Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA today and after a big hoopla the Obama Administration sided with the TSA.

Remember a similar story back in 2004 when Senator Ted Kennedy was detained because his name was similar to one on the “no fly” list?

I have to wonder, doesn’t this violate Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution which provides that members of Congress…

…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

Oh, the joys of living in a police state.

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• November 30, 2011 -- The SOPA scoop
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• August 11, 2011 -- Mr. President tell us the truth! [Must see video]
  The United States is being plundered and extorted by the global oligarchs who seek profit at any cost. Privatized profits, socialized risk. The oligarchs are literally stealing from the elderly, students and working Americans through a system of tax cuts and spending cuts and too-big-to-fail. The president needs to stand up to this bought-and-sold Congress and communicate to the American people just who is responsible for this mess, how to get out of it and tell the truth about the reason...

I like to think of the ability to peacefully amend the constitution as the constitutional safety valve, with an Article V convention being the ultimate tool of We the People to reign in our government. This was the wisdom of our Founders. It keep us from violent government overthrow, which would be disastrous. It’s probably time to make use of this legal safety valve.

The ever brilliant Robert Reich explain the case for a constitutional amendment, particularly in light of Citizens United.

Check out this video from Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who is a strong advocate of substantive constitutional reform. This is good brain food.

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• January 22, 2010 -- Countrymen, take your country back from the thieves
  I cannot emphasize enough how today's Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC, has completely undermined what shreds of democracy were left and has formally confirmed what we have had for years anyway, a corporatist kleptocracy.   This ruling puts a severe roadblock in the way of reclaiming our country for We the People. This is serous stuff, folks.  It's time for all of Americans to step up and become part of a serious populist movement to take over both political parties.  We need a ...
• January 23, 2012 -- Member of Congress detained by TSA, Obama Admin sides with TSA
  Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA today and after a big hoopla the Obama Administration sided with the TSA. Remember a similar story back in 2004 when Senator Ted Kennedy was detained because his name was similar to one on the "no fly" list? I have to wonder, doesn't this violate Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution which provides that members of Congress... ...shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their ...
• December 11, 2010 -- Robert Reich: Why Bill Clinton’s favorable view of Obama’s tax deal should be disregarded
  Robert Reich has a piece up on Huffington Post arguing that Obama's use of Clinton this week to convince Democrats to support his tax scam should be ignored. During the presser Obama pointed out that Clinton presided over the best economic boom our at least my lifetime.  Reich, however, points out, Clinton's economy was vastly different from Obama's. The recession Clinton inherited was relatively small, and caused by the Fed raising interest rates too high to ward off inflation. So it could ...

Mike Ludwig over at Truthout has written a good piece giving us a good overview of the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act. Emphases mine:

A movement to stop the bills has gone viral online. Web companies like Mozilla, Google, AOL and Facebook have come out against the legislation.

Both bills would allow the Justice Department to take down sites deemed to be “dedicated to infringing activities” and both the department and copyright owners would be allowed to sue alleged infringers. The bills also allow the Justice Department to demand that search engines, payment processors like PayPal, social media sites and service providers remove links and block access to targeted sites.

In addition, SOPA would make the unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison, a measure that prompted the American Censorship coalition to claim “singing a pop song on Facebook could be a felony.”

Broad language in both bills targets web pirates, but because many pirating sites operate outside the US and copyrighted content is mixed in with user generated media, a wide range of third-party search engines and sites would be forced into the legal process.

[...]

Censoring user-generated media could drive consumers toward more conventional sources, and it turns out the entertainment industry is a big supporter of the legislation. Comcast, Viacom, NBC Universal and industry groups like the Recording Industry Association of America have all joined the US Chamber in Commerce in supporting SOPA. Together, these groups have contributed more than $3.9 million to top members of Congress.

Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vermont) introduced the Protect IP Act, and the television, movie and music industries are his second-biggest campaign donor group, donating a total of $371,806 since 2007, according to OpenSecrets.org. The entertainment industry is top SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith’s (R-Texas) biggest donor with a total of $59,300 in contributions since 2011.

But some lawmakers are wary of regulating the Internet in tough economic times, and bipartisan opposition to both bills is building in Congress, with leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) coming out against the legislation in recent weeks. (Pelosi took a side via Twitter.)

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) recently told members of the House Judiciary Committee that their legislation is a threat to the Internet as Americans know it.

“In other words, the wrong approach to combating infringement could fundamentally change the Internet as we know it, moving us towards a world where transactions are less secure, ideas are less accessible and starting a website wouldn’t be an option for anyone who couldn’t afford a lawyer,” Wyden said.

SOPA is expected to receive markups on December 15 in the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate could vote on Protect IP by the end of the year or in early 2012.

Share your thoughts with these members. This is big industry’s payoff for buying members of Congress like Senator Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) and Representative Lamar Smith (@LamarSmithTX21).

Send some words of encouragement to Leader Pelosi (@NancyPelosi), Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) and Senator Ron Wyden (@RonWyden).

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• January 16, 2012 -- House kills SOPA
  An interesting development today... In a surprise move today, Representative Eric Cantor(R-VA) announced that he will stop all action on SOPA, effectively killing the bill. This move was most likely due to several things. One of those things is that SOPA and PIPA met huge online protest against the bills. Another reason would be that the White House threatened to veto the bill if it had passed. However, it isn't quite time yet to celebrate, as PIPA(the Senate's version of SOPA) is still up for ...
• January 23, 2012 -- Member of Congress detained by TSA, Obama Admin sides with TSA
  Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA today and after a big hoopla the Obama Administration sided with the TSA. Remember a similar story back in 2004 when Senator Ted Kennedy was detained because his name was similar to one on the "no fly" list? I have to wonder, doesn't this violate Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution which provides that members of Congress... ...shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their ...
• June 22, 2011 -- Sanders and Franken vs. Paul on senior hunger
  This is where the rubber meets the road. Ultimately, We the People will bear the cost of emergency and nursing care for the elderly indigent. Why not reduce costs by spending money on prevention instead? Even this fiscally responsable  approach escapes the libertarian Republican Senator Rand Paul. The the libertarian myopia is evident in this exchange between Paul and Senators Bernie Sanders and Al Franken. Paul mocks Sanders and Franken by saying, "It's curious that only in Washington can yo...

In a South Carolina prison sixty-six years ago, guards walked a 14-year-old boy, bible tucked under his arm, to the electric chair. At 5′ 1″ and 95 pounds, the straps didn’t fit, and an electrode was too big for his leg.

The switch was pulled and the adult sized death mask fell from George Stinney’s face. Tears streamed from his eyes. Witnesses recoiled in horror as they watched the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century die.

Now, a community activist is fighting to clear Stinney’s name, saying the young boy couldn’t have killed two girls. George Frierson, a school board member and textile inspector, believes Stinney’s confession was coerced, and that his execution was just another injustice blacks suffered in Southern courtrooms in the first half of the 1900s.

In a couple of cases like Stinney’s, petitions are being made before parole boards and courts are being asked to overturn decisions made when society’s thumb was weighing the scales of justice against blacks. These requests are buoyed for the first time in generations by money, college degrees and sometimes clout.

“I hope we see more cases like this because it help brings a sense of closure. It’s symbolic,” said Howard University law professor Frank Wu. “It’s not just important for the individuals and their families. It’s important for the entire community. Not just for African Americans, but for whites and for our democracy as a whole. What these cases show is that it is possible to achieve justice.”

Some have already achieved justice. Earlier this year, syndicated radio host Tom Joyner successfully won a posthumous pardon for two great uncles who were executed in South Carolina.

A few years ago Lena Baker, a black Georgia maid sent to the electric chair for killing a white man, received a pardon after her family pointed out she likely killed the man because he was holding her against her will.

In the Stinney case, supporters want the state to admit that officials executed the wrong person in June 1944.

Stinney was accused of killing two white girls, 11 year old Betty June Binnicker and 8 year old
Mary Emma Thames, by beating them with a railroad spike then dragging their bodies to a ditch near Acolu, about five miles from Manning in central South Carolina. The girls were found a day after they disappeared following a massive manhunt. Stinney was arrested a few hours later, white men in suits taking him away. Because of the risk of a lynching, Stinney was kept at a jail 50 miles away in Columbia.

Stinney’s father, who had helped look for the girls, was fired immediately and ordered to leave his home and the sawmill where he worked. His family was told to leave town prior to the trial to avoid further retribution. An atmosphere of lynch mob hysteria hung over the courthouse. Without family visits, the 14 year old had to endure the trial and death alone.

Frierson hasn’t been able to get the case out of his head since, carrying around a thick binder of old newspaper stories and documents, including an account from an execution witness.

The sheriff at the time said Stinney admitted to the killings, but there is only his word — no written record of the confession has been found. A lawyer helping Frierson with the case figures threats of mob violence and not being able to see his parents rattled the seventh- grader.

Attorney Steve McKenzie said he has even heard one account that says detectives offered the boy ice cream once they were done.

“You’ve got to know he was going to say whatever they wanted him to say,” McKenzie said.

The court appointed Stinney an attorney — a tax commissioner preparing for a Statehouse run. In all, the trial — from jury selection to a sentence of death — lasted one day. Records indicate 1,000 people crammed the courthouse. Blacks weren’t allowed inside.

The defense called no witnesses and never filed an appeal. No one challenged the sheriff’s recollection of the confession.

“As an attorney, it just kind of haunted me, just the way the judicial system worked to this boy’s disadvantage or disfavor. It did not protect him,” said McKenzie, who is preparing court papers to ask a judge to reopen the case.

Stinney’s official court record contains less than two dozen pages, several of them arrest warrants. There is no transcript of the trial.

The lack of records, while not unusual, makes it harder for people trying to get these old convictions overturned, Wu said.

But these old cases also can have a common thread.

“Some of these cases are so egregious, so extreme that when you look at it, the prosecution really has no case either,” Wu said. “It’s apparent from what you can see that someone was railroaded.”

And sometimes, police under pressure by frightened citizens jumped to conclusions rather than conducting a thorough investigation, Wu said.

Bluffton Today – ‘Crusaders look to right Jim Crow justice wrongs’ by Jeffrey Collins

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• January 25, 2010 -- André Bauer, another dumb right-winger with stupid ‘solutions’
  It's always enlightening when right-wingers' true colors show.  Having been immersed in the right-wing swill I can tell you there is a thick layer of crazy, insecure, paranoid hatred that is abundant below the surface and sometimes (more often recently it seems) some of this putrefaction bubbles to the top becoming olfactible to all. Well here is another story, reported by the Greenville News, that well reveals more of the right-wing cruel daftness we have all become well acquainted with. Sou...

In 1967 CBS aired a controversial episode of CBS Reports on a taboo subject at the time entitled, The Homosexuals. It was hosted by Mike Wallace and was the first national network documentary dealing with the topic of homosexuality.  Originally proposed in 1964, it took three years, two producers and multiple revisions to complete.

It is fascinating to see how far American culture has come when watching this documentary. There is exclusive attention to gay men. At no point in the documentary are lesbian women mentioned. The otherworldly approach to the gay community is interesting. Homosexuality is explicitly and implicitly treated as an aberration, a condition, a desease, a syndrome or even a handicap. There is constant talk of treatment and cure and what parents can do to prevent it. The gay-rights movement was viewed as a conspiracy, a kind of mafia, a cosa nostra, as clannish.

Mike Wallace cites some statistics of the time.  According to a 1967 CBS News survey, 90% of the American public viewed homosexuality as an illness, with two-thirds viewing homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear and one-in-ten viewing homosexuals with hatred. A majority of Americans favored legal punishment even for homosexual acts even performed in private.

At one point Wallace states,

The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in nor capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage.

To get an idea of the disproportionate approach of the law at the time, a Judge James Brackston Craven of the Federal District Court in Charlotte, North Carolina appears saying,

Is there any public purpose served by a possible 60 year maximum or even 5 year minimum imprisonment of the occasional or one time homosexual without treatment? And if so, what is it? Are homosexuals twice as dangerous to society as second degree murderers? Is there any good reason why a person convicted of a single homosexual act with another adult may be imprisoned six times as long as an abortionist, twice as long as an armed bank robber, 730 times as long as the public drunk?

Warren Adkins, who is in fact the prominent gay rights activist Jack Jichols, founder of the Mattachine Society, appears early saying,

The innermost aspects of a person’s personality is his sexual orientation, and I can’t imagine myself giving this up, and I don’t think most other people who are sure of their sexuality, whether they’re homosexuals or heterosexuals, can imagine giving that up either.

The great Gore Vidal is also interviewed offering a metacultural view,

We have a sexual ethic which is the joke of the world. We are laughed at in every country of the world for our attitudes toward sex. The United States is living out some mad Protestant 19th century dream of human behavior. Instead of saying, aren’t we wicked because we are at the highest divorce rate? Or aren’t we wicked because men like to go to bed with men and women like to go bed with women? Why not begin by saying that our basic values are all wrong. The idea of marriage is obsolete in our society. Everybody knows it. There are natural manogamers. There are people who indeed enjoy one another’s company, but can you imagine a man and a woman who are told that for 60 years they are going to have to live together and have sex only with one another? This is nonsense. Why not began by accepting the fact of what human beings really are, men and women, which is we are open. We have something André Gide referred to as “floating sensuality.” We can be aroused by this, by that, not necessarily by men, not necessarily by women. So let us begin with the reality of human relations and not start talking about moral fibre because we are not living out this mad 19th century dream of that everybody, we must, of Noah’s Ark and tombs, one male and one female and for 60 years in one another’s company. This is what’s at fault. This is breaking down. I think the so called breaking of the moral fibre of the country that these commentators speak of is one of the healthiest things that has begun to happen.

Wallace closes the documentary with the following,

The dilemma of the homosexual, told by the medial profession he is sick, by the law that he is a criminal, shunned by employers, rejected by heterosexual society, incapable of a fulfilling relationship with a woman and for that matter with a man. At the center of his life he remains anonymous, a displaced person, an outsider.

44 years later, we can look at all of this as an old attitude largely dead thanks to the efforts of so many men and women, gay and straight, who have tirelessly worked at moving the culture.

ht brain pickings

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• August 6, 2011 -- A century of Lucille Ball
  The late Lucille Ball was born 100 years ago today. In an 1980 interview with People magazine she was asked what she thought about gay rights. Her response, It's perfectly all right with me. Some of the most gifted people I've ever met or read about are homosexual. How can you knock it? What an amazing woman and one of the best entertainers of the last century!...
• August 5, 2011 -- President bars certain haters from entering the country
  Yesterday, the president issued a proclamation that could bar active gay haters from entering the United States. The proclamation titled, "Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons Who Participate in Serious Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Violations and Other Abuses," opens (with my emphases), The United States enduring commitment to respect for human rights and humanitarian law requires that its Government be able to ensure that the United States does not become a s...

Justice has been served for gross abuse of power. Yesterday, Pennsylvania Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. has been convicted of receiving $1 million in bribes from developers of juvenile detention centers for presiding over cases sending innocent kids to the centers. This sociopath been sentenced to rot in prison for 28 years.

The AP reports,

In the wake of the scandal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned about 4,000 convictions issued by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008, saying he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles, including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea.

Ciavarella, 61, was tried and convicted of racketeering earlier this year. His attorneys had asked for a “reasonable” sentence in court papers, saying, in effect, that he’d already been punished enough.

“The media attention to this matter has exceeded coverage given to many and almost all capital murders, and despite protestation, he will forever be unjustly branded as the ‘Kids for Cash’ judge,” their sentencing memo said.

The Wilkes-Barre Times Ledger reports,

The sentence was nearly four times the length of the 87-month prison term Ciavarella and his one-time co-defendant, ex-Judge Michael Conahan, had previously worked out with prosecutors in a plea agreement reached in January 2009. The deal was later rejected by U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik.

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…a militant Christofacist. They lurk in America too.

Such groups are among the fastest-growing extremist organizations in the country, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in February. Right wing anti-government groups grew by 60% in 2010 over the previous year, the center reported, attributing much of the growth to militia groups.

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I’ve never been a fan of non-traditional or tacky made-up names for which celebrities seem to have a fondness. I figure if you have to stick a human being with a label to wear the rest of his or her life, you should tread lightly.

New Zealand’s Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages is cracking the whip on names like Lucifer, Messiah, General, Baron, Bishop, Duke, General, Judge, Justice, King, Knight, Mr., 89, 4real, C, D, I and T. Yes, these are names that parents in New Zealand have actually given to their kids.

International Business Times reports,

The agency banned names involving asterisks, commas, periods and other punctuation marks.

The new regulations may be a response to the attention the country received in 2008 for allowing names such as Benson and Hedges for a set of twins, as well as Violence and Number 16 Bus Shelter.

The remote island nation is not the first to institute strict laws for naming.  In Sweden, name choices are subject to a naming law. So far, the committee has had the duty of rejecting such names as Superman, Metallica and Elvis as well the name Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced Albin, of course).

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The final step in the repeal of the unjust and reactionary “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is complete with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and President Obama certifying that the military is ready to discard this bullshit policy. The repeal legislation passed by Congress provides for a sixty-day waiting period before the repeal is actually implemented. Finally, this September gay and lesbian service men and women can openly serve with pride and dignity.

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• December 22, 2010 -- Big Day: President signs Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal
  ...
• February 1, 2010 -- Right-wing group says Obama is seeking to “sexualize the military”
  The ever predictable James Dobson founded, Tony Perkins led Family Research Council has responded to President Obama's call to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell" by claiming that Obama is trying to sexualize the military... sigh. From their press release... Washington, D.C. - Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released the following statement in response to President Obama's first State of the Union Address: "At a time of enormous economic challenge, two on-going wars in which Amer...
• September 20, 2011 -- The end of an era
  Today the United States military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is officially over. It is the end of a long era. There will still be challenges and there is still a lot of work to be done, but decades of hard word by so many courageous men and women to overcome fear and hate has lead to this moment, today. For all my disillusionment, I can take solace in this. Today, my country has made a huge leap forward and for that I am grateful....

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, who recently came out as an undocumented immigrant, appeared on the Colbert Report last night. As Jose explains in this interview, he was sent from the Philippines by his parents as a child. He started Define American. Please go over and sign up and show your support for his efforts to bring light to our broken immigration system. I applaud Vargas’ courage.

I also have to give a shout out to my friend and fellow blogger Carlos Quiroz who lives in D.C. Carlos is from Perú and also recently came out as an undocumented immigrant.  It is men and women of courage like Jose and Carlos who effect real change in our country.

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• June 22, 2011 -- Now an Arizona sheriff blames fire on immigrants
  As a follow up to this story, now not only is John McCain blaming Mexican immigrants for the devastating Arizona wildfire, but the Cochise County Sheriff, Larry Dever told Reuters that the Monument Fire was "man-caused" and started in an area near the border fence with Mexico, which is closed to visitors and known to law enforcement for "high-intensity, drug- and human-trafficking. It wasn't the rabbits or the rattle snakes that started this fire, it was human beings, and the only human beings b...
• December 18, 2010 -- Senator Graham tells DREAMers they are “wasting their time”
  Immediately before the vote failed today, closeted homosexual Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham  told young DREAMers who have come to his office that they were "wasting their time." To the DREAM Act, I have been involved in comprehensive immigration reform for many years. Senator Durbin and I have talked about how to make the DREAM Act part of comprehensive immigration reform. To those who have come to my office — you’re always welcome to come, but you’re wasting your time. We’re not going to ...
• December 18, 2010 -- DREAM fails
  The DREAM Act cloture vote failed today by 55-41, with 60 votes necessary but that would have been enough to pass in an up or down vote.  Once again, the abuse of arcane Senate rules stifling democracy.  That makes this more ifuriating is that five Democrats joined the slimy Republicans. Here is a list of the bastards: Max Baucus of Montana Jon Tester of Montana Kay Hagan of North Carolina Ben Nelson of Nebraska Mark Pryor of Arkansas Now the Senate votes on cloture of Don't Ask Don't...