Thursday Reads
Posted: July 2, 2015 Filed under: New Orleans, U.S. Politics | Tags: Andrew Jackson, confederacy, historical monuments and sites, Robert E Lee 20 Comments
Good afternoon!
BostonBoomer got into a bad fight with a bush that needed trimming and came out the loser yesterday. She’s laid up at her mother’s house with a terrible, horrible, awful, very bad rash. So, I’m writing today’s post and it’s on the tardy side as usual these days. I’ve never been a morning person but now I have no reason to be since all my lectures, etc. happen in the evening. So, I’m just going to get us caught up on some thoughts today on the cultural shift of the last few weeks and give you a few suggested reads.
There’s some interesting things going on in New Orleans that I thought I’d share with you. We’re a southern city in a southern state even though our history is more nuanced that some of the other southern states and cities. There are two very prominent statues in the city from our past. The first is one of Andrew Jackson atop a stallion to recognize his role in the Battle of New Orleans.
The second statue stands on top of a huge column and is part of a traffic roundabout called Lee Circle. It is, of course, a statue of Robert E. Lee the Confederate General. Lee looks more than a little defiant with his back to the Mississippi and his arms crossed. He faces due North.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu has decided that he’d like to take down the statue and rename the circle because he feels that it’s a little too much of a monument to a confederate general. My question is when do we cross the line from glorification of past sins to erasing some history that we need to really discuss and understand.
Lee was not exactly Nathan Bedford Forrest, the ex-Confederate General who helped to found the KKK. Nor, was Lee a particularly gung-ho Confederate General to start out with if you remember your history. Lee did something completely different than Forrest after the Civil War. He became an educator and an advocate of educating black Americans. Lee also freed his slaves 10 years before the war. So, he was a complex man with a complex history as are most of our historical figures. Still, both of these men who led an insurrection need to be understood without glorification. Can a monument area become an outdoor teaching museum made to elucidate instead of glorify just as many of our National Parks and Museums already do.
After the Battle of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson became a U.S. President who is notable for the “Trail of Tears” which was the policy of forcibly and violently removing Native Americans from their land. The Chocktaw nation was removed from their land in the south and sent on what amounted to a death march west to what is now Oklahoma. There are two National Parks where Jackson figures prominently. One is the Chalmette Battlefield site where the Battle of New Orleans took place. The other is Trail of Tears National History Trail. One is a site of national pride. The other is a site of national shame. Jackson, you may recall, is still etched on our $20 bill. If any one’s statue needs to come down it is surely that of Andrew Jackson.
However, history is a nuanced bitch and should never be white washed or banned or removed. While I fully support removing the Confederate Battle Flag off of public buildings that aren’t museums, I question the wisdom of Mitch Landrieu and others who want to remove monuments rather than use them as an opportunity to teach.
Again, If any one deserves to have all his monuments torn down it is the genocidal Jackson. Yet, without the win at the Battle of New Orleans we might have a totally different history with the British. The citizenry who could vote at the time made him President. He was an extremely controversial President and at times very unpopular for a variety of reasons. Studying the variety of reasons helps us to learn about past mistakes and the ramifications of these mistakes to our present and future.
Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called “Indian removal.” As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers. As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the “Indian colonization zone” that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. (This “Indian territory” was located in present-day Oklahoma.)
The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their land. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations. In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian territory on foot (some “bound in chains and marched double file,” one historian writes) and without any food, supplies or other help from the government. Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a “trail of tears and death.”
This is what Mitch says about removing the Lee Statue and redoing Lee Circle.
Now is the time to talk about replacing the statue of Robert E. Lee, as iconic as it is controversial, from its perch at the center of Lee Circle, Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced Wednesday (June 24) during a gathering held to highlight his racial reconciliation initiative.
“Symbols really do matter,” he said. “Symbols should reflect who we really are as a people.
“We have never been a culture, in essence, that revered war rather than peace, division rather than unity.”
[Listen to Landrieu’s speech on why Lee Circle should be renamed, or read a full article on his announcement here. ]
The slaying last week of nine black people in a historic Charleston, S.C., church at the hands of Dylann Roof, an avowed white supremacist, has sparked heated debate about whether the Confederate battle flag and other symbols associated with the country’s racist past ought to be displayed in public places.
Just two days ago, Landrieu was noncommittal when asked whether the Lee statue should be removed, though he called for a larger discussion on it and other Confederate monuments in New Orleans. The 2018 Tricentennial Commission, whose tasks include addressing the city’s complex racial history ahead of its 300th anniversary, would also examine the propriety of the monuments continued display on public property, the mayor’s office said.
“These symbols say who we were in a particular time, but times change. Yet these symbols — statues, monuments, street names, and more — still influence who we are and how we are perceived by the world,” a spokesman said in a statement. “Mayor Landrieu believes it is time to look at the symbols in this city to see if they still have relevance to our future.”
Now, I will give him credit if he manages to get Jefferson Davis Parkway renamed. That shocked me the first time I saw it. But, there’s an opportunity lost in the Lee Circle suggestion. That opportunity is to highlight a complex moment in history and a complex man. One of his former slaves Rev. William Mac Lee wrote some fascinating bits about their lives together.
There are many more things that we could learn about the horrible institution of slavery and the men that enabled it. That’s a real conversation we need to have about race. That institution has shaped race relations in this country. We can’t bury or white wash the past by removing all elements of it. We need not glorify the men, but we do need to understand the history and work to ensure we correct the sins and errors of the past. We also, need to instruct on how their actions inform our lives now by including more into these monuments or parks. Rev William Mac Lee wrote this about his former owner.
I was raised by one of the greatest men in the world. There was never one born of a woman greater than Gen. Robert E. Lee, according to my judgment. All of his servants were set free ten years before the war, but all remained on the plantation until after the surrender.
We have an opportunity in these places where monuments reside to discuss the sins, the complexities, and all of the people impacted both past, present and future. There’s more than enough land there to introduce us to William Mac Lee and his descendants as they struggle to navigate the post Civil War South as well as understand the ways that Lee atoned and evolved.
Even statues of the nasty Nathan Bedford Forrest give us an opportunity to put a face and history on the horrible acts of the KKK including lynchings which were frequent and savage in many parts of our country. So, rather than just bury this history and these men, why not use the sites to explore the history of the lives they shaped? Lee became an advocate of black education even while maintaining the racist notions of the time that African Americans were savages that could eventually be brought to full status through education. That’s an attitude that needs elucidation because it still informs many in the South. I remember thinking of Lee when Barbara Bush made her pronouncement at the AstroDome on Katrina refuges. Forrest created the original domestic terrorist organization. How did these men take such different paths? How far have we come or not come since then?
So, in all of this call to bring down monuments, I hear no similar call to remove the statue of the genocidal Jackson that is also surrounded by enough land for us to be regaled not only with his victory at the Battle of New Orleans but his savage treatment of the Southern Tribes. The square could be used to connect the Jackson of Chalmette Battlefield to the Jackson of The Trail of Tears. For some reason, we seem incapable of grabbing teaching moments when they are upon us. But think, no one plowed under the major concentration camps and there are Holocaust Museums. They are are there for us to learn, understand, and evolve.
The SPLC has asked that holidays celebrated in the names of Jeff Davis and Robert E Lee be dropped. This is appropriate. It’s important to remove the glorification even while we search for deeper understanding of the acts, men, and history.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has launched an online petition asking that Alabama and four other states drop holidays honoring Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.
“It’s time to stop the celebrations,” the petition says. “We should honor those who represent American ideals, not those who led the fight to preserve slavery.”
The other states listed are Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi.
The petition follows other calls to remove symbols honoring the Confederacy since the murders of nine African-American worshipers at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., two weeks ago.
Gov. Robert Bentley had Confederate flags removed from a monument on the north side of the state Capitol last week.
In Birmingham today, a city board voted to explore removal of a Confederate monument from Linn Park.
SPLC President Richard Cohen said it was a good time to act on the organization’s concerns about holidays honoring Confederate President Davis and Lee, the South’s top general.
“We thought that now, while the public is sensitive to these issues and in some sense has a broader understanding of the nature of these kinds of symbols, that it would be a good time to put this issue on the public agenda,” Cohen said.
He said the petition was a way to start conversation.
“Why we honor people who fought to preserve slavery is a question I think the public has to ask itself,” Cohen said.
Again, it is a completely different thing to revere or honor bad actors. So, I’m a firm advocate of museums, parks, and national historic sites that tell the full picture. I’m not in favor of glorification. Maybe, we should also have a conversation on the true stories behind the Thanksgiving myths eventually. Plus, some one needs to talk to Mitch Landrieu about Andrew Jackson. The man committed genocide plain and simple. But that’s enough from me!!!
Here’s a few interesting things that you might want to read today.
- The Donald is tanking the Trump brand–which is really the only true asset he’s had for some time–as both Serta and Macy’s dump the bloviating presidential candidate’s brands. It seems that each of the companies prefer a diverse customer and employee base to the old goon.
- The US Navy Yard was shutdown this morning as reports of an active shooter emerged. They were later found to be false but caused a noticeable panic in the area.
- Candidate Bernie Sanders is drawing huge crowds on the campaign trail much to the chagrin of the beltway punditry. After all, SOCIALIST!!!!!
- Here’s an interesting story on a charter school that actually embraced teacher unions which is a bit of an outlier for that business/education model.
So, that’s my thoughts and suggestions for today.
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
Tuesday Reads: Indiana Summer Blogging
Posted: June 30, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: arson, black church fires, Bree Newsome, Charleston massacre, civil disobedience, Civil Rights, cruel and unusual punishment, death penalty, Indiana in Summer, lethal injection, Samuel Alito, Ted Cruz, US Constitution, US Supreme Court 25 Comments
Summer thunderstorm in Indiana
Good Morning!!
I’m still staying with my mother in Indiana. Her 90th birthday party was a huge success. Everyone that we expected showed up, and I got to talk to some cousins I haven’t seen in ages–except on Facebook. The weather sort of cooperated. It had been raining for days, but we just had intermittent showers on Saturday, the day of the party. We had the canopy set up over part of the driveway so the tables were on solid ground. We had too much food, so we donated some of it to a local homeless mission, ate some leftovers, and froze the rest. Since that day, we’ve had gorgeous sunny weather.
The image above of the first lighting strike of an Indiana thunderstorm comes from Schweiger Photo. I’m including other scenic photos of various parts of Indiana throughout this post.
Supreme Court Decisions and Reactions to Them
A country road in Randolph County, Indiana
The U.S. Supreme Court continues to dominate the news today. I know you have already heard about the terrible decision to allow Oklahoma to continue using drugs that cause intense, extended pain for their inhuman executions. The U.S. Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment, but Samuel Alito thinks it’s much more important to preserve the death penalty than to worry about whether the victims feel like they are being burned alive.
Carimah Townes at Think Progress: It’s ‘The Chemical Equivalent Of Being Burned At The Stake.’ And Now It’s Legal.
By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that the use of the lethal injection drug midazolam does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling comes more than a year after the botched executions of several inmates who remained conscious and experienced pain as they were put to death.
According to the majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, “petitioners have failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the use of midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment. To succeed on an Eighth Amendment method-of execution claim, a prisoner must establish that the method creates a demonstrated risk of severe pain and that the risk is substantial when compared to the known and available alternatives. Petitioners failed to establish that any risk of harm was substantial when compared to a known and available alternative method of execution. Petitioners have suggested that Oklahoma could execute them using sodium thiopental or pentobarbital, but the District Court did not commit a clear error when it found that those drugs are unavailable to the State.”
In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote, “as a result, [the Court] leaves petitioners exposed to what may well be the chemical equivalent of being burned at the stake.”
The Indiana Dunes at Lake Michigan
Alito’s “reasoning” is that since the death penalty is “settled” law, whatever drug is available must be used even if it causes extreme pain and does not cause unconsciousness. Remember when Clayton Lockett “gasped for 43 minutes” before he finally died?
Cristian Farias at New York Magazine: In Lethal-Injection Case, the Supreme Court Essentially Ruled That Death-Row Inmates Have to Pick Their Poison.
Now we know why the Supreme Court left Glossip v. Gross — a contentious case about the constitutionality of lethal-injection protocols — for the very last day of its term. Four out of five justices who had something to say in the case announced their opinions from the bench — an extremely rare occurrence that the American public won’t get to hear for itself until audio of the session is released sometime in the fall.
In a 5-to-4 decision, the justices ruled that the death-row inmates in the case failed to establish that Oklahoma’s use of midazolam, a sedative they claimed was ineffective in preventing pain, violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The case’s various opinions and dissents run a whopping 127 pages — far longer than even the Obamacare and marriage-equality decisions. And they’re a sign that states’ methods of punishment are a major point of conflict at the court.
But Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the lead opinion, went further: He said it is up to the death-row inmates and their lawyers — and not up to Oklahoma — “to identify a known and available alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain,” which is “a requirement of all Eighth Amendment method-of-execution claims.” In other words, it is the responsibility of those condemned to death to plead and prove the best alternative method to execute them. They have to pick their poison — otherwise, no harm, no foul under the Constitution.
And just so that there aren’t any doubts, even though the case was not about the death penalty proper, Alito went out of his way to remind us that “we have time and again reaffirmed that capital punishment is not per seunconstitutional.”
Samuel Alito should never have been approved by the Senate. He’s a monster.
Indiana corn, “knee high by the Fourth of July.”
The Court ordered that abortion clinics in Texas could remain open for the time being. Ian Millhauser at Think Progress: BREAKING: Supreme Court Allows Texas Abortion Clinics To Remain Open.
The Supreme Court issued a brief, two paragraph order on Monday permitting Texas abortion clinics that are endangered by state law requiring them to comply with onerous regulations or else shut down to remain open. The order stays a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which imposed broad limits on the women’s right to choose an abortion within that circuit.
The Court’s order is temporary and offers no direct insight into how the Court will decide this case on the merits. It provides that the clinics’ application for a stay of the Fifth Circuit’s decision is granted “pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition” asking the Court to review the case on the merits.
Ugh. I can hardly wait for the final decision./s
And then there’s the continuing unhinged right wing response to the Supremes’ decision on gay marriage. Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been in dangerous meltdown mode ever since the announcement on Friday.
A Converse County, Indiana road.
Politico reports: Ted Cruz: States should ignore gay-marriage ruling.
“Those who are not parties to the suit are not bound by it,” the Texas Republican told NPR News’ Steve Inskeep in an interview published on Monday. Since only suits against the states of Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan and Kentucky were specifically considered in the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which was handed down last Friday, Cruz — a former Supreme Court clerk — believes that other states with gay marriage bans need not comply, absent a judicial order.
“[O]n a great many issues, others have largely acquiesced, even if they were not parties to the case,” the 2016 presidential contender added, “but there’s no legal obligation to acquiesce to anything other than a court judgement.”
Izzat so?
While Cruz’s statement may be technically true, federal district and circuit courts are obligated to follow the Supreme Court’s precedent and overrule all other states’ same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional.
The Texas senator then went on to suggest that Republicans who have called for following the court’s decision are members of a “Washington cartel” and are lying when they say they do not support same-sex marriage.
“[Republican Party leaders] agree with the rulings from last week, both the Obamacare ruling and the marriage ruling,” Cruz said. “[T]he biggest divide we have politically is not between Republicans and Democrats. It’s between career politicians in both parties and the American people.”
I guess Cruz hasn’t bothered to look at the polls that show most Americans support same sex marriage–or, more likely, he couldn’t care less what Americans think about it. Get over it, Ted. Marriage equality is “settled law” now.
Another view of the Indiana Dunes.
From The Hill: Cruz bashes ‘elites’ on Supreme Court.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday bashed “elites” on the Supreme Court for imposing their will on America’s heartland in its decision to legalize same-sex marriage.
“You’ve got nine lawyers, they are all from Harvard or Yale — there are no Protestants on the court, there are no evangelicals on the court,” the 2016 GOP presidential candidate said on NBC’s “Today,” echoing criticism from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion.
“The elites on the court look at much of this country as flyover country; they think that our views are simply parochial and don’t deserve to be respected.”
ROFLMAO! Earth to Ted: You graduated from Princeton and Harvard and worked under former Chief Justice Rehnquist. Obviously you think the inhabitants of “flyover country” are too stupid to know that.
A couple more reactions:
AL.com: Roy Moore: Alabama judges not required to issue same-sex marriage licenses for 25 days.
The Texas Tribune: Some Counties Withholding Same-Sex Marriage Licenses.
Following the Charleston Massacre,
A windmill on an Indiana farm
a number of black churches have been burned in the South, according to Think Progress.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, at least six predominantly black churches in four Southern states have been damaged or destroyed by fire in the past week. While some may have been accidental, at least three have been determined to be the result of arson.
The first arson fire was on Monday at the College Hills Seventh Day Adventist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Knoxville fire department has said that the arsonist set multiple fires on the church’s property and the church’s van was also burned. On Tuesday, a fire in the sanctuary of God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Georgia was also blamed on arson, although the investigation is ongoing. And on Wednesday, a fire at the Briar Creek Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina was determined to be caused by arson, destroying an education wing that was meant to house a summer program for children, impacting its sanctuary and gymnasium, and causing an estimated $250,000 in damage.
The cause of a fire that destroyed the Glover Grover Baptist Church in Warrenville, South Carolina on Friday is unknown, while lightning is suspected in a fire that destroyed the Fruitland Presbyterian Church in Gibson County, Tennessee on Wednesday and a tree limb that fell on electrical lines is suspected in a fire at the Greater Miracle Apostolic Holiness Church in Tallahassee, Florida on Friday that destroyed the church and caused an estimated $700,000 in damage.
That is truly frightening. Read more details at the link.
A log cabin in Brown County, Indiana
Blue Nation Review: EXCLUSIVE: Bree Newsome Speaks For The First Time After Courageous Act of Civil Disobedience.
Over the weekend, a young freedom fighter and community organizer mounted an awe-inspiring campaign to bring down the Confederate battle flag. Brittany “Bree” Newsome, in a courageous act of civil disobedience, scaled a metal pole using a climbing harness, to remove the flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol. Her long dread locks danced in the wind as she descended to the ground while quoting scripture. She refused law enforcement commands to end her mission and was immediately arrested along with ally James Ian Tyson, who is also from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Read all about it and see photos at the link.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread below and have a terrific Tuesday!
Thursday Reads: Upcoming Supreme Court Decisions and Other News
Posted: June 25, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Affordable Care Act, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Obamacare, same-sex marriage, US Supreme Court 84 Comments
The Tea Party, Matisse Forman
Good Morning!!
The Supreme Court justices will convene this morning at 10AM. No one knows which rulings they plan to release. Will we learn their decision on same sex marriage? I hope so. I’m guessing they will leave the announcement of their decision on the Affordable Care Act for last. But who knows?
ABC News reports: Supreme Court Has Seven Final Cases to Decide, Including Gay Marriage and Obamacare.
The high court is saving the high drama for the end of its term.
As June dwindles, seven cases are left for the Supreme Court to decide — including one that could legalize same-sex marriage across the country and one that will significantly affect the future of Obamacare.
The court is scheduled to announce decisions Thursday, Friday and Monday, and it could add days beyond that. There’s no indication which decisions will be released on which days.
The seven cases are summarized at the link. On the two most prominent cases:
Same Sex Marriage
In a landmark decision, the court will confront two questions. The first is whether states can ban same-sex marriage. The second is whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states.
All eyes are on Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote three of the court’s most important opinions on gay rights. At an oral argument in April, Kennedy asked tough questions of both sides, and at one point he said “it’s very difficult for the court to say, oh, well, we know better” what defines marriage than centuries of tradition limiting it to the union of a man and a woman.
Affordable Care Act
The justices could deal a potentially crippling, if not fatal, blow to President Barack Obama’s signature health law.
The challenge centers on whether the federal government is violating the act by offering subsidies to lower- and middle-income people who live in states that haven’t set up their own health care insurance “exchanges.”
Sixteen states have exchanges up and running. The remaining 34 rely on the federal exchange. The law says the subsidies can be made available only to people living where exchanges have been “established by the state.”
The plaintiffs argue that the subsidies are illegal because the federal government isn’t a state. The federal government argues that it was always clear that the subsidies would be available to anyone who bought insurance on an exchange. The insurance industry argues that if the federal subsidies are struck down, Obamacare itself would enter a “death spiral,” with costs rising for a shrinking number of participants, eventually causing the system to collapse.
Read about the other cases at the link.
The Tea, Mary Cassatt
Possible Outcomes on Same Sex Marriage
Although no one can really know what’s going on in Anthony Kennedy’s confused mind, most pundits expect the Supremes to decide that states cannot ban same sex marriage. I hope they’re right.
Richard Wolf at USA Today: Anticipating high court’s blessing, same-sex couples plan weddings.
Mark Phariss and Vic Holmes have sent out “Save the Date” cards and plunked down thousands of dollars for their November wedding, which promises to be Texas-style big.
Brittany Rowell and Jessica Harbuck are busy laying plans for a January wedding in Mississippi, with traditional white dresses and all the trimmings.
Tim Love and Larry Ysunza have reserved their church for an October wedding in Kentucky, about the time of their 35th anniversary together.
Liz Neidlinger and Erika Doty have their sights set on an outdoor sculpture garden in Michigan next May.
Jon Coffee and Keith Swafford were engaged last October in Tennessee and decided to marry in a year, regardless of court action. If it had to be merely symbolic, that would be sufficient.
What sets the five couples apart from your average wedding planners is a small impediment: They can’t get married in their home states — not yet, anyway. But they’re so confident the Supreme Court will change that in the coming days that they already are making plans for the big day.
Tea, Henri Matisse
Chicago Tribune: Coming gay marriage ruling triggers anticipation, anxiety in gay couples.
Chantel and Marcela Gatica-Haynes, who live in Arizona, were married in a garden ceremony at an Ojai, Calif. bed-and-breakfast on Sept. 7, 2013. The wedding came less than three months after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling ended Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage. They returned home to Flagstaff and were married again last October after a federal judge ruled Arizona’s ban on the marriages was unconstitutional.
Though many observers predict the coming ruling will open the door wider to same-sex marriage, Chantel Gatica-Haynes worries her marriage could be impacted by a ruling against the unions. She worries more that a ruling upholding state bans could affect Marcela’s attempt to adopt Chantel’s 1-year-old daughter, Aspen.
“We’re just in this holding pattern,” she said. “The things that are hanging out there will affect our daughter’s future even when we’re gone.”
More at the link.
Summer Afternoon Tea in the Garden, Theo van Rysselberghe
The Boston Globe: Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision still in question.
When it comes to same-sex marriage, the justices have considered two principal questions:
1) Does the Constitution require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?
2) If same-sex couples marry in one state, where it’s legal, must other states recognize their marriages?
If the justices say yes on the first question, then same-sex couples in all states will be able to marry. If the justices say no to the first question, but yes to the second, then same-sex marriages will be recognized in every state, but states will not have the duty to marry same-sex couples.
If the justices say no to both questions, then states without same-sex marriage will be neither required to perform same-sex unions, nor to recognize unions performed out of state.
At oral arguments earlier this year, Justice Anthony Kennedy, widely viewed as the swing vote on the case, asked the petitioners early on about the role of the court in changing a definition of marriage that has been used for “millennia,” instead of allowing citizens to engage with the issue through the states.
But Kennedy, who spoke only 17 times during the hearing — the least of any justice barring famously silent Clarence Thomas — also spoke of the ability of same-sex couples to recognize the “nobility and sacredness” of marriage.
Read the rest at the Globe.
NPR: Maps: What The Supreme Court’s Ruling On Same-Sex Marriage Could Mean.
It’s always tough to predict how the court will rule but, broadly speaking, there are three main possibilities: the simplest is that the court declares state marriage bans unconstitutional, meaning states will all perform and recognize same-sex marriage. That’s a pretty simple outcome, but things get much trickier in the other two cases.
One other possibility is that the court decides to uphold bans. That means states that currently have bans could continue having theirs. But it also leaves 20 states up in the air legally. That group includes states where federal action struck down state bans. If the Supreme Court says bans are constitutional, those states could go back to having bans in place.
And there’s also the possibility of the court saying bans are constitutional, but that all states must all recognize marriages performed in other states. This option retains the messiness of the above possibility, but it does mean that couples would be recognized equally nationwide.
While you can break the decisions down into three neatly color-coded maps, there is a complicated web of state laws at work, and it means outcomes could vary widely by state if the court decides bansare constitutional. Adam Romero, senior counsel at UCLA’s Williams Institute, says the states where federal action struck down state bans are where things could get really complicated.
Read more and check out the maps at the NPR link.
The Affordable Care Act Ruling
Afternoon Tea, Susan Rinehart
From New York Magazine: Chief Justice Roberts’s Big Health-Care Moment, by Cristian Farias.
Chief Justice John Roberts has big plans after the end of the current Supreme Court term. He will be hopping on a plane to Japan, half a world away from any fallout that may result in the aftermath of King v. Burwell, the closely watched challenge to the Affordable Care Act. According to SCOTUSblog, that decision could come as early as this Friday.
Three years ago, when Roberts first saved President Obama’s signature law, he headed for the other side of the globe, to Malta — a CBS Newsscoop about a vote switch and internal “arm-twisting” by Roberts aroused such conservative wrath, the Mediterranean island seemed like a good place for him to teach some law and weather the controversy. “After ruling, Roberts makes a getaway from the scorn,” said the Times.
No one knows where the chief justice stands in King, but there are real-world, pragmatic reasons for him to side with the government again — even more so than with NFIB v. Sebelius, which threatened a law still in its infancy and not yet fully implemented. Now the prospects of unraveling insurance markets and millions losing health-care subsidies with an adverse ruling are real, and Roberts more than any of the justices cares about these things because the court bears his name and anything the court does, whether he had something to do with it or not, falls under his legacy. He’s the most accountable member of the least accountable branch.
But consider also that by the time a decision is announced, Roberts will have finished his tenth year on the Supreme Court — a milestone legal scholars and commentators will seize on to discuss that legacy, his jurisprudence, and whether he has delivered on his promise to be the kind of chief justice who merely “calls balls and strikes,” as he famously said during his confirmation hearings. Just yesterday, the Upshot suggested the court is leaning leftward more than any other time in recent history. And other retrospectives have begun to roll out: the Constitutional Accountability Center, a legal advocacy group, has published a series of reports on Roberts’s first decade and his record — on civil rights, campaign finance, access to justice, the environment, equality. The kinds of cases the public cares about. And yes, that includes health care.
Much more interesting analysis at the link.
Tea Party, Martha Walter
Washington Post: Supreme Court ruling could push health industry agenda to back burner — again, by Catherine Ho.
The health care industry was hoping this would be the year it could move beyond the Obamacare fight in Washington and on to new priorities, such as improving drug development and patient care.
But the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling in King v. Burwell threatens to derail those ambitions.
Industry advocates are concerned that no matter how the court rules on the legality of certain insurance subsidies provided under the law, the health care debate in Congress will once again become dominated by the political divisions over the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
“It has the potential for serious chaos and disruption,” said health care lobbyist Ilisa Halpern Paul, who represents hospital systems and health advocacy groups.
The court is expected to rule as early as Thursday on whether to strike down a critical part of the law by invalidating subsidies to 6.4 million Americans in the 34 states that have federally run health insurance exchanges.
If the court rules against the subsidies, Republicans will be scrambling to figure out whether they should find a way to keep them in place until after the 2016 election when they hope a Republican president and GOP-controlled Congress can repeal the law in its entirety. The concern for Republicans is that if they don’t find a way to keep the subsidies in place until a new plan is ready, they will face backlash from constituents who currently use them to offset the cost of their health insurance. The legislative focus on the subsidies would mean all other health-related legislative initiatives that have gained traction recently are likely to come to a halt, at least temporarily.
More at the WaPo.
And some maps of the possible results of the decision at Slate: These Maps Show How Radically the Supreme Court Could Upend the Health Care System.
Once again the fate of the Affordable Care Act rests in the hands of the Supreme Court. In King v. Burwell, the court is weighing whether the federal government can legally provide insurance subsidies to people who have purchased their health care through one of the federally run exchanges in 34 states. Whatever the court decides could also theoretically extend to three other exchanges—in Nevada, New Mexico, and Oregon—that are state-based but federally supported. Altogether, roughly $1.7 billion in tax credits and the health insurance of more than six million people is at stake. It’s arguably the biggest existential challenge to Obama’s signature health care reform since the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate in 2012.
The crux of the case is a perilous clause buried in the ACA’s hundreds of pages. According to the law’s exact wording, people become eligible for federal insurance subsidies if they’ve purchased care through “an Exchange established by the State.” Because of those last four words, the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell argue that federal subsidies can only be available on state-based exchanges, and not on the federally facilitated ones in most of the country. The Obama administration has countered that the purpose of the law is to make health care accessible, and that “established by the State” should be read with that in mind. Several of the people who helped pen the legislation have dismissed the clause as a drafting error.
The Tea Party, Jules Cayron
Other News, Links Only
#NotOneMore: Undocumented Transgender Woman Who Interrupted President At White House Pride Event Calls to End Deportation.
CNN: Obama shuts down White House heckler: ‘You’re in my house!’
Buzzfeed News: Bobby Jindal’s Plan To Stop Being A Punchline And Actually Win. [Good luck with that.]
Christian Science Monitor: Bobby Jindal was supposed to be the ‘next Reagan.’ What happened? (+video).
Slate: Bernie Sanders, Gun Nut. He supported the most reprehensible pro-gun legislation in recent memory.
NYT: Ex-Advisers Warn Obama that Iran Nuclear Deal “May Fall Short of Standards.”
AP via ABC News: Funeral Plans for South Carolina Church Shooting Victims.
CNN: 2nd prison worker charged in connection with inmates’ escape.
TPM: Lindsey Graham: Charleston Shooter Showed ‘Mideast Hate’ (VIDEO). [WTF?!!]
PIX11.com: Chilling letters from ‘The Watcher’ force NJ family to flee $1.3M dream home.
ABC News: Small Ohio Town Is Focus of FBI Probe After Strange Deaths and Disappearances.
10WAVY.com: NYC: Whole Foods mislabels prepackaged items, overcharges.
WaPo: Whole Foods under investigation for overcharging in NYC.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links on any topic in the comment thread and enjoy your Thursday.
Tuesday Reads: The Republican Party’s Mess
Posted: June 23, 2015 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Civil Rights era, Civil War, Confederate flag, Racism, South Carolina, Tea Party 69 Comments
Good Morning!!
I’m sure you’ll recognize the image at the top of this post. The photo was taken at a Tea Party rally in Washington, DC, a couple of years ago. I’ve included other similar photos in this post. Don’t tell me the people holding these flags don’t understand that it is a symbol of racial hatred.
Since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, we have seen shocking overt racism on display by right wing Republicans, and so called “mainstream” Republican elected officials have done nothing to stop it. The simple truth is that the Tea Party is a racist hate group that was formed in reaction to the election of a black president.
As a consequence of Republican officials’ refusal to call the Tea Party what it is, we have seen extreme right wing candidates like Ted Cruz elected to high office and stupid and hateful people like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann treated seriously by the media. It’s a national disgrace, and we should begin to hold Republicans responsible for it.
Nikki Haley was elected governor of South Carolina in 2010 as a Tea Party candidate, although she has since fallen out of favor with the group. Yesterday Haley made a cowardly, mealy-mouthed public statement calling for removal of the Confederate flag from the state house grounds, and yet today she is being celebrated in the media for her “courage.” Here’s part of it:
For many people in our state the flag stands for traditions that are noble. Traditions of history, of heritage and of ancestry.
The hate-filled murderer who massacred our brothers and sisters in Charleston has a sick and twisted view of the flag. In no way does he reflect the people of our state who respect, and in many ways, revere it.
Those South Carolinians view the flag as a symbol of respect, integrity and duty. They also see it as a memorial. A way to honor ancestors who came to the service of their state during time of conflict. That is not hate, nor is it racism.
At the same time, for many others in South Carolina, the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past. As a state, we can survive and indeed we can thrive as we have done whilst still being home to both of those viewpoints. We do not need to declare a winner and a loser here.
We respect freedom of expression. And that for those who wish to show their respect for the flag on their private property, no one will stand in your way.
But the statehouse is different. And the events of this past week call upon us to look at this in a different way….
One hundred and fifty years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come. There will be some in our state who see this as a sad moment. I respect that. But know this, for good and for bad, whether it is on the statehouse grounds or in a museum the flag will always be a part of the soil in South Carolina. But this is a moment in which we can say that that flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state.
It is South Carolina’s historic moment, and this will be South Carolina’s decision. To those outside of our state, the flag may be nothing more than a symbol of the worst of America’s past. That is not what it is to many South Carolinians. The state house belongs to all of us. Their voices will be heard, and their role in this debate will be respected….
But we are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer. The fact that people are choosing to use it as a sign of hate is something that we cannot stand. The fact that it causes pain to so many is enough to move it from the capitol grounds.
Why couldn’t Haley just admit that the flag on the her state house grounds is a symbol of resistance to integration and to legal recognition that African Americans should have equal rights; and that decades after the changes brought about by Civil Rights Movement they are still not treated equally by many, including police officers? By the way, maybe she should also consider opposing the efforts of Republicans in South Carolina to prevent African Americans from voting.
Last night I watch Rachel Maddow’s show for the first time in months, and I’m very glad I did. Maddow presented a detailed history of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the group whose website inspired Dylann Roof to murder nine African Americans at a prayer group meeting at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC last week. The Council of Conservative Citizens grew directly out of the White Citizens Councils that fought to maintain racial segregation in Southern cities in the 1950s and 1960s. From Wikipedia:
The Citizens’ Councils (also referred to as White Citizens’ Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South. The first was formed on July 11, 1954 After 1956, it was known as the Citizens’ Councils of America. With about 60,000 members across the United States, mostly in the South, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of schools, but they also supported segregation of public facilities during the 1950s and 1960s. Members used severe intimidation tactics including economic boycotts, firing people from jobs, propaganda, and occasionally violence against civil-rights activists.
By the 1970s, following passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s and enforcement of constitutional rights by the federal government, the influence of the Councils had waned considerably. The successor organization to the White Citizens’ Councils is the Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1985.
Maddow pointed out that in 2010, Haley Barbour was quickly eliminated from the race for the GOP nomination when he publicly praised the White Citizen Council in his home city of Yazoo, Mississippi. Maddow also interviewed SC Rep. James Clyburn about the history of the Confederate flag that still flies on the SC state house grounds. He explained that that flag was a Virginia flag flown by Robert E. Lee and that it has nothing to do with South Carolina history. It was put up over the SC state house in 1962 as a direct response to the battle for civil rights for African Americans.
Why couldn’t Nikki Haley simply admit that in her statement? Frankly, the Republican Party has allowed itself to become the party of racism and hatred; and it’s time for decent Republicans to face up to that and and deal with it honestly.
Here’s what Melissa McEwan wrote about Haley’s statement:
She couldn’t even be bothered to say that the thing is a racist symbol. Which has nonetheless not stopped members of her party from celebrating her courage.
The thing is, it’s not really “brave” to take down a flag that never should have been flying in the first place.
I see what Haley is doing as approximately as “brave” as when I clean up cat vomit. You’re supposed to clean up gross messes in your home….
let’s not pretend that it’s a Great Leadership moment, when it took 150 years of fluttering insult, and nine deaths in the last week at the hands of one of the many white people to embrace that contemptible symbol of white supremacy, to pull it off the flagpole.
I completely agree. As I wrote in a comment yesterday, the Confederate flag is a symbol of hate and fear that should be in the same category as the Nazi swastika and the “n” word. Why should people be allowed to fly it on their own property? Why should more intelligent and sensitive neighbors or even people driving by have to see it?
It’s way past time for Republicans to stop beating around the bush and clean up the disgusting mess in their party, and it’s time for all Americans to recognize that racism in any form is evil.
Here’s a more serious discussion of the meaning of the Confederate flag by Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic:
This afternoon, in announcing her support for removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer Dylann Roof had a “a sick and twisted view of the flag” which did not reflect “the people in our state who respect and in many ways revere it.” If the governor meant that very few of the flag’s supporters believe in mass murder, she is surely right. But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong.
Roof’s belief that black life had no purpose beyond subjugation is “sick and twisted” in the exact same manner as the beliefs of those who created the Confederate flag were “sick and twisted.” The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.
This examination should begin in South Carolina, the site of our present and past catastrophe. South Carolina was the first state to secede, two months after the election of Abraham Lincoln. It was in South Carolina that the Civil War began, when the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. The state’s casus belli was neither vague nor hard to comprehend:
…A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
In citing slavery, South Carolina was less an outlier than a leader, setting the tone for other states, including Mississippi…
Please go read the whole thing at the link.
Republicans are now arguing that Democrats are responsible for the confederate flag symbolism and for the South’s history of racism. It’s true that Dixiecrats fought to maintain segregation, but most of those old guys switched to the Republican Party back in the Civil Rights era. The Republicans own the mess now, and they need to get busy cleaning it up.
As always, this is an open thread. Please post your thoughts and links on any topic in the comments below.
Tuesday Reads: Jeb! Is Running for President, and Other News
Posted: June 16, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 presidential race, Jeb Bush 40 Comments
Good Morning!!
Jeb Bush is Running for President
Yesterday Jeb Bush announced that he’s really going to run for president, as if we didn’t know already. From Channel 6 South Florida: Jeb Bush Announces Republican Presidential Bid for 2016.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush entered the 2016 presidential campaign on Monday with a rally and speech at Miami Dade College, joining 10 other Republicans already in the race for the party’s nomination.
“I’m a candidate for President of the United States of America,” Bush told a spirited crowd at the college’s Kendall campus. “I am ready to lead.”
Six months after he got the 2016 campaign started by saying he was considering a bid, the 62-year-old former Florida governor formally entered the race at the college, an institution selected because it serves a large and diverse student body symbolic of the nation he seeks to lead.
Bush, whose wife is Mexican-born, addressed the packed college arena in English and Spanish, an unusual twist for a political speech aimed at a national audience.
Columba and Jeb Bush
I guess he’s going to exploit his wife’s ethnicity for all it’s worth.
“In any language,” Bush said, “my message will be an optimistic one because I am certain that we can make the decades just ahead in America the greatest time ever to be alive in this world.”
In his kickoff speech, he said Democrats are responsible for “the slowest economic recovery ever, the biggest debt increases ever, a massive tax increase on the middle class, the relentless buildup of the regulatory state, and the swift, mindless drawdown of a military that was generations in the making.”
Bush didn’t mention why the economy crashed in the first place–his brother George’s trickle down economic policies and his pointless wars.
Some reactions:
The Guardian is getting a bit ahead of itself, assuming that Bush and Clinton will each win the nomination of their respective parties.
Clinton v Bush: America is getting the dynastic matchup it said it didn’t want, by Dan Roberts.
The first salvos in the war for the White House were fired in Miami on Monday with the two families most heavily backed by pollsters, bookies and donors officially beginning a dynastic battle unprecedented in American history.
The Clinton “dynasty”: two people unrelated by blood.
OK, Hillary’s husband was president, but that’s not a dynasty. A dynasty is by definition a group of leaders from a family bloodline. The Bush family is a true dynasty–going back generations in politics, with a father and son who have each held the White House. Not the same thing. But nitpicking aside, they are not facing each other yet, and I seriously doubt that Jeb will get the GOP nod.
Dana Millbank at The Washington Post: Jeb Bush runs away from his family name.
If Jeb Bush is going to run for president as something other than a Bush, it will take a transformation worthy of Rachel Dolezal.
And yet the former Florida governor, who once accidentally checked “Hispanic” on a voter registration form, is doing everything but change his appearance to de-emphasize his inheritance. His presidential campaign logo, introduced over the weekend, is a simple exclamation: “Jeb!” His brother, the 43rd president, and his father, the 41st president, were not in attendance forhis presidential announcement speech in Miami on Monday. He didn’t even mention them until nearly the end.
“In this country of ours, the most improbable things can happen,” he said. “Take that from a guy who met his first president on the day he was born and his second on the day he was brought home from the hospital.”
And then the punch line: “The person who handled both introductions is here today. . . . Please say hello to my mom, Barbara Bush.”
Har har har . . . . get it? But he’s just a regular guy anyway just plain old “Jeb.”
The adoration of the 90-year-old family matriarch was disrupted by demonstrators who wore T-shirts spelling out “Legal status is not enough.” The candidate, taken off script, made a remark about immigration reform, then tried to pick up where he left off.
“So back to my family, just for a second.”
Ugh.
The Bush Dyasty:
Father, son, and two grandsons, related by blood.
About those demonstrators, Betsy Woodruff writes at The Daily Beast: ‘Amnesty Hecklers’ Moment Will Haunt Jeb Bush on the Trail.
Jeb Bush is getting used to hecklers real quick. He was officially a presidential candidate for about 20 minutes before a coordinated heckling campaign hijacked his announcement and pushed him into unplanned territory.
It felt like inverted déjà vu; just a few months ago, Bush joined Sean Hannity for a Q&A session on the main stage of CPAC, and a cadre of Tea Party activists and Rand Paul supporters made a dramatic exit in the middle of the former Florida governor’s speech. Led by a hirsute gentleman sporting a tricorn hat and a Gadsden flag, they marched out and then congregated in the hallway to tell reporters how unacceptable it was that Bush supports comprehensive immigration reform and isn’t Rand Paul.
Monday afternoon’s party-crashers made a ruckus on a similar scale, but for ideologically opposite reasons. They sported day-glo green T-shirts and stood up in a row in the middle of the candidate’s speech. Letters on their shirts together spelled “LEGAL STATUS IS NOT ENOUGH!”
Bush didn’t want to have to talk about immigration. A transcript of his remarks released to media as he began to deliver his speech didn’t include any references to the contentious issue. Bush’s stance on immigration reform is probably more detailed than any other contender’s, Republican or Democrat. Still, his hesitance to talk about it on the announcement stage makes sense, given that it’s a highly polarizing issue for much of the Republican base.
But if the former governor thought he’d get through his announcement without addressing the issue, he was dead wrong.
Read more details at the link.
From Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight: Pols And Polls Say The Same Thing: Jeb Bush Is A Weak Front-Runner.
Money isn’t everything, and it certainly isn’t the only thing in presidential campaigns. Still, as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush officially enters the 2016 presidential campaign today, there’s going to be a lot of talk about whether his super PAC can hit its $100 million fundraising “goal” by the end of the month. You should mostly ignore those stories; money matters, but Bush will clearly have plenty of cash. Pay more attention to whether GOP officials — governors, senators and House members, in particular — are backing Bush.
Late last week, Bush unveiled a raft of endorsements from Florida pols, including 11 of the 17 Republicans in the state’s U.S. House delegation. Normally, home-state endorsements are pro forma, but with a fellow Floridian, Sen. Marco Rubio, in the race, these endorsements are a bit more meaningful.
Bush now has more endorsements, 13, from current House members, governors and senators than anyone else in the 2016Republican field. He’s also the only candidate besides Sen. Rand Paul to pick up at least two endorsements from members of Congress who are not from his home state.
The endorsement race echoes the polling (Bush leads national polls by a speck and New Hampshire polls by a bit, and is running in the second tier in Iowa): Bush is a weak front-runner.
When we weight these endorsements by position (10 points for each governor, 5 points for each senator and 1 point for each representative), Bush’s 13 points account for 28 percent of all endorsement points so far. That’s OK, but not great. And most Republican bigwigs haven’t made a choice at all.
Lots more interesting data at the link.
Jeb in Germany
And finally, McCay Coppins at Buzzfeed News: Jeb Bush Embarks On Least Joyful Campaign Ever.
From the beginning, Bush has insisted his decision about whether to undertake a presidential run in 2016 would depend on his answer to one question: “Can I do it joyfully?” But now, as he officially launches his campaign at a Monday afternoon rally in Miami, Bush’s pursuit of the presidency seems destined to be a grinding, grumpy ordeal — permeated with disdain for the trivial demands of campaign pageantry, and rooted in a sense of duty to save the GOP from a field of candidates he seems to regard as unprepared or unserious.
Joylessness wafts off Bush wherever he goes, from the photo ops on his just-completed tour of Europe to the grip-and-grins on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.
He responds with impatient sarcasm when he is forced to field questions about political strategy — or his brother’s polarizing record — instead of public policy. “Anybody have some questions about Germany?” he deadpanned in Berlin, by way of announcing he was through talking about campaign personnel.
His strict adherence to the trendy, low-carb Paleo diet — with its onslaught of grilled chicken and raw almonds — has left him trimmer, crankier, and frequently complaining that he is hungry.
He has been told he needs to make an effort to smile more.
LOL! Read much more funny stuff at Buzzfeed.
The Rest of the News, Links Only
NAACP: NAACP STATEMENT ON THE RESIGNATION OF RACHEL DOLEZAL.
NBC News: Rachel Dolezal breaks her silence on TODAY: ‘I identify as black.’
The New Yorker: Black Like Her.
The Smoking Gun: NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims.
The New York Gossip Sheet Times: Why It Matters That Hillary Clinton Wore Ralph Lauren.
Business Insider: Chris Christie’s local newspaper says he’ll start World War III if he’s president.
I wonder what Rick Santorum et al. will have to say about this:
The Guardian: Pope Francis warns of destruction of Earth’s ecosystem in leaked encyclical.
The Washington Post: Pope Francis blasts global warming deniers in leaked draft of encyclical.
New York Daily News: Joyce Mitchell had sexual relationships with both escaped N.Y. inmates, sources say.
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