Controversies dejour

[howeird]

Paula Deen was under oath in a courtroom and lawyer asks if she has ever said "nigger". She said 'yes, but not recently'. The media hears the first part but not the second and brands her a racist. The reason she is in a courtroom is she is being sued by an employee whom she had fired, the employee making IMHO hard to believe claims of systematic racial discrimination against said employee.

The knee-jerk reaction from her various employers will bite them eventually.

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Snowden. Espionage? Srsly? Espionage is when you give classified information to enemies, not when you give it to We, The People™.

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The Voting Rights Act was not thrown out by the Supreme Court. What was thrown out was what I have always thought of as an unconstitutional section which singled out particular counties to be required to submit any proposed changes to their voting laws to a Federal court to be evaluated for discriminatory activity. IMHO all counties ought to be subjected to this level of scrutiny, or none of them. I hate to agree with Roberts, but in this case he's right that the 40-year-old list is no longer based on current data. His decision didn't throw out the special section, it only told Congress to update it based on current data. And again the media is screaming as if all voting rights are now in the toilet. Sheesh.

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Sad to see former Texas Gov. Ann Richards' daughter's filibuster against the proposed medieval abortion law was halted on a technicality.

Comments

[susandennis]

Ann Richards' daughter? You meant that figuratively? I can't find anything that says they were even related blood wise speaking. My Google skills broken?

However, I totally agree with your sentiment.

[howeird]

I misread the article. It was the Planned Parenthood spokesperson who is the gov's child.

[susandennis]

Ah yeah. Ok. Thanks.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I think you're simultaneously right and wrong about everything. Of course, I could be wrong. But I may be right.

I've come to a conclusion that things are going to hell in a handbasket, and the only positive thing any of us can do it is to sell handbaskets and make some money on the deal.

I am ashamed that I am going to the state of Texas for the Worldcon, and plan to spend as little money as possible without depriving myself of food and a place to sleep. What a horribly messed up government they have.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

The most reliable information I can find (BIM this is the internet) says the filibuster worked. Which is good.

It also seems that two hours after the Voting Rights Act was shall we then say amended? the same state of Texas announced its intention of doing the exact things that the amended Act no longer prevented it from doing; restricting voting rights. Which is not so good. As I said in a FB comment, now the Supreme Court has hard evidence that it was wrong, that the "data" is still depressingly "current," they should reverse their decision. But I bet there's some reason why they can't, or shouldn't, or just won't. Just like there was a reason why Bush and Blair couldn't be arrested and shipped off to The Hague two seconds after they left office.

All governments, everywhere, are messed up to some degree. It's the damn human beings...they get into the machinery.

Sorry, BLC, this should have been a comment to the post, not a reply to you. Not awake yet.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

That's OK - I'm asleep as well. I'd heard they ended the filibuster somehow and took a vote - nothing would surprise me. Sadly, I can't say what I really think in print, because advocating violence in public print is considered wrong and immature, but the evil the Republicans are perpetrating causes me to think evil thoughts in return.

[howeird]

The filibuster failed after 10 hours of the media cheering for it to succeed. At about 8 hour in, AP erroneously reported it had succeeded, but it needed 13 hours. BUT the bill it was designed to block also failed. CNN's write-up

Mixed feelings about the DOMA decision this morning. It only recognizes marriages in states where they are legal, which I fear will encourage the bigots to try to reverse the few existing state pro-gay-marriage laws. 3/5 of the states have same-sex marriage banned in their constitutions and the DOMA decision will not change that.

However, refusing to take on the Prop 8 case means we get back to legal gay marriage here in California. Yay!

So IMHO three wins, none of them resounding.

As for voting rights, I had not heard anything happening in Texas, but if it has, then Congress is free to act on that, and so is the US Attorney General. As I said above, the voting rights act was not struck down, only the part which requires some counties (in the US each county makes its own election rules, not just each state) to have their changes pre-approved by the Feds. The Feds can still prosecute violations of the Act as they happen.

And I would add Cheney and Obama to your list.