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Mac Thomason - the "war Liberal" - provides a voice of reason concerning issues that affect folks in Alabama. SERIOUSLY!
Anything that annoys the neo-Confederates is a good thing. Governor Bob Riley of Alabama, in proclaiming the bone-stupid but annual Confederate History and Heritage Month, accidentally dropped the paragraph naming slavery a cause of the Civil War - but he restored it and endorsed it. The paragraph, reads: "Our recognition of Confederate history also recognizes that slavery was one of the causes of the war, an issue in the war, was ended by the war, and slavery is hereby condemned ... "The neo-Confederates just about wet their sheets. And one of their leaders says that "Roy Moore will get all of the Confederate vote for governor." Roy Moore, candidate of secession.(Click thumbnail to view)
Senate Bill 520 (and House Resolution 1070), present us with an even more frightening bit of judiciary bashing called the "Constitution Restoration Act" (CRA) ... Introduced in the Senate by Republicans Richard Shelby (AL), Richard Burr (NC) and Sam Brownback (KS), the CRA would singlehandedly turn the United States into a theocracy by allowing government and its representatives to promote religion with impunity.
Here's the relevant text of the bill:
[T]he Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review, by appeal, writ of certiorari, or otherwise, any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.Never mind that the CRA amends existing judicial review laws in a way never intended by the Founding Fathers; or that it does irreparable injury to separation of powers; or that it aims to allow precisely the kind of endorsement of religion by government against which this country was founded.
Those issues, important though they may be, are dwarfed by the fact that the CRA explicitly authorizes government officials to violate the law by preventing citizens from availing themselves of the judiciary - the one mechanism they have to protect them from tyranny of the majority.
More than religiosity run amok, more than a sodomizing of the constitution with a rusty word processor, the CRA is organized thuggery of precisely the sort that characterizes the legislative agenda of every fascist state.
“I’d prefer using the criminal process rather than the regulatory process ... People who are in flagrant disregard should face a criminal process rather than a regulator process ... Aim the cannon specifically at the people committing the offenses, rather than the blunderbuss approach that gets the good actors.
[The chairman of one of the most important congressional committees for the entertainment industry - Rep. F. James (Making absolutely NO) Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis.]
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Robyn Blumner - St.. Pete Times writes:
By following the lead of fundamentalists, our nation has turned off course. It is time for religious moderates to start challenging the dangerous views of some of their brethren. In his book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, author and neuroscientist Sam Harris says it is time we stop tiptoeing around religious zealots - of any faith or denomination - and start challenging their implausible world view.
From Sam Harris:
"If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us. Add weapons of mass destruction to this diabolical clockwork, and you have found a recipe for the fall of civilization."
Harris is particularly worried about the rise of militant Islam. But his call is that we stop insulating all religions from the credulity tests we would normally apply to other fields of inquiry, such as physics and history.
He puts the blame for allowing the perpetuation of these ancient blood decrees on religious moderates. Those who reject the murderous exhortations from these holy books, but refuse to denounce those who accept every word as a direction from God, are giving fundamentalists a pass, according to Harris.
"By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally," Harris writes.
Those people in the middle, who think it is inappropriate to challenge the religious certainty of others, have allowed our country to be hijacked by irrational forces. In poll after poll, a large majority of Americans say they would not want to be kept alive as Terri Schiavo has been. But the elected branches of government are beholden to a vocal fringe of religious extremists
As Harris insightfully notes:
"The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us."
Robyn Blumner sums up with
"That would be a world in which fundamentalists are marginalized by their own closed minds ..."
I gleaned these from 146 E-Mails this morning . . .
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2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they could find the time -- and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.
10. The DAYTON DAILY NEWS is read by people who aren't sure there is a country ... or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy provided, of course, that they are not Republicans.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
12. None of these is read by the guy who is running the country into the ground ...
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(Click)DILLON's CATALOG
VERIFIED @SNOPES.COM
The following mind-boggling attempt at a crime spree in Washington, USA, appeared to be the robber’s first (and last), due to his lack of a previous record of violence, and his terminally stupid choices:
1. His target was H&J Leather & Firearms, A gun shop specializing in handguns.
2. The shop was full of customers — firearms customers.
3. To enter the shop, the robber had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
4. A uniformed officer was standing at the counter, having coffee before work. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a .22 target pistol.
5. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, the police officer with a 9mm Glock 17, the clerk with a .50 Desert Eagle, assisted by several customers who also drew their guns, several of whom also fired, The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics.
6. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop.
7. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt in the exchange of fire.
8. Here we are at the beginning of March and we already may have the 2005 winner of the Darwin Award. This guy is going to be hard to beat.
Good fortune . . .
