Posts Tagged ‘bigot’
Federal judge says minorities are predisposed to commit crimes
Civil rights advocates in Texas said they will file a complaint against a federal judge for telling a law school audience minorities “are predisposed to crime.”
The Texas Civil Rights Project, based in Austin, said on its website Wednesday it would join with other organizations to file the judicial-misconduct complaint against Edith Jones, a senior judge of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, over remarks she made in February during a speech at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.
The complaint alleges Jones’ remarks “violated basic rules of judicial ethics, including the fundamental duty of impartiality,” and were biased against minority groups and people with mental disabilities. It says Jones told her audience certain “racial groups like African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime,” and are more apt than others to commit “heinous” crimes and other acts of violence.
The complaint alleges Jones told the law school audience she is disgusted by capital case defendants’ claims of “mental retardation” and execution is a service to such defendants because they are “likely to make peace with God only in the moment before their imminent execution,” the TCRP said in the release…
Jones was considered as a potential U.S. Supreme Court nominee during the administration of former President George W. Bush, the San Antonio Express-News said.
Of course she was considered. She fits the model approved and recommended by neocons, the Tea Party and old-fashioned rightwing creeps enjoying their newfound “leadership” status within the Republican Party.
A Catholic school’s teaching about civil rights
Bishop Watterson High School students protest the firing of Carla Hale
No one at the Catholic high school that fired Carla Hale in March claimed that she was anything less than a terrific physical education teacher and coach, devoted to the kids and adored by many of them.
No one accused her of bringing her personal life into the gym or onto the fields. By nature she’s private. And she loved her job too much to risk it that way.
But she lost it nonetheless, and the how is as flabbergasting as the why is infuriating.
Rather suddenly, her mother died, and an hour afterward, she and her brother numbly went through the paces of a standard obituary, listing survivors. Her brother included his wife. So Carla included her partner, Julie, whom her mother had known well and loved. Leaving Julie out would have been unthinkable, though Carla didn’t really think it through at the time. Her grief was still raw.
A parent of one of the school’s students spotted the obituary, and wrote an anonymous letter to the school and to the Diocese of Columbus, saying that they couldn’t allow a woman like Carla to educate Catholic children.
So they don’t, not anymore. In a termination notice, the principal explained that Carla’s “spousal relationship violates the moral laws of the Catholic Church.” That was the sum of the stated grievance against her, and after more than 18 years at Bishop Watterson High School, Carla, 57, was done…
So much for what the Catholic Church really thinks about the rights of working people.
Hollywood conservative unmasked as notorious Holocaust denialist – decides to return to his old ways
To those who knew him, or thought they knew him, he was a cerebral, fun-loving gadfly who hosted boozy gatherings for Hollywood’s political conservatives. David Stein brought right-wing congressmen, celebrities, writers and entertainment industry figures together for shindigs, closed to outsiders, where they could scorn liberals and proclaim their true beliefs.
Over the past five years Stein’s organisation, Republican Party Animals, drew hundreds to regular events in and around Los Angeles, making him a darling of conservative blogs and talkshows. That he made respected documentaries on the Holocaust added intellectual cachet and Jewish support to Stein’s cocktail of politics, irreverence and rock and roll.
There was just one problem. Stein was not who he claimed. His real name can be revealed for the first time publicly – a close circle of confidants only found out the truth recently – as David Cole. And under that name he was once a reviled Holocaust revisionist who questioned the existence of Nazi gas chambers. He changed identities in January 1998.
“That was when David Cole officially expired,” he told the Guardian in an interview this week. “That was the end of Cole. Or so I thought. That was when David Stein was brought into this world.
For 15 years I have been David Stein. Now the genie is out of the bottle. I’m done. I’m finished. I’m not going to try to remain as David Stein…”
The unmasking shocked and angered the small, tight-knit community of Hollywood conservatives, setting their Facebook groups ablaze and prompting emergency meetings.
Some of Stein/Cole’s erstwhile friends are media figures with blogs, newspaper columns and syndicated radio shows. They put a lid on the story. Not a word has been published or broadcast. “When people found out it was, ‘Oh my God, get the fuck away from him.’ There was debate about whether everyone would look guilty by association,” said one entertainment industry artist, a member of Republican Party Animals, who requested anonymity. “The reason we were all so pissed at him is it plays into every horrible stereotype about the right…”
…Cole today still challenges established Holocaust scholarship, including the certainty about Nazi gas chambers. “The best guess is yes, there were gas chambers” he says. “But there is still a lot of murkiness about the camps. I haven’t changed my views…
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said Cole’s views on the Holocaust could no longer be attributed to youthful naivete. “I’m very disappointed that someone who abused his Jewishness to get his five minutes of notoriety still stands by his lies. It’s disgusting and puts him in the camp of bigotry.”
Not a lot of anything new either about opportunistic bigots disguising the disgusting truth for their own profit and position. Another reason why – sometimes – stereotypes aren’t stereotypes; but accurate.
RTFA for beaucoup details about this slimeball.
Jesse Helms bones are the foreign policy skeleton in the closet
What US elected officials are doing to reproductive rights in the US is outrageous, but at least we have some recourse as voters and advocates. What US elected officials are doing to the reproductive rights of women in developing countries – through foreign policy that exports our own abortion hang-ups – is reproductive colonialism.
The Helms Amendment was enacted in 1973 and bars US aid recipients from using funds for abortion services, even in countries where it is legal. However, funding can support abortion referrals and even the procedure itself in cases of rape and incest. But it rarely or never does.
The language of the policy is vague and confusing, prohibiting “abortion as a method of family planning” and the “motivation or coercion” of anyone to perform the procedure. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) (and one presidential administration after the next) has continually neglected to provide sufficient guidance on how to implement the policy.
This has left ample room for misinterpretation by aid recipients and USAID staff, which is further fostered by the US’ long history of politicising and stigmatising abortion combined with the undue power of a wealthy donor country. The result is that Helms is being implemented as if it were a total abortion ban.
Seeds of stigma and censorship have been sewn into already-struggling health systems of poor countries, hampering meagre efforts to address unwieldy maternal mortality rates. It is poor women who suffer, unable to access the safe, legal abortion services they deserve…
Reproductive rights groups have raised the alarm, continuing to push the Obama administration to issue clarifying guidelines. Last year, 12 members of US Congress publicly called on President Obama to even reviewthe policy – the first time it would have received such close attention in decades…
Ideally, the Helms Amendment should be repealed. It is archaic and over-reaching, a relic of paternalistic aid that we should have long moved beyond. It was authored by the late Republican Senator Jess Helms, a well-known racist and homophobe, and is shameful as global reproductive health legacy.
But barring repeal, at the very least the policy should be implemented properly. This is not about personal opinion on the morality of abortion, but rather the principles of good, fair and effective foreign policy. Abortion counselling and referral as well as services in cases of rape and incest should be fully funded, and USAID should take active steps to ensure everyone – grantees, employees and government officials – knows this is so.
In his second term, President Obama can lead the United States away from racist and anti-human policies established within our foreign policy by one of the worst bigots in the history of Congress. So far, he ain’t making a peep. So far, he has done little or nothing to counter the so-called gift of Christian guidance provided to poor women around the world.
Jessica Mack reminds us that decades of hatefilled ideology and just plain stupidity are cast into iron bars defining the policies of the American government. Some of these are more than a little fragile – not needing much more than a hammer blow from someone with courage and a fist to hold that hammer. Ain’t seen it happen, yet.
New York City’s latest subway murder is a hate crime!
A 31-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday and charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime in connection with the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of an elevated subway station in Queens and crushed by an oncoming train.
The woman, Erika Menendez, selected her victim because she believed him to be a Muslim or a Hindu, Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said…
In a statement, Mr. Brown quoted Ms. Menendez, “in sum and substance,” as having told the police: “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.” Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said.
The victim, Sunando Sen, was born in India and, according to a roommate, was raised Hindu.
Mr. Sen “was allegedly shoved from behind and had no chance to defend himself,” Mr. Brown said. “Beyond that, the hateful remarks allegedly made by the defendant and which precipitated the defendant’s actions should never be tolerated by a civilized society.”
No one ever accused Tea Party bigots of being part of a civilized society. They’re still welcomed into the Republican Party with open arms.
Four years back we all witnessed John McCain rejecting this kind of stupidity. But, don’t worry, it won’t happen, again.
Ms. Menendez is expected to be arraigned by Sunday morning. If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. By charging her with murder as a hate crime, the possible minimum sentence she faced would be extended to 20 years from 15 years, according to prosecutors…
The attack occurred around 8 p.m. on Thursday at the 40th Street-Lowery Street station in Sunnyside.
Mr. Sen, 46, was looking out over the tracks when a woman approached him from behind and shoved him onto the tracks, according to the police. Mr. Sen never saw her, the police said.
Mr. Sen, after years of saving money, had opened a small copying business on the Upper West Side this year.
Ar Suman, a Muslim, and one of three roommates who shared a small first-floor apartment with Mr. Sen in Elmhurst, said he and Mr. Sen often discussed religion.
Though they were of different faiths, Mr. Suman said, he admired the respect that Mr. Sen showed for those who saw the world differently than he did. Mr. Suman said he once asked Mr. Sen why he was not more active in his faith and it resulted in a long philosophical discussion.
“He was so gentle,” Mr. Suman said. “He said in this world a lot of people are dying, killing over religious things.”
Welcome to 19th Century Oklahoma – judge denies name change because God decided DNA
No one told me we changed the American f;ag
An Oklahoma County judge is refusing to let men planning sex-change operations switch to feminine names.
District Judge Bill Graves has denied name changes in two such cases so far — last year and again in August. The judge ruled both times the requests were made for a fraudulent purpose.
“I wanted to give up and just die,” said James Dean Ingram, who asked to legally be known as Angela Renee Ingram but was turned down Aug. 30.
“It’s so important because it’s who I am. I can’t be who I am with a male name,” Ingram said.
The judge’s order in the first case is on appeal.
His position also has generated criticism of him at the courthouse.
Five other Oklahoma County judges who handle name change requests told The Oklahoman they routinely grant them in transgender cases…
…Graves wrote…“To grant a name change in this case would be to assist that which is fraudulent…It is notable that Genesis 1:27-28 states: ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth …’ The DNA code shows God meant for them to stay male and female…”
The judge in his 2011 order gave three specific reasons against allowing name changes in transgender cases.
He wrote it could result in someone unwittingly marrying a person “who appeared to be of the opposite sex but was actually of the same sex.”
He wrote it also could hinder crime investigations — causing police officers searching for a male based on DNA evidence to ignore a potential suspect the officers believed was female.
He wrote it also could let someone circumvent the state’s prohibitions against same-sex marriage.
The man is an ignoranus. The average college graduate – at least from schools free of administration by fools like this one – has sufficient book-learning to comprehend the importance of gender identification.
I hope I haven’t offended the half-dozen educated, sensible human beings who prefer for whatever reason to continue to subject themselves to the vagaries of Christian Sharia by continuing to live in Oklahoma.
I doubt if even the bass-fishing is worth it.
Republican official says New Mexico Governor disrespected Custer by meeting with American Indians — UPDATED
Pat Rogers, a Republican National Committee (RNC) leader, is facing calls for his dismissal after telling the staff of Gov. Susana Martinez, R-N.M., that because she agreed to meet with American Indians, she disrespected the memory of Col. George Armstrong Custer…
Rogers is a GOP lobbyist and partner with the Modrall law firm of Albuquerque, New Mexico. A recent member of the RNC Executive Committee, he is also an RNC National Committeeman for his state. He is currently in Tampa, Florida preparing for the upcoming Republican National Convention…
Rogers made the Custer-friendly statement in an e-mail obtained by Independent Source PAC and publicized by ProgressNow New Mexico, a liberal advocacy organization that is urging his exit from the RNC…
“The state is going to hell,” Rogers wrote in part of the e-mail. “Col. [Allen] Weh would not have dishonored Col. Custer in this manner.” Weh was a Republican candidate for governor of New Mexico in 2010 who ran against Martinez.
The e-mail was sent following a meeting in June between Martinez and the state’s tribes, according to ProgressNow. It was directed to senior members of the governor’s administration…
“George Armstrong Custer may be regarded as a kind of military hero by Pat Rogers, but to the Native peoples of America Custer represents the bellicose imperialism that was responsible for the systematic slaughter of American Indians throughout this continent,” according to an e-mail being circulated by ProgressNow.
“Such a blatantly racist statement against our Native people is offensive from anyone, but to come from a national GOP leader and lobbyist for some of our country’s largest corporations is indefensible,” said Pat Davis, executive director of ProgressNow New Mexico, in a statement.
The list of firms this bigot represents as lobbyist include General Motors, Molina Healthcare, Motorola, CYRQ Energy and Verizon. The petition from ProgressNow includes them in the list of those contacted about Rogers’ racist position.
Am I surprised to read such racist crap from a leading New Mexico Republican? Of course not.
Do I expect today’s Republican Party to disavow Roger’s arrogance and bigotry? Of course not.
This is what the Republican Party has become. Home base for the disaffected racists of America. A hate magnet which gathers in the most reactionary nutballs in this land – and says they are the vision of conservatism represented by 21st Century Republicans.
UPDATE: Roger’s boss at the Modrall Sperling law firm “accepted” his resignation, today. More than the Republican Party will do — no doubt.
Arizona border vigilante shooting ends with 5 dead
GILBERT, Arizona — The police confirmed Thursday that a former Marine and aspiring politician who led a vigilante border militia group was among five people shot to death on Wednesday in what apparently was a murder-suicide at a home in this suburban Phoenix town.
The leader, Jason Todd Ready, who was called J. T., was known as a gun-carrying, camouflage-clad extremist who preached violence to stop immigrants and drug smugglers from crossing the Arizona desert into the United States from Mexico.
“I firmly believe in having a minefield across the border,” he once said…
The bodies of Mr. Ready, 39, and another man, Jim Franklin Hiott, 24, were found just outside the home’s front door. The bodies of Mr. Ready’s girlfriend, Lisa Lynn Mederos, 47; her daughter, Amber Mederos, 23; and her 15-month-old granddaughter, Lily Lynn Mederos, were inside.
Inside the house, the police recovered two handguns, a shotgun and six projectile grenades, which Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix, said are strictly for military use. Officers also found two 55-gallon drums containing an unknown chemical. Sergeant Balafas said federal agents were investigating the origin of the weapons and the nature of the chemical, as well as why they were there…
To Harry Hughes, regional director of the National Socialist Movement, the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States, Mr. Ready was “a patriot” — “a sincere and compassionate man,” he said in a telephone interview. Mr. Ready had been a member of the movement, Mr. Hughes said, but resigned two years ago to found the U.S. Border Guard, an armed group that conducted expeditions in the Arizona desert to search for migrants and drug smugglers…
“J. T. Ready has a long history of thuggish and violent behavior,” Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in an interview. “He really typified the ugly racism and violent attitude of a lot of people that we see in the nativist movement.”
In recent years, Mr. Ready tried his hand at politics; in 2007, he was photographed at a rally against illegal immigration with Russell Pearce, a former State Senate president and the architect of Arizona’s contested immigration law, known as S.B. 1070.
Anyone surprised? If you take a good look around you will find nutballs like this on the fringe of political movements that cater to anarchy. Doesn’t matter if they’re Left or Right – though the right-wing gets to claim most of the types who like to pretend they’re defending the white nation from an non-white threat.
There isn’t anything positive to learn from this other than guns in the hands of someone who believes in political violence are just as likely to lead to personal violence and death. That won’t mean anything to the NRA, the Tea Party or any other nativist paranoids.
Conservative magazine – National Review – finally fires bigot
The National Review has fired columnist John Derbyshire over a web posting in which he wrote that black people are hostile to whites and that white people should stay out of black neighborhoods and away from black crowds.
The magazine on Saturday night disavowed Derbyshire’s “nasty and indefensible” posting – which ran on a website unrelated to the National Review – and said it amounted to a “letter of resignation” by the columnist.
“We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer,” editor Rich Lowry said in a posting on the magazine’s website.
“Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways,” Lowry said…
Derbyshire said children were advised to “avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally,” stay out of heavily black neighborhoods and avoid events likely to attract a lot of black people.
The column sparked outcries of racism and calls for Derbyshire’s dismissal from bloggers, news publications and some of the National Review’s own editors.
The thug has advocated moving away from cities that elect Black politicians, that white men have a higher intelligence than anyone else – and previously advocated that women should not be allowed to vote. Because our Constitution protects the rights of fools to preach what they wish does not mean they are guaranteed an income from their hate speech.
The National Review has been foot-dragging – as usual – over their association with racist and bigoted ideology. Whether the rationales are literate enough to satisfy their Ivy League roots or dull and illogical enough to bring a moronic smile to the Kool Aid Party – the result has been the same. Providing a pulpit for political pigs.
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