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Greetings, purveyors and seekers of justice in the world! Following on from earlier stories, a judge has ruled that Constance McMillien's school violated her constitutional rights when it canceled thr prom rather than let her attend with her girlfriend, dressed in a tuxedo, but did not require the school to reinstate the prom. Since then, Ms. McMillen has received an invitation for her and her date to another high school's prom, as well as the organization of a private prom event that would be more inclusive than the school’s standards. The split decision is stopping short of fully enforcing Constitutional protection, according to Ms. Ruby-Sachs, a position we agree with.
Elsewhere, a young gentleman wanted to take his date to the prom, another male, and was granted the ability to do so, with the school noting that it had no policy forbidding the bringing of a same-sex date, and thus they had no reason to deny his request. This is the good part. the bad part is that the student was evicted from his house by his parents for speaking up with his request.
Our international segment is brought to you by the Context Devoid Department, where one can watch a clip of former administrator George W. Bush apparently shaking the hand of a dark-skinned Haitian and then wiping his hand off on former administrator William Clinton. This can be seen as “boy, now we know what he thinks about brown people” or “I wonder what that person had on his hand.” Occam requests we rule in favor of strange hand stuff, but with the way the country was run, I can see why people might be more willing to go for malice over incompetence.
In our “Hey, isn’t this how you win conflicts?” department, a group linked with the Taliban in Afghanistan is offering a peace proposal to a delegation of the United Nations - the peace is denounced by the Taliban itself, but i think this was part of a strategy - peel off leaders from that association and get them to work with each other instead.
Back here in the United States, enjoy the inability of certain lawmakers to decide whether they were firmly against the health care reform bill, or they were instrumental in crafting it to its current successful state. Whichever way the political winds blow, Senator Grassley will be there. Other Republicans are still lloking for any chance they can get to change language in the reconciliation bill and require it to be sent back to the House, which is really a delay tactic more than a bill-killer, but it will allow for more time for fundraising and other efforts to make the American populace feel the bill is bad for them. While they do their thing, I suggest reading the remarks made by the President at the signing ceremony for the bill.
A recent poll provides insight into just how lunatic the fringe has gone - 40 percent of the populace think the President is a socialist, a third think he’s Muslim, a quarter are Birthers, some think he’s the Anti-Christ, others think he’s doing all sorts of unconstitutional things (about 30%), or is a racist (20-23%). One might suggest, very gently, that if this is the average American, then we really do need people in office who will work for the interests of the people, even if they are too stupid to understand they need it. And then you read about the threats against familiy members, smashed windows, cut gas lines, bleeped-out phone messages, shots fired, protests planned for the personal residences and other actions taken against Deomcratic Congresspersons and you realize in a hurry that saying it gently is too nice. Anyone stupid enough to act in this kind of manner should be investigated and prosecuted, under hate crimes law where applicable. Period. Regardless of who is in power and who is doing the threatening and violence. And by the way, Mr. Cantor, you have no leg to stand on and accuse your opponents of using these threats for political gain, when you and Republicans were egging on the protestors making the threats before they got to this level, using the kind of rhetoric that would encourage brick-throwing, and sometimes even doing it on the floor of the legislative chamber. Clean up your glass house before you go throwing stones.
Perhaps worst, David Frum, who had the courage to suggest cooperation would have been better than obstinance, has been terminated from his position at the American Enterprise Institute. The official reason for his termination is budget concerns. The undercurrent of that termination suggests he was fired for not toeing the party line with his speech, something the head of the AEI denies.
Technology strikes with robot reporters, taking pictures, asking questions, and uploading their information to the Web and another attempt to make some sort of biometric national identification card for United States residents, this time to make illegal immigrants unable to work in the United States, instead of to foil terrorists like the REAL ID Act has been trying to.
In the opinions, Mr. Schaller of FiveThirtyEight takes a swing at the possible constitutionality of the individual insurance mandate, and finds that several already-in-place mandatory taxes are farther down the “potentially unconstitutional” line, but are established law that nobody blinks at, so either we’re being hypocritical about it, or there needs to be reform of a lot more things that just that. The Washington Times focuses their challenge on the Commerce Clause, and saying that nowhere in there does the government have the power to mandate people engage in a commercial activity. Ms. Tantaros provides a more general overview of all the things that the health care bill supposedly does that are all lies.
Working from there, Mr. Goldberg finally gives an explanation of what conservatives mean when they talk about a "government takeover" of health care - highly regulated businesses, which becomes “nationalization by proxy” and an easy in toward single payer for the next time people want reform because their premiums have continued to go up despite the reform just passed. Thanks, Mr. Goldberg, for letting us in on the thought processes.
Away from health care, Mr. Boortz has a paranoid fantasy about how a plan to allow workers to carry their retirement plans with them from job to job will result in a government takeover of private retirement plans, and then everyone gets an equal pension when they retire, regardless of how much they put in. Socialism under every rock, now, Mr. Boortz? I think you and Mr. McCarthy will do fine together. Or perhaps, Mr. Stossel, who is convinced that Medicare and Social Security are Ponzi schemes, with no money to pay when the Boomers retire, because the government has been using that money to do other things. Well, if he’s right, then he knows which party to blame, right? The one that’s been in power for most of the last few decades, yeah? Mr. Sowell lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, complaining more about Congress giving the CBO garbage numbers to assuage the populace that their big spending bills result in savings over time. We think, however, Mr. Will sums up all those arguments best when he says that the Democratic Party is the party of fostering dependency, regardless of the ability to pay for all the entitlements that are happening.
And the very end of the day, a picture of the President deep into the editing process on one of his speeches. Definitely get a good look at the close-up picture on this one, just to see the magnitude of the markup going on.
Elsewhere, a young gentleman wanted to take his date to the prom, another male, and was granted the ability to do so, with the school noting that it had no policy forbidding the bringing of a same-sex date, and thus they had no reason to deny his request. This is the good part. the bad part is that the student was evicted from his house by his parents for speaking up with his request.
Our international segment is brought to you by the Context Devoid Department, where one can watch a clip of former administrator George W. Bush apparently shaking the hand of a dark-skinned Haitian and then wiping his hand off on former administrator William Clinton. This can be seen as “boy, now we know what he thinks about brown people” or “I wonder what that person had on his hand.” Occam requests we rule in favor of strange hand stuff, but with the way the country was run, I can see why people might be more willing to go for malice over incompetence.
In our “Hey, isn’t this how you win conflicts?” department, a group linked with the Taliban in Afghanistan is offering a peace proposal to a delegation of the United Nations - the peace is denounced by the Taliban itself, but i think this was part of a strategy - peel off leaders from that association and get them to work with each other instead.
Back here in the United States, enjoy the inability of certain lawmakers to decide whether they were firmly against the health care reform bill, or they were instrumental in crafting it to its current successful state. Whichever way the political winds blow, Senator Grassley will be there. Other Republicans are still lloking for any chance they can get to change language in the reconciliation bill and require it to be sent back to the House, which is really a delay tactic more than a bill-killer, but it will allow for more time for fundraising and other efforts to make the American populace feel the bill is bad for them. While they do their thing, I suggest reading the remarks made by the President at the signing ceremony for the bill.
A recent poll provides insight into just how lunatic the fringe has gone - 40 percent of the populace think the President is a socialist, a third think he’s Muslim, a quarter are Birthers, some think he’s the Anti-Christ, others think he’s doing all sorts of unconstitutional things (about 30%), or is a racist (20-23%). One might suggest, very gently, that if this is the average American, then we really do need people in office who will work for the interests of the people, even if they are too stupid to understand they need it. And then you read about the threats against familiy members, smashed windows, cut gas lines, bleeped-out phone messages, shots fired, protests planned for the personal residences and other actions taken against Deomcratic Congresspersons and you realize in a hurry that saying it gently is too nice. Anyone stupid enough to act in this kind of manner should be investigated and prosecuted, under hate crimes law where applicable. Period. Regardless of who is in power and who is doing the threatening and violence. And by the way, Mr. Cantor, you have no leg to stand on and accuse your opponents of using these threats for political gain, when you and Republicans were egging on the protestors making the threats before they got to this level, using the kind of rhetoric that would encourage brick-throwing, and sometimes even doing it on the floor of the legislative chamber. Clean up your glass house before you go throwing stones.
Perhaps worst, David Frum, who had the courage to suggest cooperation would have been better than obstinance, has been terminated from his position at the American Enterprise Institute. The official reason for his termination is budget concerns. The undercurrent of that termination suggests he was fired for not toeing the party line with his speech, something the head of the AEI denies.
Technology strikes with robot reporters, taking pictures, asking questions, and uploading their information to the Web and another attempt to make some sort of biometric national identification card for United States residents, this time to make illegal immigrants unable to work in the United States, instead of to foil terrorists like the REAL ID Act has been trying to.
In the opinions, Mr. Schaller of FiveThirtyEight takes a swing at the possible constitutionality of the individual insurance mandate, and finds that several already-in-place mandatory taxes are farther down the “potentially unconstitutional” line, but are established law that nobody blinks at, so either we’re being hypocritical about it, or there needs to be reform of a lot more things that just that. The Washington Times focuses their challenge on the Commerce Clause, and saying that nowhere in there does the government have the power to mandate people engage in a commercial activity. Ms. Tantaros provides a more general overview of all the things that the health care bill supposedly does that are all lies.
Working from there, Mr. Goldberg finally gives an explanation of what conservatives mean when they talk about a "government takeover" of health care - highly regulated businesses, which becomes “nationalization by proxy” and an easy in toward single payer for the next time people want reform because their premiums have continued to go up despite the reform just passed. Thanks, Mr. Goldberg, for letting us in on the thought processes.
Away from health care, Mr. Boortz has a paranoid fantasy about how a plan to allow workers to carry their retirement plans with them from job to job will result in a government takeover of private retirement plans, and then everyone gets an equal pension when they retire, regardless of how much they put in. Socialism under every rock, now, Mr. Boortz? I think you and Mr. McCarthy will do fine together. Or perhaps, Mr. Stossel, who is convinced that Medicare and Social Security are Ponzi schemes, with no money to pay when the Boomers retire, because the government has been using that money to do other things. Well, if he’s right, then he knows which party to blame, right? The one that’s been in power for most of the last few decades, yeah? Mr. Sowell lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, complaining more about Congress giving the CBO garbage numbers to assuage the populace that their big spending bills result in savings over time. We think, however, Mr. Will sums up all those arguments best when he says that the Democratic Party is the party of fostering dependency, regardless of the ability to pay for all the entitlements that are happening.
And the very end of the day, a picture of the President deep into the editing process on one of his speeches. Definitely get a good look at the close-up picture on this one, just to see the magnitude of the markup going on.
