Democratic Conventions in Philly, 1948 and 2016: some things change, too many stay the same

A h/t to TPT's Almanac for the reminder of this very famous HHH speech.

As we have seen, at their respective conventions, Republicans have not changed, and the conservatives among them - the only members they tolerate after repeated purges - are still opponents of civil rights and pro-discrimination.  Democrats are still the inclusive progressives, making speeches that hold up well across history.

It will be an embarrassment to conservatives as historians look back at this period that they were so regressive and so divisive, embracing all matters of discrimination and exclusion.  President Obama echoed Hubert Humphrey's speech in Philadelphia in 1948 when he spoke about the arc of history.  It is a particular shame that we must continue to rely on our judicial branch to overturn voter suppression laws, like those which were just overturned recently in Wisconsin, Texas, Kansas and North Carolina.  Conservatives are still trying to keep minorities from voting -- and shame on them for it.

Per the accompanying Youtube notes, this speech ranked 66 in the top 100 speeches of the 20th century.

   

Additional bits of history -- this speech, like the ones this past week, were made in Philadelphia, 68 years ago. At that convention, instead of Bernie supporters, Conservative democrats walked out in protest to the addition of a civil rights plank that would correct the wrongs of Jim Crow. This makes it all the more poignant that this convention was addressed by a sitting black president. Moderates did not want to upset the conservative 'Dixie-crats', but liberal democrats pushed the civil rights position. Wikipedia provides the details:

In response, all 22 members of the Mississippi delegation, led by Governor Fielding L. Wright and former Governor Hugh L. White, walked out of the assembly. Thirteen members of the Alabama delegation followed, led by Leven H. Ellis. The bolted delegates and other Southerners then formed the States' Rights Democratic Party ("Dixiecrats"), which nominated Strom Thurmond for President and Wright for Vice President. ...In the absence of three dozen Southern delegates who walked out of the convention with Thurmond, 947 Democrats voted to nominate Truman as their candidate (against 263 for Senator Richard Russell, Jr. of Georgia).

We have seen a variety of sources, from the conservative Wall Street Journal to Think Progress acknowledge that conservatives opposed civil rights, regardless of party, while the progressive wing of the Democratic party spearheaded the legislation in cooperation with liberal Republicans like the gravel-voiced Everett Dirksen of Illinois.  From Think Progress:

...it simply highlights the fact that politics in 1964 were not ideologically aligned. The main block of support for white supremacy was a group of Southern Democrats, most of whom were very conservative on all issues, and all of whom were very conservative on the issue of race. They were joined in their support for white supremacy by a smaller block of non-southern conservative Republicans. Conservative movement organs like The National Review supported white supremacy, as did Barry Goldwater who was the leading conservative politician of the time. It’s a very interesting historical fact about the United States of America that for most of the twentieth century conservative southerners generally belonged to the Democratic Party. But it’s also true that if you think of American politics in terms of the history of ideological struggle, civil rights is clearly an issue on which the liberals were right and over time conservatives came around to that view.

After the Cleveland and Philadelphia conventions this month, we can see that at least the GOP is undergoing a similar fracturing process between extreme conservatives, and moderates who are consistently repudiating the excesses of the majority right represented at the convention.

Now that we have seen the increasingly radical and more extreme right have attempted to hijack credit for civil rights, it is worth noting where the votes came from, and whom, to pass the subsequent legislation that was drafted by Hubert Humphrey as a continuation of his efforts in 1948.(wikipedia again):

Note: "Southern", as used in this section, refers to members of Congress from the eleven states that made up the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. "Northern" refers to members from the other 39 states, regardless of the geographic location of those states.
The original House version:

• Southern Democrats: 7–87   (7–93%)
• Southern Republicans: 0–10   (0–100%)
• Northern Democrats: 145–9   (94–6%)
• Northern Republicans: 138–24   (85–15%)

The Senate version:

• Southern Democrats: 1–20   (5–95%) (only Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
• Southern Republicans: 0–1   (0–100%) (John Tower of Texas)
• Northern Democrats: 45–1   (98–2%) (only Robert Byrd of West Virginia voted against)
• Northern Republicans: 27–5   (84–16%)

If the same vote were held in Cleveland, or in the Republican majority House and Senate, I would expect a vote that mirrored the conservative Southern Democrats and Republicans of 1968.

It is also worth noting that the right is STILL making many of the same arguments that went through the courts following enactment of the legislation. For example, Senator Rand Paul has promoted the position that businesses should have the right to discriminate for ANY reason, as a right of private property ownership. Humphrey was in the Senate representing Minnesota in cooperation with President Lyndon Johnson at the time this legislation, a direct extension and continuation of the policies in the 1948 speech,  Again, Wikipedia has an excellent summation:

There were white business owners who claimed that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to ban segregation in public accommodations. For example, Moreton Rolleston, the owner of a motel in Atlanta, Georgia, said he should not be forced to serve black travelers, saying, "the fundamental question…is whether or not Congress has the power to take away the liberty of an individual to run his business as he sees fit in the selection and choice of his customers". Rolleston claimed that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a breach of the Fourteenth Amendment and also violated the Fifth and Thirteenth Amendments by depriving him of "liberty and property without due process". In Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964), the Supreme Court held that Congress drew its authority from the Constitution's Commerce Clause, rejecting Rolleston's claims. Resistance to the public accommodation clause continued for years on the ground, especially in the South. When local college students in Orangeburg, South Carolina attempted to desegregate a bowling alley in 1968, they were violently attacked, leading to rioting and what became known as the "Orangeburg massacre." Resistance by school boards continued into the next decade, with the most significant declines in black-white school segregation only occurring at the end of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s in the aftermath of the Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968) court decision.

In view of the acceptance of White Supremacists, John Birchers and others that were rejected by mainstream conservatives in 1948 and 1968 it is well past time that the right came out of the darkness of bigotry and regressive politics. It is time the right stopped trying to turn the clock back to Jim Crow and worse.  It is time the right stopped their concerted efforts to make this a country that only acknowledges and gives preference and advantage to heterosexual white christian males (and even then mostly protestant males).

We've waited way to long already as a nation, especially a nation in the 21st century, not the 19th or shameful first half of the 20th.  THIS is just part of what makes the 2016 election so significant.

T'is the Season to Abandon Reason - The Conservative Christmas War on Freedom and the Constitution

For those of you who missed me, I'm back after an approximately two months hiatus.

This will serve as my holidays post - covering Christmas and the Solstice.

I am heartily sick this December of two thing - the excessive Star Wars hype, and the false claims about a war on Christmas (or Christians). There is nothing I can do about either, other than vent my vexation here. Star Wars hype will eventually subside in satiation; the effort to continue the manipulation of conservatives and the false and faulty screeches of fake victims will continue. But for the interim, it very much feels as if Star Wars has substantially hijacked the holidays.

There is no war on Christmas or Christians in the United States, and precious little effective war on Christians anywhere else.

There IS, however, something I can do about the Conservative War on Freedom  and their attacks on intelligent, informed thinking. It seems particularly apt as my first returning topic, given a brief browse of faulty claims and sloppy propaganda made by local conservative bloggers as I sit down to my computer to write.

Specifically, I am joining here in the protest against -- where else? -- Texas conservatives and their hatred of our constitution, in spite of all the lip service they give that document. Part of my objection is a continuing pet peeve when it comes to fake sources and especially inaccurate attribution of quotes in support of propaganda.

When I saw the image below, the one that bigot governor Abbott saw fit to remove as offensive, what I was reminded of was the opening line to the Gettysburg address:

FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS BROUGHT FORTH ON THIS CONTINENT A NEW NATION CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY AND DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

Apparently those who are elected by ignorant conservatives are not equally well educated in American history -- especially historically accurate quotations.

Hat tip to the Free Thinker for this one, and the Dallas Morning News:

Nativity display created by the
Freedom from Religion Foundation,
which Gov. Greg Abbott demanded
be removed from the Capitol grounds.

Staff at the Texas Capitol on Tuesday removed an exhibit that Gov. Greg Abbott said mocked religion without contacting the organization that sponsored the faux nativity display that replaced baby Jesus with a representation of the Bill of Rights.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, an organization that promotes the separation of church and state, said it is reviewing its options to take further action against the state for the move.

“This sort of censorship is inappropriate and illegal,” said Sam Grover, the foundation’s staff attorney. Removal of the exhibit came after Abbott sent the State Preservation Board a letter saying that the display mocked religion and calling for its immediate elimination from the capitol grounds. 

The exhibit, called the “Bill of Rights Nativity and Winter Solstice Display,” was on the ground floor of the capitol building. In it, the bill of rights sat in the manger in place of baby Jesus, and it was surrounded by three founding fathers and the Statue of Liberty, which appeared to be worshiping the document.

...Abbott, in his letter, said the exhibit did not meet the requirements for display at the Capitol because it didn’t promote a “public purpose.”

And as observed by Patheos and subsequently the Freethinker, but sadly neglected by the Dallas Morning News, Texas Gov. Abbot did not merely remove a legitimate display supporting the separation of church and state -- which GENUINELY was a desideratum held by our founding fathers.  He went on to attempt to support his illegal act against freedom with a false attribution to George Washington.  I despise false attributions, particularly when a source is so well known to be false, and when it is so easily verified if they are correct.  When done by a governor, it is clear that the governor is either willfully too ignorant to fulfill the duties of his office, or he is a propagandizing dictator. 

It is entirely possible Abbot is both.

From the Freethinker:

Andrew L  Seidel, Staff Attorney for the FFRF, Freedom From Religion Foundation, said here that Abbott:
Quoted, at length, erroneous history to support his position. The quote comes from a fabricated prayer journal, misattributed to Washington.

In a letter explaining his decision to have the display removed, Abbott called the FFRF’s  Bill of Rights display “tasteless,” a “spiteful message … intentionally designed to belittle and offend” and charged that it is:

Far from promoting morals and the general welfare.

He even likened the Bill of Rights display to:

A photograph of a crucifix immersed in a jar of urine.

Frank Grizzard, an editor of the George Washington Papers at the University of Virginia, wrote of the book from which Abbott pulled the quote:

Tens of thousands of genuine Washington manuscripts have survived to the present, including many from the youthful Washington, and even a cursory comparison of the prayer book with a genuine Washington manuscript reveals that they are not the same handwriting.

Not only are the prayers not in Washington’s handwriting, they were not composed by Washington himself as Abbott claims.
To borrow from Gizzard, “Both claims are patently false”. That prayer book had been “rejected by the Smithsonian Institute as having no value” and even at the time it first surfaced, “others continued to challenge its authenticity.”
Other historians, such as John Fea, chair of the History Department at Messiah College and author of Was American Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction, agree that this prayer book is not Washington’s:

It is also far too pious for Washington. In fact … George Washington only referenced Jesus Christ twice in all his extant writings and neither of them were in a prayer …

Seidel said:

All that vitriol, from looking at three founding fathers, the Statue of Liberty, and the Bill of Rights. One wonders how such disrespect for the Bill of Rights comports with Abbott’s oaths of office to uphold that sacred document.

We are a secular nation, and we should be a thoughtful nation which embraces freedom of speech, freedom of and from religion, and most of all we should, in order to remain free, push back at any attempts like this one of Texas governor Abbot to make encroachments that effectively create a state sponsored, endorsed and/or promoted religion.  Because when THAT happens, we ALL are less free than our founding fathers intended.

Oppose the tyranny, and the erosion of constitutionally guaranteed freedom promoted by the worst of conservative evangelicals attempting to impose a state sponsored religion.  Oppose ignorance peddled by conservatives in positions of power; the truth, and facts, are not on their side.

Jade Helm trophy?

Via FB Occupy Democrats:

My favorite quote of the week, so far: Robert Reich

Sing it Reich, sing it LOUD, sing truth to power!  Texas not only hates the rest of the nation, Texas just passed more lax gun laws, which were promoted and sought - in part - by those who want to secede, and declare they don't mind shooting people to get their way on a range of issues. (my bold and italicize emphasis added in the body of the quote)

Why Federal Disaster Relief Money Poses a Bit of Awkwardness for Texas

Yet Texans have elected people who seem not to have a clue. Indeed, Texas has done more in recent years to institutionalize irrationality than almost anywhere else in America—thereby imposing a huge burden on its citizens.
How many natural disasters will it take for the Lone Star State to wake up to the disaster of its elected officials?

Texas represents the worst of conservative willful and malicious ignorance, magical thinking, failure to grasp the rational concept of cause and effect, but most of all Texas conservatives are masters of hypocrisy.

From the same link above:

As extreme weather marked by tornadoes and flooding continues to sweep across Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has requested—and President Obama has granted—federal help.
I don’t begrudge Texas billions of dollars in disaster relief. After all, we’re all part of America. When some of us are in need, we all have a duty to respond.
But the flow of federal money poses a bit of awkwardness for the Lone Star State.

After all, just over a month ago hundreds of Texans decided that a pending Navy Seal/Green Beret joint training exercise was really an excuse to take over the state and impose martial law. And they claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency was erecting prison camps, readying Walmart stores as processing centers for political prisoners.
There are nut cases everywhere, but Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott added to that particular outpouring of paranoia by ordering the Texas State Guard to monitor the military exercise. “It is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed upon,” he said. In other words, he’d protect Texans from this federal plot.
Now, Abbott wants federal money. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency is gearing up for a major role in the cleanup—including places like Bastrop, Texas, where the Bastrop State Park dam failed—and where, just five weeks ago, a U.S. Army colonel trying to explain the pending military exercise was shouted down by hundreds of self-described patriots shouting “liar!”
Texans dislike the federal government even more than most other Americans do. According to a February poll conducted by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune, only 23 percent of Texans view the federal government favorably, while 57 percent view it unfavorably, including more than a third who hold a “very unfavorable” view.
Texas dislikes the federal government so much that eight of its congressional representatives, along with Senator Ted Cruz, opposed disaster relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy—adding to the awkwardness of their lobbying for the federal relief now heading Texas’s way.
Yet even before the current floods, Texas had received more disaster relief than any other state, according to a study by the Center for American Progress. That’s not simply because the state is so large. It’s also because Texas is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather—tornadoes on the plains, hurricanes in the Gulf, flooding across its middle and south.
Given this, you might also think Texas would take climate change especially seriously. But here again, there’s cognitive dissonance between what the state needs and how its officials act.
Among Texas’s infamous climate-change deniers is Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, who dismissed last year’s report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as “more political than scientific,“ and the White House report on the urgency of addressing climate change as designed “to frighten Americans.”
Smith is still at it. His committee just slashed by more than 20 percent NASA’s spending on Earth science, which includes climate change.
...Consider also the consequences for the public’s health. Several deaths in Texas have been linked to the extreme weather. Many Texans have been injured by it, directly or indirectly. Poor residents are in particular peril because they live in areas prone to flooding or in flimsy houses and trailers that can be washed or blown away. What’s Texas’s response?  Texas officials continue to turn down federal funds to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, thereby denying insurance to more than 1 million people and preventing the state from receiving an estimated $100 billion in federal cash over the next decade.

In my experience, Texans, individually, one on one are usually wonderful, hospitable people.  But as an electorate the conservative majority are freakishly, foolishly NUTS. 

At some point, the right has to take their party back from the fringies, the fundies, the cray-cray-crazies, and the rest of the extremists, and most of all the damned hypocrites.

GIGO: Islamophobia, the Ridiculous Radical Religious Right, and Hate Crimes

Remember when....... pick one.......the state of (blank) passed laws banning Sharia law?  There's more coming.

A panel of local Muslims last week denounced the state’s ban on a foreign law designed to bar Sharia or Islamic law.

“Folks were in this hysteria thinking that the minority Muslim Community here in North Carolina could somehow impose our laws, laws taken from the Sharia,” Imam Khalid Griggs of Community Mosque said at a forum on the subject held Tuesday, Jan. 27 at the Polo Recreation Center
...Proponents of the bans say they protect the Constitution, but many disagree. Muslim groups have been joined by Jewish organizations in their opposition to the bans. The Anti-Defamation League in Florida opposed that state’s foreign law ban, which passed last year, for fear of its potential effects on alimony, child custody and even the ability to remarry for Jews who divorce in Israel."

The right is wrong, and has been wrong since Barry Goldwater said this:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

But Goldwater was correct when he noted, as an ardent opponent of the religious right:

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.

Ironically, both quotes are from Goldwater's presidential nomination acceptance speech in San Francisco waaaaay back in 1964.

That right wing extremism has resulted in actual hate crimes.  No, not the shooting of the three Muslim students in North Carolina, but in more clear and obvious and genuine hate crimes like the burning of a Mosque in Ohio by an Indiana man 'riled up' by Fox News.

But there is plenty of hate to go around with out actual violence, like regarding the arson attack on a Muslim Center in Texas, where a person misrepresenting himself to be a fireman used social media to post this:

We have plenty of hate, by the right, from the right, riling up people with purely evil right wing propaganda full of lies.

There is a real tragedy that OPPOSING the evils and abuses of religion, like the ones below, from any and every religion, wherever it occurs, is being miscontrued as a hate crime in what appears to be an ordinary, every day case of gun violence by a man in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the tragic shooting deaths of three Muslim students by a man obsessed like George Zimmerman with trying to dominate and intimidate a wide variety of people in his immediate neighborhood with his excessive gun collection, a man who had apparent anger issues.

There are a lot of things to criticize Craig Hicks for, but being an Islamophobe is not one of them, nor should being Anti-Theist.   This is a case where the Left wing media has it wrong, in generalizing that being Anti-religion generally for what is wrong with religious oppression and conflict is the same as being Anti-Muslim.  And of course the Right has it wrong as well.  The promoting of Islamophobia was one of the things Hicks opposed.  Hicks was indicted by a grand jury yesterday, per MSNBC news:

A grand jury indicted a North Carolina man on Monday for the shooting deaths of a newlywed Muslim couple and the wife's sister last week, a court official said.
Craig Hicks, 46, of Chapel Hill, was charged by a grand jury with three counts of first-degree murder and one of discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling, said Angela Kelly, an assistant clerk of the Durham County Superior Court.
Investigators have said initial findings indicate a dispute over parking prompted the shooting, but they are looking into whether Hicks was motivated by hatred toward the victims because they were Muslim.

A new law to ban Sharia law is being introduced in Montana, following passage in other states, and of course the overturning of such a ban after Oklahoma passed one. From another apparent Islamophobe/ bigot, in the Examiner:

Montana's Senate Bill 199–also called the Primacy of Montana Law–would prohibit the state from abiding by foreign religious customs and foreign laws within the court system. Well there's an idea! A United States that follows United States laws. I'm getting excited already. Maybe we'll even follow the Constitution one day. Janna Taylor, a Republican state senator in Montana, said that the bill is modeled after a similar anti-Sharia law that has been passed by Republicans in three other states so far: Tennessee, Kansas and Louisiana.

Of course, the islamophobe bigots CLAIM, wrongly, that they support the U.S. Constitution as well as their state constitutions. They just forget that we have the supremacy clause, which establishes that where there is a conflict between Federal and State law, Federal law 'wins' aka usually supersedes state law.

We have in this country, and have always had, religious courts in parallel to our secular court system.  In Christianity it is Canon law, versions of which are practiced by Roman Catholics, Eastern Rite Christianity, Anglicans and Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists, Lutherans, and in some forms by Quakers and the Amish.  Judaism has Halacha (aka Halakha) law and courts, and Islam in this country has Sharia.

An example of how a religious court operates would be the requirement for both a SECULAR legal decision and a religious one to end a marriage, either by divorce or annulment in some faiths and the requirement to do so by secular courts as well, before one can marry, IF one's religion has that requirement (and some do).  In other instances religious courts are purely advisory, for example on the finer points of keeping Kosher or Halal.

If you don't want to go through the religious courts, then no one requires it for secular purposes; it is entirely voluntary as a matter of religious faith and conscience.

But the ridiculous radical religious right deliberately misrepresents this, ginning up fear that Sharia law is somehow a threat to replace secular law.  It never has been and never would or could be; this is pure propaganda, complete ignorance pandering to the gullible, looking for an excuse to express their hatred for anyone who does not conform to their belief or will. From the same source above:

At least individual states are finally taking matters into their own hands to stop the travesty of Sharia law in America. The Christian Action Network noted on its website that Sharia law, also called Islamic law, has been used in United States courts multiple times to override America's law under the guise of Freedom of Religion. Of course! Freedom of Religion is suddenly important when it involves catering to the violent religion of Islam. However, if you take your Bible to the public square you better have on a bullet proof vest and when you demand protection from your President against foreign and domestic threats you get psycho-babble about the Crusades.
The Christian Action Network site went on to say: “Montana may be on the brink of accomplishing what Congress, the federal court system and all but three other states could not: Banning Islamic Shariah law from being used in state courts.”

There is NO case, whatsoever, ANYWHERE in the United States, its possessions or territories, at any time, that any religious law, Sharia, Halacha, or Canon law, has been used to override American law.

Another example of this kind of fear mongering and hate peddling is occurring across right wing media over a Sharia court in Irving Texas.  Specifically, a proposal for a ban on Sharia law in Mississippi is referencing that religious court, from the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN):

Lawmakers in Mississippi are proposing legislation that would ban Sharia law from the state.

"I think we need to make a stand and a statement that we are not going to allow it to be used in our court system," state Rep. John Moore, R-Brandon, said.

More than two dozen states have considered similar bans on the laws followed in Muslim nations.

A group of Muslims in northern Texas has created what may be the first official Sharia law system in the United States. 

The Sharia tribunal in Irving, Texas, said they're not planning to follow the type of Sharia practiced in Muslim countries, where severe punishments are handed out for even small crimes, women have very few rights, and blasphemy against Mohammed can result in a death sentence.

But in Mississippi, Rep. Moore recently introduced a meaure that blocks any foreign laws from being enforced or applied in the state and country.

He made clear that Sharia law is a big concern and wants to make sure it never gets argued in a Mississippi courtroom.

He said a Muslim defendent could try to use Sharia law as a defense against a U.S. criminal case.

This is a right wing lie; no one has succeeded in using such a defense, nor is it a defense attempt unique to one religion.  The closest we have come to a problem with a religious law interfering with the function of civil and criminal secular law was the abuse by the Roman Catholic church in conducting their own investigations under Canon Law instead of immediately reporting all accusations of sex crimes.  This led to priests being protected by the Church from legal action, including prosecution  under cover of priests being subject to Canon Law rather than civil and criminal secular law, as we see in the findings of subsequent law suits and investigative reports by journalists.

So we see the ridiculous, radical, religious right engaging in the most vile hypocrisy when it comes to outlawing Canon Law, and instead obsessing factually falsely about Sharia Law, as a justification and pretence for raging bigotry and Islamophobia.

Gay Marriage Ban -- another one bites the RED RED RED dust, this time, the bloody red dust of hypocrisy in Texas!

Another gay marriage ban bites the dust in the deeply red state of Texas. It will be interesting to see what the Attorney General,  Greg Abbot, recently seen campaigning with thug and failed reality tv figure, Ted Nugent, is expected to file an appeal.  Abbott appears to be the leading contender for the GOP nomination in the 2014 race for Governor of Texas.  State legislator Wendy Davis, also an attorney, and the leading contender for the Democratic candidate in the same race, came out earlier this month in favor of legal same-sex marriage. According to the reporting by the Kansas City Star:

[Judge] "Garcia said the state could show no compelling reason to deny that right to the two couples who brought the lawsuit. But Abbott said states have the right to define marriage as they see fit."

Of course, that statement by Texas AG Abbott is incorrect; states have previously been prevented by federal law and federal judicial rulings that, for example, bans on mixed-racial marriages were unconstitutional. It is worth noting that those who attempt to discriminate against the civil rights of minorities in this way are consistently conservative, and consistently on the wrong side of history.

Texas is the latest state, following Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia, to have gay marriage bans overturned.  My personal prediction, by the end of the year, NO state ban on same-sex marriage, regardless of being in the form of a law or a state constitutional amendment, will be in force.

It is worth mentioning here that Texas AG Abbott is a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair by an accident some years ago, and that he has an adopted daughter. In 2001, during the time Jesse Ventura served as governor of this fine state, our sodomy laws were struck down by Minnesota State District Court Judge Delia Pierce.

One of the parties involved in that suit, under anonymity for privacy reasons as John Doe in Doe, et al v. Jesse Ventura, et al, who sought to have the sodomy law overturned, did so on the basis of being a quadriplegic who could only enjoy oral sexual intimacy in his marriage.  That poses the question - does AG Abbott support sodomy laws, as did for example, former VA AG Ken 'the Cooch' Cuccinelli?

From GPLAN.org :

"This is a tremendous victory — because of what sodomy laws do, but also because of what they say," said Matt Coles, Director of the ACLU Lesbian & Gay Rights Project, which along with the ACLU’s Minnesota state affiliate last summer filed Doe, et al. v. Jesse Ventura, et al., a lawsuit challenging the sodomy statute. "A society’s laws are its core statement of right and wrong. Sodomy laws, because they are understood to primarily apply to lesbians and gay men, marginalize gay people and their pursuit of equal citizenship."

State District Court Judge Delila F. Pierce struck the law down, saying that the court "declares [the sodomy statute] to be unconstitutional, as applied to private, consensual, non-commercial acts of sodomy by consenting adults, because it violates the right of privacy guaranteed by the Minnesota Constitution."

Minnesota’s sodomy law, which has been on the books since the 1800s, prohibits both oral and anal sex between any adults. Penalties include up to a year in jail and up to $3,000 in fines. In recent years, the law has been directly enforced and also has been indirectly used to deny opportunities, especially to lesbians and gay men in employment, child custody and other areas. For years, efforts to repeal the law in the state legislature were unsuccessful. Right-wing groups unsuccessfully tried to alter the law in recent years, so it would not apply to married, straight couples.

Pierce’s decision striking down the sodomy law noted that the plaintiffs in the case "represent a cross section of Minnesotans impacted by the sodomy statute." The ruling should prevent the law from being enforced or invoked anywhere in Minnesota, according to Leslie Cooper, the ACLU Lesbian & Gay Rights Project staff attorney handling the case.

But the ACLU is asking the court to technically certify the case as a class-action, which Cooper said will leave "absolutely no question" that the sodomy law cannot be enforced directly or indirectly. At the end of May, Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura’s administration may file legal papers opposing this, and a hearing would be held June 7.

"It’s unfathomable that the Ventura Administration would want the court to limit this ruling," Cooper said. "The sodomy law has been declared unconstitutional — and the state has no good reason to say that it should be unconstitutional for some people, but not everyone."

The ACLU’s clients in the case are state citizens whose jobs, homes and relationships with their children were threatened by the sodomy law, including, a quadriplegic married man who lives in Minneapolis, identified for privacy reasons only as "John Doe." Because of his disability, the only forms of intimacy he is capable of engaging in with his wife were among those criminalized under the sodomy statute. (bold and italics are my emphasis added - DG)

It is worth noting as well that Greg Abbott in 2008 tried to uphold the state's "obscenity" laws, which included the banning of sex toys of any kind.  Apparently Abbott likes to interfere in people's private sex lives in every way possible, which at the same time certainly raises some interesting speculation on his own life choices in this regard.

Of course, with the federal overturning of bans on mixed racial marriage, it is clear that states DO NOT have the right to violate the constitutional claims to equality of anyone, or to unduly intrude on the definition of marriage where the state has no clear and compelling interest to do so.

Texas is the latest state to have a gay marriage ban overturned, following Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia.

I'm betting by the end of the year, and possibly sooner -- by the time election day rolls around -- that all states and territories will have had their same sex marriage laws and amendments overturned. And another one down, and another one down.......another one bites the dust.  Besides dust, it will be interesting to see how much hypocrisy this kicks up on the right.

Execute a Corporation

Remember when Romney claimed, at the Iowa Presidential Candidate Fair and Circus, that corporations were people, too?  I wonder how long it will be until Romney not only takes the money from corporations, but tries to get them the right to vote, as well?

via Job Sanger and
MikeB's blog:

UK Aplomb; Texas Stupid

(larger type, emphasis mine - DG) from MSNBC.com:
Once again, a lack of education in history, including Texas history; there have been plenty of riots in Texas over the years. None of them seem to be resolved positively by law enforcement shootings.  Riots occur because of stresses and frustrations; they are not prevented or ended by simply issuing or acquiring guns.  This is an other one of those 'common sense' solutions which is in reality simplistic and stupid and which can make a bad situation worse.

An older example:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdfres=F70E12FF355D1A728DDDA90B94D1405B818CF1D3

And a more recent example, also including property damage and fire:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/01/texas.prison.riot/

An overview, of sorts, is here:
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jcr02

which includes these paragraphs, although it clearly doesn't cove the second half of the 20th century, or the first decade of the 21st century :

"The most common cause of riots in the first half of the twentieth century was public outrage toward prisoners. Mob threats of violence to prisoners necessitated the use of state troops on four occasions in 1900. In 1901 three lynchings by mobs took place despite the calling of state troops; in two instances the troops suppressed the mobs. At Brenham rioting broke out over the employment of a black brakeman by a railway; it was suppressed after two days. In 1902 mob violence brought on the use of state troops three times. In one instance the mob hanged a prisoner before the troops' arrival. Troops were called out three times on this account in 1903, twice in 1904, three times in 1905, and once in 1906. The Brownsville Raid qv (1906) precipitated a serious race riot involving black soldiers. Troops were needed elsewhere in 1907 and 1908; in the latter year rioting at Slocum resulted in the killing of more than ten blacks. Other mob actions in the first decade of the century resulted from strikes at Houston in 1904 and racial tension at Ragley the same year. Riots also took place in San Antonio and Fort Worth in April and May of 1913. The Houston Riot of 1917 was started by about 150 black troops from Camp Logan, a temporary training center near the city. The riot, touched off by the arrest of a black woman, was the culmination of general uneasiness and hostility following the establishment of the camp. It resulted in the deaths of seventeen people, mostly whites; the anger of an aroused white population necessitated martial law for four days. The Longview Race Riot of 1919 also resulted in the proclamation of martial law. A strike at Galveston in 1920 produced lawlessness that required the help of the Texas National Guard. Mexia was declared in a state of anarchy because of a riot and was placed under martial law from January to March 1922. The Sherman Riot of 1930 stemmed from the arrest of a black who had assaulted a white woman; rangers were called to protect the prisoner, but a mob set fire to the courthouse and virtually seized control of the town. When troops of the Texas National Guard arrived, they were attacked by the mob, and before martial law restored order, a number of buildings were destroyed. Enforcement of oil-conservation laws in the 1930s also necessitated the use of the National Guard to suppress mob lawlessness.

The guard was also called in September 1937 to suppress mob violence at Marshall and again to quell the Beaumont Riot of 1943. In Beaumont a white mob, outraged at the assault of a white woman by a black, terrorized the black section of town. Two died and 100 homes were destroyed. In 1955 the National Guard was used to control a riot at Rusk State Hospital. In May 1967 a riot that occurred among black students at Texas Southern University in Houston resulted in the death of one policeman and the wounding of two students and two police officers. Though the immediate cause of the riot was the arrest of a student, the night-long incident was related to general racial tension. "

Both massive property damage - as in the example of the destruction of 100 homes - and racial tension appear to be factors in common with the UK rioting and the history of riots in Texas.

It wouldn't surprise me if the other people in the room when this woman spoke up actually had a better grasp of Texas history than this dim bulb, in spite of being, presumably, mostly citizens of the UK.

Where are the guns? A Texan's take on the UK riots



Daniel Deme / EPA (photo credit)
Police officers patrol the streets of Camden, in north London, on Monday. An extra 10,000 officers were brought in from other parts of the country to help to quell rioting and looting that engulfed parts of the capital.



By Heather Lacy, NBC News assignment editor

LONDON - We’ve been on five-day roller-coaster here in the NBC News London bureau, what with riots and looting breaking out across the capital and the country.

We’re all wondering if the “criminality pure and simple,” as Prime Minister David Cameron put it, will pop up again, or if the uneasy calm we have now will hold.

Everyone in the newsroom has been discussing the recent violence, the worst this country has seen in three decades. Why would people set fire to stores, cars and homes, looting, wounding, killing and destroying property as they go? Who could do this? How did the police fail to bring order for days?

As everyone in the newsroom debated the use of force – whether to use rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannons, Tasers, even bean-bag guns – I wondered why they were wasting their breath.

“If your cops had guns, day number 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this, it would NOT have happened!” I said at a recent meeting.
People stopped talking and looked at me. A couple giggled. Those who know me weren’t too horrified, but others stared at me like I’d just drop-kicked a puppy.
Transplanted Texan

I’m a relatively recent London implant, having moved from Texas a few years back. I’m surrounded mostly by Brits who are usually amused and occasionally appalled at some of my comments.

“In fact, why are we even talking about this?” I asked. “A couple batons aren’t gonna do the trick when the rioters have Molotov cocktails, bricks and knifes, and they outnumber the police.”

When I first moved here I was surprised when I discovered that “bobbies on the beat” (cops on the street) don’t carry guns. Apparently, when the Metropolitan Police Service was founded they thought arming the officers would scare the public. How quaint, I thought.

There is an armed contingent, the Authorised Firearms Officers, which makes up about a third of the Met’s numbers, but they don’t patrol routinely and are only called in when needed. And getting a firearms certificate as a private citizen is very difficult, if not impossible, unless you live in the countryside.

Now, I’m not suggesting police just go out and start capping people carte blanche, but I can assure you those brave and defiant “hooded youths” (as they were described by many a British broadcaster) would not have been so brave or defiant if they had a lethal weapon pointed at them.

Yes, there’s an argument for unarmed police, and yes the British police do have an armed unit, but I’m not going to get into the minutiae. I just want to know, what’s so bad about a show of force in the form of a gun?

I mean, you don’t see anything like this kicking off in Texas, do you?

Yes. You do.

What an embarrassment that this person is in a news position, with such a background of ignorance. Odds are she knows even less about the UK and their history, or world history generally, than what she knows of Texas. The history of Texas is not the same as the myth of guns in Texas, or the myths of  "Texas-style" law and order.  It's no wonder George W. Bush was a joke in the UK.