The Georgia Senate created a combined bill out of two different pieces of religious liberty legislation, which can now be advanced for a floor vote whenever the Rules Committee says so. The combined bill is fairly tame: it's no threat to "gay marriage" being the law of the land. However, if you own your own business, you can life your life according to sincerely held religious beliefs.
The combined legislation under HB 757 would enable faith-based organizations and individuals to opt out of serving couples — gay or straight — or follow anti-discrimination requirements if they cite a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction regarding marriage.
The bill would bar state and local governments from taking any “discriminatory action” to punish those beliefs, specifically over convictions that marriage should be between a man and a woman or that sexual relations between two people are properly reserved to such a marriage.
It would protect government grants and contracts, among other things, held by faith-based organizations such as those that receive money to aid in adoption. Those organizations would also not be required to register as a nonprofit, although they would have to state a religious belief or purpose in their governing documents or mission statements.
Additionally, the bill states clergy could not be forced to perform a same-sex wedding ceremony.
The bill would not, however, allow public employees or elected officials such as Georgia probate court employees to refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses if that offends their faith.
Not sure if it will pass. It's already got some corporate opposition, which normally spells doom even for carefully-crafted compromise bills in the Georgia legislature. Corporate opponents say they believe the law might prevent them from firing people whose religious views are against company policy.
UPDATE: The Senate passed the bill on Friday, having just approved it out of the Rules Committee on Tuesday. No word yet on next steps, or if the governor is willing to sign it if it gets to him.
Here's a fun project: this site lists all the superdelegates in the Democratic primary, by state and whether or not they've committed to backing Clinton. Those with Twitter or Facebook pages have links given, but mostly they are political officials who won't be hard to find.
It's probably worth your time to ping the ones from your state, and tell them that you won't thank them for backing Clinton if Sanders wins the local primary. Whatever we can do to undermine her last bastion of support is worth doing, as she is by far the worst choice in this election. We cannot afford to turn national security over to someone for whom the lives of its defenders are so small a concern next to her own convenience. Nor is her relationship to the truth, in general, apparently a wholesome one.
Pelley began by asking Clinton, “You know in ’76, Jimmy Carter famously said, ‘I will not lie to you.’”
“Well, I will tell you, I have tried in every way I know how, literally from my years as a young lawyer, all the way through my time as Secretary of State to level with the American people,” Clinton claimed.
Pelley replied, “You talk about leveling with the American people. Have you always told the truth?”
“I’ve have always tried to, always, always,” Clinton suggested.
These sound more like the ramblings of a suspect in an interrogation room with their hands cuffed to the table than a presidential candidate. How on Earth is the question, are you going to lie to us a tough one? Even if you’re talking out the side of your mouth, the answer is no. There’s some panic setting in at Clinton HQ as much as her many surrogates insist that they always knew it was going to be a long, hard slog.
Tennessee moves to protect its statues from destruction. Seems like there's a wave of destroying art that symbolizes history we'd rather forget, these last few years. The Taliban dynamited Buddhas. ISIS wrecks even mosques they don't like, as well as any remaining Classical civilization they can lay hands upon. Iran visits Italy, and Renaissance sculptures are hidden away so they don't disturb. Cartoons that offend must not be republished, or hung even in an art gallery where people might see them. The Merlin sculpture hardly got up before people were arguing it was "vandalism" to put it there.
Whatever this is, it is not liberal tolerance for diversity. Even the dead must conform to current opinions.
The Washington State Senate and House, at the request of the Washington State Council of Clubs and the Motorcycle Profiling Project, have both proposed identical legislation, SB 6624/ HB 2950, that would add individuals wearing motorcycle or motorcycle club related paraphernalia to the Washington State Civil Rights Act (RCW 49.60.030) as a protected class. Additionally, SB 6624/HB 2950 adds the right to be free from law enforcement profiling to the list of explicated civil rights protections for all protected classes.
The Washington State Council of Clubs, the Motorcycle Profiling Project, and BOLT of Washington drafted the language for the identical proposals. ABATE of Washington also supported the effort.
The addition of individuals wearing motorcycle or motorcycle club related paraphernalia would provide unprecedented protection against many forms of discrimination if these bills pass. It would be a violation of civil rights to deny an individual employment, public accommodations, or profile them based on their expression or associations with a motorcycle club.... Individuals in motorcycle clubs have a fundamental right of association that should not be infringed upon based on generalized suspicion. Absent proof of the intent to commit criminal activity an individual should not be subjected to government regulation or law enforcement actions.
I have two questions about this, understanding that ABATE is a good organization that normally means well.
1) Is it really necessary to seek protected status to obtain what sound like ordinary Constitutional rights -- free association, and the right to be free of unreasonable harassment by police?
2) Doesn't this bill protect free association in one case only by limiting it in another? Your freedom to associate with your club is protected, but at the cost of telling (say) employers that they can't choose whether or not to associate with you because of it. What makes it right to use the government to place our rights above the rights of others? It's the same right, and we are both of us citizens of the United States in the same way.
All in all, I don't think I want to be a member of a 'protected class' anyway. I'm one of the last Americans who isn't, and there's a certain glory to that.
Baggett’s [B-24] was badly hit, and the crew were ordered to bail out. The Japanese pilots then attacked U.S. airmen as they parachuted to earth.
Two of Baggett’s crew members were killed, and Baggett, though wounded, played dead, hoping the Japanese would ignore him. One Zero approaching within several feet of Baggett, then nose-up and in an almost-stall, the pilot opened his canopy. Baggett shot at the pilot with his .45 calibre pistol. The plane stalled and plunged to the earth, with Baggett becoming legendary as the only person to down a Japanese airplane with a M1911 pistol.
Of more interest may be his remarks on an exception to the Church's ordinary prohibition of birth control, which draws a bright line between birth control and abortion. This is the sort of thing he's better placed to talk about. I suspect there's a danger, if that's the right word, that most American Catholics would be only too happy to take that distinction and run with it. Almost no Americans of any stripe are opposed to birth control on moral grounds. If the Church intends to maintain that prohibition as a usual thing, exceptions will need to be very carefully drawn.
Speaking of gun rights legislation, HR 3799 is in committee in Congress. It would remove suppressors and "silencers" from the National Firearms Act, making them readily available for use by individuals. As someone who both shoots guns and rides motorcycles, all I have to say is -- what did you say? I couldn't quite hear you.
In the wake of Beyonce’s controversial Super Bowl halftime performance of her new song “Formation” — which critics say contains an anti-cop message — police and politicians around the country have been speaking out against it.
But the criticism could be manifesting itself in practical ways, given what’s happened since police in Tampa, Florida, got a request to work her April 29 concert in town.
Usually off-duty officers sign up to work concerts and sporting events for extra cash, but to date no officers have signed up for the show, WTVT-TV reported. And given it’s expected to sell out, that could be a security issue.
While police spokesman Steve Hegarty couldn’t tell the station if zero sign-ups means local cops are angry with Beyonce, he did say the show would have security.
I didn't see the Superbowl, but I did see a lot of mockery of her for having demanded a police escort that closed off an entire highway for her motorcade -- in order to sing a song about the evils of cops. That's par for the course with these celebrities, though. I may field occasional criticisms of police, but I don't ask them to bow and scrape to me while I do it. In fact, I try to leave them alone, and if I do have to call them for some reason -- usually a neighbor's escaped livestock, out here -- I always treat them with the courtesy and respect due to someone who shows up when called to do a hard job.
Probably this lady will get her way again, as the sense of duty toward securing the concert-goers overwhelms the bad taste in the mouths of off-duty police.
But hey -- if the police thing doesn't work out, she can always try the Outlaws.
Georgia is in a weird position on campus carry because it passed two laws with different language recently. Students for Concealed Carry explain after the jump. This law would clarify the situation legislatively, rather than waiting for a court to do it -- which could result in someone who thought they were obeying the law going to jail, if the court decides against them.
Oddly, HB 859 seems to undo a feature of Georgia's weapons carry laws I normally tout as a highly desirable feature: it severs handguns from knives. I often prefer to carry a knife instead of a handgun, as it is useful in far more situations and eliminates the dangers of overpenetration, ricochet, and similar risks in highly populated areas. (Obviously, it does this at the cost of limiting your effective range, and knives require much more training and practice to be effective.) HB 859 would allow people who have undergone background checks and obtained the weapons carry permit to carry handguns only on school property (and not to sporting events).
The piece I mentioned below deserves a longer consideration. No one knows what to do about Turkey, which is a NATO ally that is -- to quote what I wrote earlier this week -- "openly Islamist, deceitful, and murderous, [and that] does not deserve our support." Nevertheless, the treaty obligation requires us to fight in their defense should the war they and Russia are playing at starting break out into full scale.
I suspect Russia believes we would not, especially under Obama, actually come to their aid with more than symbolic force. There is some reason to doubt they are right about this supposition. We moved F-15C fighters to Turkey following the movement of Russian air superiority fighters to Syria earlier this fall. In response, probably, came Russia's deployment of S-400 missiles in Syria. The older F-15C is not thought capable of defeating this system. Of the fighters we have, only the F-22 and F-35 incorporate stealth technology completely enough that we think them safe against the S-400 system. We deployed four(!) F-22s to Germany in August on an operational basis.
Does that mean we're getting ready to fight the Russians? Perhaps -- these are two of several shifts that suggest we are at least bluffing our readiness to do so. A bluff is rational, since the best outcome would be avoiding a Russian test of our treaty commitments entirely. Unfortunately, bluffs by this administration are likely to be called because they have been called in the past and have proven to be empty. Syria itself is the leading example, thanks to the President's so-called "red line" on chemical weapons use. Putin probably doubts that there is anything behind these moves besides bluster.
He's probably right to probably think that.
All of that leaves us with a quandary about Turkey. It's a major problem.
American democracy could survive as a liberal democracy despite the heavy repression of socialists and radical labour. However, in much of Europe, these forces were so strong [in the 1930s] that the state’s repressive apparatuses expanded indefinitely. When they were not sufficient, civilians were mobilized, and fascism was born.
What is clear, in light of the Turkish case, is that liberalisation and democratisation cannot go hand-in-hand for an extended period of time in structurally weaker societies. While the spoils of a semi-productive model could satisfy many social groups, the downturn of the world economy after 2008 gradually dynamited the cash basis of the AKP’s consent. In this new global scene, the party had to incorporate more and more Islamist cadres to retain a mobilised base, but these very cadres pushed the regime into a collision with Israel, the liberal intelligentsia, and various (local and foreign) capitalist interests.
Under increasing pressures from the emboldened cadres (and the opening granted by the Arab Spring), the party’s hardly contained imperial ambitions were bolstered further and eventually ran out of control. Becoming more Islamist first seemed to be a wonderful resolution to the problems created by slowing economic growth, but this political choice backfired.
What sense does it make to have a major alliance with a fascist, Islamist power? Is it worth defending should the Russians decide to smack it around, at the cost of war with Russia? Certainly not. If the NATO alliance is fractured by our failure, though, can it be saved for the more plausible cases? What if Russia moves to reconquer the Baltic states it ruled as the Soviet Union? Are they worth fighting for, at the cost of war with Russia? What about Norway?
Further, if liberalization and democratization of Turkey is the very reason they are turning Islamist, what policy choices do we have in front of us for improving that alliance should it survive? Endorsing the fascism? But the fascism is now part of the Islamist problem. Endorsing more democracy? That's how we got the fascist Islamists. Endorsing a liberal but anti-democratic coup? Overthrowing, in other words, a NATO ally?
The conclusion that the administration does not have any idea what to do with Turkey is warranted. The best choice might be to preemptively expel them from NATO for their genocidal policy against the Kurds. Then the Russians could do what they liked to Turkey without endangering NATO, which would be reserved for its more obvious and plausible function of defending liberal democracy in Europe. That would concede the Middle East to the Russian/Iranian alliance, however.
Power’s tweets are a legitimate response to a horror that is unfolding daily. What’s so odd about them is the Twitter account they come from belongs to the American Ambassador to the United Nations, who has been a member of Obama’s inner circle since before he hit the campaign trail in 2007. Hence, Ambassador Power’s doe-eyed outrage against the policies that she helped to shape in her time in the White House and whose current public face is literally Samantha Power leaves a casual observer a bit slack-jawed. Is the real Samantha Power being held prisoner in the U.N. basement with access to Twitter, while a Davos-friendly version of Arya Stark from Game of Thrones impersonates Power in policy meetings?
“Humanitarian aid to [civilians] must be allowed immediately. ‘Surrender or starve’ tactics are directly contrary to the law of war.”
Any western leader might easily use these words to scold the Turkish state, and its starvation of Kurdish towns to the south-east of the country. But it would be highly unlikely. In fact, John Kerry’s tweet was aimed at the Syrian regime, not the Turkish one.
Why do American leaders describe Assad’s strategy of ‘surrender or starve’ as a war crime, while they ignore Erdoğan’s?
Because, they decide after a lengthy analysis, nobody in the administration knows what to do about Turkey.
The third of Abbott's proposed amendments would restore the balance of legislative and executive power that existed before the New Deal, and specifically before Roosevelt's Supreme Court-packing scheme intimidated the Court into letting him do what they had repeatedly held to be unconstitutional.
III. Prohibit administrative agencies—and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them—from creating federal law.
At this point, this would make a massive change in the way the Federal government does business. Administrative rules now make up the bulk of Federal law, including the bulk of Federal felonies for which you can be sent to prison for years. This is another one of those issues that readers of the Hall have read about for years. Here's a longer piece from 2007 that talks about administrative regulation as well as the explosiveness of SCOTUS picks. (Here is a post from the same year on the problems of over-regulation for government itself, from the perspective of trying to be sympathetic and helpful to the State Department.)
Looking back over my work in assembling that quite incomplete list, I see that Abbott's solution is the very one I was endorsing eight years ago: not just this shift, but a constitutional convention to restrain the SCOTUS and the regulatory agencies. It would be a huge change. The argument against it has to do with the complexity of the economy and society: a Congress that had to pass all the laws would be unable to come up with nearly so many laws and regulations and standards. We would have a much less managed society and economy.
The compensation would come in the legitimacy of the rules we did pass. Now, most of Federal law is created without you or your representatives being involved in the process, or even knowing about it. That's not obviously legitimate in a representative democracy, or a democratic Republic. If "No taxation without Representation" is a founding principle, well, every regulation is a kind of tax: compliance takes time and, yes, money. Regulations of such complexity that you cannot be sure you are following them all -- and we are very far past that threshold -- destroy the legitimacy of the whole scheme. They also create a great danger of partisan tyranny through prosecutorial discretion: if we are all guilty of transgressing these hidden laws, the government can punish its enemies and reward its favorites simply by choosing where and on whom it enforces the law.
The amendment suggests a course that will not be easy, but I think the hardships are necessary to the legitimacy, and stability, of our government. I have thought so for a long time.
Grim's post below about the Merlin cave and it's monument to Merlin- the carving in the rock of the wizards face, brought to mind another monument I'd seen recently, alas not in person but perhaps someday- Sverd i Fjell. It's near Stavenger, Norway and memorializes the battle most symbolic of the unification of Norway, the Battle of Hafrsfjord, where King Harald Hårfagre (Fairhair) united most of Norway under one crown, effectively marking the origins of the modern Norway.
The largest sword represents that of the victorious King Harald, with the two smaller swords representing those of the two defeated petty kings. The swords are about ten meters tall, making them rather impressive in scale. Similarly to Merlin's Cave, it's a beautiful natural location of historic significance, where a memorial has been placed, and in my opinion, in an effective and powerful way, boldly marking the place and presenting some information and raising one's curiosity to learn more about that which is here memorialized, I would think. It also makes it quite clear what it took to give birth to a nation.
While I'm at it- here's another monument in natural stone like Merlin's Cave-
the Löwendenkmal, or Lion of Lucerne.
It's a memorial to Swiss Guards massacred in the French Revolution in 1792 at the Tuileries Palace.
This one I have had the honor of seeing in person. As I recall, having seen it in photographs prior to going there, I was rather surprised at the scale of it. Because of the pool of water in the foreground, photos never really give a true sense of it's scale. The sculpture is about 33 feet long and 18 feet high, not the 1:1 scale I had always assumed in seeing the photos.
Partly because of the sculpture itself, and partly because of the setting, it's quite moving. Mark Twain describes it better than I ever could (from "A Tramp Abroad"):
"The most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world."
"The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff — for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. His head is
bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw
rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in
the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond
at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is
mirrored, among the water-lilies.
Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered,
reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion — and
all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite
pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion
of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as
where he is."
I think these two monuments are quite powerful, each in their own way. Maybe if I'm lucky, some day I'll win a commission to design a memorial for some event or person of significance. I'd think it a great honor. I would only hope I could do so well as these.
...Perhaps the most famous opponent of judicial supremacy in our nation’s history was Abraham Lincoln, who as President directly defied the abominable and inhuman monstrosity that was Chief Justice Taney’s ruling in 1857’s Dred Scott v. Sandford.
"...the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
Far from the Supreme Court being the obvious answer to the problem of state slavery, for a time it was slavery's most prominent defender.
