At the beginning of February, University of Missouri defensive end, Michael Sam announced that he was gay. The fall out from that was predictable with support coming openly from most of the press and many players, as well as NFL officials. However, there were the usual anonymous “manly men”, expressing the usual homophobic memes about naked men in locker rooms. ESPN’s Keith Olbermann weighed in on the homophobia of the nameless NFL executives and highlighted a fellow sports caster’s criticism of Sam’s spineless detractors.
Affirmative Action has been around since 1961 when President John F. Kennedy issued his executive order which created the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and mandates that projects financed with federal funds take affirmative action” to ensure that hiring and employment practices are free of racial bias. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. Since then Affirmative Action has gone through the courts where it has been narrowed but essentially left intact. The last major challenge to the University of Michigan’s Affirmative Action admissions policy (Grutter v. Bollinger) resulted in the Supreme Court in a narrow 5 – 4 ruling up held the University’s policy.
Challenges didn’t end there. In January of 2011, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled against a student who challenged the University of Texas’ policy in Fisher v. University of Texas (pdf). The plaintiffs appealed and the Supreme Court has decided to reconsider what has been considered decided law (stare decisis). In Grutter v. Bollinger the deciding vote was cast by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who has since retired and was replaced by the very conservative Samuel Alito. Justice Elena Kagan, who was solicitor general when the Obama administration filed the Fifth Circuit brief, recused herself from the case. So the case will be considered by only 8 Justices, 4 of whom are very conservative. The deciding vote may fall to Justice Anthony Kennedy who has sided with the more conservative justices in recent rulings.
KEITH OLBERMANN: And now, as promised, a brief Special Comment on the resignation of Karen Handel from Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
There is no avoiding the simple fact that a week had passed since Ms. Handel decided that the Komen organization should collaborate with the witch hunt that the nation’s right wing has directed against Planned Parenthood. In the time until Ms. Handel’s exit this morning, Komen’s only real actions had been a mealymouthed partial reversal about a rule change it had first denied, a new-new policy to replace the new policy – a spineless convenience by which Komen has still not really committed to continuing its funding of Planned Parenthood and, perhaps more importantly, by which it has not committed to staying out of this dangerous, ideological game which will kill some freedoms and which could kill some women.
Komen could not do that by itself, of course.
If it never gave another dollar to Planned Parenthood, it would be doing the latter organization a fundraising favor, because it has raised the consciousness of many to whom the reality was not yet clear, that one of vote-getting machines in this country was zeroing in on Planned Parenthood as the scapegoat for all the evils which that vote-getting machine exaggerates – to whip up paranoia and political power among the easily led of this nation. Those who were thus awakened will find – or rather, fund – Planned Parenthood in ways Komen never has, and never could.
But the real issue here is the Komen organization’s attempt to hide its new partnership with that most base of political advocacy groups – the guttersnipe purveyors of hate, and fear and revenge fantasies – by couching as apolitical the most intense kind of political involvement; the willingness to participate in guilt by association; to echo the infamous call of investigation; to shun affiliation with a group or an individual purely to amplify suspicion and doubt and paranoia about that group or individual.
All of the dark periods of American history have begun with acts like Komen’s and excuses like Komen’s.
Planned Parenthood’s extraordinary services for men and women – 97 percent of which have had nothing to do with abortion – were to Komen’s advantage, until one Florida congressman decided to try to get himself re-elected by launching a specious investigation of Planned Parenthood.
And recall what we’re dealing with. Planned Parenthood’s opponents will believe anything and say anything. Remember well that tragic, comical story from yesterday about the Louisiana congressman who posted to Facebook, with horrified comments accompanying it, the story of an $8 billion Planned Parenthood “Abortion-Plex” being built in Kansas, without ever noting – perhaps without even caring – that the story was, in fact, from the satirical website The Onion. These are the people with whom Susan G. Komen for the Cure got into bed.
Ms. Handel’s resignation changes nothing of this. Komen’s statement today continues to lie about its own motives, to insist its attack on Planned Parenthood was, “Not based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology,” and to speak only of, “Mistakes in how we have handled recent decisions.”
Komen – specifically its president, Susan Komen’s own sister Nancy Brinker – has still not told the truth nor explained how she will again make this organization worthy of the donations from, and participation in and by, the women and men of this country who had put women’s health and valuable organizations like Komen and Planned Parenthood above politics.
Mrs. Brinker has dishonored both her sister’s memory and this essential cause. Until she acts, either by correcting what she acquiesced to, or by leaving the organization to somebody who truly cares, until she does one or the other – since are a thousand generous organizations which perform what Komen performs – Komen does not deserve a dollar in donations from a shocked public. Karen Handel is gone. Komen’s corruption remains.
Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person’s Rant this Friday hit the mark. Keith take on the hypocrisy of Dr. Keith Ablow, “psychology pundit on the political whorehouse that is Fox News”, and his defense of Newt Gingrich’s lack of “Family Values.”
But the winner? On the Gingrichian theme. Dr. Keith Ablow – he used to have a talk show on TV, but recently has been reduced to co-authoring a book with “Lonesome Rhodes” Beck and being the psychology pundit on the political whorehouse that is Fox News.
And, he may have admitted the single dumbest thing yet said in this campaign. I mean, Rick Perry is embarrassed for this guy.
Ablow writes that – if you are coldly analytical about Gingrich being a serial marrier and philanderer – you will realize it would make him a great president. Quoting:
One, “three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of theirs lives with him.”
Two, he writes, “Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich is already married.”
Three, he writes, “One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.”
You left out four – he betrayed the first two, one of them while she was fighting cancer.
But wait, this gets worse.
Albow writes, “So, as far as I can tell, judging from the psychological data, we have only one real risk to America from his marital history. If Newt Gingrich were to become president, we would need to worry that another nation – perhaps a little younger than ours – would be so taken by Mr. Gingrich that it would seduce him into marrying it and becoming its president.
So what you are saying, Dr. Ablow, is that voters need to worry about whether or not Newt Gingrich is loyal to the United States of America?
Dr. Keith Ablow – I think you may be mispronouncing that last name, buddy – today’s “Worst Person” in the World.
Twist as the president’s supporters might with the “look over here” tactic, the National Defense Authorization Bill (NDAA) does not change any existing law that Barack Obama has interpreted to mean he has the power to throw your sorry butt in prison anywhere in the world for as long as he chooses. Or he can just declare you a terrorist without providing evidence and have you executed without due process. Ignoring the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) that was recently renewed giving the president the authority to send in the military to fight that ubiquitous enemy “terror”, the Obama loyalists, keep pointing to section 1022 of the NDAA, the section that makes military detention presumptive for non-citizens but doesn’t foreclose military detention of US citizens, while completely ignoring section 1021, the section that affirms the President’s authority to indefinitely detain people generally. As Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel points out while the NDAA does not authorize indefinite detention for American citizens, it does not foreclose the possibility either:
The NDAA doesn’t do anything to exempt Americans from indefinite detention. And the reason it doesn’t-at least according to the unrebutted claims of Carl Levin that I reported on over a month ago-is because the Administration asked the Senate Armed Services Committee to take out language that would have specifically exempted Americans from indefinite detention.
The initial bill reported by the committee included language expressly precluding “the detention of citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.” The Administration asked that this language be removed from the bill. [my emphasis]
So the effect is that (as Lawfare describes in detail) the bill remains unclear about whether Americans can be detained indefinitely and so we’re left arguing about what the law is until such time as a plaintiff gets beyond the Executive Branch’s state secrets invocations to actually decide the issue in court.
Nor did the amendment from Sen. Diane Feinstein clarify that point either, in fact, she may have codified it. So the only recourse is for some poor fool to have his civil liberties abrogated and try to fight in court without being allowed access to lawyers or courts. Those are some hurdles. Scott Horton, contributing editor at Harper’s magazine and New York attorney known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict, discussed this with Keith Olbermann:
President Obama has just stated a policy that he can have any American citizen killed without any charge, without any review, except his own. If he’s satisfied that you are a terrorist, he says that he can kill you anywhere in the world including in the United States.
Two of his aides just … reaffirmed they believe that American citizens can be killed on the order of the President anywhere including the United States.
You’ve now got a president who says that he can kill you on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion [..]
I don’t think the the Framers ever anticipated that [the American people would be so apathetic]. They assumed that people would hold their liberties close, and that they wouldn’t relax …
How quickly the president’s defenders forget Anwar al-Awlaki. Marcy points to the contortions of the law that Obama used to justify his assassination and then issued a “secret memorandum” which was conveniently “leaked” to New York Times reporter Charles Savage:
And, as Charlie Savage has reported, the legal justification the Administration invented for killing an American citizen in a premeditated drone strike consists of largely the same legal justification at issue in the NDAA detainee provisions.
The 2001 AUMF, which purportedly defined who our enemies are (though the NDAA more logically includes AQAP in its scope than the 2001 AUMF)
Hamdi, which held the President could hold an American citizen in military detention under the 2001 AUMF
Ex Parte Quirin, which held that an American citizen who had joined the enemy’s forces could be tried in a military commission
Scott v. Harris (and Tennesee v. Garner), which held that authorities could use deadly force in the course of attempting to detain American citizens if that person posed an imminent threat of injury or death to others
In other words, Obama relied on substantially the same legal argument supporters of the NDAA detainee provisions made to argue that indefinite detention of American citizens was legal, with the addition of Scott v. Harris to turn the use of deadly force into an unfortunate side-effect of attempted detention.
There is no question that the Obama administration, by signing the NDAA, believes that it has the broad power to indefinitely detain and assassinate American citizens and guarantees that the next president will too.
The late George Carlin said it several years ago, “this country is circling the drain“.
This might sound like a foolish title, but actually the concepts of heat and temperature are quite different. Obviously things that feel “hotter” must have more heat in them, right? Actually, that is not always, and is often NOT, the case. The two concepts are quite different, but are related.
In a bit we shall go into specific definitions of what heat and temperature actually are, but it is more interesting to look at the historical thoughts about them. Back before quantitative physics, the higher the temperature that an object had, the more heat that it was thought to have. That is correct for a specific object, as the temperature increases, the amount of heat in it also increases.
But it is easy to show that for dissimilar objects, the amount of heat is quite unrelated to the temperature. I shall show you that ice might contain more heat than red hot steel! Ready to look more deeply? Then let us go to it!
Find out why Mayor Chris Myers, Medford, N.J., is WORSE; Dave Briggs, Alisyn Camerota and Clayton Morris, hosts of the weekend edition of Fox & Friends on “Fixed” News, are WORSER; and Herman Cain is the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD for Oct. 24, 2011.
First, please allow me to apologize for not posting Popular Culture Friday last. I was occupied until late in the day and did not have enough time to write a quality piece for the series, and I would rather post nothing rather than a poor piece. It shall return this coming Friday.
Actually, this is not about soap, but rather synthetic detergents, although we often call then “soap”. In the companion piece to this one from last week, here, the terms are explained in detail.
There are a couple of reasons for using synthetic detergents over actual soap. Part of it is economics, because both vegetable and animal fats, essential ingredients for soap, tend to be fairly high in cost. Most detergents are based on petroleum, so when oil prices are low then can be cheaper to produce than soap. When petroleum is high in cost, then detergents become less economically favorable.
Before we start, here is an important public service message brought to you by Translator. There is a fraudulent email going around asking that gmail users verify their accounts by the end to the month to avoid suspension. This is a fraud! If you get an email from [email protected], do not respond and delete it.
We take something as mundane as soap way too much for granted. It is not an exaggeration to say that soap has saved more lives over its history than modern medicine has over its history. Of course, soap has a much longer history than modern medicine, but soap is still essential as a medical adjunct.
The actual origin of soap is lost in prehistory. I suspect that the first soap like materials were plant saponins, and we shall get to them in just a bit. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of soap (and by extension detergents), it is important to understand just how these materials work. At first it does not seem to make a whole lot of sense, but as we continue I promise one of those “Aha!” moments. Ready to get going? I am!
Twist as the president’s supporters might with the 