The [university's] policy with respect to intermarriage, the record also clearly establishes, was rooted from the beginning in a belief that is derived from scripture: not that races should not associate, but that races should not intermarry.
-- William Ball, lawyer for Bob Jones University,
oral argument of Bob Jones University v. the United States (1982)
This week's featured post is "2016: Understanding the Republican Process".
This week everybody was talking about Indiana's new right-to-discriminate law
I'm tempted to go into detail about what's in it and why it's wrong, but it's basically the same thing Governor Brewer vetoed in Arizona last year, so I'd just be repeating what I wrote then. (If you want details, an Indiana lawyer has blogged a better analysis than I could do.)
What I find most discouraging is my own reaction: The bigots are wearing me down. When Arizona was about to do it, I was outraged. Now it's just "Oh, not this shit again." And how the heck am I going to boycott Indiana, when I was never planning to go there anyway?
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LH2FVxrj4k[/embed]
I include the quote at the top to point out that we've heard all these points in favor of religiously-mandated discrimination before. Then it was discrimination against blacks rather than discrimination against gays, but the arguments are exactly the same.
And no, Michele Bachmann's husband was not refused service at an Indianapolis dress shop because the owner thought he was gay. That clever satire went over the heads of many of its readers. They might have figured it out by looking at other articles on the National Report site, like "Obama's Executive Amnesty Will Grant Illegals Marijuana Seller Permits".
Georgia has a similar "religious freedom" bill pending. A few days ago, opponents thought they had it blocked by attaching an amendment that takes the bill's supporters at their word.
As in Indiana, proponents of Georgia’s bill have tried to argue that it has nothing to do with discrimination. Rep. Mike Jacobs, an LGBT-friendly Republican, decided to test this theory by introducing an amendment that would not allow claims of religious liberty to be used to circumvent state and local nondiscrimination protections. Supporters of the bill, like Rep. Barry Fleming (R), countered that the amendment “will gut the bill.”
So it's not about discrimination, but taking discrimination out of the law "guts" it.
It's still possible that the unamended version will be restored and passed.
Big Atlanta-based corporations like Delta and Coke have spoken out against similar Georgia laws in the past, but aren't making a big deal about this one. ThinkProgress speculates:
Some speculate that lawmakers have intimidated these companies into silence with bills that threaten their business — with Delta serving as the example for others. Still pending in the legislature is a bill (HB 175) that would eliminate Georgia’s tax subsidy on jet fuel, which would primarily hurt Delta. Its sponsor, Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R), makes no secret of the fact that the bill is retribution for Delta CEO Richard Anderson’s recent history of weighing in on public affairs, including last year’s version of RFRA.
It's fascinating to watch the sleight-of-hand involved in defending so-called "religious freedom" laws, particularly when defenders try to make a parallel to liberal freedom issues, either to point out our obliviousness or our hypocrisy. For example:
Shoebat.com decided to call some 13 prominent pro-gay bakers in a row. Each one denied us the right to have “Gay Marriage Is Wrong” on a cake
But this is explicitly not what the bakery court case was about. As the judge wrote:
There is no doubt that decorating a wedding cake involves considerable skill and artistry. However, the finished product does not necessarily qualify as “speech,” as would saluting a flag, marching in a parade, or displaying a motto. ... [The baker] was not asked to apply any message or symbol to the cake, or to construct the cake in any fashion that could be reasonably understood as advocating same-sex marriage. [my emphasis]
Or consider this cartoon:
In what sense are Klansmen analogous to gays, or right-wing Christians analogous to blacks? Have gays been lynching right-wing Christians or burning their churches? Does a fundamentalist baker feel physically threatened when lesbians come into his shop?
And finally, Bob the Baker's reluctance to make a KKK cake is political, not religious. A religious freedom law doesn't help.
and a plane crash
Once again, CNN has turned into the Air Disaster Network. Every time I checked CNN this week, they were talking about Germanwings Flight 9525. Somehow, they managed to spend 24 hours a day repeating: It crashed, everybody died, and we think one of the pilots might have crashed it intentionally.
Plane crashes are the junk food of news. They seem important -- and they are important to the friends and families of the people who die -- but otherwise they don't affect your life and there's nothing you can do about them. Beyond the simple announcement that a crash has happened, it's literally News You Can't Use.
Zak Cheney-Rice points out that CNN could also speculate about terrorism, if the suspect weren't white. If he were a brown-skinned Muslim, they'd be talking about little else.
This is not an argument for jumping to conclusions. Nor is it meant to accuse Lubitz of terrorism. On the contrary, it is an argument for holding people who commit mass murder to similar standards, regardless of their race or religion. If one gets to be portrayed as a complex human being, they all should be portrayed as such.
and Bowe Bergdahl
But whenever I scanned through Fox News, they were talking about Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier that President Obama got back from the Taliban in a prisoner exchange last May.
The new development this week was that the Army decided to charge Bergdahl with desertion and "misbehavior before the enemy". For some reason, this makes the prisoner swap a "fiasco" in the conservative mind. I guess they think we should have let the Taliban keep torturing him.
and Yemen
Iran-backed rebels have taken over the capital, and the Saudis have launched air strikes against them. There's talk of Saudi or Egyptian troops invading. The Christian Science Monitor has a good summary of the situation, which is complicated to say the least.
It's tempting to frame this as part of the brewing regional Sunni/Shia war -- Iran vs. ISIS in Tikrit is another part -- but (as in Syria/Iraq) there are more than two sides. The Sunni government was helping us fight the local branch of Al Qaeda, which is also Sunni. The Shia rebels recently overran the air base we had been using for drone strikes against their enemies.
For those of you who can't find Yemen on a map (don't be ashamed, just learn), here's a map.
You actually know more about Yemen than you think. Historically, it might be where the Biblical Queen of Sheba came from. More recently, its Aden harbor is where the U.S.S. Cole was attacked.
Yemen has been an oil producer, but its fields are near exhaustion. (In 2008, the World Bank predicted Yemen's oil reserves would run out by 2017. How any government will replace that revenue is a mystery.) It's a poor country that has been badly governedfor a long time, and has a scary water problem that climate change is making worse. (Thomas Friedman went there to film Episode 8 of Years of Living Dangerously.)
In short, it's one of those tragic situations where people are squabbling over crumbs. The victor in the civil war will just win responsibility for solving intractable problems.
and 2016
Presidential candidates are starting to show up in New Hampshire, but it's surprisingly hard to track them down. (Ted Cruz' visit this week didn't show up on WMUR's candidate tracker.) We're at a stage in the campaign where candidates want to talk to groups they expect to support them, and don't want possibly hostile voters showing up to ask embarrassing questions. (Not that I do that.)
Cruz officially announced his candidacy at Liberty University, the school Jerry Falwell founded. WaPo has the transcript of his speech. Next week I plan to start an intermittent series where I look at candidate stump speeches in detail, starting with that one.
and you also might be interested in ...
Most of the opposition to the administration's negotiations with Iran have hidden behind the fig leaf of the "better deal" Obama could get if he took a firmer stand. So it's kind of refreshing to see a NeoCon honestly admit that he wants war, as former Bush UN Ambassador John Bolton did in Thursday's NYT.
Bolton thinks bombing "should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran." Because that would totally work, just like Dick Cheney's plan to have the Iraqis greet us as liberators.
In reality, Iranians would react to an attack the way we reacted to 9-11: 90% of them would rally behind the government, while the other 10% would either shut up or get ostracized as unpatriotic. If you want to completely destroy any chance of democratic change in Iraq, do what Bolton wants.
Happy Birthday, ObamaCare. Steve Benen lists ten false predictions its critics made.
Happy trails, Harry Reid.
Two weeks ago I talked about a racist song sung on a fraternity bus. I remarked at the time that the song couldn't be new, because the brothers in the video know the words. Now we know where they learned them: at an SAE national leadership school four years ago.
SAE also turned up in "The Hunting Ground" as a particularly dangerous frat for a woman to attend a party at. On some campuses, SAE is said to stand for "Sexual Assault Expected".
In New York City, a crime is more likely to get on TV if the suspect is black.
As a Michigan State alum, I can't not mention our most unlikely Final Four run ever. No one can strategize against us, because no one can figure out how we're winning.
and let's close with a cautionary tale
If you take your girlfriend to the game, keep your eye on the KissCam.
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