We will not have Sunday Cartoon Blogging this week, as Ms. Oh So Right and the Wrongologist will be in Vermont at a wedding. However, some are too good to pass up. There will be a 9/11 column on Friday. On to cartoons!
Kim Davis is out of jail. She remains on the case, however:
“I want you to go down to Morehead Kentucky, and instruct Kim Davis to stop putting words in my mouth”
Last week saw the incredible shrinking NFL Commissioner Goodell:
The surprising track races continue:
With Hillary looking weaker, Dems consider a relief pitcher:
The Iran deal now has a bullet-proof minority in the Senate. Time to get frisky:
At the time, Wrongo thought that awarding Mr. Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was a mistake. It was also a mistake for Mr. Obama to accept it. We will see if the Iran deal holds, and if it promotes peace in the Middle East.
At this point, Kentucky’s Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis is in jail for not doing her job. She was sent to jail for contempt of court last week for openly defying multiple court orders to obey the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in all US states. Judge David L. Bunning of Federal District Court said:
The court cannot condone the willful disobedience of its lawfully issued order…If you give people the opportunity to choose which orders they follow, that’s what potentially causes problems.
Davis has maintained that issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples is against her Christian beliefs. This has prompted her attorneys and supporters to come up with some wildly fanciful comparisons, including this one from Rep. Steve King (R-IA):
He wasn’t the only Republican to try to co-opt black civil rights history. Her attorney, Mat Staver, went for this:
Kim joins a long list of people who were imprisoned for their conscience…People who today we admire, like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jan Huss, John Bunyan, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and more. Each had their own cause, but they all share the same resolve not to violate their conscience.
Republicans, particularly evangelical Christians, believe they are persecuted when other people receive the same rights that they have had for decades or possibly, centuries. Persecution would be burning a gay flag on Davis’s lawn or you know, firebombing her church. Nobody is physically assaulting her, or turning water cannons (or dogs) on her.
Saying same-sex marriage is Constitutional doesn’t create persecution for millions of Christians, no matter how badly Ms. Davis and her Conservative supporters dislike it. Asking her to do her job is not persecution.
Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.
Cruz goes on to observe:
In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts rightly observed that the Court’s marriage opinion has nothing to do with the Constitution. Justice Scalia observed that the Court’s opinion was so contrary to law that state and local officials would choose to defy it.
Cruz then ups the ante:
Those who are persecuting Kim Davis believe that Christians should not serve in public office. That is the consequence of their position. Or, if Christians do serve in public office, they must disregard their religious faith–or be sent to jail.
And, of course, Cruz is only the most vituperative of the Republican candidates. With the exception of Lindsey Graham and Carly Fiorina, all the other Republican presidential candidates have criticized the decision to jail Ms. Davis.
While it’s fun to poke at Republicans for their response, we need to remember that Kim Davis is an elected Democrat. That said, she was elected county clerk after serving 26 years as a deputy clerk under her mother in the same county, with a total population under 24,000. Her party affiliation has little meaning in the context of the national debate about gay rights, but it sure says quite a bitwhen most Republican candidates purposefully misunderstand what religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment really means.
They purposefully misunderstand that this country was founded on the rule of law, and separation of church and state. That the codifying of separation was designed to put an end to the interference of religion in the operations of government, exactly what Ms. Davis was trying to do. Congress passes laws, the President signs them, the Supreme Court determines their constitutionality… and then they’re subject to the individual veto of every county clerk in America?
Ok, Ms. Davis has principles that flow from her religious beliefs. That is just fine, and her faith can be celebrated.
She might remember that while she believes same sex marriage is against religious tradition, divorce was also forbidden and then difficult to get, because of religion until relatively recently. The no-fault divorce was introduced by California Governor Ronald Regan in 1970. Before then, you went to Reno, Las Vegas, or Mexico if you couldn’t prove adultery.
Thus, today’s Kentucky county clerk, who has been divorced three times, wouldn’t have easily gotten a divorce just 50 years ago, because, religion.
Birthright Citizenship, or the common law concept of jus soli, is back in the news. This time, brought back by Donald Trump. One of his proposals is to stop automatically giving citizenship to most people born on US soil unless their parents are US citizens. Denying people Birthright Citizenship rights is something America hasn’t done since the days of slavery. The Republican concern is that too many illegal immigrants have a child in the US who is automatically an American citizen, and therefore, has the right to vote.
Most Republicans think, just like Rep. Steve King (R-IA), that Hispanics perpetrate a scheme to get a foothold in the country by coming here and having a child. King calls them “anchor babies”. In fact, the Republican plan would visit the sins of the parents on the children, assuming the children were born in the US.
And Trump isn’t alone. A large group of GOP candidates believe we should end Birthright Citizenship:
• Scott Walker has the same view
• Ohio Gov. John Kasich, during his run for governor in 2010 said that he supported ending Birthright Citizenship
• KY Sen. Rand Paul has pushed for a Constitutional amendment ending it
• NJ Gov. Chris Christie has said the issue needs to be re-examined
• Former PA Sen. Rick Santorum has also stated his support for altering the 14th Amendment
On Monday night, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal tweeted:
We need to end birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Wrongo’s favorite thing is that Bobby Jindal supports ending Birthright Citizenship, even though neither of his parents were US citizens when he was born.
SC Sen. Lindsey Graham, called for a change in the Constitution, because he believes immigrants will simply “drop and leave” their kids in this country. Just like Steve King!
The GOP’s target is the 14th Amendment, which grants everyone born in the US the right of citizenship. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case declared that blacks, even the daughters and sons of freed slaves, were not US citizens. But, 11 years later, in 1868, the US ratified the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, making Birthright Citizenship a right. The first sentence reads:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
The Court later ruled in 1898, that a child born in the US to non-citizens was a citizen under the law. So the short version of today’s GOP pitch on eliminating birthright citizenship is:
We must enforce the immigration laws by violating the Constitution.
This means that a solid chunk of the Republican presidential field says that, while they revere the Constitution, they have little issue with distorting it, ignoring it, or shredding it in order to fit their political and ideological motives.
Consider the irony: The Republican Party accomplished something hugely enlightened and important with the 14th Amendment. Here is American Civil War historian Eric Foner:
The 14th amendment and birthright citizenship rank among the great and defining accomplishments of the Republican Party, back when it was the Party of Lincoln.
Yet today’s Republican Party wants to purge their historic accomplishment from the Constitution. The problem with this Republican immigration proposal is that it’s at core explicitly nativist, racist, and xenophobic. The Republican’s clear objective is to stave off the growing political power of Latino voters in the service of one particular political party.
Luckily, Constitutional amendments are very difficult to enact, and while this attempt is likely to fail, it could potentially send Latino voting through the roof.
The current crop of Republican presidential candidates show that the Republican Party of today is in no way related to the Republican Party of Lincoln. In fact, it is barely related to the Republican Party of Eisenhower.
If you had any doubt about the current crop of Republicans being a mutant version of the party, consider Ben Carson’s viewpoint on immigration:
Why not land mines? The only piece of common ground the current Republican Party has with the Party of Lincoln or Eisenhower is its name.
In fact, that should change. In 2015, we should call it the “New Republican Party,” since it fails to honor Lincoln’s, or even Eisenhower’s memory.
The Connecticut Democratic Party has decided to change the name of its “Jefferson-Jackson Dinner”. Apparently prompted by the national controversy over the Confederate flag, the state’s Democratic Party last week voted unanimously to change the name of its annual fundraising dinner and remove the names of two slave-owning American presidents.
The clear implication is that there’s something wrong with Thomas Jefferson which puts him in the same category as the Confederate Flag. The Hartford Courant reported this quote from the state Democrats’ resolution:
As members of the Democratic Party, we are proud of our history as the party of inclusion. Democrats have led the way on civil rights, LGBT equality and equal rights for women…It is only fitting that the name of the party’s most visible annual event reflects our dedication to diversity and forward-looking vision.
Wrongo doesn’t care if the Democratic Party stops naming their fundraisers after Jefferson and Jackson.
What is bothersome is the implication that Jefferson is a pariah. Andrew Jackson is another matter, despite the fact that the symbol of the party is the donkey, or jackass. “Jackass,” stood for Andrew Jackson. It came from an 1837 political cartoon referring to Jackson as a “Jack-ass.” Jackson thought it was funny, and used it to his advantage. Democrats embraced the symbol, and it has stuck for nearly 180 years.
What message does the CT Dems public disowning of Jefferson send? Do CT Dems understand history? We owe a debt to Jefferson. It’s easy to say that Jefferson did things that were wrong, but he wrote the Declaration of Independence, managed our relationships with France during the Revolutionary War, and was a highly successful president. It is a huge mistake to invalidate his accomplishments because of his personal foibles. He was a man of his time, and did what he did. But, without him, our revolution would have been different.
Making perfection the enemy of great is wrong-headed. It places the CT Dems in a similar intellectual place as Donald Trump, who says McCain isn’t a war hero because he was captured, or that John Kerry wasn’t a good negotiator because he fell off his bike.
Maybe we could all be adults? The effort at political correctness by the modern Democratic Party is fine, but we should remember that Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a perfect man. African-Americans know that, but Dr. King is still revered by almost all Americans.
And the fact that today’s GOP embraces Abraham Lincoln does not make the modern GOP a racism-free party, regardless of how often the GOP invokes Lincoln’s name to claim credit for his greatness. Judging our founders, or our heroes by today’s standards, would condemn almost everyone past and present. Maybe, Democrats in Washington, CT, named after George, will want to change its name, since George Washington owned slaves.
Yes, there are egalitarian threads in both the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian traditions that resonate with Democrats today—but both men based the equality of some men upon the subordination of others.
Since CT Democrats are determined to replace Jefferson and Jackson as patrons of these events, and are holding a meeting to decide the new name of the event in September, without question, FDR-JFK could serve pretty well, despite each man’s foibles. Or maybe, Joe Lieberman?
Are you the one American without personal foibles?
So, wake up Connecticut Democrats. To help with their wake-up, here is #4 in our songs of summer series, “Summertime Blues”, the great Eddie Cochran tune done here by Brian Setzer on MTV, recorded live for the ‘La Bamba’ concert. It reminds that there was a time when MTV was watchable:
For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.
Monday’s Hot Links: Foreign Policy reports that back in 2000, the NSA intercepted a call to Bin Laden’s operations center in Yemen from a 9/11 hijacker in San Diego. They failed to follow-up, which should set off warning bells. Now 16 years later, the NSA denies they knew where the calls originated. That’s bullshit two ways: In 2000, the telephone network’s technology automatically provided a digital equivalent of caller ID to every phone switch, including NSA’s. And former NSA people like Tom Drake and William Binney say there’s no way the NSA wouldn’t have tapped this line.
Dark matter is the stuff that cosmologists think makes up some 85% of all the matter in the universe. A new theory says dark matter might be a known particle. If true, that would open up a window onto an invisible, dark matter version of physics.
Gun deaths will surpass automobile deaths in the US this year, says The Atlantic. Car crashes killed 33,561 people in 2012, the most recent year for which data are available, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Firearms killed 32,251 people in the US in 2011, the most recent year for which the CDC has data. The young are most at risk: CDC data show guns will kill more Americans under 25 than cars in 2015. Surely, a small price to pay for our Second Amendment freedoms?
Here is a photo with commentary by the indispensable Charles Gaba, who runs the site, ACA Signups, the go-to place for data about the Affordable Care Act:
Apparently, 12 people showed up for the Confederate flag rally.
There will be limited blogging for the next seven days, as the Wrongologist and Ms. Right head to Bermuda.
It was an epic news week, from the killings in Charleston to the ACA decision by the Supreme Court, 6-3, in which Antonin Scalia wrote the 21 page dissent. Then came the Marriage Equality decision. Antonin Scalia wrote another dissent, starting with:
I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy
Here is the Cliff notes version of both Scalia dissents: “I stole the 2000 election for this”??
They shot and missed:
Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press
Republicans secretly happy about SCOTUS decision on ACA:
Marriage equality decision not popular with everyone:
And the Supremes said, “Let them eat cake”:
The big change on the Confederate flag doesn’t change much:
On Monday, South Carolina’s governor Nikki Haley announced a plan to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the SC state house. That got many Republican presidential candidates off the hook after a weekend in which most delivered waffles about the subject.
But, everything you need to know about the conservative Republican position on the Confederate flag in 2015 was summed up by Bill Kristol on the very same day:
OK. Time to talk about history. The South seceded, and then fought a war to preserve slavery. It was not a war of Northern aggression. It was a war of Confederate choice, and the choice was made first by South Carolinians, who were the first to announce their secession.
SC’s Declaration of Causes of Secession was issued on December 20, 1860, after the election, but three months before Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office. If you choose to read at the link, you’ll see the entirety of their complaint had to do with slavery. They were angry:
• That slaves were escaping from their territory and Northern States were refusing to send them back
• That blacks had been granted citizenship in some Northern states
• That the election of Lincoln would lead to slavery’s exclusion from the new territories
Here is a snippet: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the Common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
Lincoln was explicit during the early years of the war that he fought back, not for slavery, but to preserve the union. Today, some modern “confederates” use those quotes from Lincoln to argue that the war wasn’t about slavery, but that is revisionist history.
The people who started the war, in every confederate state, were explicitly doing so to preserve slavery. Read the other secession statements. Read the speeches of leading confederate politicians. Read the founding CSA documents, in which the CSA states were free to do anything they wanted except end slavery. In fact it’s clear that the main purpose of even having a confederation was to preserve slavery.
The Confederate flag was basically forgotten after the civil war until the civil rights movement when the battle flag was resurrected by those in the south who were against the federal laws prohibiting lynching, segregation, and vote blocking. In other words, that flag has been used only by those promoting white supremacy. Heritage? Of course, but for a flag that represents something that existed for four years?
The flag is just a start. Why are there Civil War reenactments in the South? Battle field reenactments where they honor their defeat of the north, focused on battles they won in a war that they lost. Imagine if Mexican Americans had an Alamo reenactment where they storm the Alamo and kill Davy Crockett.
Taking down the Confederate flag over the South Carolina Capitol, along with Walmart and EBay stopping sales of the flag, and the number one Confederate flag manufacturer ending production are all important steps, but they are the just a few steps on a long road.
The next big question is will country music follow the lead of Governor Haley and distance itself from the Confederate flag? The rebel flag is deeply interwoven into country and southern rock music, that relationship is both deep and wide.
This stuff is symbolic, and a very important symbol is being phased out.
We know that when faced with a tragedy, some people exploit it for narrow ends. But we got to see just how low Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) could go. Appearing on The View, Senator Graham at first said a couple of things that seemed mainstream:
It’s not who we are, it’s not who our country is, it’s about this guy…and this guy’s got tons of problems and to kill people in a church after sitting with them for an hour shows you how whacked out this kid is.
Fine. He’s going with the lone wacko meme instead of the domestic terrorist meme.
Then he goes further. Despite the fact that the Justice Department had labeled the attack a “hate crime,” Graham wouldn’t go there: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)
There are real people who are organized out there to kill people in religion and based on race, this guy’s just whacked out…But it’s 2015. There are people out there looking for Christians [in order] to kill them.
Excuse us Mr. Graham, there hasn’t been anything so far to indicate that this was a hate crime against Christians for being Christian. And when you suggest that it is about that, two bad things happen:
• It denies the legitimacy of the trauma this caused black people in and outside South Carolina, irrespective of their religious beliefs
• It feeds the paranoia of white Christians, many of whom already have a borderline persecution complex
He ignores that the killer’s roommate said he was “big into segregation” and wanted to start a race war, and that he had Confederate Flag vanity plates. The eyewitness survivors of the attack said that he complained about black people raping white people.
Under the circumstances, it is safe to say that this was a hate crime, and also that it was a hate crime directed against black people for being black. This guy turned his anger on black people. The next guy might target secularists because politicians like Mr. Graham use this tragedy to say that people are out to get Christians.
A primary job of our leaders is to tamp down paranoia when it appears. But, Sen. Graham isn’t interested in calming people’s fears, he is a merchant of the politics of fear. He wants you to be afraid all the time, which is how he builds support for his domestic policies and his foreign adventures.
That he is consistently re-elected speaks volumes about South Carolina. Only 672,941 people of South Carolina’s roughly 3.8 million voters voted for him in 2014. Since he is now a GOP presidential candidate, he wants to win the SC GOP primary. So he is only speaking to those 672,941 SC voters.
That implies that he has no moral compass.
On to cartoons. South Carolina was the dominant story, but we heard from Pope Frank, Obama’s trade deal passed the House, and there is a new $10 bill on the way.
We shouldn’t fool ourselves about root causes:
The usual suspects offered the usual denials:
The Pope’s faith-based climate teaching met resistance:
Pope Francis has difficulty reading right-wing signals:
Obama rides Republicans towards a trade deal:
There should be no debate on who will be on new $10 bill:
The “lawgivers” in DC moved forward on two deeply held Republican ideas this week, and neither stand up to close inspection.
Yesterday, the Senate passed a bill banning torture. It is an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that will permanently bar the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were used by the CIA during the George W. Bush administration. It passed 78-21. It limits the interrogation of detainees by any US government employee or agent to only using techniques that are listed in the publicly available Army Field Manual on human intelligence collection. This is a good thing.
The 21 no votes, which are really a vote for torture, were all by Republicans. That’s 21 US Senators, all from one political party, including the Senate Majority Leader and his Majority whip, who voted to continue torture as an official policy of the US government.
Presumably, these 21 will run on their support for torture the next time they come up for re-election. Interestingly, the vote split Texas’ two Republican Senators, with Cruz voting for the bill, and Cornyn voting against it. The Houston Chronicle quoted an aide to Cornyn:
The senator is concerned that limiting intelligence professionals and law enforcement to interrogation techniques detailed in publicly available manuals would give would-be terrorists the ability to train and prepare against them.
Really? You think it is possible for the average jihadist to “prepare” for the techniques described in the Army Field Manual? And that preparation will compromise our intelligence gathering? As Charlie Pierce said:
This country can be America, or it can be a country that tortures. It cannot be both.
It would eliminate Title X funding unless the program meets a certain ideological (read: abstinence-focused) criteria:
None of the funds appropriated in this Act may be made available to any entity under title X of the Public Health Service Act unless the applicant for the award certifies to the Secretary that it encourages family participation in the decision of minors to seek family planning services and that it provides counseling to minors on how to resist attempts to coerce minors into engaging in sexual activities.
And here’s the part of the proposal that would let your school or boss determine whether or not your insurance covers contraception or any other form of healthcare they may not like:
Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, no provision of this title (and no amendment made by any such provision) shall… require a sponsor (or, in the case of health insurance coverage offered to students through an institution of higher education, the institution of higher education offering such coverage) to sponsor, purchase, or provide any health benefits coverage or group health plan that includes coverage of an abortion or other item or service to which such sponsor or institution, respectively, has a moral or religious objection, or prevent an issuer from offering or issuing to such sponsor or institution, respectively, health insurance coverage that excludes such item or service.
Yes, it enables more unwanted pregnancies, less breast and cervical cancer screenings, more undiagnosed sexually transmitted diseases, and more economic burdens pushed onto the states.
According to a data from the Guttmacher Institute, each dollar invested in Title X saves $3.80 in Medicaid expenses related to pregnancy and childbirth. Another Guttmacher analysis found that the services provided by Kansas’ Title X clinics in 2010 helped save the state more than $61,000,000 in public funds. According to the report:
That accounts for savings from reduced maternity and birth-related costs, along with reduced costs related to miscarriage and abortion and savings related to [sexually transmitted infection] screening and cervical cancer prevention services.
You can certainly count on Republicans. If there is an efficacious solution to a problem, as in this case, you can disregard it for a faith-first solution that costs more, while creating unnecessary cruelty and inhumanity.
Republicans want to stand the First Amendment on its head.
This is who they are. They will piss on the Pope if he speaks about climate change. And their leadership, plus a total of 39% of Republicans in the Senate support torture, since torture seems mas macho.
You have a chance on Election Day to tell them what you think about their “conscience”!
Nearly six in 10 Americans said government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.
Inequality is no longer a partisan issue. The poll found that inequality is important to almost half of Republicans and two-thirds of independents, suggesting that it is likely to be a central theme in next year’s general election. We are already seeing populist appeals by politicians of both parties who are trying to capitalize on the sense among Americans that the economic recovery benefited only a handful at the very top.
Sadly, the surveillance society has changed the costs and benefits of protests. The Occupy movement was crushed with a coordinated 17 city paramilitary crackdown. In this day of background checks as a condition to get a job, a misdemeanor arrest for protesting can make you unemployable. You can find yourself on any one of a variety of official lists that cannot be challenged because of secrecy laws; there are sham arrests like those conducted at Occupy Wall Street or, at the NYC Republican convention in 2004 by then-Mayor Bloomberg.
And the financial services industry seems to be able to get cops to come in and round up people on their behalf.
It is not enough to gather in the street. Once you are there and gathered, it must lead somewhere, there must be a goal. Admittedly, the problem with activism is that the fight is to change perceptions and narratives, and progress toward those goals is slow, and rarely concrete and visible.
It’s astonishing today to see how Americans have been conditioned to think that political action and engagement is futile. The Wrongologist was a demonstrator when the reverse occurred, when activism in the 1960s produced significant advances in civil rights for blacks and women, and eventually led the US to exit the Vietnam War. But today, when activism is an option, quite a few argue that there is no point in making the effort, that we as individuals are powerless. Yet, what Richard Kline wrote about protest in 2010 still applies:
The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, and [then] they give up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it’s plain that one spends most of one’s time being defeated. That’s painful, humiliating, and intimidating. One can’t expect typically, as in a battle, to get a clean shot at a clear win.
What activism does is change the context, and that change moves the goalposts on your opponent. It also raises the political price for governments that make bad decisions. Demonstrations helped stop LBJ and Nixon from making a few bad decisions. The same principle could apply to the Conservative’s desire to kneecap Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare while they hand out more baubles to their rich friends. This kind of class inequality is deeply un-American, but it has big political benefactors in both parties.
We can’t use the protests of the 1960s as a model in today’s political environment. Back then, power feared the people. Power feared the people because there was a free press to publicize and record events. The White House press confronted presidents; they didn’t pander, or act as stenographers as they do now.
That no longer exists. The press has been destroyed by corporate consolidation and foreign ownership. Investigative reporting and the institutions that nurtured and supported it were alive and well.
In the 1960s, few local politicians would refuse a permit for a peaceful demonstration, if in fact, a permit was even required. That is no longer true. No permit, no demo. The arrogance of power is demonstrated repeatedly right in front of cameras and reporters; the police harass and provoke, restrain and intimidate at peaceful demonstrations. They also create incidents to blame on demonstrators, which are dutifully captured by the cameras.
If one unit of protest worked in 1965, we need 10 units today to achieve similar results. In the meantime, reflect on this quote from a noted demonstrator:
“When the idea is a sound one, the cause a just one, and the demonstration a righteous one, change will be forthcoming”–Martin Luther King, Jr.
