Radical Republicans: Violence Against Hindus.
(based on material from the Hindu) Last Tuesday, back over Washington’s Eastern border, the Idaho Senate was opened by a Hindu prayer in in Sanskrit and English. Society of Hinduism president Rajan Zed gave the prayer after being invited by Senate President Pro-Tem Brent Hill.
Four Republican Senators walked out. Senator Steve Vick walked out of the Senate saying that that Hindu prayers should not be allowed because the U.S. was “built on the Judeo-Christian, not only religion, but work ethic, and I don’t want to see that undermined”, Hindus “have a caste system,” he added. “They worship cows.” Senator Sheryl Nuxoll said she boycotted Mr. Zed’s prayer because she believed the United States is a Christian nation and “Hindu is a false faith with false gods,” according to the newspaper.
The Statesman quoted Mr. Zed as saying of the protests: “We don’t mind. Hinduism is more embracing.”
Idaho borders Washington State, where two Hindu temples were vandalised last month. The second attack occurred the same week that an influential Christian fundamentalist preacher, Pat Robertson, said on his TV show that Hindu prayer “sounds like gibberish.”
A former candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, he had earlier called Hinduism “demonic.”
“What black man holds a steady job for four years?”
That’s a Ferguson cop joking about the President of the United States to a Ferguson municipal court employee in an email explaining why Obama wouldn’t be president very long, according to a Justice Department report to be released later today, the Guardian reported. At this point the email’s author isn’t identified.
DOJ’s investigation of Ferguson police also uncovered another racist joke, about a black woman getting a check from Crimestoppers for getting an abortion.
Preliminary hints of DOJ’s findings outline a pattern of systematic racism in the white-run city whose population is predominantly black and poor. Ferguson’s all-white police force and municipal court system exploit and discriminate against blacks, the report shows, with blacks accounting for most of the city’s tickets, fines, and arrests.
Update: Ferguson’s mayor says a police department employee has been fired and two others placed on administrative leave pending investigation because of this and other racist emails.
Photo: This man can’t hold a steady job, according to a former Ferguson city employee, who is now unemployed.
California lawyer files initiative to have “Sodomites” put to death
A California lawyer has filed an initiative, called the “Sodomite Suppression Act,” requiring that ‘any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method” and imposing $1 million fines and 10-year prison sentences on anyone who “distributes, performs, or transmits any sodomistic propaganda” (and throws in banishment for good measure). There probably are some free speech, equal protection, and due process problems with this; but never mind all that, he has that angle covered. The initiative also provides:
“This law is effective immediately and shall not be rendered ineffective or invalidated by any court, state or federal, until heard by a quorum of the Supreme Court of California consisting only of judges who are neither sodomites nor subject to disqualification hereunder.”
Matthew Gregory McLaughlin, who has an office in a Huntington Beach strip mall, wants to protect California from “God’s wrath” for harboring what he calls “Sodomites.” Which makes me wonder: Was this guy molested by a funny uncle when he was a kid? Or is he just a religious extremist? This isn’t his first initiative; in 2004, he filed an initiative to give Bibles to all public school students in California. That one probably had constitutional issues, too.
Image: Will this be California’s fate when God’s wrath descends upon modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah?
Text of “Sodomite Suppression Act” amending California Penal Code Sec. 39:
“a) The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
“b) Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating wickedness in our midst, the People of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.
“c) No person shall distribute, perform, or transmit sodomistic propaganda directly or indirectly by any means to any person under the age of majority. Sodomistic propaganda is defined as anything aimed at creating an interest in or an acceptance of human sexual relations other than between a man and a woman. Every offender shall be fined $1 million per occurrence, and/or imprisoned up to 10 years, and/or expelled from the boundaries of the state of California for up to life.
“d) No person shall serve in any public office, nor serve in public employment, nor enjoy any public benefit, who is a sodomite or who espouses sodomistic propaganda or who belongs to any group that does.
“e) This law is effective immediately and shall not be rendered ineffective nor invalidated by any court, state or federal, until heard by a quorum of the Supreme Court of California consisting only of judges who are neither sodomites nor subject to disqualification hereunder.
“f) The state has an affirmative duty to defend and enforce this law as written, and every member of the public has standing to seek its enforcement and obtain reimbursement for all costs and attorney’s fees in so doing, and further, should the state persist in inaction over 1 year after due notice, the general public is empowered and deputized to execute all the provisions hereunder extra-judicially, immune from any charge and indemnified by the state against any and all liability.
“g) This law shall be known as “The Sodomite Suppression Act” and be numbered as section 39 in Title 3 of the Penal Code, pertaining to offences [sic] against the sovereignty of the state. The text shall be prominently posted in every public school classroom. All laws in conflict with this law are to that extent invalid.”
Filing this initiative cost McLaughlin 200 bucks. The publicity it’ll generate for his law practice likely is priceless, although if I needed a lawyer, I’d want someone with a better command of basic legal principles.
I’m curious why this “Sodomite Suppression Act” calls for shooting gays, instead of stoning them. Lacking more information, I assume McLaughlin was motivated by compassion for the condemned.
Republicans propose to ban history
With Republican-controlled legislatures in several states poised to ban the teaching of history in their public schools, and replace it with a requirement that students read Reagan speeches, we are reminded that, “Conservative contempt for academia has long been established” and “a hallmark of the modern conservative movement … is that science and knowledge is only valuable to the extent to which it can shore up conservative beliefs.”
It’s perhaps emblematic of our times that Scott Walker is shooting up in Republican polls. If he wins the GOP nomination and White House, he will be only the second president* since Grover Cleveland who didn’t graduate from college, which in retrogression terms beats George W. Bush’s “gentleman’s Cs” from Yale by a country mile.
Let’s suppose he makes it. Not to be outdone, the next generation of Republican presidents will be people who dropped out of homeschooling in sixth grade.
(* Harry Truman attended business college and law school, but didn’t receive degrees from either.)
Image: What a Walker presidency would look like.
South Carolina preserves Southern tradition
This is a tale of two plaques, old and new.
The old plaque commemorates Greenwood, South Carolina’s fallen of World War I — segregated under “White” and “Colored” headings. The new plaque, bought with $15,000 raised by the town’s two American Legion posts — one for whites, one for coloreds — desegregates the list of fallen soldiers by simply listing them all alphabetically.
A South Carolina law passed recently to protect the South’s traditions precludes replacing the old plaque with the new one. It would take an act of the legislature to authorize it. A local resident threatened to have the mayor arrested if he removes the old plaque. Someone else helpfully suggested sticking the new plaque in a museum.
Southern spirit is alive and well in South Carolina.
“We didn’t vaccinate our kids and they’re fine … “
… because he and his wife are home schooling them, so they’re not exposed to germs, says freshman GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk, newest member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
GOP lacks appeal to youths
If this photo and chart are indications, the GOP will be in big trouble when all the angry old white men die off. (Hat tip to Daily Kos)
Photo: Thin attendance at a CPAC youth voter outreach session.