Some Justices Think Systemic Racism is Gone

Justices are weighing whether or not to throw out the 2006 renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Its come down to liberals vs conservatives. I'm stuck wondering if our highest court really is as predictable as the political leanings of its membership. Does empirical evidence still have a place in modern law?

Let's check in with the liberals:

Justice David Souter, who was among the most active questioners in defense of the Voting Rights Act, said Coleman's claim seemed "to deny the empirical reality" of the contemporary instances of bias Congress documented in the states.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested by her questions that she, too, believed the law was necessary to prevent backsliding in voting rights. Similar sentiment was expressed by the two other liberal justices, John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer.

And quite the empirical reality there is. Take Voter ID laws, for example:

Texas is considering such a law. Unfortunately, these types of laws typically adversely affect the poor, people of color, people with disabilities and the elderly. Some estimates suggest that the number of eligible voters without acceptable identification is as high as 12 percent.

Note that Coleman, the attorney arguing against the Voting Rights Act, is representing a district in Texas. Voter ID legislation is one of many scurrilous tactics employed by the right wing to suppress votes. And this is done precisely because a legal avenue opened up:

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that states may require identification other than a voter registration card. That doesn't mean Texas should. It would be wrong to make voting more difficult for law-abiding citizens without good reason. Having enough votes to do it isn't a good reason.

So what do the conservative judges say?

The more conservative justices appeared to strongly believe the law has run its course. Chief Justice John Roberts said of Congress' repeated renewal of the 1965 act: "At some point, it begins to look like it's going to go on forever."

Justice Antonin Scalia said that much of the evidence of government bias against black people and other minorities was documented "a long time ago."

Just what universe does Justice Scalia live in?
Look, I understand the value of healthy debate and differences of opinion. But when some show flagrant disregard for the truth and remain impervious to evidence to the contrary, are they still qualified to act as judges? Its not as if the evidence presented was easily dismissable (emphasis mine):

Defending the law were Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal and Debo Adegbile of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Both lawyers emphasized the difficulty of bringing individual voting bias cases and said Congress wanted to ensure that unfair policies could be caught before they took effect.

Katyal said Congress compiled 16,000 pages of testimony and determined that its work in this area was not done.

16 thousand pages of testimony!

Respect for the truth and empirical evidence is central to a functioning judiciary. The conservative judges on our highest court, especially Scalia, are doing a fine job of undermining our confidence in the stability of the institution.

Best Description of Republicans Ever

August Pollack is a genius (emphasis mine):

this insane "we've got them right where we want them" whining from the right and the pseudo-libertarians sems desperate to imply that Democrats are inherently just as big a pile of screw-ups as Republicans, so naturally they're going to crash and burn just as badly as... umm... they did.

It's like a bunch of arsonists telling firemen as they rush into a building "you guys suck. That building is totally on fire."

Ha!

PUMA Tea Parties

Remember when, during the primaries, speculation began that the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) crowd were really Republicans? When during the general election their widespread defection to the McCain/Palin ticket showed how their respect for Democratic ideals (including a women's right to choose and separation of church and state) were beyond flimsy?

Apparently they've joined the extreme fringe of the Republican party, the proud tea-baggers alliance. And boy, is their crazy chock full of irony:

Obama is so obsessed with batting down his domestic “enemies” that it doesn’t matter if America’s real enemies are strengthened in the process. What was Obama’s goal in releasing the CIA torture memos, against the advice of his top terrorism and intelligence advisors?

There isn't even a trace of self-awareness or accuracy to be found. While Bush did attack political enemies domestically (and enemies of choice internationally) at the documented expense of our national security, Obama has focused his energy on solving problems directly and at their source. The CIA torture memos were already public.

PUMA bloggers are essentially concern trolls attempting to fustigate meaningful analysis of fringe Republican activity with deliberately false and misleading statements.

Citizens engaged in a grassroots Tea Party movement clearly are perceived as a bigger threat to Obama than evil forces intent on destroying America.

The Tea Party "movement" has been funded and organized by all the usual players intent on using astroturfing strategies to fake grassroots support for an otherwise unsustainable politics. It is clear that the so called PUMA movement is a part of that right wing strategy.

Reconsidering Pork: Factory Farming and Swine Flu

After reading this excellent Rolling Stone article (via Mike@C&L), I'm reconsidering pork, and I think you might want to as well. Here are some choice quotes:

The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs -- anything small enough to fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits.

Taken together, the immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs' immune systems.

When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat.

The cruelty towards these animals and alarming lack of health concerns are quite apparent. But how they treat the refuse from these pigs is nothing less than startling (emphasis mine):

Smithfield's holding ponds -- the company calls them lagoons -- cover as much as 120,000 square feet. The area around a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not brown. The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink.

Even light rains can cause lagoons to overflow; major floods have transformed entire counties into pig-shit bayous. To alleviate swelling lagoons, workers sometimes pump the shit out of them and spray the waste on surrounding fields, which results in what the industry daintily refers to as "overapplication." This can turn hundreds of acres -- thousands of football fields -- into shallow mud puddles of pig shit. Tree branches drip with pig shit.

Just how toxic is this stuff? Fucking scary as hell, you go in you don't come out toxic (emphasis mine):

The lagoons themselves are so viscous and venomous that if someone falls in it is foolish to try to save him. A few years ago, a truck driver in Oklahoma was transferring pig shit to a lagoon when he and his truck went over the side. It took almost three weeks to recover his body. In 1992, when a worker making repairs to a lagoon in Minnesota began to choke to death on the fumes, another worker dived in after him, and they died the same death. In another instance, a worker who was repairing a lagoon in Michigan was overcome by the fumes and fell in. His fifteen-year-old nephew dived in to save him but was overcome, the worker's cousin went in to save the teenager but was overcome, the worker's older brother dived in to save them but was overcome, and then the worker's father dived in. They all died in pig shit.

That can't be good for the people stuck living nearby, can it?

People who breathe the shit-infused air suffer from bronchitis, asthma, heart palpitations, headaches, diarrhea, nosebleeds and brain damage. In 1995, a woman downwind from a corporate hog farm in Olivia, Minnesota, called a poison-control center and described her symptoms. "Ma'am," the poison-control officer told her, "the only symptoms of hydrogen-sulfide poisoning you're not experiencing are seizures, convulsions and death. Leave the area immediately." When you fly over eastern North Carolina, you realize that virtually everyone in this part of the state lives close to a lagoon.

At least they aren't feeding pigs dead pigs:

Millions of factory-farm hogs -- one study puts it at ten percent -- die before they make it to the killing floor. Some are taken to rendering plants, where they are propelled through meat grinders and then fed cannibalistically back to other living hogs.

That's just begging for prions to spread.

The whole article, a stinging takedown of factory farming and Smithfield Foods specifically. Is worth a read. Smithfield Foods is worth a visit too, if only to see their cynical slogan "Good food. Responsibly" with a whole section devoted to their supposed responsibility.

Given the people stuck living next to these farms where the smell of concentrated chemical-infused pig shit can literally knock you unconscious, Smithfield Food's claim of a commitment to food safety is a cruel joke. It is an even harsher joke in the light of their lobbying efforts.

It looks like that joke could cost us all. Smithfield Foods might be linked to the recent outbreak of swine flu.

Idea! Moon Resolution for Texas

Texas, boldly showing tea-bagging patriots the way forward, has run into yet another tricky liberal commie .. trick: Reality! Bill Nye made some Texans upset by claiming that the moon wasn't a "lesser light", but rather, a reflector (Hat Tip Jesus' Very Own General).

Well, if Illinois can declarify Pluto a planet, why not can has Texas legalize the Moon as a lesser light?!

Brilliant, you say?

I bet Texas Republicans would luv the chance to help Church and State snuggle just a lil bit closer.

Associated Press: Irresponsible Journalism?

Making every effort to report the recent swine flu outbreak responsibly, the Associated Press has a piece titled: "Is swine flu 'the big one' or a flu that fizzles?":

Is this the novel virus that will kill millions around the world, as pandemics did in 1918, 1957 and 1968?

The short answer is it's too soon to tell.

Is this an example of irresponsible fear-mongering on the part of the AP? Can we get away with sweeping statements as long as they are framed as questions?

The short answer is it's too soon to tell. The really short answer is yes.

Obama/Reid Fail: Justice vs Retribution

President Obama and top Democrats lead by Harry Reid have shown a complete failure to understand the importance of justice in our country. Aside from our national identity as a moral beacon for the world, we are a nation of laws. Bush's administration, members of the CIA and those under their command broke the law of our nation. Allowing them to escape punishment for their crimes is unconscionable. According to the NY Times:

At a meeting of top Democrats at the White House Wednesday night, President Obama told Congressional leaders that he did not want a special inquiry, which he said would potentially steal time and energy from his ambitious policy priorities, and could mushroom into a wider distraction by looking back at other aspects of the Bush years.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and other top Senate Democrats endorsed Mr. Obama’s view on Thursday, telling reporters that they preferred to wait for the results of an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee expected sometime “late this year.”

This is a cruel joke at the expense of the American people. We voted - heavily - for change. We voted in people we expected to uphold the law, human rights, and our constitution. Instead we've gotten mollycoddled fopdoodles with all the bravery of an icterine soaked whelp with its belly up and throat exposed. Spineless just doesn't begin to describe the kind of people who abandon respect for the rule of law and the people literally tortured through it for the sake of respect from an opposition so entrenched against you they speak of revolution at a moderate tax increase for the wealthiest Americans. You may was well succor a brick wall in hopes it will bend out of the way when you attempt to run through it.

Bravo to Patrick J. Leahy and Nancy Pelosi for taking a stand in the face of Obama and Reid's stupidity:

“I don’t think there is a division among Democrats,” Mr. Reid said. “Justice must be served. Retribution should not be a part of what we’re talking about.” He said that it was premature to act without facts to be provided by the intelligence committee. “They will make a public report,” he said. “I hope that it will come toward the end of this year.”

But Ms. Pelosi, at a news conference attended by many youngsters visiting the Capitol for Take Your Child to Work Day, reiterated her position – shared by many of the more liberal Democrats in the House – that a panel should be named to investigate the Bush administration legal memos that allowed waterboarding and other harsh techniques.

The division between top Democrats threatened to open up a debate that would distract from Mr. Obama’s agenda one way or another.

Mr. Obama's agenda should be derailed if this is the true face and heart of it. The President would do well to find the courage to take to heart the words of Fox News anchor Shep Smith:

We are America! We do not fucking torture!

AMEN.

Trying to Find God

Older versions of Firefox on Windows were much more fun.

Republican's Huge Boehner About Torture

To sum up Boehner and his spokeman Michael Steel (via HuffPost):

Boehner: Yes its torture, but letting people know we broke a host of laws and trampled on human rights is a political decision, not a legal or ethical one. I'm sure you've read our talking points? Now that terrorists know for sure no backsies that we use waterboarding, they can practice drowning and stay one watery step ahead of us! (Innocent people will just have to suck it).

Reporter: Hey we all know this will never be prosecuted, but shouldn't we at least know what crimes won't be prosecuted.

Boehner: OMG 9/11 9/11 9/11. Plus these techniques toootally worked scouts honor (tru patriots won't read the shitload of studies that prove otherwise).

Michael Steel: Right honorable Senator Lord Boehner used the word torture cause them there dirty liberals use it to, but he didn't mean it!

And there's the funny thing about Republicans and Democrats.
When Republicans say we don't torture, they mean "uh that stuff is a-ok".
When Democrats say we don't torture, they actually mean it.

Ron Paul Understands Secession

Ron Paul (CNN):

We as a nation have endorsed secession all along. Think of all of the secession of the countries and the republics from the Soviet system. We were delighted. We love it.

Right. Especially during the civil war. We endorsed secession heartily.