Hop over to Joe.My.God for coverage of a rally in College Point, Queens, NY, where 300 people marched in support of Jack Price, who was brutally beaten in the area; he suffered a broken jaw, bruised ribs, a collapsed lung and multiple other injuries. These are photos he said to spread around. Background via Edge NY’s Michael K. Lavers:

Daniel Aleman, 26, and Daniel Rodriguez,Jr., 21, allegedly beat Jack Price, 49, outside an all-night deli on the corner of College Point Avenue and 18th Avenue around 3 a.m. on Oct. 9. Price’s sister-in-law, Joanne Guarneri, marched arm-and-arm with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Congressman Anthony Weiner, City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr., Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and other politicians, activists and local residents down College Point Avenue. She also spoke at a rally at a local park.

“They [Aleman and Rodriguez] nearly beat my brother-in-law to death for $10 and a pack of cigarettes,” Guarneri said. “We have to stop violence in College Point. We have to take back our streets.”

Amanda Guarneri echoed her mother’s anger before she and other members of her family marched. They [Aleman and Rodriguez] are a disgrace,” the 15-year-old told EDGE. “They should be locked up forever. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”

What’s disgusting is that supporters for Aleman and Rodriguez showed up at this rally. Given that this attack against Price is only one of a series of gay bashings that have been reported in Queens, people should remember that Blue states where laws on bias crimes may be strong doesn’t mean the hate goes away. Joe:

After a 15-minute march down College Point Boulevard to the sullen or unknowing stares of locals, we were shocked to find a group of 20 or so counter-protesters, PRO gay bashers, already in a pen perilously close to the park where the rally was to take place. Leading the pro-bashers was Mr. Leviticus Tattoo Douchbag himself. He and his co-thugs wore stickers in support of the jailed cowards as they shouted “Free Daniel Rodriquez!” and “No hate crime!” Among their signs was “Daniel doesn’t hate gays!” Riiiight. Fortunately, there was a huge NYPD presence on hand and the two groups were not permitted to get closer than shouting distance.

 

Surf over to Joe’s for more, including reactions from locals.

OMFG. When I read the AP version of the story of the justice of the peace Keith Bardwell in Hammond, Louisiana’s Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward—the man who refused to marry an interracial couple out of “concern for the children,” I thought that was bad enough.

But the CNN, USA TODAY and AP reports oddly left out the real money quote Bardwell offered up. You may have read this:

“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell told the newspaper. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”

Well look at what The Guardian and several others published—also from the AP—that you might not have seen:

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell said. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

WTF? So the intimacy of letting a black *ss sit on your pot is proof positive that you’re not racist Mr. Bardwell? Wow. He must have just gotten rid of the outhouse he had reserved for the black bride and groom.

I happened to post a link to an article in the News & Observer today, “N.C. to impose ‘fat tax’”, on my Facebook page and I couldn’t believe how many comments were generated there, opening up a somewhat heated dialogue revolving on the “blame the fattie” meme. So I decided to post it as an entry here for discussion. First, the news article:

North Carolina is poised to become only the second state to impose a fat fee on its state employees by placing them in a more expensive health insurance plan if they’re obese.

Smokers will feel the drag of higher costs, too, as North Carolina state employees who use tobacco are slated to pay more for health insurance next year.

State workers who don’t cut out the Marlboros and Big Macs will end up paying more for health care. Tobacco users get placed in a more expensive insurance plan starting in July and, for those who qualify as obese, in July 2011.

...The policies have generated a backlash among at least a portion of state workers. Some workers are anxious about the idea of tests for smoking.The tests involve examining a saliva sample for cotinine, a derivative of nicotine found in the system of tobacco users. Health plan officials recognize those concerns and are getting ready to take bids from companies that will perform the tests. The state plan has not yet developed a procedure to monitor members for the obesity standard due to take effect in 2011.

That last line says it all. There are serious problems with this policy that you don’t need a medical degree to see are going to crop up.

Is all obesity the same? No, but it’s treated in this policy as if it’s all about “stop shoving Big Macs in your mouth.” Obesity is a complex problem; if it were that easy to lose weight and keep it off, everyone would be thin, and we’d already have a pill that is safe, effective and can be taken long term. Speaking of pills, many medications to treat other illnesses (diabetes, depression) are the documented cause of substantial, sudden weight gain that is almost impossible to shed.

For fibromyalgia, for example, I refused to take Lyrica because it was associated with too many cases of weight gain, as in 30-60 lbs(!). On message boards I surfed, there were people so fraught with pain, and who never had a weight problem, suddenly finding themselves obese, but with reduced pain. Will NC employees in similar situations be told to stop those medications? I doubt it, but how does that solve the policy problem? If the state really cares about the health of these people (instead of naked costs), then they would have thought this through.

The no-win situation. The state says in order to stay in the 80/20 plan (the insurance pays 80%, the employee 20%), your BMI must be under 40. So if you kick your butt in the gym, do Nutrisystem or whatever plan of the month is, and gut bust down to 39 BMI you should be good to go, right? Nope. The state moves the goalposts the next year, because they lower the BMI qualification to 35. Sweet.

The onus is solely on the employee. The logical question is, will insurance then cover bariatric surgery for those who want to make the BMI goal? Something tells me I doubt it. Will it cover weight loss programs? What if the employee has two jobs and kids and can’t afford any gym membership, let alone the time to go? Is that person then punished with a higher premium?

What about yo-yo effect. It’s well-known that calorie-restricted diets simply don’t work. The weight does come off, but the vast majority of individuals put the pounds back on over time, and some end up even heavier than they were prior to dieting. The cycle of yo-yo dieting and the strain it places on the heart is well-known as well. Did the state take this into consideration? How about when you yo-yo and go over 40 BMI, drop to 35 and go back up to 40—do they keep switching you back and forth between plans?

As I said, on my Facebook page, the discussion escalated quite quickly. See some of it below the fold.

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This may seem like a little inside baseball, but bear with me, because it will directly affect some of your favorite blogs.

Over at my blog, my contributors and I have inboxes overflowing with emails asking us to cover this story or that event—from advocacy organizations, tips from readers, PR firms, and the news media. It’s pretty clear that the equality rights movement is highly dependent on blogs and citizen journalism to analyze, report and advocate in the unique way that we do.

Many of these LGBT-based blogs are done as a labor of love because there’s certainly not enough money out there to quit our day jobs. Bloggers like myself, who subsidize the site with an unrelated day job are about to get a big F-You from Chuck Schumer if the roof isn’t raised. Ad revenue is irrelevant here, btw; you have to be employed by an entity to be covered.

A recent amendment to the federal shield bill being considered in the Senate will exclude non-”salaried” journalists and bloggers from the proposed law’s protections.

The law, called the Free Flow of Information Act, is intended to prevent journalists from being forced to divulge confidential sources, except in cases such as witnessing crimes or acts of terrorism.

Well, read the fine print to see how citizen journalists are left legally hanging out to dry. Schumer’s amendment draws a distinct line between bloggers and “real journalists” that:

limits the definition of a journalist to one who “obtains the information sought while working as a salaried employee of, or independent contractor for, an entity–

a. that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means; and

b. that—
1. publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;
2. operates a radio or television broadcast station, network, cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier;
3. operates a programming service; or
4. operates a news agency or wire service.”

So there’s no doubt that independent bloggers are the target here. At once we’re considered irrelevant and so dangerous they have to legislatively set up a slippery slope that can land us in the clink or left penniless just for trying to participate in citizen journalism. Wow.  The real issue here, however, is less the shield law than placing a definition of what is a journalist on the books. That will alllow pols, news outlets, state governments, etc. to deny citizen journalists press access because they are not “journalists” as defined by federal law. It’s a huge slippery slope and a loss for independent reporting by bloggers if this definition clears.

Marcy Wheeler of Firedoglake confirms that we’re screwed:

To to be a journalist in Chuck Schumer’s eyes, you have to both have a boss (at this point, you generous readers and Jane would count as my boss, but Jane doesn’t have a boss, for example) and that boss’ company must disseminate news on some other medium, in addition to the Toobz. Even free-lance writers or people like IF Stone (in the period when he ran his own newsletter) would be excluded from this definition of journalist.

Now, I’m on the record as a skeptic that this new law is going to work out the way the media thinks. I fear that the national security exemption will mean the law will protect people like Judy Miller mobilizing smears or the Rent-a-Generals spreading propaganda, but not protect Dana Priest or James Risen and their sources.

Still, this move pisses me off because it’s a transparent bid to grant a powerful industry special privileges.

This is about ensuring that there is a wall between real journalists and the perceived unwashed masses of ignorant, unqualified bloggers who are mucking up the system. This is a serious issue, because I believe that reliable citizen journalists do have the respect of traditional media in some circles, but this legislative bid to create a firm wall is declaring war on us.

Nieman Journalism Lab’s Zachary M. Seward, who previously noted the House’s different definition of journalist, also expressed concern. “The shield law obviously needs a definition that limits its scope, but the professional definition, which now seems inevitable, would exclude student journalists as well as bloggers with a day job,” he wrote.

More below the fold.

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And why does the school board reserve the right to do this—no parental consent required?

Family members said this week that Atlantic high school officials forced five teenage girls to remove their clothes during an investigation into a theft.

The girls' families and their lawyers said the incident at Atlantic High School amounts to a strip-search, which is illegal in Iowa schools.

But school officials said the search was "allowable" under board rules.

The search took place during a gym class after a classmate charged that $100 was stolen from her purse. And it wasn't just stripped down to underwear—one girl was stripped naked. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that no school official has free rein to do intimate searches of students. Making a girl pull the waistband of her underwear away from her body constituted a strip-search, the court ruled. And after the indignities heaped on these girls—the money was not found.

What do you think occurred as a result of this egregious behavior on the part of school officials?

Atlantic Interim Superintendent Dan Crozier has confirmed that an Atlantic administrator had been placed on administrative leave, but did not name the individual. Unconfirmed reports have identified Activities Director Paul Croghan as the individual placed on paid administrative leave, pending further investigation into the incident.

And look at this:

Crozier said the faculty denied the searches were strip-searches, but he added that there are different interpretations of what the term means. "According to the people that we've talked to the first time, and I've talked to them maybe once or twice, they've said it would not fall into that category," he said. "I'm real careful about saying that because it could be interpreted differently."

OK, here are additional details. You decide:

Each girl stripped in varying degrees, families and the lawyers said.

Hudson's client, who is 15, "was asked to remove all of her clothing including her undergarments," he said.

One mother said the girl refused to take off her underwear in front of everyone, but went around a corner and did so.

Some of the girls didn't take off their underwear because it was more revealing than the other girls', making it more obvious that nothing was hidden underneath, said Noethe, one of the lawyers.

Hudson said, "Someone asked if they could just lift up their bra and they were told that wasn't good enough."

One of Noethe's clients was searched twice, he said.

"She was told to take her clothes off and put them back on, then told to do it again because we need you to take your bra off," Noethe said.

Is there some other meaning for "strip-search" that I'm unaware of?

Back in 2007, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality was planning to hold one of its pitiful fundraising banquets at the Holiday Inn Select in LaBarbera’s town of Naperville. He told staff there that there that he expected the homophobia-laden event would draw protestors. Six weeks before the event, the hotel canceled on him, citing “potential negative publicity.”

So now The Peter is dropping a federal discrimination lawsuit on Holiday Inn—based on bias against AFATH’s religious beliefs against homosexuality. OK. Look at how weak this is:

LaBarbera did not have a written contract, and no money was exchanged, but he said organizers verbally worked out details of the 100-person event, including the menu, during two meetings.

...“It’s always easy to come up with excuses,” said LaBarbera, AFTAH’s executive director, “but the real truth is they didn’t like our message. If you allow this sort of hecklers’ veto, you’re sanctioning discrimination.”

OMG, what flaming crap that is—“heckler’s veto.” How many times has the right wing protested LGBT and progressive events? If bible beating attempts at a “heckler’s veto” fail to garner the desired results (cancellation, bad publicity), perhaps it’s because the message is so ridiculous and offensive that no one gives a flip. When you sue a hotel for religious discrimination that you didn’t even sign a contract with, that smacks of either stupidity or raw headline hunting, not a noble effort to protect religious liberty.

And when The Peter opened his trap and announced there was a potential for demonstrations outside the venue, he basically handed Holiday Inn an out—they aren’t obligated to sign a contract with any organization if the hotelier doesn’t want bad publicity, potential for violence or to need extra security (after all, who knows what kind of overblown expectations The Peter relayed).

More below the fold, including reaction to the article.

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I may be a lowly law student, but I’m pretty sure that David Rivkin and Lee Casey are flat-out wrong when they say that a federal mandate for health insurance would be unconstitutional. 

I think that it’s terrible policy, personally, and that a Medicare-for-all single payer system would be a drastically better system, but their reading of the Commerce Clause in light of our currently existing system of mandatory old-age health insurance, coupled with the existence of the Department of Health & Human Services and the CDC, and the fact that the federal government has already done years of research into the impact of the uninsured on interstate commerce seems to be placing a healthcare mandate in some sort of parallel universe where the government isn’t already accomplishing many of the same goals in different ways - and doing so in ways that haven’t been declared unconstitutional. 

Also, if you accept that a direct insurance mandate is unconstitutional, there’s no reason that the federal government couldn’t pull a South Dakota v. Dole and simply use federal Medicare/Medicaid purse strings to force each state to institute a health insurance mandate.  I’d be very interested to see, though, if Rivkin and Casey would argue that Medicare is unconstitutional, which would cause aged, infirm revolution in the streets.  It’s been a frequent contention of Medicare opponents since the inception of the program that there’s no constitutional basis for it, but it does create an interesting question: if a mandate passed, and the Supreme Court found that health insurance mandates were unconstitutional, would the abolition of Medicare lead to a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to health care?  In the era of baby boomer retirement, I think such an amendment would almost assuredly succeed, which would pretty much decimate any opposition to universal health care in America.

After successfully convincing the stupid and the opportunistic that Barack Obama had already picked out a tiny mahogany casket for Trig, former person with a respected position in society Sarah Palin is back to sell tort reform. 

Using Texas as a case study, Palin makes the rather persuasive argument that tort reform could save us billions and billions of dollars.  However, she doesn’t cite any evidence that Texas’ tort reform has actually saved any actual patient any actual money.  This is largely because it hasn’t.  Tort reform approaches one of the lowest cost and highest reward areas of medical spending and cripples it, almost entirely to the benefit of the provider.  Want proof?  Let’s look at one of Palin’s links from the ABA Journal.

In fact, Cunningham says, many of the nursing homes he has been dealing with over the years have either stopped carrying insurance or have switched to $250,000 so called wasting policies. Under those policies, defense costs are subtracted from the coverage amount, leaving less for payouts to plaintiffs.

[...]

But not all defense lawyers were mum.

“Some of us on the defense side were telling legislators that they were going way overboard on some aspects, and the problems today bear it out,” says Roby, the rare defense lawyer willing to speak out on the issue.

In an interview, Roby outlined criticisms that could come straight from a talking points memo from the Texas Trial Lawyers Association:

• There are a few plaintiff friendly jurisdictions in lesser populated areas, but big city courts had few suits that did not involve medical error and “a legitimate bone to pick.”

• Stay-at-home mothers, children and the elderly often don’t have enough income or proof of future income to qualify for significant economic damages. Thus the cap on noneconomic damages makes their cases too costly for plaintiffs lawyers to pursue.

• The dramatic decrease in litigation takes away incentive for risk managers and others to ensure carefulness in medical care.

When you enact a system of “tort reform” that puts the people making medical mistakes in the position of not even needing to insure themselves because it would cost too much to hold them responsible, you’re increasing the cost of health care for patients.  When you create a legal system that says the only relevant variable in a practitioner’s liability is the income of the person they’re operating on, you create an effective caste system in medicine.  The only people worthy of careful medical care are the ones who are rich enough (or potentially rich enough) for it to hurt the provider. 

Oh, and the most expensive state in the union for nursing home care is Alaska, which has enacted every major version of tort reform.  Also.

Anyone remember way back in the dusky mists of last month when National Review writer Ed Whelan outed an anonymous blogger because said blogger criticized him?  Well, now, an anonymous blogger at the National Review who is also an LA cop has advocated shooting people who assert their Fourth Amendment rights.

Ed Whelan eventually apologized for the outing, but it strikes me that someone in a position to enact an agenda of state-sanctioned execution for invoking the Constitution should maybe have their cloak of anonymity debated a bit more strenuously than a guy who said mean things on the Internet?  Perhaps, Rich Lowry?

We’re moving into the phase of the coverage of the Henry Louis Gates incident where people reprimand themselves for caring so much, but I’d like to point out that the reason the incident has captured the public attention is that it touches on so many extremely important issues of daily life in the United States that don’t get sufficient coverage, precisely because few things get the immediacy of news coverage like this arrest of Gates has.  With that in mind, I’d like to point everyone to this long, but involving post from Digby on one of the must frustrating aspects of the discussion about the incident—-the way a lot of people reflexively jump to “Gates was stupid to talk back”, instead of talking about the much more important issue, which is that the cop was not just stupid but malevolent in not dropping the case the second that he realized that Gates was in his own home, no matter what kind of hot-headed things Gates may have said  Now, let’s be clear about this: I think the likely truth is that the cop wildly exaggerated and even made up some parts of the incident when he wrote the report, knowing that he’d just tossed a Harvard professor in jail for not doing anything illegal. When I read bloggers reflexively assume that the police report is reliable in any way, I just get more upset because it’s just more evidence that a whole lot of people out there are more naive about power and authority than you’d think.  Is it really possible that so many of my fellow Americans have never been on the receiving end of unfair treatment from a bunch of asshole cops?  Same story with the people who chastise Obama for calling the cop’s move “stupid”.  Can you hear yourselves saying that?  Since when is it a given in America that we’re so slobberingly worshipful of police authority that it’s forbidden to call obviously stupid cops stupid?  Obama didn’t even say the cop was stupid.  He said the actions were stupid, which strikes me as an objective assertion of truth on par with saying that the sky is blue. 

But by and large, I’ve seen more concern out there with whether or not Gates was stupid for not staring at his shoes and apologizing for breathing the second a cop started speaking to him.  Since I’ve been blogging for a long time, on and off, about the politics of rape, I know this behavior when I see it—-it’s victim-blaming.  And it’s a particularly stubborn problem, because the people who do it really often do mean well when they say things like, “Well, she shouldn’t have been out drinking,” or “She shouldn’t have worn that skirt” after someone was raped.  They sincerely think they’re saying something that might help other women not get raped, and oblivious to the fact that they’re insulting women’s intelligence, pouring salt into wounds, and worst of all, reinforcing the notion that stopping gendered violence is strictly the responsibility of the women who are its targets.  Again, I realize they don’t see it this way.  They imagine they’re just being realistic, not realizing that they’re reinforcing the notion that rape is simply a force of nature and not something that individual men choose to do, and that the main people responsible for the choice to rape are the ones who make it.  (With some responsibility going towards other people who let it happen without holding rapists accountable.)

Victim blamers are often also telling a story about how they personally will never be raped, or in this case, arrested unfairly for doing something totally legal.  To blame Gates for being stupid is to say, “I would never get arrested for breaking into my house, because I have the sort of self-preservation instincts that this man is clearly missing.”  People enjoy the illusion of having more mastery of the world than they do, because it makes them feel safe, but it also contributes to an atmosphere where victim-blaming can flourish, particularly in situations that are loaded with racial or gender politics.

In case it’s hard to see why it’s problematic to focus on Gates’ choices—-which again, I strongly suspect were exaggerated and even lied about by the cop—-Digby has a really great retort.

Now, on a practical, day to day level, it’s hard to argue that being argumentative with a cop is a dangerous thing. They have guns. They can arrest you and can cost you your freedom if they want to do it badly enough. They can often get away with doing violence on you and suffer no consequences. You are taking a risk if you provoke someone with that kind of power, no doubt about it.

Indeed, it is very little different than exercising your right of free speech to tell a gang of armed thugs to go fuck themselves. It’s legal, but it’s not very smart. But that’s the problem isn’t it? We shouldn’t have to make the same calculations about how to behave with police as we would with armed criminals.

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Shall we bring out the tiny violin? (Philly.com):

Racial-discrimination lawsuits against a private Montgomery County swimming club over its revoked contract with a Philadelphia day camp could cost enough to threaten the Valley Club's existence.

Attorneys, club members, and tax records indicated that a pair of federal-court lawsuits - one filed, one promised - could cost the club more money than it has and possibly leave board members liable for civil-rights verdicts.

"The only asset we have is the land, which housing developers have been trying to buy for years," said Bonnie Bacich, a Valley Club member for 30 years.

"The outrage of having to go through this, with an African American president in 2009 - we don't take this kind of stuff lightly in America anymore," said Montgomery County civil-rights lawyer Brian Wiley, who is not involved in the case lawsuit.

Wiley said fighting the issue in court could prove a fiscal challenge to the tax-exempt, nonprofit club, which listed $210,193 in assets in its most recent federal filing. "That club's got to settle that case," he said.

The best solution for this matter is for the club to go belly up and have some rich black person —how about Bill Cosby, who hails from Philly— buy up the land and open up a club where anyone can take a dip in the purity pool.

A commenter at my pad said:

I think the best solution is for the plaintiffs to settle and keep the club in operation. And part of the settlement is an iron-clad diversity policy at The Valley Club, starting with free, permanent memberships for everyone in Creative Steps. I’d much rather have the membership of The Valley Club have no choice but to mingle with people of color than have them stay in their gated, racist fantasyland blaming those same people for not having any place to swim anymore.  Creative Steps shouldn’t want to destroy a great place for them to swim, they should want to make sure it’s open to them and everybody else. Why use the upper hand to destroy the enemy when you can use it to actually make things better for everyone, including future generations on both sides?

My response:

The members of the Valley Club do have a choice; to not return to the club under new rules, which many of the racist members would choose to do. They can’t be forced to swim with minority children. No, this is one of those instances where punishment does have to be meted out, and if they can find some way to settle, then they will. Of course I’m sure any terms of settlement will be a public admission that race was indeed the factor that made management eject the children from that pool—anything less would not be justice, because that cannot and should not be papered over, even if they only have to shell out 10 cents to Creative Steps and the families of those kids.

Just sickening. Back in September 2008, the feds raided the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in Fouke, located south of Texarkana, after an investigation into minor children being abused at the property.

The 74-year-old Alamo, who believes that age of consent is puberty, homosexuality is caused by demon possession and “the Vatican, the one-world government and church are spiritually powered by that old serpent called the Devil,” is now on trial facing a 10-count indictment alleging he took underaged girls across state lines for sex.

A 9-year-old girl was considered too young to answer the office phone at evangelist Tony Alamo’s compound, but old enough for frequent sex with the ministry leader, she alleged at his federal trial on child-sex charges.

The woman, now 18, testified that she dodged security cameras and roving guards to escape the compound in 2006. Her testimony left jurors red-eyed and shaking their heads Thursday….Defense lawyers have largely left the sex and underage marriage claims unchallenged, though they have questioned witnesses’ memories and whether they had been coached by authorities.

The teenage witness said Alamo “married” her when she was 8, and groped her after their wedding…She said at one point she asked the minister why he had selected her. “He said, `Because you were cute,’” she said on the witness stand. “It wasn’t God’s will that he married me. It’s just because he thought I was cute.

This man shouldn’t see the light of day again. The Southern Poverty Law Center did an extensive investigation into Alamo’s “ministry.”

As detailed in the Fall 2007 issue of the Report, Alamo in recent years has argued that girls should marry once they start menstruating, even if they are as young as 10. In a 2006 radio broadcast, he said: “God impregnated Mary when she was about 11 years old. So the government idiots, the people that don’t know the Bible, what you’re going to have to do is get a hold of God now, you’re going to have to get up there and cuff him and send him to prison for statutory rape.”

In early 2007, Alamo cited the alleged promiscuity of 1st-graders as grounds for marrying them before the age of legal consent. “I’ve found out from people’s parents that their daughter started having sex when she was 6 years old and had sex every day of her life,” he said in another broadcast. “So right there, by the time she’s 15 years old, she’s had sex thousands of times. I mean, this is just reality.”

Related:
* Arkansas: Child porn, abuse bust at Tony Alamo Christian

Via Atrios, Craig Crawford shoots and scores, when discussing the reprehensible behavior of Senate Republicans towards Sonia Sotomayor, particularly Lindsay Graham’s.

They are coming across as a bunch of snarky and bitter old white men who cannot bear the thought of their kind losing power.

Well, exactly.  It’s hard to hide and may actually win major awards in the category of Incredibly Fucking Obvious.  It’s really hard to spin the paranoia and bitterness any other way.  But as usual with this blog, the question is a simple, “Why?”

When I see this seething fear and anger on the part of the bitter old white men that make up the vast majority of the Republican party, I’m honestly confused.  Who the fuck actually thinks that Barack Obama or Sonia Sotomayor’s ascent means that there won’t be plenty of room for old white men at the hands of power, too much room really?  More to the point, what do these old white men get out of protecting the privilege of old white men so fiercely?  Senator Graham and Senator Sessions clearly think that Sotomayor is sitting in a chair they believe belongs to a white man, but what I fail to understand is why they give a fuck.  (Or fail to understand for rhetorical purposes; believe me, I have my theories.)  That Sotomayor instead of old white dude Democrat is taking this spot on the bench doesn’t change the worlds of Sessions or Graham.  Sotomayor isn’t going for their particular jobs.  She is no threat whatsoever.  There’s no personal threat to their individual privilege that comes from treating Sotomayor with respect.

Their strident panic attack about the possibility that non-white people or women will gain some seats of power is a much different thing than the sort of group advocacy of anti-racist or feminist activists, for a very simple reason.  We applaud the rise of people that aren’t straight white men to power because actual obstacles are being diminished every time this happens.  Because there are external obstacles between smart, ambitious women and minorities and the reins of power.  Call it the glass ceiling or discrimination or any of these words, but it’s there.  But no matter how many Sotomayors or Obamas rise to power, no one is going to start putting up obstacles between straight white men and power.  Straight white men will never have to face having their gender or race be used to stereotype them and squeeze them out unfairly.  Giving other people the same opportunities to prove themselves that straight white men enjoy doesn’t diminish the benefit of the doubt that straight white men get automatically.  Sotomayor’s confirmation doesn’t mean that any straight white man looking to get a seat on the Supreme Court is suddenly going to be held accountable for stereotypes of his race and gender.  No one’s going to accuse him of being too masculine, or suggest that uptight WASPness means his temperament is questionable.

Luckily, last night I mentioned to Marc all the tweeps yesterday praising Sotomayor’s calmness in the face of the bullshit, and he laughed and pointed out that she can run laps around these dumb fuck red state white dude Senators.  And of course he’s right.  First of all, being a judge and being a Senator, particularly from a Bible-thumping district, have much different intelligence and temperament requirements.  Being a judge requires that you have the intelligence and temperament to handle the jargon-laden, complex, argumentative courtroom.  This goes quadruple for anyone facing as many obstacles as Sotomayor has over her lifetime.  But being a Senator from South Carolina or Alabama is simple for any hot-tempered, slow-witted dumbfuck, if he can thump the Bible hard enough and allow himself to be schmoozed by lobbyists with the greatest of ease.  In fact, intelligence and definitely thoughtfulness are drawbacks, because these qualities might contain some of your more outrageously hateful actions.

Oh yeah, and if he’s a straight white male.  That’s mandatory for the position of Senator in many states, still.  But if you think about that, it becomes clear what privilege that the bitter old white men are defending: the privilege of dumbfucks to trade in on being straight white males to be powerful and rich without ever having to learn how to think or develop reasonable social skills outside of schmoozing.  No wonder empathy turned into such a dirty word!  Empathy is some complicated stuff.  It requires imagination, feeling, understanding that other people are real, and intelligence—-all qualities that seem like onerous burdens for white men to have to develop if they want to stay competitive, at least in the eyes of the dumbfucks that hold Senate seats for some of your lousier red states. 

The rise of individuals like Obama and Sotomayor aren’t a threat to straight white men of intelligence and thoughtfulness who are qualified for the jobs they seek.  But yeah, I can say that power-sharing means that barking morons like Sessions and Graham need to start sweating.  Being good enough to do your damn job is indeed an enormous obstacle for them in keeping their jobs, one that they hope to stave off by throwing loud, dramatic temper tantrums any time qualified people that fall out of the narrow straight white dude band vie for powerful jobs.

Yet again, a murderous psychopath is freed because of gay panic.

Joseph Biedermann fatally stabbed his Hoffman Estates neighbor 61 times last year. On Friday, a Cook County jury acquitted him of first-degree murder, buying his claim that he was defending himself against an unwanted sexual advance, his mother confirmed Saturday.

There is no other conclusion you can come to after reading the story the jury bought when Joseph Biedermann testified:

Biedermann said [victim Terrance Michael] Hauser invited him to his apartment for drinks after the bartender refused to serve Biedermann. Biedermann, who admitted he is an alcoholic, claims he passed out on Hauser’s couch, only to be awakened later by Hauser threatening him and holding a 4-foot-long sword to his neck.

Biedermann testified Hauser threatened to kill Biedermann if he screamed, which Biedermann said he initially took as a joke. But according to Biedermann, Hauser then replied, “You understand me?” “At that point I knew he was serious,” Biedermann said. “I was in big trouble.”

Biedermann said Hauser threatened to sexually assault him, then held him around the neck and tried to stab him in the stomach with another weapon, an 16-inch dagger. Biedermann testified he escaped Hauser’s grasp, gained control of the weapon and stabbed Hauser as many times as he could. There were no witnesses.

Um, he stabbed him 61 times. Do you think that was a bit of overkill? And this is the second time this year a defendant floated this defense. Back in March, Timothy Bailey-Woodson claimed 53-year-old David G. Coungeris made a move on him (they were sleeping in the same bed):

Timothy Bailey-Woodson, 23, is accused of beating to death 53-year-old David G. Coungeris with some type of auto part during an altercation at High Tech Auto & Truck Repair at 250 S. Gary Ave. in Bloomingdale, according to DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph Birkett.

...Bailey-Woodson told investigators that he and Coungeris were sleeping in a bed at the shop early Thursday morning when Coungeris “made sexual advances” toward him, Assistant DuPage County State’s Attorney Anne Therieau said. Bailey-Woodson told investigators he then left the bed, got dressed, put on gloves, picked up a “mechanical implement” and beat Coungeris in the head some 25 times.

“He told detectives he beat the victim until his arm was tired,” Therieau reported to Ostling. “He also told them he’d do it again if the opportunity presented itself.”

Oh, and the trauma of it all then caused Bailey-Woodson to leave the scene, stealing money from the cash register and tried to take a car that was parked in the shop.

When will this horror end?

Related:
* Gay panic: the defense that will not die

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and Nancy Goldstein has a good piece up explaining how far gays and lesbians have come since then, and how far they have to go. She cites bans on gay marriage, higher poverty rates, lack of health care, and DADT as examples.  Sadly, 40 years after the Stonewall raid that led to riots from gays who were completely fed up with the way the cops targeted gay clubs for harassment, gays and lesbians still have to face police raids of bars based on flimsy excuses that result in police brutality.

Is it a coincidence that the Ft. Worth police chose the anniversary of the Stonewall riots to raid a gay bar called the Rainbow Lounge and arrest 7 people (hospitalizing one, who may have bleeding on the brain, according to the Dallas Voice) for public intoxication?  Did you even know it’s a crime to be drunk in a bar?  Probably not, because while it’s technically a crime to be intoxicated in public, it’s a minor one and usually you have to be a danger to yourself or other people. It’s in place mainly to arrest drunks getting into fights or people that are drunk and about to get behind the wheel.  Or, it seems, if the cops want to honor the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots to intimidate gays and lesbians who thought that winning Lawrence v. Texas was the final step in making it legal to be gay in Texas.  The blog at the Dallas Voice is bearing witness to what happened at the Rainbow Lounge Saturday night, and helping organize protests.

Some eyewitness accounts:

When it first started she went up to a cop and said thank you for coming out to keep us safe.  This is a rough neighborhood.  He said that’s not why we are here.  She asked why they were there and he said a disgruntled employee had said that the bar was overserving people.  She told him she had been drinking but that she had a designated driver.  He told her that she was fine.  She said they only arrested men and seemed to be targeting effeminate men.

This “disgruntled employee” thing keeps coming up, but the Rainbow Lounge has been open for a week, which doesn’t seem like enough time to develop disgruntled employees, even in the food and alcohol industry.

My name is Kayla Lane. I am a Ph.D. student at UC-Santa Cruz, staying with my sister, Kelly Lane, for the summer. We and a few of our friends went to the new Rainbow Lounge last night to dance and have some fun. I was in the VIP section when police officers started coming up there. The first arrest (that we saw) was right in front of me in that section.

They asked the guy if he had been drinking, and he said some, and they snidely replied, “Well, we’ll see how much!” and plastic handcuffed him as they read him his rights The guy was doing NOTHING wrong. It was utterly repugnant.

Once I saw this happen, I decided to try and speak with one of the police officers themselves, to go straight to the source and get their side. My sister Kelly and I simply started asking what they were doing here, stating how suspicious it seemed on this date and in this specific club, etc. This was a “State Policeman,” whose name I forgot, who tried to explain their actions by referring to “anonymous tips” and “disgruntled ex-bartenders.” We pointed out the place was open a week, so the disgruntled ex-bartender source seemed a bit unlikely! He wouldn’t really answer my questions. although he did try to grab my hand and flirt with me (which was completely uninvited).

More here.

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