GOP: Guns, God, and Surveillance.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/2016/6/20/not-even-orlando-could-get-senate-act-guns

http://www.advocate.com/politics/2016/6/20/not-even-orlando-could-get-senate-act-guns

After many of them sent “thoughts and prayers” toward the victims of the mass shooting in Orlando last week, Senate Republicans cast enough votes against a group of gun safety bills on Monday — including two proposals from within their own party — to prevent them from moving forward.

The move, while perhaps not surprising, still angered many Twitter users who supported the measures, which included expanded background checks and a ban on gun sales to individuals on terrorism watch lists.

Tweets

There’s more at Raw Story.

In the meantime, the GOP has made clear what they do think will help: more surveillance. Yep, let’s erode the rights of citizens a bit more, it will be okay!

enate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set up a vote late on Monday to expand the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s authority to use a secretive surveillance order without a warrant to include email metadata and some browsing history information.

The move, made via an amendment to a criminal justice appropriations bill, is an effort by Senate Republicans to respond to last week’s mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub after a series of measures to restrict guns offered by both parties failed on Monday.

“In the wake of the tragic massacre in Orlando, it is important our law enforcement have the tools they need to conduct counterterrorism investigations,” Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and sponsor of the amendment, said in a statement.

The bill is also supported by Republican Senators John Cornyn, Jeff Sessions and Richard Burr, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Privacy advocates denounced the effort, saying it seeks to exploit a mass shooting in order to expand the government’s digital spying powers.

[…]

The amendment would broaden the FBI’s authority to use so-called National Security Letters to include electronic communications transaction records such as time stamps of emails and the emails’ senders and recipients.

[…]

The amendment filed Monday would also make permanent a provision of the USA Patriot Act that allows the intelligence community to conduct surveillance on “lone wolf” suspects who do not have confirmed ties to a foreign terrorist group. That provision, which the Justice Department said last year had never been used, is currently set to expire in December 2019.

Full story here.

Top 1% Accountability Act.

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI)

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI)

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) has had enough of the growing movement to drug test poor people who need government assistance. So on Tuesday, she’s introducing a bill that she says will make things fairer.

Her “Top 1% Accountability Act” would require anyone claiming itemized tax deductions of over $150,000 in a given year to submit a clean drug test. If a filer doesn’t submit a clean test within three months of filing, he won’t be able to take advantage of tax deductions like the mortgage interest deduction or health insurance tax breaks. Instead he would have to make use of the standard deduction.

Her office has calculated that the people impacted will be those who make at least $500,000 a year. “By drug testing those with itemized deductions over $150,000, this bill will level the playing field for drug testing people who are the recipients of social programs,” a memo on her bill notes.

Moore has a personal stake in the fight. “I am a former welfare recipient,” she explained. “I’ve used food stamps, I’ve received Aid for Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid, Head Start for my kids, Title XX daycare [subsidies]. I’m truly grateful for the social safety net.”

Ten states require applicants to their cash welfare programs to undergo a drug test. States are currently barred from implementing drug testing for the food stamps program, but Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has sued the federal government to allow him to do so and has gotten some Congressional Republican support.

Moore has been frustrated to witness attempts to tie those who avail themselves of the safety net to drug use. “Republicans continue to criminalize poverty and to put forward the narrative, the false narrative in fact, that people who are poor and reliant upon the social safety net are drug users,” she said.

In fact, evidence from test results among states that test welfare recipients indicates that they are no more likely to use drugs than the general population — in fact, they may be less likely.

That didn’t stop House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) from using a drug rehab center as the backdrop while he unveiled his poverty plan last week. “I think this is what tipped me over the edge,” Moore said, “rolling out his poverty initiative in front of a drug treatment program to sort of drive that false narrative forward.”

[…]

Her bill will also help illuminate this very fact: that so much is spent on tax expenditures, not just on direct aid programs like welfare and food stamps. “We think it’s important to engage in some transparency and accountability around tax deductions,” she said.

[…]

She also wants to “engage the wealthy in this poverty debate,” she said. “I would love to see some hedge fund manager on Wall Street who might be sniffing a little cocaine here and there to stay awake realize that he can’t get his $150,000 worth of deductions unless he submits to a drug test.”

You go, Rep. Moore! I am all for this, even though this would be one tiny bit of accountability on the part of the filthy rich. Any accountability is better than none. As someone who gets the pleasure of the regular humiliation of drug tests, it would be nice to see the rich unable to dodge this little test the rest of us get hit with for the most basic things. There’s much more at Think Progress.

Four More Heads.

Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. This front page of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper ran with portraits of 11 Modoc Indians, who ended up as federal prisoners.

Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
This front page of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper ran with portraits of 11 Modoc Indians, who ended up as federal prisoners.

The four Modocs dangling from the gallows at Fort Klamath, Oregon, on October 3, 1873, had barely been cut down when the ghoulish souvenir-taking started. Soldiers auctioned off a hank of hair shorn from the head of Modoc leader Kientpoos (a.k.a. Captain Jack) to fit the noose around his neck, and they sold unraveled gallows rope for $5 a strand. Thomas Cabaniss, a physician from nearby Yreka, California, who had worked for the army during the Modoc War, claimed two halters. Other spectators snatched pieces and parts from the gallows. Meanwhile, in a nearby tent, military medical officer Henry McElderry was taking the army’s share of hanging-day mementos.

This image of Kientpoos (Captain Jack) was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

This image of Kientpoos (Captain Jack) was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

In 1868, George Otis Alexander, then assistant surgeon general of the United States Army, circulated an order among military physicians requiring them to help the Army Medical Museum’s effort to build its collection of Native crania. The museum had already amassed 143 skulls and wanted to add more.

“The chief purpose … in forming this collection,” Alexander explained, “is to aid in the progress of anthropological science by obtaining measurements of a large number of skulls of aboriginal races of North America.”

The official purpose for collecting Indian skulls was comparative study of racial differences. George A. Otis, MD, of the Army Medical Museum, after studying the “osteological peculiarities” of the skulls collected up to 1870, announced that America’s Native peoples “must be assigned a lower position in the human scale than has been believed heretofore.” Lewis Henry Morgan, a pioneering physical anthropologist who had sought unsuccessfully to be appointed Indian Affairs commissioner, wrote that Native Americans “have the skulls and brains of barbarians, and must grow toward civilization.” Thus did the crude, pseudo-Darwinist science of the time support herding Natives on to reservations to learn English and farming.

This image of Black Jim was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

This image of Black Jim was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

Army doctors in Indian country could augment the collection by gathering skulls and forwarding them to Washington and the Army Medical Museum. Accurate statistical analysis required as many specimens as possible: “… it is chiefly desired to procure sufficiently large series of adult crania of the principal Indian tribes to furnish accurate average estimates. Medical officers will enhance the value of their contributions by transmitting with the specimens the fullest attainable memoranda, specifying the locality where the skulls were derived, the presumed age and sex….”

The army’s medical officers responded enthusiastically, swelling the collection to more than 1,000 skulls by the time of the Fort Klamath hangings. Some remains came from ancient burial sites, such as the mounds of the eastern United States, others from tribal cemeteries captured during military operations. Epidemics were a boon for the collectors, since, besides felling Indians in droves, they tore apart Native societies and made it difficult for survivors to protect their dead against white grave robbers. And then there were the many battles and executions.

modoc-war-heller-boston-charley

This image of Boston Charley was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

Military medical officers enjoyed easy access to all these opportunities. Plus, they had the surgical skills to dissect away soft tissues and prepare heads for boiling in water or steeping in quicklime to leave only the bare bone the Army Medical Museum wanted.

The Army Medical Museum collection had grown to 2,206 skulls by 1898, when it was turned over to the Smithsonian Institution. The collection had fallen into disuse as academic anthropologists adopted different modes of study, and the museum no longer wanted to maintain it. Almost a century later, the skulls became part of the more than 6,000 individual human remains offered for repatriation by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of Natural History through federal legislation passed in the 1980s and 1990s. The Modoc skulls were among the remains repatriated.

Despite the federal government’s latter-day efforts to make this wrong right, the Army Medical Museum’s collection marks the United States as the only national government ever to officially use warfare to collect human skulls.

This image of Schonchin was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

This image of Schonchin was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

Full Story at ICTMN. And before anyone tsks, shakes their head and murmurs, thank goodness we’re past that now, we aren’t. We’re currently surrounded by so called ‘race realists’ and white nationalists who think this is great science, and we should probably do more of this sort of thing. Don’t go dismissing it, everyone thinks it can’t happen to them.

Democrats’ Filibuster on Gun Control.

Chris Murphy.

Chris Murphy.

There’s a glimmer of hope that the tiniest shred of gun control legislation might pass the Senate in response to the Orlando shooting that left 49 people dead.

After nearly 15 hours of talking on the Senate floor, the filibuster held by Democrats on Wednesday and into the early hours of Thursday has apparently been a success, and there will be two votes on gun control measures.

The two ideas — stopping people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns, and requiring background checks even when someone purchases a gun online or at a gun show instead of in a store — will be allowed votes by the full Senate, Democrats say.

“We chose to ask for the two least controversial provisions possible that will still do a world of good,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, home to the Newtown mass shooting that killed 20 children and six adults. He spoke from the Senate floor and announced Republicans had agreed “on a path to get those votes.”

With the Senate controlled by Republicans, it’s essentially up to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on whether any piece of legislation gets a vote. So Democrats, led by Murphy, filibustered an existing funding bill, called the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill. It worked, and now they must focus on winning enough votes to pass the laws.

“Least controversial provisions”. I can’t get past that, nor can I muster up even a tiny bit of hope. Yes, this might help, a teeny, tiny bit, if these actually make it through, but I am so fucking sick and tired of every single sensible person in uStates feeling the need to walk on tiptoes on eggshells, so as not to upset all the gun fetishists. FFS, wouldn’t this normally be called terrorism, where people are scared to death of those with weapons? A good portion of uStates is being held hostage, and nothing is going to be done, unless it’s a tiny, marginally effective sop.

Full Story Here.

A Change of Heart.

https://youtu.be/MU_ZP2j74bY

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Lt. Governor Spencer Cox addressed a vigil held Monday night to honor the victims and survivors of the mass shooting in Orlando. Here is a transcript of his remarks:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for being here tonight on this very solemn and somber occasion. I begin with an admission and an apology. First, I recognize fully that I am a balding, youngish, middle-aged straight, white, male, Republican, politician… with all of the expectations and privileges that come with those labels. I am probably not who you expected to hear from today.

I’m here because, yesterday morning, 49 Americans were brutally murdered. And it made me sad. And it made me angry. And it made me confused. I’m here because those 49 people were gay. I’m here because it shouldn’t matter. But I’m here because it does. I am not here to tell you that I know exactly what you are going through. I am not here to tell you that I feel your pain. I don’t pretend to know the depths of what you are feeling right now. But I do know what it feels like to be scared. And I do know what it feels like to be sad. And I do know what it feels like to be rejected. And, more importantly, I know what it feels like to be loved.

I grew up in a small town and went to a small rural high school. There were some kids in my class that were different. Sometimes I wasn’t kind to them. I didn’t know it at the time, but I know now that they were gay. I will forever regret not treating them with the kindness, dignity and respect — the love — that they deserved. For that, I sincerely and humbly apologize.

Over the intervening years, my heart has changed. It has changed because of you. It has changed because I have gotten to know many of you. You have been patient with me. You helped me learn the right letters of the alphabet in the right order even though you keep adding new ones. You have been kind to me. Jim Dabakis even told me I dressed nice once, even though I know he was lying. You have treated me with the kindness, dignity, and respect — the love — that I very often did NOT deserve. And it has made me love you.

But now we are here. We are here because 49 beautiful, amazing people are gone. These are not just statistics. These were individuals. These are human beings. They each have a story. They each had dreams, goals, talents, friends, family. They are you and they are me. And one night they went out to relax, to laugh, to connect, to forget, to remember. And in a few minutes of chaos and terror, they were gone.

[Read more…]

Congress Will Not Allow the CDC to Study Gun Violence.

AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

On June 2, Obama gave a provactive argument for common sense gun laws. He compared the issue of gun violence to auto fatality rates. Though direct action was taken to lower car-related deaths, such as seatbelt laws and required air bags, no studies are even allowed to be conducted on gun violence.

“Why don’t we treat this like everything else we use? We used to have really bad auto fatality rates. The auto fatality rates have actually dropped, precipitously, drastically, since I was a kid. Why is that? We decided to have seatbelt laws. We decided to have manufacturers put air bags in place. We decided to crack down on drunk driving and texting. We decided to redesign roads so that they were less likely to have a car bank. We studied what is causing these fatalities using science and data and evidence, and then we slowly treated it like the public health problem that it was.

We are not allowed to use any of that when it comes to guns because when you propose anything it is suggested that we are trying to wipe away gun rights and promote tyranny and martial law. Do you know that Congress will not allow the Center of Disease Control to study gun violence? They are not allowed to study it because the notion is that by studying it, the same way we do with traffic accidents, somehow that is going to lead to everyone’s guns being confiscated. If you buy a car and want to get a license—first of all you have to get a license, people have to know you know how to drive—you don’t have to do any of that in respect to buying a gun.”

[…]

Obama also notes that those put on airplane watch-lists are still free to purchase weapons. “Because of the National Rifle Association, I can not prohibit those people from buying a gun.”

Full Story and video at Out.

A bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay?

threestooges-800x430“The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles. That’s who was a victim here, are a bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay? And then I’m sure it’s also gonna be used to push an agenda against so-called “hate speech.” So Bible-believing Christian preachers who preach what the Bible actually says about homosexuality — that it’s vile, that it’s disgusting, that they’re reprobates — you know, we’re gonna be blamed. Like, “It’s all extremism! It’s not just the Muslims, it’s the Christians!” I’m sure that that’s coming. I’m sure that people are gonna start attacking, you know, Bible-believing Christians now, because of what this guy did.I’m not sad about it, I’m not gonna cry about it. Because these 50 people in a gay bar that got shot up, they were gonna die of AIDS, and syphilis, and whatever else. They were all gonna die early, anyway, because homosexuals have a 20-year shorter life-span than normal people, anyway.”
— Steven Anderson, preacher at Faithful Word Baptist Church, Tempe, AZ in response to the slaughter in Orlando.

I felt like I had been dipped in sewage just reading that, and dipped again posting it. If Steven Anderson wants to talk disgusting, I suggest he get in front of a mirror. It was just a short while ago that I brought up in a thread here that a lot of people (Americans in particular) still believe in the gay man equals pedophile canard. And there it is, in neon arrogance, the self-righteous judgment smug only Christians can work up into such a fine froth. There were women who died in Orlando. There were hetero people who died in Orlando. There were queer people who died in Orlando. Some of them were parents. All of them were loved. But here’s the same old Christian crap of old, disease riddled predators. Naturally, the only thing Anderson is truly concerned about is whether or not people might start looking at him sideways, possibly accusing him of hate speech. Oh, and of course, us lefty pinko commie rainbow warriors might take his bible away. Disgust, thy name is Steven Anderson, and all those like you.

Radical right-wing Christians must recognize the part their anti-gay rhetoric, legislation, hate speech and repeated attacks on the LGBT community played in the slaughter at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. Yes, the terrorist homophobe who reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIL before he repeatedly pulled the trigger deserves all our anger and outrage. We will hear plenty about his radicalized religious beliefs in the coming days, but that is likely all the religious analysis we will hear in the media. But, we cannot let religious ideologues in the far-right Christian camp off the hook. Steven Anderson is not an anomaly. America has been painstakingly codifying beliefs he expressed into law. Polished politicians blunt the edges of Anderson’s words though the language of legislation but the hate and fear remains.

They will claim the assertion they have any role in the massacre as an attack on their religion – much like the consistent and well-orchestrated “war on Christmas” we heathens rage every year. They will tell you that their prayers are enough to overcome this act of terror. They will tell you Jesus wants you to arm yourself. “Get your guns before Obama takes them.” They will tell you this is about radicalized Islamist terrorists. They will whistle away the notion that guns or gays had anything to do with this tragedy.

And here is a major problem. Along with people busily straight-splaining, the rest are focusing on that terrible Muslim problem, because that’s the only terrorism that counts, and this was oh-so-definitely Islam based (even though it wasn’t), but you have a lot of Christians bristling over the idea that they might have had anything to do with this. Abrahamaic based religions all have the same root, and they have the same deep-rooted bigotry. How that bigotry is expressed isn’t the important bit – it’s why this expression is being allowed in the first place, why so many people who don’t have a personal stake in the current Christian war on all things queer, sit idly by, maybe let a small tsk escape their lip, shake their head, and decide to do nothing at all. Here in the U.S. open bigotry is being turned into law. People act like politicians spilling the most awful, bigoted bile is simply entertainment, yet another bad reality show.

The multitude of ways right-wing Christians discriminate against and kill – directly or indirectly – LGBT people can be incredibly nuanced.

[…]

Around the country LGBT couples are fighting for the right to adopt children. HIV is criminalized around the country putting a big red X on gay men and others. Gay men – by law – cannot donate blood. Most people didn’t even know that until Orlando. Federally funded abstinence-only programs populate our public schools masquerading as sexual education. What the actually do is preach sexual purity until heterosexual marriage, and they stigmatize girls and LGBT kids. How about the Great Bathroom Panic of 2016? It isn’t secular humanists behind these laws and programs; it is right-wing Christians serving in state and national office.

What message is all of this sending to our LGBT citizens? That you are less than, you are poison, your blood is tainted even if it’s not, you are after our children, you cannot love who you love. The message coming from the far right is “We Hate You”. Donald Trump gloat-tweets, Paul Ryan doesn’t mention guns or gays in his statement – just Islamic terrorists. The GOP’s (political party of choice for the far right Christian camp) presumptive presidential nominee and the US Speaker of the House deny any connection between the slaughter at Pulse and anti-gay hate crime.

The rest of Andy Kopsa’s excellent article is here.

World Blood Day, Oh the Irony.

world-blood-donor-dayx750

Happy World Blood Donor Day! (You Still Can’t Donate).

While the husbands of men wounded in Sunday’s Orlando nightclub shooting are crying and praying, they can’t easily offer their spouses the one thing so many others can: their blood.

Defying federal policy, Patty Sheehan — Orlando’s lesbian city commissioner — announced after the shooting that she was recommending the city temporarily lift the Food and Drug Administration-mandated ban on blood donated from sexually-active gay and bisexual men. In response, Orlando hospitals appear to be welcoming donations from all queer men and transgender women — also included in the FDA ban — but it’s still murky whether the federal government will crack down on Sheehan’s directive and blood will actually get to the injured.

The Orlando massacre, in a grim coincidence, came two days before the World Health Organization’s World Blood Donor Day, observed today. While the mass shooting, the nation’s worst, briefly brought the FDA’s discriminatory policy to the world’s attention, it was quickly forgotten in the barrage of news updates about the Orlando killer and his victims.

[…]

The current prohibition has been in place since December, when the FDA amended its ban, so now instead of barring any male donors who had sex with men since 1977, the new rules turn away those who haven’t had gay sex in 12 months. For many, that’s still an outright ban on any gay or bisexual man, no matter the semantics.

[…]

GMHC and FCB Health joined together to launch a campaign called the Blood Equality campaign, which will plaster cities with posters that read, “My blood is type O, not type homo” and “My blood is type A, not type gay.”

Democratic legislators like Mike Quigley of Illinois, Barbara Lee of California, and out Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin also want the FDA to reconsider the ban, which the agency considers imperative to keeping the nation’s blood supply free of HIV. The three politicians disagree with the FDA’s assertion and jointly released the following statement late on Monday:

“The resiliency of the American people is always magnified after a tragedy, and we are witnessing that compassion as Floridians rally around the people of Orlando, and the local LGBT community, by lining up to donate much needed blood after Sunday’s horrific shooting at Pulse nightclub. However, we find it unacceptable that gay and bisexual men are banned from donating desperately needed blood in response to this tragedy. Blood donations are needed now more than ever, yet gay and bisexual men remain unable to donate blood due to an outdated and discriminatory FDA rule. For years, we have worked through both authorizing and appropriations committees to overturn the FDA’s donor referral policy for men who have sex with men. We’ve made progress; this past year, the FDA reversed a lifetime ban to a 12-month deferral policy. But this revision does not go far enough in ending an outdated policy that is medically and scientifically unwarranted and that perpetuates inaccurate stereotypes. Tragedies like the one we witnessed in the early morning hours on Sunday show how crucial it is for FDA to develop better blood donor policies that are based on science and on individual risk factors; that don’t unfairly single out one group of individuals; and that allow all healthy Americans to donate. Given the enormous response by the citizens of Orlando, including members of the LGBT community, to donate blood to help heal their community, the FDA should lift this prejudicial ban once and for all.”

Nations like Spain have ended blanket deferrals for gay and bisexual men, instead considering the sexual behavior of individuals when deciding who qualifies as a donor.

Full Story Here.

LGBT Movement Is Like Taliban, ‘Jeopardizes Freedom’

North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop.

North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop.

The Charlotte Business Journal received 152 emails of Rep. Dan Bishop, the architect of North Carolina’s HB 2.

The architect of the state’s controversial law to stop cities from extending non-discrimination protection to gay and transgender people insists no amount of protests and pressure could convince him to back down or soften his stance. And, when that architect — Rep. Dan Bishop — isn’t debating the merits of the law known as House Bill 2 with constituents and critics, he is championing and celebrating those who support the measure.

“I don’t fear man. I fear God. So I won’t be backing down,” Bishop (R-Mecklenburg) stated in a message he sent to a Charlotte man who implored the lawmaker not to allow persistent opposition to the law to lead to concessions.

[…]

In the same email, Bishop described the pressure from critics as “brutal” and added, “I stepped in front of the train quite deliberately, but the beating is every bit as bad as I expected, and then some. I need the Lord’s help and your prayers.”

[…]

Bishop and fellow Republican lawmaker Rucho took umbrage when Charlotte real estate broker Rob Cochran criticized them as well as McCrory, Senate President Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore for passing HB 2.

[…]

Bishop and Rucho, in separate emails, rejected Cochran’s concerns.

“It is time for the business community to stand up and grow a back bone for what is a common sense bill,” Rucho responded.

“Stop being intimidated and extorted by the political correct police because there is no telling where this ends and the damage to our state and country. The large corporations are more concerned about offending the left wing extremists, their reputation and profits then (sic) they are about the rights of millions of woman (sic) and children. I have spent my entire elected career being a strong business advocate but after hearing the weak kneed moaning of business community, I think Bernie Sanders’s anti business philosophy has merit and your greed is despicable.”

Added Bishop: “Business skittishness is entirely the result of false media reports and activist grip on big corporations.”

[…]

A thank-you from a constituent instructed Bishop and his allies not to “cave in to the Politically Correct Taliban! Y’all should have all of the sane states to coordinate and pass these bills on the same day so one state does not have to stand up to these pompous asses alone.”

In reply, Bishop wrote, “I LOVE that idea. Taliban. Love that too. Not giving up. Ever.” A separate exchange with another supporter included a declaration by the lawmaker that “the LGBT movement jeopardizes freedom.”

Charlotte Business Journal has the full story.

The Real Victims of Persecution: American Christians, Part II.

donald-trump-claims-accommodating-transgender-people-is-too-expensivex750_0Continuing the Art of Pandering with Donald Trump: America Is A Judeo-Christian Nation Because ‘That’s The Way It Is’. Well, that’s certainly a concise, well thought out, well researched conclusion. *Cough* On with the show…

In an interview following his speech at the Road to Majority summit today, Donald Trump told Christian Broadcasting Network pundit David Brody that he agrees America is a “Judeo-Christian nation” because “that’s the way it is.”

Trump also vowed to reach out to Religious Right movement figures, mentioning his upcoming meeting with a variety of extreme activists and preachers hosted by Ben Carson.

And here I was thinking that the nightmare just had to stop at some point, the rhetoric and reaching out to all the evil people had to at least slow down, but no. It actually gets worse.

When asked if he would “turn down” some of the controversial rhetoric that has come to define him,Trump gave a mixed response.

“Well, you have to be who you are. I’ve gotten the largest number of votes in the history of Republican politics, by far, and so I want to keep doing what we’re doing. But if you ask me to tone it down I’ll tone it down,” Trump laughed.

He also used the speech to reiterate his support of the pro-life community. It’s no secret Trump has had a shaky relationship with the pro-lifers in the past but conservative women groups seem to be warming up to the idea of a President Trump.

“From what I hear he has been very consistent in meeting with the conservative community and the life community and being there in support,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told CBN News.

That is seriously bad news.

He will also hold a closed-door meeting with many evangelical leaders later this month.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, will be in that meeting. CBN News asked Perkins how Trump can narrow the gap between himself and evangelicals.

“His vice-presidential pick is going to be extremely important. I think it needs to be somebody that has a relationship with the evangelical community, which he really has not had,” Perkins said.

[…]

“I don’t think he can necessary transcend the theological differences from a stand point of evangelicals and the centrality of their faith. He can’t rewrite the narrative of his business career. But I think he can say,’ I’m going to protect your right to believe. I understand how important you are to American and America’s moral fabric and I’m going to fight for you,’ Perkins continued.

Oh good, a closed door meeting with evangelicals. Who knows what he’s going to promise them?

Via Right Wing Watch (video)  and CBN.

The Real Victims of Persecution: American Christians.

donald-trump-claims-accommodating-transgender-people-is-too-expensivex750_0So sayeth Donald Trump. Bet you’re all surprised, aren’t you? The Master of Pander is at it again:

Donald Trump told Religious Right activists today that, as president, he will stop refugees from coming to America and will instead focus on the real victims of persecution: American Christians.

Trump, who read the majority of his speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference off a teleprompter, kicked things off by bragging about how well he has “done with the evangelicals and with the religion, generally speaking.”

He went on to talk about the need “to restore faith to its proper mantel in our society” and “respect and defend Christian-Americans” along with the need to reject refugees fleeing war and violence.

[…]

Trump also repeated his vow to appoint conservative judges to the bench, boasting that the judges on his list of potential Supreme Court nominees “are all pro-life.”

People keep saying that it’s all a game, he’s really an atheist, the stuff about Jesus proves he’s atheist, and so on, but I’m not seeing it. Regardless of what he actually believes, he’s courting the true believers, hard, and if he ends up as president, he’ll keep doing that, if it allows him to do what he wants. So, I don’t see where it really matters what he believes. It’s what he’ll do that matters.

Right Wing Watch has the story.

Religious Freedom Flood

AP Photo.

AP Photo.

The current backlash of religious liberty legislation won’t come as a surprise to anyone, but it looks like we will be in for a long courthouse ride on the current wave. The Advocate has an excellent article providing a good summation of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, and their various permutations now piling up on courthouse steps. As noted, attempts at circumventing civil rights rulings aren’t new at all, but some groups are getting more savvy about language use, which can allow some discrimination to be passed, where the ones with blatant discriminatory language won’t.

Religious freedom is all the rage these days. To hear it told by conservative activists, the constitutional promise of each citizen’s free exercise of religion is under attack like no other time in U.S. history. Surely, such an urgent question is headed for the Supreme Court, right?

Maybe not so fast. Several out attorneys who have spent decades fighting for LGBT civil rights tell The Advocate that we may be settling in for another long, drawn-out battle that challenges discriminatory laws state by state, clause by clause.

[…]

Perhaps proving they’ve learned from Romer, though, anti-LGBT lawmakers these days are less explicit about which groups they’re targeting. The trend in RFRA legislation is to never include any mention of the words “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender,” or even “sexual orientation or gender identity.”

[…]

Some of the modern iterations of these religious freedom laws hew closely to the federal RFRA, which is comparatively narrow in scope, and therefore generally considered constitutional. But the new wave of bills claiming to protect religious freedom have a broader and, advocates say, more sinister motive.

“It’s not just about LGBT people,” Warbelow explain. “It’s about so much more. That’s an element of why these states are trying to pass [religious freedom laws], but it’s also very much about birth control. It’s very much about restrictions around abortion or even having to talk about abortion. It’s about creating a system in which the religious majority gets to live out their faith regardless of whom it hurts.”

The challenge, these attorneys agreed, is that litigation is designed to address one particular issue or constitutional question at a time. With laws that enable such widespread, multifaceted discrimination, each of those discriminatory provisions will have to be struck down individually, in every state where such a law exists. And even if this Herculean effort is successful, there’s nothing stopping determined anti-LGBT lawmakers from reintroducing slightly amended versions of bills that may have already been struck down in court.

“I actually think the American people are fundamentally with us, on understanding how the effort to use religion as a sword needs to be rejected in this [election] cycle,” says Wolfson. “It’s a multiple set of engagements we need to do, but the big lesson of the marriage work is: Get ahead of it. Have an affirmative strategy. Don’t just be reacting.”

Warbelow agrees and stresses that the problem isn’t with the concept of religious liberty.

“There’s still a real need for protections for religious minorities,” says Warbelow. “It’s just that the [federal RFRA] law has been misused by the courts.”

She points to the Do No Harm Act, a piece of legislation introduced by two Democrats last month in the U.S. House of Representatives that looks to revise the federal RFRA to clarify that it cannot be used to discriminate against members of any minority class, be they religious minorities, LGBT people, and/or women. The bill, Warbelow says, seeks to “restore RFRA to its original intent.”

“We need to reenvision what it means to protect religious liberties,” Warbelow says, “without creating a system in which it’s a free-for-all for discrimination.”

Full Story Here.

Helen Chavez has walked on.

Helen and Cesar Chavez with six of their eight children in 1969 at the United Farm Workers’ “Forty Acres” property outside Delano. Standing from left are Anna, Eloise and Sylvia. Seated from left are Paul, Elizabeth and Anthony. (United Farm Workers)

Helen and Cesar Chavez with six of their eight children in 1969 at the United Farm Workers’ “Forty Acres” property outside Delano. Standing from left are Anna, Eloise and Sylvia. Seated from left are Paul, Elizabeth and Anthony. (United Farm Workers)

Helen Chavez, the widow of Cesar Chavez, who aided the farmworkers union her husband founded by keeping the books, walking the picket line and being arrested — all while raising their eight children — died Monday at a Bakersfield, Calif., hospital. She was 88.

A statement from the Cesar Chavez Foundation said she died of natural causes and was surrounded by family members.

Though notoriously reticent and uncomfortable with media attention, Chavez sometimes found herself in the spotlight alongside her husband, who led the United Farm Workers of America for 31 years. In 1978 she was arrested and convicted with her husband for picketing a cantaloupe field where workers were represented by the Teamsters Union.

Yet at the height of the movement, she remained in her husband’s shadow. She seemed to push past nervousness whenever she spoke publicly. “I want to see justice for the farmworkers,” she told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times in 1976. “I was a farmworker and I know what it is like to work in the fields.”

The Chavez’s were another major window for me, in early life. They helped me to see past my own privilege, and I was honoured to help work with and for their causes when I was a teenager. Goodbye, Helen, and thank you.

Full Story Here.