Flannel Shirt

Must be a long fuse

I am intrigued how many Republicans are ready to junk constitutional rights when it comes to the surviving Boston bomber.

First, it is true that there's a legal exception to giving Miranda Rights, if there is imminent danger to the public. The guy's been in the hospital for a couple of days now, so if he planted another bomb it would have to have a very long fuse. 

As far as treating him as a military combatant, he's not. He's a U.S. citizen killing people on American soil. If you want the death penalty you probably can charge him in federal court for the bombing murders. Massachusetts doesn't have the death penalty so the murder of the MIT campus cop is a life-without-parole deal. 

I worry about politicians who are ready to deform and erode the Constitution at any chance they get. I'll particularly point out Lindsey Graham, who should know better, having been a JAG officer for years. Granted, Graham's homosexuality is the worst-kept secret in Congress and he's likely to be primaried out next year by a religious zealot, but playing a tough guy won't rescue his sorry ass. 

This is the time to find out what made these two brothers decide to do this. I suspect that the older brother was abused as a child. People who try to make their way through the world by hitting other people (he was a boxer and he reportedly hit his wife when he got angry) tend to have grown up being hit. Unfortunately, that may be the underlying cause of all this. 

Pat Robertson says gays are like the Illuminati

When I think things can't get any more absurd I only have to wait for Pat Robertson to open his mouth. Get out the guillotines.

Former Republican presidential candidate and longtime television preacher Pat Robertson implied on “The 700 Club” Wednesday that LGBT people are covertly out to destroy the family, the church and the state, in the vein of the Illuminati of the French revolutionary war.

“It has been said that those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to live them again,” he says in footage snipped and published online by Right Wing Watch.

“You go back in history to the French Revolution, you find there was a thrust, uh, spurred by the, uh, writings of a group called the Illuminati, to destroy the family, to destroy the state, to destroy capitalism, to destroy the church,” Robertson continues. “And it was lived out in the blood of the French Revolution.”

So, what exactly does that have to do with LGBT people? Robertson doesn’t quite make the connection, and instead explains: “We have here a debate over same sex marriage. But is it really just about marriage? Or does it go far beyond that? They’re destroying the traditional family and building a country without God.”

See? Totally the same thing as the French revolutionaries.

 

All around the world

New Zealand is the 13th country now.

Hundreds of jubilant gay-rights advocates celebrated at New Zealand’s Parliament as the country became the 13th in the world – and the first in the Asia-Pacific region – to legalise same-sex marriage.

Lawmakers voted 77 to 44 in favour of the gay-marriage Bill on its third and final reading. People watching from the public gallery broke into song after the result was announced, singing the New Zealand love song “Pokarekare Ana” in the indigenous Maori language.

“For us, we can now feel equal to everyone else,” said Tania Penafiel Bermudez, a bank teller who said she already considers herself married to her partner Sonja Fry, but now can get a certificate to prove it.

In one of several speeches that ended in a standing ovation, Bill sponsor Louisa Wall told lawmakers the change was “our road toward healing”.

“In our society, the meaning of marriage is universal – it’s a declaration of love and commitment to a special person,” she said.

Lawmakers from most political parties were encouraged by their leaders to vote as their conscience dictated rather than along party lines. Although Ms Wall is from the opposition Labour Party, the Bill was also supported by centre-right Prime Minister John Key.

He said: “In my view, marriage is a very personal thing between two individuals. This is part of equality in modern-day New Zealand.”

No blowjobs!

Because some people can't keep out of other people's bedrooms.

Victim card being played here

'Cause if teh gheys get the right to marry then straight Christian people, especially bigots, will be second-class citizens.

Fox News radio host Todd Starnes says that the push for equal rights for LGBT people is making Christians who believe in the “Biblical definition of marriage” into “second-class citizens.”

During a Monday interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, the often-outraged Starnes reacted to the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court could rule in favor of marriage equality.

“What concerns me, though, Sandy, is the vitriol coming from those who support gay marriage,” Starnes declared. “You know, I’m the kind of person that is more than happy to sit down and talk and debate and listen to what people have to say. I may not agree with it, but at least, you know, it’s their right to have their opinion under our Constitution.”

“And yet, there seems to be this opinion on the other side that says, you know what, you and I don’t deserve the same rights,” he opined. “You know, it’s as if we’re second-class citizens now because we support the traditional, Biblical definition of marriage or perhaps we are pro-life, and that means we’re somehow second-class citizens who don’t deserve to be in the public marketplace of ideas.”

Rios predicted that it would be even “worse than that” if the the court decided to legalize same sex marriage.

“You know there’s going to be punishment,” she said. “There will be tremendous punishment.”

“If gay marriage is embraced by the country, if the Supreme Court goes south this week in its hearings, we are in for –- of course, we’re not going to hear about it until June -– but we are in for persecution like we have never seen it.”

“Well, it’s already started,” Starnes agreed.

After President Barack Obama announced his support for marriage equality last year, the Fox News radio host had declared that a shift in public opinion was taking place because public schools were “indoctrination centers” for LGBT rights.

What world do they live in?

Not sure what world these people live in, but what "white culture" is being disrespected? The slave-owning culture?

A CPAC session sponsored by Tea Party Patriots and billed as a primer on teaching activists how to court black voters devolved into a shouting match as some attendees demanded justice for white voters and others shouted down a black woman who reacted in horror.

The session, entitled “Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” was led by K. Carl Smith, a black conservative who mostly urged attendees to deflect racism charges by calling themselves “Frederick Douglass Republicans.”

Disruptions began when he started accusing Democrats of still being the party of the Confederacy — a common talking point on the right.

“I don’t care how much the KKK improved,” he said. “I’m not going to join the KKK. The Democratic Party founded the KKK.”

Lines like that drew shouts of praise from some attendees and murmurs of disapproval from one non-conservative black attendee, Kim Brown, a radio host and producer with Voice of Russia, a broadcasting service of the Russian government.

But then questions and answers began. And things went off the rails. 

Scott Terry of North Carolina, accompanied by a Confederate-flag-clad attendee, Matthew Heimbach, rose to say he took offense to the event’s take on slavery. (Heimbach founded the White Students Union at Towson University and is described as a “white nationalist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.)

“It seems to be that you’re reaching out to voters at the expense of young white Southern males,” Terry said, adding he “came to love my people and culture” who were “being systematically disenfranchised.”

Smith responded that Douglass forgave his slavemaster.

“For giving him shelter? And food?” Terry said.

At this point the event devolved into a mess of shouting. Organizers calmed things down by asking everyone to “take the debate outside after the presentation.”

Brown, who took offense at the suggestion modern Democrats were descendants of the KKK, tried to ask a question later once things finally calmed down. She was booed and screamed at by audience members.

“Let someone else speak!” one attendee in Revolutionary War garb shouted.

“You’re not welcome!” a white-haired older woman yelled.

Eventually she asked a question. It was about whether Republicans should call out racist ads.

Attendees interviewed by TPM afterwards expressed outrage at the way the event turned out. Not at Terry and Heimbach — they were mad at Brown.

Chad Chapman, 21, one of the few black attendees, said overall he enjoyed the event — except “there were lots of interruptions, mainly because of the woman.”

I asked whether he was concerned about the question from Terry and Heimbach.

“No they were just telling the truth,” he said. You mean you agree blacks are systematically disenfranchising whites, I asked?

“I listen to anybody’s point of view, it doesn’t really matter,” he said.

A media scrum formed around Terry immediately after the close of the event. A woman wearing a Tea Party Patriots CPAC credential who had shouted down Brown earlier urged him not to give his name to the press.

She wouldn’t give her name either, but I asked her what she thought.

“Look, you know there’s no doubt the white males are getting really beat up right now, it’s unfair,” she said. “I agree with that. My husband’s one of them. But I don’t think there’s a clear understanding about what really is going on. He needs to read Frederick Douglass and I think that question should be asked to everyone in this room who is debating.”

Another white participant, Jeremy Kohn, got into a respectful discussion with Brown afterwards about the history of slavery and whether the party had a race problem. Brown explained why, after attending several CPACs, she had felt compelled to raise the issue that day.

“I just felt honestly black Americans have a lot in common with conservatives, the problem is your language and the way you — not you as an individual, you as a movement — the way racist language is overlooked,” she said.

I asked Kohn whether he was concerned, after talking to Brown, about the language used by Terry and Heimbach.

“Concerned in what way?” he said. I explained I meant the part about how whites were being disenfranchised by blacks en masse and the Confederacy wasn’t being respected.

“I would just say that if you cast a fraudulent vote you are depriving someone else of the right to vote, because you are canceling a vote that was legitimately cast,” he said. I pressed again — even leaving the voting issue aside, was it right to say white culture was being denigrated as Terry had?

“I’m not going to make a general statement about that, but obviously whatever culture you come from there’s somebody who is opposed to it,” he said.

Later after asking if he would be quoted, he requested I add the following statement: “90 percent of blacks vote for Democrats regularly.”

He paused.

“It’s hard to talk about without offending people.”

Oddly enough, the unnamed woman who had told Terry to conceal his name ended up talking to Brown afterwards and it actually approached something resembling a constructive dialogue, even if she kicked it off by complaining about an “entitlement mentality” among liberal African Americans. She explained that despite appearing outwardly white, she was one quarter Korean and her mother’s side of the family had been called “Japs” in the 1950s. She added she had gotten heat from “generally white men” who mocked her for going to school at UC-Berkeley over its large Asian population without knowing she was Asian herself.

Brown asked if her experience made her feel any sympathy for what African Americans experience.

“I feel that there is a certain disadvantage coming out of slavery, they had to make it on their own,” she said. “There are certain endowments handed down to you and on the education level the black community has not had a fair share.”

“Correct,” Brown replied, segueing into a discussion of generational wealth gaps between races.

They were joined by an older white man, George Vermillion, who had come by to make sure Brown knew he wasn’t one of the people who had muttered remarks while she was speaking. He said he was concerned “a little bit” about Terry and Haimbach, but that “we all have our own individual voices.”

“Race is such a weird issue,” he said. “It’s hard to talk about it.”

It's even weirder. Read here. And here.

The death penalty is going away

Maryland voted it away yesterday. It's about time.

Maryland lawmakers approved a measure abolishing the death penalty on Friday and sent the bill to Gov. Martin O'Malley, who has long supported banning capital punishment.

The House of Delegates voted 82-56 for legislation already approved by the Senate. Eighty Democrats and two Republicans voted for the bill, which needed 71 to pass. Eighteen Democrats joined 38 Republicans to vote against it.

The vote represented a major win for the Democratic governor, who has pushed for the death penalty's repeal for five years. He is also widely believed to be weighing a presidential bid in 2016.

"We have a moral responsibility to stop doing the things that are wasteful and do not work and that I would argue run contrary to the deeper principles that unite us as Marylanders," O'Malley said, flanked by a group of death penalty opponents, including NAACP President Benjamin Jealous.

Under the bill, life without the possibility of parole would be the most severe sentence in the state.

Supporters of repeal argued that the death penalty is costly, racially biased, a poor deterrent of crime and sometimes wrongfully applied. The possibility of executing the innocent prompted many lawmakers to support the repeal measure.

"I can live with putting to death criminals who committed what are truly grievous and wicked acts against our children, our police, our mothers and our daughters," Delegate Luiz Simmons, D-Montgomery, said on the House floor, "but what I am opposed to and what I can no longer live with is using the death penalty to accidently put to death an innocent man or woman."

Opponents insisted that capital punishment was a necessary tool in punishing those who commit the most egregious crimes.

"This bill is wrong-spirited," said Delegate Michael McDermott, an Eastern Shore Republican. "It's a shame that we will not allow future generations to have the option of putting the absolute worst of the worst to death."

Kirk Bloodsworth, the first person in the United States freed because of DNA evidence after being convicted in a death penalty case, watched the vote from the House gallery. He pumped his arms toward the ceiling when he saw the vote count.

"You can't punish the guilty by walking over an innocent -- ever," an elated Bloodsworth said.

Bloodsworth was twice wrongly convicted of a 9-year-old girl's murder, and he spent two years on death row following his first trial. A second trial brought another conviction, although he received a life sentence instead of capital punishment. He was cleared in 1993.

Maryland has five men on death row. The measure would not apply to them retroactively, but the legislation makes clear that the governor can commute their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. O'Malley said he would evaluate those cases individually.

Maryland has executed only five inmates since 1976. There were three executions in the 1990s and two under O'Malley's Republican predecessor, Robert Ehrlich.

In contrast, neighboring Virginia has executed 110 inmates since the U.S. Supreme Court restored capital punishment in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. However, Virginia's death row population has dwindled to eight from a peak of 57 in 1995, in part because fewer death sentences are being handed down in the state amid an increased acceptance of life without parole as a reasonable alternative.

"We see Maryland as the bellwether for the direction the rest of the country is headed in," said Diann Rust-Tierney executive director of the National Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty. "There was an effort, early on, to try to address some of the problems with the death penalty, especially the possibility of executing an innocent man. Maryland has gone the full gamut trying to fix it and realized it can't be fixed."

The state's last execution took place in 2005, during Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich's administration. He resumed executions after a moratorium had been in place pending a 2003 University of Maryland study, which found significant racial and geographic disparity in how the death penalty was carried out.

Capital punishment was put on hold in Maryland after a December 2006 ruling by Maryland's highest court that the state's lethal injection protocols weren't properly approved by a legislative committee. The committee, whose co-chairs oppose capital punishment, has yet to sign off on protocols.

O'Malley, a Catholic, expressed support for repeal legislation in 2007, but it stalled in a Senate committee.

Maryland has a large Catholic population, and the church opposes the death penalty.

In 2009, lawmakers tightened the law to reduce the chances of an innocent person being sent to death row by restricting capital punishment to murder cases with biological evidence such as DNA, videotaped evidence of a murder or a videotaped confession.

The center said death sentences have declined by 75 percent and executions by 60 percent nationally since the 1990s.

O'Malley's signing of the measure would make Maryland the 18th state to ban the death penalty. Connecticut did so last year. Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have abolished it in recent years.

Out here in Oregon we've got the opposite problem.

A power struggle between a death-row inmate who wants to be executed and a governor who refuses to let it happen reached Oregon state’s highest court Thursday as lawyers sparred over the governor’s power.

The lawyer for a man convicted of two murders argued that Gov. John Kitzhaber lacks authority to delay Gary Haugen’s execution without the inmate’s consent.

Kitzhaber, a death penalty opponent, regretted letting two other inmates be put to death and said he won’t allow it to happen again. He blocked Haugen’s execution in 2011, two weeks before Haugen was scheduled to die by lethal injection, delaying the sentence until the governor leaves office.

Haugen’s lawyer, Harrison Latto, said the Oregon state constitution allows the death penalty and that trumps the moral views of the governor.

The governor argued that his clemency power is absolute, and nobody — certainly not an inmate on death row — can prevent him from doing what he believes to be in the state’s best interest.

“The decision to grant clemency is something that’s entrusted in the governor and the governor alone,” Kitzhaber’s lawyer, Solicitor General Anna Joyce, argued. “No other branch of government is entitled to question the reasons or the motive.”

Kitzhaber has urged a statewide vote on abolishing the death penalty, and the Legislature could put it on the ballot in 2014.

Americans and their elected representatives have expressed mixed feelings about the death penalty. Lawmakers abolished capital punishment in New Mexico, New Jersey and Connecticut, but Californians turned down a chance to follow suit at the ballot box last year.

In 2000, then-Gov. George Ryan of Illinois issued a moratorium on the death penalty after numerous condemned inmates were exonerated. The Legislature abolished capital punishment more than a decade later.

Oregon’s justices will likely rule on Haugen’s case by the end of the year. They won’t decide the legality of the death penalty itself, which has been extensively debated, but rather will consider the sparsely explored question of how much power the governor has to reduce, delay or eliminate criminal sentences.

Haugen was sentenced to death along with an accomplice in 2007 for the jailhouse murder of a fellow inmate, who was found with stab wounds and a crushed skull in the prison band room. At the time, Haugen was serving a life sentence for fatally beating his former girlfriend’s mother in 1981.

After the state Supreme Court upheld his death sentence, Haugen announced in 2011 that he would voluntarily waive legal appeals that could have delayed his execution. He said the move was a protest against a criminal justice system he views as broken and inequitable.

Haugen was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in December 2011, but Kitzhaber issued a reprieve two weeks before the sentence was to be carried out, citing his own moral opposition to capital punishment and problems he sees with Oregon’s death-penalty process.

Haugen challenged the reprieve last year, saying it was invalid because he refused to accept it. The trial court judge agreed.

At the Supreme Court, Haugen’s lawyer argued that his client must accept the reprieve for it to be valid. He also argued that it wasn’t actually a reprieve because it didn’t have an expiration date — it expires on whatever day Kitzhaber leaves office — but rather an illegal attempt by Kitzhaber to nullify a law he doesn’t like.

Joyce, Kitzhaber’s lawyer, reached back to the English monarchy, arguing that Kitzhaber’s clemency power stems from the king’s absolute authority to issue clemency. She said Haugen can’t reject a reprieve that has no conditions attached.

“Death penalty cases are different, and an individual doesn’t possess the power to force his government to execute him if that isn’t what his government wants to do,” Joyce argued.

She later added: “That would mean Mr. Haugen has ... powers that are equal or greater than those of the governor.”

You're fired 'cause you look so good.

Merry Christmas, Baby.

A dentist acted legally when he fired an assistant that he found attractive simply because he and his wife viewed the woman as a threat to their marriage, the all-male Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The court ruled 7-0 that bosses can fire employees they see as an "irresistible attraction," even if the employees have not engaged in flirtatious behavior or otherwise done anything wrong. Such firings may be unfair, but they are not unlawful discrimination under the Iowa Civil Rights Act because they are motivated by feelings and emotions, not gender, Justice Edward Mansfield wrote.

An attorney for Fort Dodge dentist James Knight said the decision, the first of its kind in Iowa, is a victory for family values because Knight fired Melissa Nelson in the interest of saving his marriage, not because she was a woman.

But Nelson's attorney said Iowa's all-male high court, one of only a handful in the nation, failed to recognize the discrimination that women see routinely in the workplace.

"These judges sent a message to Iowa women that they don't think men can be held responsible for their sexual desires and that Iowa women are the ones who have to monitor and control their bosses' sexual desires," said attorney Paige Fiedler. "If they get out of hand, then the women can be legally fired for it."

Nelson, 32, worked for Knight for 10 years, and he considered her a stellar worker. But in the final months of her employment, he complained that her tight clothing was distracting, once telling her that if his pants were bulging that was a sign her clothes were too revealing, according to the opinion.

He also once allegedly remarked about her infrequent sex life by saying, "that's like having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it."

Knight and Nelson — both married with children — started exchanging text messages, mostly about personal matters, such as their families. Knight's wife, who also worked in the dental office, found out about the messages and demanded Nelson be fired. The Knights consulted with their pastor, who agreed that terminating Nelson was appropriate.

Knight fired Nelson and gave her one month's severance. He later told Nelson's husband that he worried he was getting too personally attached and feared he would eventually try to start an affair with her.

Nelson was stunned because she viewed the 53-year-old Knight as a father figure and had never been interested in starting a relationship, Fiedler said.

Nelson filed a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination, arguing she would not have been terminated if she was male. She did not allege sexual harassment because Knight's conduct may not have risen to that level and didn't particularly offend her, Fiedler said.

Knight argued Nelson was fired not because of her gender, but because her continued employment threatened his marriage. A district judge agreed, dismissing the case before trial, and the high court upheld that ruling.

Mansfield noted that Knight had an all-female workforce and Nelson was replaced by a woman.

He said the decision was in line with state and federal court rulings that found workers can be fired for relationships that cause jealousy and tension within a business owner's family. One such case from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a business owner's firing of a valued employee who was seen by his wife as a threat to their marriage. In that case, the fired employee had engaged in flirtatious conduct.

Mansfield said allowing Nelson's lawsuit would stretch the definition of discrimination to allow anyone fired over a relationship to file a claim arguing they would not have been fired but for their gender.

Knight's attorney, Stuart Cochrane, said the court got it right. The decision clarified that bosses can make decisions showing favoritism to a family member without committing discrimination; in this case, by allowing Knight to honor his wife's wishes to fire Nelson, he said.

Knight is a very religious and moral individual, and he sincerely believed that firing Nelson would be best for all parties, he said.

"While there was really no fault on the part of Mrs. Nelson, it was just as clear the decision to terminate her was not related to the fact that she was a woman," he said. "The motives behind Dr. Knight terminating Mrs. Nelson were quite clear: He did so to preserve his marriage.

"I don't view this as a decision that was either pro-women or opposed to women rights at all. In my view, this was a decision that followed the appropriate case law."

The United States of Uninsured

Chemical warfare

In Syria? No, on Okinawa, by Americans against American troops.

Newly discovered documents reveal that 50 years ago this week, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as "biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests," the highly classified program subjected thousands of unwitting American service members around the globe to substances including sarin and VX nerve gases between 1962 and 1974.

According to papers obtained from the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the 267th Chemical Platoon was activated on Okinawa on Dec. 1, 1962, with "the mission of operation of Site 2, DOD (Department of Defense) Project 112." Before coming to Okinawa, the 36-member platoon had received training at Denver's Rocky Mountain Arsenal, one of the key U.S. chemical and biological weapons (CBW) facilities. Upon its arrival on the island, the platoon was billeted just north of Okinawa City at Chibana — the site of a poison gas leak seven years later. Between December 1962 and August 1965, the 267th platoon received three classified shipments — codenamed YBA, YBB and YBF — believed to include sarin and mustard gas.

For decades, the Pentagon denied the existence of Project 112. Only in 2000 did the department finally admit to having exposed its own service members to CBW tests, which it claimed were designed to enable the U.S. to better plan for potential attacks on its troops. In response to mounting evidence of serious health problems among a number of veterans subjected to these experiments, Congress forced the Pentagon in 2003 to create a list of service members exposed during Project 112. While the Department of Defense acknowledges it conducted the tests in Hawaii, Panama and aboard ships in the Pacific Ocean, this is the first time that Okinawa — then under U.S. jurisdiction — has been implicated in the project.

Corroborating suspicions that Project 112 tests were conducted on Okinawa is the inclusion on the Pentagon's list of at least one U.S. veteran exposed on the island. "Sprayed from numbered containers" reads the Project 112 file on former marine Don Heathcote. Heathcote, a private first class stationed on Okinawa's Camp Hansen in 1962, clearly remembers the circumstances in which he was exposed.

"I was assigned for approximately 30 days to a crew in the northern jungles of Okinawa," Heathcote told The Japan Times. "I sprayed foliage with chemicals from drums with different-colored faces. As we did this, a guy came by with a clipboard and made notes. How better to run a test than to color-code each barrel?"

Heathcote believes the chemicals were experimental herbicides, including Agent Purple, a forerunner to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange. He says the spraying killed large swaths of the jungle — and took an equally devastating toll on his own health.

"Soon after I returned home, I underwent an operation to extract polyps from my nose. The doctors removed enough to fill a cup. Plus they diagnosed me with bronchitis and sinusitis connected to chemical exposure," said Heathcote.

Michelle Gatz, the veterans services officer who first uncovered the records of the 267th Chemical Platoon, suspects that Heathcote may have been exposed to substances even more dangerous than defoliants. "Project 112 had thousands of sub-projects testing a variety of poisons, drugs and germs. It has been compared to an octopus with its tentacles all over the place — and one of those places was Okinawa."

Gatz and Heathcote are attempting to persuade U.S. authorities to disclose details of Project 112 tests on the island, but so far to no avail. The Japan Times approached the Defense Department for comment on Nov. 5; at the time of publication, the Pentagon said it was still investigating the issue.