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Late Later Latest…Evening News Reads

Posted: February 9, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: fundamentalist Christians, indefinite detention, legislation, open thread, racism, religious extremists, Republican politics, SDB Evening News Reads, the GOP | Tags: , , , , |26 Comments

No Birth Control for You... My, what would Jesus say?

Oh, I know it is late…so if you are up and about go ahead and treat this as an open thread.

Since it is so late, I just will post a few news items that did not make a lot of news today.

Bradley Manning to face formal trial on February 23 | World news | guardian.co.uk

The formal trial stage in the case of the WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning will begin on February 23, the US military has announced, when the soldier will be arraigned on all 22 counts relating to the largest leak of state secrets in American history.

Manning will be transferred on that day from his current imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to Fort Meade in Maryland, where he will be read all the charges against him and asked to give his plea. It will be the first occasion that he has come in front of a military judge representing the full power of the court martial system.

In most cases, the arraignment is a short and routine hearing that marks the accused’s official bringing to trial. In Manning’s case, however, it presents his trial lawyer David Coombs with the opportunity to raise objections to the conduct of the prosecution against his client.

Specifically…the fact that Manning has been in custody for such a long time…

In particular, Coombs has the option to complain about the exceptional length of time that Manning has been languishing in military jail. Under the US constitution, court martial cases must be brought within 120 days of charges being preferred against a suspect.

The military rule book, under rule 707 for speedy trial, makes clear that military justice must be dispensed quickly. It says that in some circumstances, delays may be prejudicial to the accused and may result in dismissal of the case.

A military spokesperson said that Manning’s 120 days, known as his “speedy trial clock”, began on 29 May 2010, yet he has continued to be held at the brig at Quantico marine base in Virginia and latterly at Fort Leavenworth for months beyond the deadline. The extra time taken to come to trial was due, the spokesperson said, to requests by Manning’s own defence team and the period in which classified documents were being handled.

“Offenses ordinarily should be disposed of promptly to serve the interests of good order and discipline. Priority shall be given to persons in arrest or confinement.”

If you did not know, CPAC is once again spewing the hate…oops, I mean basking in the glow of good Conservative Christian brotherhood. White Nationalists Agree: Multiculturalism is Bad

Right-wing members of Congress have never shied from associating with some of fringe agitators, but appearing with a white nationalist is beyond the pale. On Thursday afternoon, Iowa Rep. Steve King jovially appeared on a panel with Peter Brimelow, an anti-immigrant author that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has termed a white nationalist. Brimelow wrote Alien Nation and founded the online community VDARE, which SPLC describes as “a nonprofit that warns against the polluting of America by non-whites, Catholics, and Spanish-speaking immigrants.”

King had no qualms about associating himself with Brimelow when I caught up with the congressman after the panel. “Consider the source, I’m not in a position to judge people in the fashion that they seem to be so free to do,” King said of the SPLC.

King was not on the public schedule for the panel held at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and showed up as a surprise guest an hour after the panel started. Hosted by a group called ProEnglish—which supports English as the official language—the panel was titled “The Failure of Multiculturalism.” According to King’s assistant, the congressman had always planned to attend in order to push the bill he has sponsored to make English the country’s only official language. After standing at the podium and pitching his bill to make English the legal language—”there’s no reason to back off, there’s no reason to think all the names we’re called are accurate, they are not”—King sat down with the panelists to take questions. When Brimelow introduced himself to the congressman, King exclaimed, “Oh yes, Peter! I’ve read your books, I just hadn’t met you.”

And what did Brimelow say at the CPAC conference?

Brimelow’s prepared remarks during the panel railed against laws in Canada that dictate a dual national language, French and English. “I think it’s a hogwash,” he said of bilingualism, proudly touting his knowledge of only one language. “I’ve never felt the absence.”

And those other scheduled guest? Well some were not able to make it, they must be tending to property issues that usually arise when you burn a cross in someone’s yard.

Serge Trifkovic, a foreign affairs editor for Chronicle magazine, had to cancel his appearance at the last minute, but the panel’s moderator graciously read his anti-multiculturalism screed. Wrapped in the language of academia, the speech essentially explained why whites of European descent must reject notions of multiculturalism as a “neurotic” affront to their community. “Members of the Western elite class overwhelming subscribe to a neoliberal outlook in general, and to the tenets of multiculturalism in particular,” the speech read. “In other words, they tend to accept the principle that recognition, positive accommodation, and even celebration of demands and special political and moral claims of various ethno-racial, religious, or sexual minorities are obligatory through group-differentiated rights. The result is a obsessive favoritism of allegedly disadvantaged groups often hostile to the European descendent majority of Americans.”

Speaking of anti-culturalism…or should I say anti-Mexican: Mississippi Bill Changes Name of ‘Gulf of Mexico’ to ‘Gulf of America’ | Fox News Latino

Now before you get all pissed at a GOP legislator drafting a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico, get this…it is a Democratic State Representative.

Mississippi State Rep. Steve Holland, a Democrat, has introduced a bill calling for the part of the Gulf of Mexico that is bordered by Mississippi to be renamed the “Gulf of America.”

The measure, known as HB 150 and introduced to the state House Marine Resources Committee, says the body of water will have its new name beginning July 1.

You just can’t make this shit up…

I am sure Dakinikat can think of a few new non-foreign names for BP aka British Petroleum.

And lastly, oh this is good…and dammit we need a laugh today!

Face Of The Day – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast

A photo that screams “Screw you guys, I’m going home”:

51Fy0

by Chris Bodenner

The story…

…at the link!

Well, that is all I have for you tonight…and in my best Cartman voice…Screw you guys, I’m going home. (But since I am already home…There is a chocolate chicken pot pie with my name on it.)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

26 Comments on “Late Later Latest…Evening News Reads”

  1. Minkoff Minx says:
    February 9, 2012 at 10:41 pm

    Chilling…Video shows Georgia girl, 7, fighting off alleged kidnapper at Walmart – CNN.com

    A 7-year-old Georgia girl fought off a man who’d grabbed her in the aisle of a Walmart, with police eventually tracking down the suspect they accuse of attempted kidnapping.

    Georgeann Baxter told HLN’s Jane Velez-Mitchell that she was in the Bremen store with her daughter, Brittney, on Wednesday.

    “We were walking around the Walmart, and we felt safe,” the mother said, talking about how they were looking at Valentine’s Day cards and toys in the west Georgia store, about 45 miles west of Atlanta.

    When Baxter asked her daughter if she wanted to join her to get strawberries, the girl said that she wanted to stay in the toy aisle for a few more minutes.

    Soon thereafter, surveillance video from the Walmart — later released by Bremen police — shows a man approaching her.

    “He came up to me and started a conversation,” Brittney recalled Thursday to HLN. “After … I said, ‘I’m going to get my Mommy.”

    The man is seen in the video picking up the young girl and starting to carry her away, as she flailed.

  2. ralphb says:
    February 9, 2012 at 11:26 pm

    Most of Obama’s “Controversial” Birth Control Rule Was Law During Bush Years

    In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn’t provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today—and because it relies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it applies to all employers with 15 or more employees. Employers that don’t offer prescription coverage or don’t offer insurance at all are exempt, because they treat men and women equally—but under the EEOC’s interpretation of the law, you can’t offer other preventative care coverage without offering birth control coverage, too.

    “It was, we thought at the time, a fairly straightforward application of Title VII principles,” a top former EEOC official who was involved in the decision told Mother Jones. “All of these plans covered Viagra immediately, without thinking, and they were still declining to cover prescription contraceptives. It’s a little bit jaw-dropping to see what is going on now…There was some press at the time but we issued guidances that were far, far more controversial.”

    This makes the Republicans look even more like the slobbering pack of rats they are! This may turn out to be a big winner of an issue for Obama.

    • ralphb says:
      February 9, 2012 at 11:28 pm

      “We have used [the EEOC ruling] many times in negotiating with various employers,” says Judy Waxman, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center. “It has been in active use all this time. [President Obama’s] policy is only new in the sense that it covers employers with less than 15 employees and with no copay for the individual. The basic rule has been in place since 2000.”

      Not even religious employers were exempt from the impact of the EEOC decision. Although Title VII allows religious institutions to discriminate on religious grounds, it doesn’t allow them to discriminate on the basis of sex—the kind of discrimination at issue in the EEOC ruling. DePaul University, the largest Roman Catholic university in America, added birth control coverage to its plans after receiving an EEOC complaint several years ago. (DePaul officials did not respond to a request for comment.)

    • bostonboomer says:
      February 9, 2012 at 11:29 pm

      I’m afraid Obama is getting ready to cave though, because he should be out there defending it and he isn’t.

      • ralphb says:
        February 9, 2012 at 11:35 pm

        He doesn’t have to defend anything. Frankly, if he joined in it would get worse. Defending things like this are what surrogates are for, or supposed to be for, anyway.

      • Minkoff Minx says:
        February 9, 2012 at 11:42 pm

        I am with you BB, his silence is the usual MO for his future caves…Whatever happens, that we are even having this battle is f’d up enough!

      • bostonboomer says:
        February 9, 2012 at 11:45 pm

        Where are the surrogates then? I haven’t seen anyone defending it except Boxer and Gillibrand.

      • ralphb says:
        February 9, 2012 at 11:45 pm

        Those are what one would call surrogates defending women and the president’s actions.

      • ralphb says:
        February 9, 2012 at 11:54 pm

        Democrats have always been bad at defending presidents. I used to wonder all the time when Democrats were going to come out for Clinton, but they didn’t do it until he was impeached.

  3. bostonboomer says:
    February 9, 2012 at 11:44 pm

    Wait a minute… CHOCOLATE chicken pot pie??!

  4. ralphb says:
    February 9, 2012 at 11:52 pm

    U.S. jobless claims fall 15,000 to 358,000

    Contraceptives did knock out of the news that jobless claims are at the lowest level since April, 2008.

  5. ralphb says:
    February 10, 2012 at 12:04 am

    Someone should introduce a bill to rename the Mississippi River as it flows through each state.

  6. Minkoff Minx says:
    February 10, 2012 at 12:13 am

    I want to see this dick give birth…

    …and I want to know if he can handle the pain.

    And about the emotions compromising the situation, uh…lets just have a photo of those marines pissing on the dead…Santorum is an asshole.

  7. bostonboomer says:
    February 10, 2012 at 12:21 am

    Fox News host claims Obama used contraception controversy to “derail” Romney “train.”

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/09/fox-news-host-contraception-rule-a-conspiracy-to-derail-romney/

  8. northwestrain says:
    February 10, 2012 at 12:39 am

    So Hawaii should become the Independent Nation of Hawaii?? Very few pure white folk — Haole– are the minority. How boring — one race — everyone talks the same — looks the same, walks the same. BOOOOORRRING.

    Stupid — ignorant people —

    And then there’s the Hawaii that 0bowma grew up in — no wonder he sticks his nose up in the air all the time — he is a snob. He went to the most elitist high school/academy/prep school possible.

    Minority status in Hawaii — Kill the haole day at school.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Haole_Day

    Science fiction writers mostly missed this story — except for A Handmaiden’s Tale.

    We are living in strange times when an time traveling alien wins three wacky primaries.

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