecosystem—when we put it on drugs?

In a paper [ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6121/814 ] published Thursday in Science, a team of Swedish researchers tried to provide at least part of an answer. They first tested various Swedish bodies of water for the levels of an anti-anxiety drug called oxazepam—like many drugs, oxazepam doesn’t get filtered out by sewage treatment plants. In a lab, the researchers then placed wild European perch in tanks with comparable drug levels. The researchers found that the drugs were, indeed, having an effect: Even at dosages at the lower end of what they found in the wild, the fish in the oxazepam tanks were less social than those in the control tanks. The drugged fish put more distance between themselves and other fish, and they ate faster than normal. At higher dosages, the researchers also found an increase in what they termed “boldness,” the lack of hesitation with which the fish entered an unfamiliar area.

“We were very surprised,” says Jonatan Klaminder, an environmental scientist at Umea University and one of the co-authors of the paper. “The concentrations out in the environment are very low, but it’s still enough to generate effects that we know are relevant for ecological processes.” He adds that most of the behavioral changes they found were, from the point of view of each fish, actually productive: The fish feed at a faster rate, they become more active. “They actually perform better,” he said. For perch, at least, putting oxazepam in a river is a bit like putting Adderall in the water supply of a college dorm (or cocaine in Charlie Chaplin’s salt [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ykdb8Zen-o (next below)]).

However, in the lab there weren’t any predators. And as Klaminder and his co-authors point out, oxazepam-dosed perch, swimming around blithely in the wild by themselves, are probably at higher predation risk. Also, the fact that the drug makes them eat so ravenously could throw their environments out of whack. The plankton that perch eat in turn eat algae, and if the perch ate up all the plankton the algae would run rampant, choking off the rest of the life in the area.

As Klaminder underlines, he and his fellow researchers only looked at one fish and one drug. But ecosystems are full of plants and animals that react to chemicals in different ways, and our rivers and lakes are increasingly full of a crazy cocktail of pharmaceuticals—from Prozac to the estrogen from birth control pills—many of which doctors would probably hesitate to prescribe together. Rebecca Klaper, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, is one of the few other researchers to have done work on fish and psychopharmaceuticals—her research is on fathead minnows and fluoxetine, the active ingredient in Prozac. She found that fluoxetine in the water didn’t affect the females, but made the males essentially obsessive-compulsive (a condition, interestingly enough, that Prozac is prescribed for in humans). The males spend an unusual amount of time building their underwater nests. When the amount of fluoxetine was increased, the males started ignoring the females. When the dosage was increased still further, the males killed the females.

According to Klaper, the problem of drugs in our waterways doesn’t have an easy solution—upgrading all of the water treatment plants in the world would be an enormous expense, and we still don’t have the technology to filter many pharmaceutical compounds out of the water. Still, she points out, we can take some encouragement from the fact that many compounds don’t actually have an effect at the sort of concentrations they’re found today in lakes and rivers. “There are medications that probably we don’t need to be as worried about,” she says. “We should focus on finding out which ones are of most concern.” In the meanwhile, as a species we might think about getting our own prescription drug issues under control. The rest of the animal family is getting concerned.

©2013 Bloomberg L.P.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-14/this-is-a-fish-on-prescription-drugs [with comment]


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Anti-anxiety drug found in rivers makes fish more aggressive
Behaviour changes result from benzodiazepine levels similar to those in the environment.
14 February 2013
Tiny amounts of a common anti-anxiety medication — which ends up in wastewater after patients pass it into their urine — significantly alters fish behaviour, according to a new study. The drug makes timid fish bold, antisocial and voracious, researchers have found.
Oxazepam belongs to the class of drugs called benzodiazepines, the most widely prescribed anxiety drugs, and is thought to be highly stable in aquatic environments. It acts by enhancing neuron signals that damp down the brain's activity, helping patients to relax.
An article [ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6121/814 ] in Science this week now places the drug on a growing list of pharmaceutical products that escape wastewater treatment unscathed and may be affecting freshwater communities. A chemical found in contraceptive pills, known as 17-ß-estradiol, and the antidepressant drug fluoxetine (Prozac) have been shown to alter behaviour in the fathead minnow [ http://www.nature.com/news/human-drugs-make-fish-flounder-1.11843 ] (Pimephales promelas), and the popular anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen reduces courtship behaviour in male zebrafish [ http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101112/full/news.2010.607.html ] (Danio rerio).
[...]
http://www.nature.com/news/anti-anxiety-drug-found-in-rivers-makes-fish-more-aggressive-1.12434 [no comments yet]


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When God Is Not Enough: Religious States Have Highest Rates of Anti-Depressant Use


Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/Oleg Golovnev

They say that religion is the opiate of the masses, but it seems that the opiates of the religious are antidepressants.

By Laura Gottesdiener
February 14, 2013

They say that religion is the opiate of the masses, but it seems that the opiates of the religious are antidepressants.

A study released [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/160415/mississippi-maintains-hold-religious-state.aspx ] yesterday confirmed that Mississippi remains the most religious state in the Union, followed by a handful of its southern belt brothers: Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, as well as the Mormon stronghold of Utah. The Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of all Mississippians identify as “very religious.” The least religious states in the U.S. are the former stomping grounds of the very, very religious Puritans: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.

But life in these highly faithful states doesn’t seem to be all its cracked up to be. The most religious states in the U.S. share another trait: the highest use of anti-depressants.

Utah has long been the nation’s capital of happy pill popping, with its citizens twice as likely to be on anti-depressants than the general U.S. population. But the rest of the observant states aren’t far behind. Of the top-ten most religious states, nine have higher than average use of anti-depressants.

Some states have startlingly medicated populations.

In Utah, Louisiana and Arkansas--the 2nd, 4th and 5th most religious states in the Union-- nearly 20 percent [ http://www.express-scripts.com/research/research/archive/docs/geoVariationTrends.pdf ] of the population is on some form of anti-depressants, according to a 2006 study by one of the largest prescription companies.

The rest of the highly religious states aren’t far behind. Mississippi (most religious), Alabama (third most religious), South Carolina (6th), Tennessee (7th), North Carolina (8th) and Oklahoma (10th) have above average rates of anti-depressant use, with 15 to 17 percent of the citizens medicated. Of the top-ten most religious states, only one--Georgia--isn’t disproportionately addicted to anti-depressants. Nationally, the prescription rate was about 14 percent.

Anti-depressants weren’t the only medication being doled out in the most religious states. In fact, a state’s level of religiosity correlates with a state’s overall medication rate. Of the top ten most religious states in the Union, six are also on the list of top-ten most medicated states [ http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/17/most-medicated-states-lifestyle-health-prescription-drugs_slide_11.html ].

Copyright 2013 Laura Gottesdiener

http://www.alternet.org/belief/most-religious-states-are-most-likely-be-addicted-antidepressants [with comments]


===


Pat Robertson calls Islam “demonic”


Evangelical Christian leader Pat Robertson
(Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder)

The bigot is at it again. We have to stop dismissing the media mogul's hate speech as white noise

By Mary Elizabeth Williams
Thursday, Feb 14, 2013 01:37 PM CST

How is it that Pat Robertson is still on TV saying terrible things? How desperate for content are cable providers that they’ll just let this windbag spew any old crazy talk? His statement this week that Islam is “demonic” and that “I hardly think to call it a religion, it’s more an economic and political system with a religious veneer” isn’t even the most offensive thing he’s ever said – it’s just the most recent in a lifetime torrent of stupid [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7joPva59DE (next below, as embedded)].

What makes Robertson’s blithe dismissal of a quarter of the world’s population [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/08/muslim-population-islam-survey ] as “angry people” so infuriating isn’t just that it’s so ignorant – after all, when was the last time he said something that made sense? You don’t exactly expect cultural sensitivity from the man who blamed a 2010 earthquake on Haiti’s “pact with the devil.” But in a country where, believe it or not, we have women and homosexuals and nearly 3 million Muslims [ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/religion/man-behind-mosque/america-and-muslims-by-the-numbers/ ], you’d think that at a certain point, being a bigot and a moron would not be the sort of thing cable companies and advertisers and talk-show bookers would want to promote. But then again, I’m the person who thought Amy Poehler and Will Arnett had the world’s cutest marriage, so I may be hopelessly naive.

On his show last month, the misogynistic elder statesman related the tale of a teenage boy who wished his father would pay more attention to his mother. “It may be your mom isn’t as sweet as you think she is,” he said. “She may be kind of hard-nosed.” And then he expanded on that theme: “A woman came to a preacher I know — it’s so funny. She was awful looking. Her hair was all torn up, she was overweight and looked terrible. And she said, ‘Oh, Reverend, what can I do? My husband has started to drink.’ And the preacher looked at her and he said, ‘Madam, if I were married to you, I’d start to drink too [ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/pat_robertson_awful_looking_women_are_ruining_marriages/ ].’” He also threw in the word “slattern,” which is always fun.

And just earlier this month, he responded to the possible easing of the banishment of gays from the Boy Scouts by saying the move will lead to “predators as Boy Scouts, pedophiles who will come in as Scoutmasters [ http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pat-robertson-predators-as-boy-scouts-pedophiles-as-scoutmasters/discrimination/2013/02/05/59883 ], and if they are, of course parents wouldn’t want their sons being involved in the Boy Scouts.” Robertson’s list of people who are doing it wrong is legendarily impressive. Last year, he warned about adoptees, “You just never know what’s been done to a child before you get that child [ http://gawker.com/5938144/old-monster-pat-robertson-warns-people-against-adopting-children ].” In December, he condemned West Point’s first same-sex wedding by saying that “General Douglas MacArthur, rolling over in his grave. What have they done to our cherished institution?”

Robertson, in addition to being a sack of hate in preacher’s robes, is also a media mogul. He gets to say most of the insane things because he’s got his own network and his own show. But the question is, why is he still getting away with this crap? Why does this idiot still have such a powerful platform? Just because a man spends decades pulling the same old garbage doesn’t make it any less garbage. It’s not enough to roll our eyes and say, “That darn Pat.” We should be disgusted, on a regular basis. We should be angry at his casual bigotry and his sneering condescension. And just because it’s his shtick, it doesn’t make it any more tolerable today than it’s ever been.

Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/14/pat_robertsons_latest_calls_islam_demonic/ [with comments]


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[F6]

The NRA's Fraud: Fabrication of Second Amendment Rights

By Burton Newman
Attorney; Adjunct professor, Washington University School of Law
Posted: 04/17/2013 4:13 pm

"A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." ~ Second Amendment, U.S. Constitution

Following the Sandy Hook massacre, gun rights, gun laws and the Second Amendment have been the subject of a national dialogue. Any discussion of these topics is severely tainted by calculated messaging by the NRA to deceive and mislead our citizens to believe that the Second Amendment grants far reaching gun rights which have not and do not exist.

The Second Amendment became part of our constitution in 1791. For well over two centuries the Supreme Court never decided that the Amendment granted a constitutional right to individuals to bear arms. The widely held notion that such a right existed was a myth fabricated by the NRA for its own self interest and for the corporate profits of gun manufacturers. This fabrication altered the mindset of most Americans to accept fictional Second Amendment rights that permitted the proliferation of all manner and kind of dangerous weapons. We became a gun culture run rampant. The gun manufacturers reaped enormous profits as gun sales soared. In 2011 industry wide gun sales were $4.3 billion. Misconceptions generated by the NRA created a warped interpretation of Second Amendment that generated these sales.

The fraud perpetrated by the NRA is patent. We do not heed the warnings of prominent citizens such as former attorneys general Nicholas Katzenbach, Ramsey Clark, Elliot L. Richardson, Edward Levi, Griffin B. Bell and Benjamin R. Civiletti. The joint statement in the Washington Post of these former attorneys general in 1992 reads as follows:

"For more than 200 years, the federal courts have unanimously determined that the Second Amendment concerns only the arming of the people in service to an organized state Militia: it does not guarantee immediate access to guns for private purposes. The nation can no longer afford to let the gun lobbies' distortion of the constitution cripple every reasonable attempt to implement an effective national policy towards guns and crime."

In a PBS News Hour interview in 1991, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger referred to the NRA Second Amendment myth as "one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American people by any special interest group that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

The opinions of these distinguished legal scholars had no bearing on NRA propaganda that continued unabated. During the weeks before the 2000 general election, a self-anointed constitution "scholar," Charleton Heston, ceremonial president of the NRA, flooded the airways to urge voters to support candidates who would protect and preserve Second Amendment rights. Little did most Americans realize that such rights did not exist. The NRA's reading of the Second Amendment was purely fictional and unsupported by the law of the land.

Candidates for public office both state and federal reaped in political contributions from the NRA. These elected officials feared the wrath of the NRA should they stray from the NRA's Second Amendment myth.

A norm evolved offering sanctity to gun owners and manufacturers. Gun manufacturers and the NRA prospered and profited. As one gun manufacturing executive states the equation, the NRA "protects our Second Amendment rights and those rights protect the ability to buy our products." Elected officials stand idly by while gun deaths and massacres escalate without lasting public outcry or meaningful legislative efforts.

The statistics are staggering. The depth of lost life is evident by comparing deaths in foreign wars and firearm deaths of citizens within our borders. In all foreign wars during our history about 650,000 soldiers died. In the 45 years since Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated in 1968, there have been over 1.3 million deaths in our country caused by firearms. The fraud perpetrated by the NRA as recognized by former Chief Justice Burger is linked to these deaths. The blood of thousands upon thousands of Americans permanently stain the hands of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre.

How did the NRA gain such power and influence on our citizenry? For the first century of its existence beginning in 1871, the NRA primarily devoted its efforts to gun safety. Following enactment of new restrictive gun laws requiring gun licensing and taxes, a 1977 coup within the NRA membership led by militants resulted in a new harder edged and more aggressive NRA. The truth mattered not. The edifice of the NRA headquarters would now bear an abbreviated version of the Second Amendment: "The Right of the People to keep and Bear Arms Shall not be infringed." The NRA amended the Constitution unilaterally to avoid even a hint that the language pertaining to a Militia had any meaning. The law of the land spoke otherwise.

In 1939 the Supreme Court issued the Miller decision. The justices ruled that "the Second Amendment must be interpreted and applied with the view of its purpose of rendering effective Militia." That was the state of Second Amendment law until the 2008 Heller decision. Prior to Heller, the Supreme Court never recognized that individuals had an individual right to keep and bear arms. It was the NRA propaganda, not the law of the land, that led the cry for unlimited gun ownership and protection of gun owner rights. The NRA myths allowed the cycle of expanded gun sales and NRA power to purchase political influence. Democrats and Republican alike announced their allegiance to the Second Amendment and the public grew to believe that the NRA view of the Second Amendment was consistent with constitutional law. The NRA controlled too many elected officials to allow for protection of our citizens from gun violence, gun deaths and unspeakable gun horrors in schools and public places.

The NRA myths were disseminated on other fronts. Articles appeared in NRA publications and rewrote history by declaring that "Armed citizens [were] unregulated except by his own ability to buy a gun at whatever price he could afford." This credo became an NRA rallying cry.

The NRA poured millions upon millions of dollars into congressional and state legislative campaigns. Gun owners and manufacturers poured more money into the NRA. The revisionist view of Second Amendment rights gained momentum in 1982 when a Senate judiciary subcommittee issued a report about the discovery of "long lost proof" of an individual's constitutional right to bear arms. The chair of the subcommittee was Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. The "proof" has never surfaced.

For over three decades the NRA funded legal research, legal seminars and pushed for law review articles supporting individual rights to bear arms. This and the NRA persuasion of elected officials led to a dramatic shift in Second Amendment legal views. In 2003 the NRA established a $1 million chair at George Mason University law school. The views of NRA supported professors and legal scholars were relied on in the 2008 Supreme Court decision finding an individual right to bear arms for the first time.

What did the Supreme Court say in the 2008 Heller decision? The Court held that there existed an individual right to bear arms only for traditional purposes such as self-defense in the home. The Court declared that the Second Amendment should not be understood as conferring a "right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." The Court gave examples of firearms laws presumed to be lawful. These included laws prohibiting firearm possession by felons, mentally ill persons and possession of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings. The Court found that conditions on the commercial sale of firearms were presumptively lawful. The Court said this list was not exhaustive; and found that the Second Amendment is consistent with laws banning firearms that are "dangerous and unusual."

The ruling in Heller was a departure from the 1939 decision in the Miller case where the court stated that the "obvious purpose" of the Second Amendment was to ensure effectiveness of the stated Militia. However, even with this departure the decision in Heller is limited in its scope. The only right specifically mentioned in the Supreme Court's opinion is the right of an individual to possess a gun for self-defense in the home.

Did this limited decision stop the NRA from its propaganda campaign? Of course not. On Meet the Press on March 24, 2013, Wayne LaPierre declared to the nation that under the Heller decision it would be an "absolute abridgement" of constitutional rights to regulate assault weapons. That myth, heard by millions, was intended to again mislead the country into believing that there are sweeping Second Amendment rights that cannot be regulated. Nonsense. The very language of the Supreme Court opinion in Heller calls out LaPierre as a liar.

How can the American people be educated to understand the true meaning of the Second Amendment consistent with the Supreme Court's interpretation of that Amendment? Such an education process could lead to sweeping reform of state and federal regulation of firearms. But how is the mindset of the American people to be changed? The same way our mindset about drunk driving and smoking changed over time. Let's take a look at the circumstances involved in smoking. Smokers 35 years ago would never have believed there would be no public smoking. When harms caused by drunk drivers and tobacco users were known in clear terms, the mindset of the public changed. New reforms, enforcement of laws and demands for a safer society became reachable goals. The change in that mindset did not take place in a day a week or a year. Nor will the change in the mindset regarding Second Amendment rights change overnight. But it is the education of the citizenry and the education of our lawmakers that is necessary in order for the calculated messaging of the NRA to be known for what it is: Lies, myths and fictions that have harmed and killed our citizens and will continue to do so until an enlightened view of the very limited scope of Second Amendment rights is known, understood and acted upon.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/burton-newman/the-nras-fraud-fabricatio_b_3103358.html [with comments]


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Justices Refuse Case on Gun Law in New York

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: April 15, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html ] said Monday that it would not weigh in [ http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/041513zor_p86b.pdf ] on a major Second Amendment question that has divided the lower courts: May states bar or strictly limit the carrying of guns in public for self-defense?

The justices turned down a case concerning a New York State law that requires people seeking permits for carrying guns in public to demonstrate that they have a special need for self-protection. In urging the justices to hear the case, the National Rifle Association called the law [ http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2013-02-10-Kachalsky-Amicus-Brief-FINAL.pdf ] “a de facto ban on carrying a handgun outside the home.”

In November, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, upheld the law. California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey have similar laws.

As is their custom, the justices gave no reasons for declining to hear the case from New York. Additional cases presenting essentially the same question are likely to reach the court in the coming months.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html ] that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns, and it struck down a District of Columbia law that prohibited keeping guns in homes for self-defense.

“We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority in the decision, District of Columbia v. Heller. “But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” he added.

Aside from saying that total bans on the right to keep guns at home for self-defense are unconstitutional, the court has said little else about what other laws may violate the Second Amendment. On the other hand, the Heller decision did include a long list of laws and regulations that would be unaffected by the ruling. Among them were “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools.”

In the lower courts, very few challenges to gun laws and gun prosecutions since the Heller decision have succeeded.

A major exception came in December, just days before the Newtown, Conn., shootings, when a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, struck down an Illinois law [ http://www.isra.org/lawsuits/coa.pdf ] that banned carrying guns in public.

Judge Richard A. Posner [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/richard_a_posner/index.html ], writing for the majority, said the ruling was required by the Heller decision. The court gave the Illinois legislature six months to modify the law.

Judge Posner reviewed the empirical literature about the practical consequences for crime and safety of bans on carrying guns in public, and he found it inconclusive. “Anyway,” Judge Posner wrote, “the Supreme Court made clear in Heller that it wasn’t going to make the right to bear arms depend on casualty counts.”

The Illinois decision is in tension with the one from New York, and such conflicts often prompt Supreme Court review. Last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., upheld the Maryland law [ http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/121437.P.pdf ].

The case turned down by the Supreme Court on Monday, Kachalsky v. Cacace, No. 12-845, was brought by five New Yorkers who had been denied permits to carry handguns in public. In urging the justices not to hear the case, Eric T. Schneiderman [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/eric_t_schneiderman/index.html ], New York’s attorney general, said the state’s permit requirement was a reasonable regulation that was consistent with the Second Amendment. The Illinois law, by contrast, he said, amounted to a blanket prohibition.

In a statement [ http://www.ag.ny.gov/press-release/statement-ag-schneiderman-regarding-us-supreme-courts-decision-reject-challenge-new ] issued Monday, Mr. Schneiderman said that “New York State has enacted sensible and effective regulations of concealed handguns, and this decision keeps those laws in place.” He added that the court’s order declining to hear the case amounted to “a victory for families across New York who are rightly concerned about the scourge of gun violence that all too often plagues our communities.”

A lawyer for the challengers did not respond to a request for comment.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan of Illinois has said that she will wait to see what the state’s legislature does before deciding whether to ask the Supreme Court to hear the decision striking down the Illinois law.

*

Related

Senators, Seeking Support, Weigh Revisions to Background Check Bill (April 16, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/us/politics/senators-manchin-and-toomey-consider-changes-to-gun-bill.html

Off-Duty Officer Killed Boyfriend, Their Year-Old Son and Then Herself, Police Say (April 15, 2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/nyregion/officer-killed-boyfriend-and-son-in-murder-suicide-police-say.html

Seeking Answers to Officer’s Murder-Suicide in Memories and Notes Left Behind (April 17, 2013 )
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/nyregion/seeking-answers-to-officers-murder-suicide-in-memories-and-notes-she-left.html

*

© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/us/politics/supreme-court-declines-gun-law-case.html


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NRA 500 Suicide: Man Shoots Himself To Death At NASCAR Race

Drivers take run the main straight during the NASCAR Sprint Cup series NRA 500 auto race at Texas Motor Speedway, Saturday, April 13, 2013, in Fort Worth, Texas.
04/16/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/14/nra-500-suicide_n_3082119.html [with embedded video report, and (over 13,000) comments]


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States with the Most Gun Violence
April 15, 2013
1. Louisiana
2. Alaska
3. Alabama
4. Arizona
5. Mississippi
6. South Carolina
7. New Mexico
8. Missouri
9. Arkansas
10. Georgia
http://247wallst.com/2013/04/15/states-with-the-most-gun-violence/


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Law Enforcement More Likely To Be Killed In States With Weak Gun Laws, Study Finds



By Charles Posner, Guest Blogger on Apr 8, 2013 at 1:54 pm

As wrangling over the outcome of gun safety legislation in the Senate reaches a fever pitch, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D) has been quiet on where she stands. Her home state, though, exemplifies the real risk weak gun laws pose–not only to residents, but also to the men and women charged with protecting them.

Gun laws in Louisiana prevent the state’s law enforcement officers from doing their jobs, and put them at a much greater risk of gun violence. Last November, the state passed an NRA-backed ballot initiative [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/11/08/1164791/louisiana-amendment-gives-gun-rights-strictest-constitutional-protection/ ] that enshrined gun ownership in the constitution and removed provisions that prohibited certain individuals, such as domestic abusers and the seriously mentally ill, from carrying a concealed weapon. In March, a judge ruled that the amendment outlawed a “state statute forbidding certain felons from possessing firearms,” noting that “The courts cannot question the wisdom [ http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/03/new_orleans_judge_rules_statut.html ] of fundamental law and frustrate the will of the people.”

This new law makes it easier for dangerous people to possess guns and endangers law enforcement officials. But Louisiana has long been a trail-blazer for weak gun laws. Prior to this amendment’s passage, the state denied [ http://smartgunlaws.org/concealed-weapons-permitting-in-louisiana/ ] giving law enforcement discretion when issuing concealed handgun permits and a slew of other weak regulations [ http://www.tracetheguns.org/#/states/LA/exports/ ] have ranked the state among the worst in the nation on key measures of gun trafficking as determined by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

A new study [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/03/1811311/study-states-with-loose-gun-laws-have-higher-rates-of-gun-violence/ ] released last week by the Center for American Progress analyzed 10 key measures of gun violence and found that Louisiana is worst among the 50 states. Included in the report is a 50-state ranking of law enforcement feloniously killed by guns: Louisiana ranks second worst in the nation behind South Dakota.

The Newtown tragedy has woken legislators across the country up to the need for sensible gun violence prevention measures. Landrieu, recognizing the important role law enforcement plays, has said [ http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/277783-vulnerable-senate-democrats-balk-at-obamas-gun-measures#ixzz2PWpyNRGY ] that “some of the most respected law enforcement leaders in our country are calling for commonsense reforms.” Among the most obvious and effective [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/20/1747551/why-harry-reid-must-make-universal-background-checks-part-of-gun-law-reform/ ] of these reforms is to require every gun buyer to go through a mandatory criminal background check.

Universal background checks, which enjoy support from 85 percent [ http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/9/cf/b/1397/LA_MAIG_Release_030513.pdf ] of Louisianans, would help prevent criminals and other dangerous people from having easy access to guns. And they would cut down on illegal gun trafficking by holding straw purchasers accountable for giving guns to criminals. But of course, the law must require the firearm sellers conducting background checks to keep a record; otherwise, law enforcement would once again be undercut by having no method to enforce the law.

The NRA often says that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” But in states like Louisiana, no single group has done more than the NRA to put guns in the hands of bad guys. That puts the good guys with guns—like our law enforcement officers—and good guys without guns at a higher risk. Universal background checks, as evidence has shown [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/02/13/1589161/study-gun-homicides-increased-25-percent-after-missouri-background-check-laws-repeal/ ], are a meaningful and uncontroversial measure that would make Louisiana a safer place and protect those charged with protecting us.

© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/04/08/1835021/law-enforcement-more-likely-to-be-killed-in-states-with-weak-gun-laws-study-finds/ [with comments]


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You can’t understand what’s happened to the Senate without these two graphs
April 18, 2013
[...]
... In 1790, Virginia, the largest state, was 12.65 times the size of Delaware, the smallest. In 2010, however, California, the largest state, was fully 66 times the size of Wyoming, the smallest. The Senate is now about five times less proportionate than it was at the country’s founding.
And that’s not even the worst it’s gotten. In 1900, the largest state, New York, was a shocking 171.7 times the size of the smallest, Nevada. An individual Nevadan had 171.7 times the influence of New Yorkers in the upper house of Congress:

[...]

That’s right: If senators representing 17.82 percent of the population agree, they can get a majority in the 2013 U.S. Senate. That’s not the lowest that figure has gotten (it hit about 16.8 percent in 1970) but it’s about there. And this doesn’t even take the filibuster into account. The smallest 20 states amount to 11.27 percent of the U.S. population, but if all of their senators band together they can successfully filibuster legislation.
You can see all the data represented here in this spreadsheet [ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkeTUNT8ZF3ldDlaQkd5QXZSQnRkbHNmU0xkc1Rxbmc#gid=0 ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkeTUNT8ZF3ldDlaQkd5QXZSQnRkbHNmU0xkc1Rxbmc&usp=sharing )].
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/18/you-cant-understand-whats-happened-to-the-senate-without-these-two-graphs/ [with comments]


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Dad arrested on gun, drug charges a week after deadly pit collapse



Posted: Apr 15, 2013 5:44 PM CDT
Updated: Apr 15, 2013 6:37 PM CDT

STANLEY, N.C. (WBTV) - A Lincoln County man, who was digging a two-story-deep pit on his property when it collapsed, killing two children, has now been arrested on unrelated charges.

31-year-old Jordan Arwood was arrested by the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office on Monday. He was charged with possession of a weapon by a felon and a drug charge.

He was placed in the Harven A. Crouse Detention Center under a $20,000 secured bond.

Last week, deputies removed firearms and a marijuana plant from Arwood's mobile home. Officers say they found six firearms, including an AR-15 rifle.

Arwood's 6-year-old daughter, Chloe Jade Arwood, and his nephew, 7-year-old James Levi Caldwell, were fatally buried when the rain-soaked walls of the pit collapsed last Sunday evening.

Arwood was operating a backhoe Sunday night in the pit when the walls collapsed and he called 911.

The bodies of the two young cousins were dug out Monday morning.

The investigation into the deaths of two young children is continuing. When the investigation is completed the information will be turned over to the District Attorney's Office to determine if charges will be filed.

Arwood's first court appearance will be Tuesday in Lincoln County District Court.

The Associated Press contributed to the report.

Copyright 2013 WBTV

http://www.wbtv.com/story/21984758/dad-arrested-on-gun-drug-charges-a-week-after-deadly-pit-collapse [no comments yet] [further to "Guns, marijuana plant seized from NC home where walls of pit collapsed on 2 children" about 40% of the way down at/see generally (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=86650342 and preceding and following]


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[temp luvs amy]

I have to admit, your battle against fallacies, misquotes, and sophistry is quite elegant in it's verbosity.

The arguments were indeed plausible and even credible, having the objective of appealing to the authorities cited.

I still suppose the Supremes might have to sing.