John Pilger Discussing Obama & Empire

I may have posted this before...

Chomsky (who is over 80, now) on "Liberal Disillusionment with Obama"

There is plenty about which to be disillusioned:

Noam Chomsky on the consequences of liberal disillusionment with the Obama administration and a deliberately uninformed American populace.

From the question and answer session of a lecture given at Boston University on December 8, 2009, the entirety of which can be seen here: http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/buniverse/videos/view/?id=425

Join Fuzzy, the Conciliation Caterpillar, as he tries to discover a 'principle' that Shamwow WOULD defend.

Take a look at the two (or more) Obamas and pick your favorite! Join Fuzzy the Conciliation Caterpillar in investigating Obama's record. At least one Obama is always right! Dig deeper into his record on gay marriage, terrorism, civil liberties and more! A political animation by Mark Fiore.

John Bonifaz and Laura Flanders on the Corporate Supreme Court

At the 10:22 point in this video, GRIT tv host Laura Flanders takes up the topic of the Supreme Court, corporate power, and the "Citizens United" ruling. Guest John Bonifaz, the director of Free Speech for People discusses the results we're already seeing from that ruling, how it impacts corporations, unions, and real flesh-and-blood people, (including how it has already impacted our thinking) and what needs to be done.

Bonifaz explains how we can amend the Constitution to reclaim our first amendment, and the kind of popular movement that will be required to do it. He describes what people are doing at the local level in their free time to advance this agenda.

The only problem is, of course, that amending the Constitution is a long, arduous, and ultimately uncertain proposition. Remember the ERA?

Chris Hedges: The US Government Is “Inverted Totalitarianism”

Recently, journalist Chris Hedges was interviewed by “Russia Today”, the video of which is presented here. The substance of Hedges’s discussion regards how the United States has evolved into a form of what Sheldon Wollin calls “inverted totalitarianism”. He also discusses the inevitable collapse of the US infrastructure, as well as Obama’s uselessness as a “political brand”.

In a recent article, “Democracy in America is a Useful Fiction”, Hedges defines “inverted totalitarianism”:

“Inverted totalitarianism represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry [...] Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.”

Fair Use: Vet Services Report Increasing Calls To Suicide Hotline

The number for the suicide hot line is 1-800 273-TALK. Press 1 for vets.

KOAT TV: Calls To Suicide Hot Line On the Rise

More Veterans Seeking Help By Calling Hot Line

POSTED: 9:04 pm MDT April 7, 2010
UPDATED: 11:48 pm MDT April 7, 2010

ALBUQUERQUE, NM --

New Mexico Department of Veteran's Services Dr. Brenda Mayne said that calls to the suicide hot line have been non-stop.

"People are calling just for support right then and there because of a bad nightmare or a flashback, something related to their service, and they want someone who understands to listen," said Mayne.

Statistics show the need for that support has risen in the past three months.
According to the New Mexico VA hospital, for all of 2009 they received about 2,000 calls. From January to March of this year, the hot line has already received 2,000 calls.

Mayne contributes the increase in calls to the rise of side effects from the war. From post traumatic stress disorder and violent flashbacks, to general inquiries about VA services.

"It's a growing population how many soldiers from Afghanistan to Iraq, a million-and-a-half I think, and they have to come home," said Mayne.

Earlier this year, soldier Kenneth Ellis was shot by police after he refused to put down his gun. There was no report showing that Ellis was suicidal. His family told Action 7 News that he suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and had not been the same after returning from Iraq.

Officials said that having an 800 number in place for vets to combat problems like suicide is important, especially since vets are twice as likely to commit suicide than civilians.

The number for the suicide hot line is 1-800 273-TALK. Press 1 for vets.

FAIR Challenges CBS To Televise Rebuke of Michelle Bachmann's lies on Face The Nation Last Week.

Speaking of 'weak,' that would be Bob Schieffer, who sat silently by while the ditz from Minnesota, Michelle Bachmann (R-Fucktardville) strewed lies about the set like decomposing tampons. FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) enquired politely whether or not CBS or Schieffer were televise the 'correction' Schieffer timidly published oh the CBS blog.

Will Face the Nation Factcheck Guest's Healthcare Lies?
04/01/2010 by Julie Hollar
Republican Rep. Michelle Bachmann made two false claims about healthcare on CBS's Face the Nation last Sunday that went unchallenged by host Bob Schieffer. CBS did, however, post an article on their website challenging her claims. FAIR has a new action alert encouraging Face the Nation to debunk Bachmann's lies on its upcoming April 4 broadcast. Read the alert here and post your letters to CBS below.

I didn't have to asked twice; herewith, my response:

Dear CBS

As you well know, by now, Michelle Bachmann is a wacktard fuckloon. Which is okay, since one supposes even wacktard fuckloons should be represented in Congress, considering the numbers of them which parade their ignoraqnce at almost any and evdery occasion. Her popularity testifies to the size of the wacktrd/fuckloon constituency, and CBS should be commended for its open-mindedness.

That said, CBS anchor Bob (Friend of Bush) Shieffer permitted a couple of Bachmann 's real waacktard/fuckloon holwers to go unrebutted in the segment in which she appeared on 3/28. I have looked at video of her, and of her 'followers,' and I can understand why Shieffer, an aging, careful, comfortably corrupt man, might eschew outright confrontation with a demonstrated Wacktard/fuckloon eminence on national tv. To your organization's semi-credit, you did post refutations of her assertions on a blog.

And I suppose it is ingrateful of me to find that reply to be unsatisfactory, but I do.

It seems to me that, as long as neither Bachmann nor any of her wacktard/fuckloon constituency will be present to threaten either physical or psychic damage, you would be serving the interests of your viewers if you were to repeat *on the air* the refutations you published so obscurely earlier this week.

I am in absolutely no doubt as to your response to this missive: you'll utterly ignore it. In this way, our transaction will epitomize the relation between the modern 'press' and the citizens it is supposed to inform, and will serve as an apt object lesson for those who still tremble at the possibility of their own agency, evanescent ande ephemeral as it is.

Sincerely, one former newsman to another...

Ratzi, the Nazi Pope, Plays The "Religious Intolerance" Card In Molestation Scandal

No, really!

Personally, I believe that all male Roman Catholic clerty should be required to carry a $5Million "morality" bond, and to register as agents of a foreign power.

Via FAIR:

An 'Ignoble Attempt' to Smear the Pope?
03/30/2010 by Steve Rendall

The Vatican is lashing out at mounting news reports suggesting that, before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger used his positions to cover up the the church's sex abuse scandals, with little regard for the child victims of the abusers or the law. A Vatican spokesperson denounced the reporting as an "ignoble attempt" to smear the pope "at any cost."

In fact, increased U.S. media interest in the pope's role in church scandals should be a welcome development. Following Benedict's 2008 visit to the U.S.--intended, among other things, to address the abuse scandals--Extra! (7-8/08) chided U.S. media for fawning coverage of the pope, and particularly for its failure to mention Ratzinger's key role in the scandals.

Extra! cited one London Observer report (8/17/03) that revealed that in 2001, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican agency charged with addressing the church's sexual abuse scandals, Ratzinger sent a secret directive to bishops worldwide, threatening automatic excommunication for any Catholic official who discussed pending abuse cases outside the church’s legal system.

Another Observer story (4/24/05) reported that, in 1994, Ratzinger personally dismissed charges of sex abuse against Father Marcial Maciel, the head of an influential conservative seminary in Mexico and a personal confidant to then-Pope John Paul II. Maciel was accused of abusing several children over decades. According to the Observer, Ratzinger told a reporter at the time, "One can't put on trial such a close friend of the pope." (Twelve years later, on the eve of his elevation to the papacy, Ratzinger reopened the investigation of Maciel, later asking the aging priest to resign.)

Recent Vatican attacks on the media echo earlier Vatican media assaults by Ratzinger himself. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 2001, Ratzinger dismissed coverage of scandals as anti-church bigotry (Zenit, 12/3/02), calling it a "a planned campaign" to smear the church. In that regard, little has changed. What has changed, thankfully, is that the U.S. media seem to be paying more attention now. Let's hope media interest doesn't flag in the face of church attacks.

"Real-Politik": Why the USofA Is Engaged In War In Central Asia

I have been saying this all along: It's the Caspian oil, stupid!

1. The Caspian Sea Basin (Kazakstan, Turkmenistan etc.) holds between 11 and 12 TRILLION dollars in oil and gas resources.

2. There are only three ways to get it out:

- East to China

- West through Iran, Russia, and Turkey to Europe

- South through Afghanistan and Pakistan

3. The Taliban who controlled Afghanistan before 9/11 made pipeline deals with non-US companies and refused to change them to give control of the region's resources to the US.

Remember Bush famously threatening the Talibs about permitting/protecting a proposed pipeline consortium (led by Hamid Karzai): "'At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs'," Brisard said in an interview in Paris." http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/11.17A.Oil.Taliban.htm

The American Legion Coup D'Etat

Led and inspired by JP Morgan and Presidential forebearer Sen. Prescott Bush, the USer fascisti tried to incite former Marine Commandant Gen. Smedley Butler, two-time CMH winner, to lead the insurrection. Butler refused and turned the plotters in. There were NO consequences...none. Not one of the plotters--who probably included "Lucky" Lindbergh--was ever even the slightest bit inconvenienced, mush less apprehended, tried, and convicted of and hanged for treason...


Part II:

Part III:


The final passage of the piece expressing apparent gratitude that the USofA had escaped the fascist threat is, in my opinion, spurious. The USofA is today every bit as much a "fascistic" enterprise as either Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy. The difference is that the tools of exerting power in the USofA are in the CorpoRat Boardrooms instead of the State bureaucracies. The wars and other clashes of the 20th century were fought primarily to determine what VERSION of fascismo would prevail.

"Ours" won...

"...(T)he giftie gie us ..?" Here ya go...

You have but to ask: The PRC news agency, Xinhua, has painstakingly compiled a "Human Rights Report" on the USofA. Some "highlights":

In 2008, U.S. residents experienced 4.9 million violent crimes, 16.3 million property crimes and 137,000 personal thefts, and the violent crime rate was 19.3 victimizations per 1,000 persons aged 12 or over, according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2009 (Criminal Victimization 2008, U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov)....

The United States ranks first in the world in terms of the number of privately-owned guns. According to the data from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), American gun owners, out of 309 million in total population, have more than 250 million guns, while a substantial proportion of U.S. gun owners had more than one weapon. Americans usually buy 7 billion rounds of ammunition a year, but in 2008 the figure jumped to about 9 billion (The China Press, September 25, 2009). In the United States, airline passengers are allowed to take unloaded weapons after declaration....

In the United States, civil and political rights of citizens are severely restricted and violated by the government.

The country's police frequently impose violence on the people. Chicago Defender reported on July 8, 2009 that a total of 315 police officers in New York were subject to internal supervision due to unrestrained use of violence during law enforcement. The figure was only 210 in 2007. Over the past two years, the number of New York police officers under review for garnering too many complaints was up 50 percent (http://www.chicagodefender.com)....

Abuse of power is common among U.S. law enforcers. In July 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation put four police officers in the Washington area under investigation for taking money to protect a gambling ring frequented by some of the region's most powerful drug dealers over the past two years (The Washington Post, July, 19, 2009)....

Prisons in the United State are packed with inmates. According to a report released by the U.S. Justice Department on Dec. 8, 2009, more than 7.3 million people were under the authority of the U.S. corrections system at the end of 2008. The correctional system population increased by 0.5 percent in 2008 compared with the previous year (http://www.wsws.org). About 2.3 million were held in custody of prisons and jails, the equivalent of about one in every 198 persons in the country....

The basic rights of prisoners in the United States are not well-protected. Raping cases of inmates by prison staff members are widely reported. According to the U.S. Justice Department, reports of sexual misconduct by prison staff members with inmates in the country's 93 federal prison sites doubled over the past eight years.

That's just highlights from the first two pages. The whole report goes 10 pages, chock-ful of statistics and citations.

Read it and weep.

Ex-Chimperor Bush Models First Two Rules Of Faux-Altruism

Rule #1: Don't Get ANY On Ya!

Rule #2: If you do, wipe it off fast...

Advice For The Christian Boy To Avoid Abusing His Genesis

Pat Current's a funny guy. He's one of those who is so good at it, it perfectly exemplifies "Poe's Law": "Eternal purity requires eternal vigilance against the devil's hand. Here are some practical tips to keep you from "playing with your Genesis."


Poe's Law:

"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

In other words, No matter how bizzare, outrageous, or just plain idiotic a parody of a Fundamentalist may seem, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, having seen similar REAL ideas from real religious/political Fundamentalists.

At The HCR Table, Was Prez. Shamwow Playing Bridge at a Poker Game?

Tom Tomorrow certainly seems to think so (click on the image to enlarge), and he gets at the thing that has always bothered me about Prez. Shamwow's "negotiating style," his fundamental weakness, his apparent willingness to have negotiated away what the negotiation was supposedly to be about even before the negotiations have begun.

This, I would argue, is not a way to "succeed" at negotiation, unless the purpose for your negotiation is merely and only to reach any kind of spurious agreement, rather than to win concessions for your side. In this 'debate,' Prez Sham 'folded'--gave away the ranch--before the first card was ever dealt...

Imagining the cold, dead embrace of the Gipper, TDS' John Oliver Goes Right The Fuck Over the TOp!

Health-Con1 - The Mediscarening

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

THIS Kind of Thing Is What Makes Jon Stewart Valuable

In Dodd We Trust

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Lagniappe: Catholic Church Bashing (Never Too MUCH)!
Holy Sh*t

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Can the Proselytizing Pledge...

When you read the accompanying verbiage that ushered the phrase "under God" into the innocuously secular Pledge of Allegiance into that document, you cannot escape the conclusion--despite the ruling of the recent 9th Circuit panel--that the language is utterly, totally, wholly, and completely unconstitutional in terms of the establishment clause. That unctuous fraud Eisenhower raved raptly about dedication to the Almighty and the commitment of Murkin youth to God's purposes. There's a pretty durn good summary of the fracas here, via TruthOut:

Pledging Allegiance to God
Tuesday 16 March 2010
by: Stephen Rohde | The Daily Journal

In 1954, at the height of the cold war, Congress amended the phrase "one Nation indivisible" in the 62 year-old Pledge of Allegiance to read "one Nation, under God, indivisible." Last week, over a blistering 160-page dissent, the Ninth Circuit held that the state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the amended Pledge by children in public schools did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The original version of the Pledge (without any reference to God or religion) was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892, although many mistakenly assume the founders wrote it. (Sarah Palin once wrote that if the Pledge "was good enough for the founding fathers, its [sic] good enough for me.") In 1942, the Pledge (again without any reference to God or religion) was officially codified by Congress.

But in 1954, one day after Rev. George M. Docherty, a highly regarded Presbyterian minister, delivered a sermon attended by members of Congress, urging that the Pledge be amended to add "Under God," several resolutions were introduced in the House and Senate to do just that.

Soon, members of Congress were piously declaring that "without these [new] words ... the pledge ignores a definitive factor in the American way of life and that factor is belief in God," that there "should be embodied in the pledge our allegiance and faith in the Almighty God," that "we are officially recognizing once again this Nation's adherence to our belief in a divine spirit, and that henceforth millions of our citizens will be acknowledging this belief every time they pledge allegiance to our flag," and that Congress was engaged in "a sacred mission" to achieve a "victory for God."

On June 14, 1954, as he proudly signed the joint resolution amending the Pledge to add the phrase "under God," President Dwight D. Eisenhower solemnly declared that "[f]rom this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our Nation and our people to the Almighty. To anyone who truly loves America, nothing could be more inspiring than to contemplate this rededication of our youth, on each school morning, to our country's true meaning."

To celebrate, according to the Congressional Record, the victorious legislators recited the newly minted Pledge of Allegiance to "our Nation [and] to the Almighty," while a bugle played "Onward, Christian Soldiers."

In the face of such overwhelming evidence (and much more recounted in detail in the dissent filed by Judge Stephen Reinhardt) establishing the predominantly religious purpose behind the amendment, Judges Carlos T. Bea and Dorothy W. Nelson in Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District, held that, instead, the predominate purpose was "to inspire patriotism" and convey the secular principle that our nation is founded on "the concept of a limited government."(Bea was a GWBush appointee; Nelson clearly in her dotage, is a Carter appointment--W

Mincing no words, Reinhardt wrote that "[t]o put it bluntly, no judge familiar with the history of the Pledge could in good conscience believe, as today's majority purports to do, that the words 'under God' were inserted into the Pledge for any purpose other than an explicitly and predominately one: 'to recognize the power and the universality of God in our pledge of allegiance'; to 'acknowledge the dependence of our people, and our Government upon the moral direction and the restraints of religion,' 100 Cong. Rec. 7590-91 (1954); and to indoctrinate schoolchildren in the belief that God exists, id. at 5915, 6919."

Reinhardt goes on to bemoan the fact that "[w]e should indeed have had more faith in our country, our citizens, and Constitution than we exhibited at the peak of the McCarthy era when we enacted the religious amendment to our Pledge of Allegiance, in part to inculcate in our children a belief in God. In doing so, we abandoned our historic principle that secular matters were for the state and matters of faith were for the church. The majority does so once again today, sadly, by twisting, distorting, and misrepresenting the law, as well as the issues that are before us."

Reinhardt proceeds in detail to demonstrate how the addition of "under God" to the Pledge violates all three of the Establishment Clause tests established by the Supreme Court, to wit: the Lemon test, the Endorsement test and the Coercion test. As persuasive as this trenchant and authoritative analysis is, it is Reinhardt's compassionate examination of the damaging and corrosive impact of the amended Pledge on our schoolchildren and those who do not believe in God that should persuade the entire Ninth Circuit to reverse this decision on en banc review.

The plaintiff is a five-year-old child compelled by law to attend school, where "her teacher, a state employee, leads her and her classmates in a state-directed exercise explicitly designed to inculcate a religious belief in each of them - a belief in God."

The Supreme Court has expressed special concern for "young impressionable children." A study conducted 20 years after the Pledge was amended to include the words "under God" found that for grade school children the most important part is "talking about God" and, as one child put it, "We better be good cause God is watching us even if he is invisible."

The very nature of coercive activity, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, is that it exerts enormous "pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion." Reinhardt points out that 766,000 Hindus, one million Buddhists, 106,000 adherents of Native American religions, "not to mention our two million atheists, agnostics, humanists, and secularists and quarter million other believers in some other form of spiritualism" in America might take issue with the "explicitly monotheistic nature of the Pledge and its reference to a "superintending God."

"The very fact that the religious beliefs now embodied in the Pledge is antithetical to the beliefs of millions of Americans, religious and irreligious alike," Reinhardt wrote, "is why the Constitution prohibits the government from taking sides, and certainly from coercing schoolchildren to adopt and proclaim an officially prescribed belief."

Reinhardt concluded by pointing out the regrettable truth that the "majority opinion will undoubtedly be celebrated by a large number of Americans as a repudiation of activist, liberal, Godless judging." Nevertheless, he pointed out that by reaching the result the majority does, "we have failed in our constitutional duty as a court. Jan Roe and her child turned to the federal judiciary in the hope that we would vindicate their constitutional rights. There was a time when their faith in us might have been well placed. I can only hope that such a time will return someday."

Judge Reinhardt has done his part. For the sake of the Constitution, we can hope that a majority of the Ninth Circuit or a majority of the Supreme Court will do their part. But upholding the Constitution, in general, and separation of church and state, in particular, are not only the responsibilities of judges. Popularly elected members of Congress converted the Pledge of Allegiance into a religious exercise in 1954 and Congress can return it to its secular origins.

But that will require the people to speak out, people who are deeply religious or not religious, who understand the genius of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison when they guaranteed that we must keep the state out of the church and the church out of the state.

It will require us to lobby our elected representatives, telling them that in a free country religion can thrive without indoctrinating children in public school to espouse religious beliefs they may not believe and that it demeans religion itself to dilute the sacred concept of God by pretending that it's not religious.

Over a half-century ago, Justice Robert H. Jackson warned us that "[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism [or] religion."

Stephen Rohde, chair of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, is author of "American Words of Freedom and Freedom of Assembly."

Since the Skeevy Fux On the SCROTUS Have Decided To Abandon All Pretense

...of impartiality and cast their lot with corpoRatism, I suppose I shouldn't take exception to this. Not even Clarence "Uncle" Thomas can be obtuse enough NOT to know his name was put in nomination for the position he now occupies BECAUSE GHWBush thought it would b humorous and ironic to put the immensely unqualified white-guy wannabe Thomas in Thurgood Marshal's seat.:

Justice's wife launches 'tea party' group

The nonprofit run by Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is likely to test notions of political impartiality for the court.

It gets as bad as you'd expect:

By Kathleen Hennessey
March 14, 2010
Reporting from Washington

As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the "tea party" movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.

"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you," she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's "hard-left agenda."

But Thomas is no ordinary activist.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.

The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources -- including corporations -- as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.

"I adore all the new citizen patriots who are rising up across this country," Thomas, who goes by Ginni, said on the panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "I have felt called to the front lines with you, with my fellow citizens, to preserve what made America great."

The move by Virginia Thomas, 52, into the front lines of politics stands in marked contrast to the rarefied culture of the nation's highest court, which normally prizes the appearance of nonpartisanship and a distance from the fisticuffs of the politics of the day.

Justice Thomas, 61, recently expressed sensitivity to such concerns, telling law students in Florida that he doesn't attend the State of the Union because it is "so partisan." Thomas, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush, has been a reliable conservative vote since he joined the court in 1991.

Experts say Virginia Thomas' work doesn't violate ethical rules for judges. But Liberty Central could give rise to conflicts of interest for her husband, they said, as it tests the norms for judicial spouses. The couple have been married since 1987.

"I think the American public expects the justices to be out of politics," said University of Texas law school professor Lucas A. "Scot" Powe, a court historian.

He said the expectations for spouses are far less clear. "I really don't know because we've never seen it," Powe said.

Under judicial rules, judges must curb political activity, but a spouse is free to engage.

"We expect the justice to make decisions uninfluenced by the political or legal preferences of his or her spouse," said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics.

Virginia Thomas declined to comment in detail about her plans for LibertyCentral.org, which she said would fully launch in May. In a brief phone interview, she did not directly answer questions about whether she and her husband had discussed the effects her role might have on perceptions of his impartiality.

"I don't involve myself in litigation. Are you asking that because there's a different standard for conservatives? Did you ask Ed Rendell that question?" she said, referring to the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, who is married to a federal appellate court judge.

Virginia Thomas has long been a passionate voice for conservative views. She has worked for former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas and for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with strong ties to the GOP.

In 2000, while at the Heritage Foundation, she was recruiting staff for a possible George W. Bush administration as her husband was hearing the case that would decide the election. When journalists reported her work, Thomas said she saw no conflict of interest and that she rarely discussed court matters with her husband.

"We have our separate professional lives," she said at the time.

In fall 2008, when Thomas joined Hillsdale College as an administrator, she called the school's Washington campus "the safest place for me to be when it comes to conflicts." Her new endeavor could signal a return from that shelter.

Although Liberty Central is a nonpartisan group, its website shows an affinity for conservative principles. Her biography notes that Thomas is a fan of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, author of "Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America."

"She is intrigued by Glenn Beck and listening carefully," the bio says.

As in her appearance at the panel discussion, the website does not mention Clarence Thomas.

The judicial code of conduct does require judges to separate themselves from their spouses' political activity. As a result, Marjorie Rendell, a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has stayed away from political events, campaign rallies and debates in Pennsylvania. Her husband discussed such issues in his first campaign for governor.

Since then, Judge Rendell has sought the opinion of the judiciary's Committee on Codes of Conduct when a case presents a possible conflict of interest involving her husband's political office, she said.

Law professor Gillers said that Justice Thomas, too, should be on alert for possible conflicts, particularly those involving donors to his wife's nonprofit.

"There is opportunity for mischief if a company with a case before the court, or which it wants the court to accept, makes a substantial contribution to Liberty Central in the interim," he said.

Justice Thomas would be required to be aware of such contributions, Gillers said, adding that he believes Thomas should then disclose those facts and allow parties in the case to argue for recusal.

But it would be up to Justice Thomas to decide whether to recuse himself. He could not be reached for comment.

As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Liberty Central can raise unlimited amounts of corporate money and largely avoid disclosing its donors.

Because of a recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the group may also spend corporate money freely to advocate for or against candidates for office.

Justice Thomas was part of the 5-4 majority in that case.

khennessey@tribune.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Behold! The "Memory Hole" Doth Gape!

Warning: This is a mere, microcosmic foreshadowing of what will indubitably and inevitably ensue from the totalitarian pipe-dream of a "nationwide standards" curriculum.

Probably by now you have heard that the Texas School Board has written (inconveniently "Deist") Thomas Jefferson OUT of the curriculum of Texas high school studies, and replaced him with (acceptably THeist) John Calvin as an exemplar of enlightenment thought.

And that they have expressly forbidden the utterance of the fact that the US Constitution forbids the privileging of one religion.

And that they have replaced Cesar Chavez with Phyllis Schafly as a paragon of leading social change.

No. Really!

AUSTIN, Texas — A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.

Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic," and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.

"We have been about conservatism versus liberalism," said Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas, explaining her vote against the standards. "We have manipulated strands to insert what we want it to be in the document, regardless as to whether or not it's appropriate."

Following three days of impassioned and acrimonious debate, the board gave preliminary approval to the new standards with a 10-5 party line vote. A final vote is expected in May, after a public comment period that could produce additional amendments and arguments.

Decisions by the board – made up of lawyers, a dentist and a weekly newspaper publisher among others – can affect textbook content nationwide because Texas is one of publishers' biggest clients.

Ultraconservatives wielded their power over hundreds of subjects this week, introducing and rejecting amendments on everything from the civil rights movement to global politics. Hostilities flared and prompted a walkout Thursday by one of the board's most prominent Democrats, Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi, who accused her colleagues of "whitewashing" curriculum standards.

By late Thursday night, three other Democrats seemed to sense their futility and left, leaving Republicans to easily push through amendments heralding "American exceptionalism" and the U.S. free enterprise system, suggesting it thrives best absent excessive government intervention.

"Some board members themselves acknowledged this morning that the process for revising curriculum standards in Texas is seriously broken, with politics and personal agendas dominating just about every decision," said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for religious freedom.

Republican Terri Leo, a member of the powerful Christian conservative voting bloc, called the standards "world class" and "exceptional."

Board members argued about the classification of historic periods (still B.C. and A.D., rather than B.C.E. and C.E.); whether students should be required to explain the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its impact on global politics (they will); and whether former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir should be required learning (she will).

In addition to learning the Bill of Rights, the board specified a reference to the Second Amendment right to bear arms in a section about citizenship in a U.S. government class.

Conservatives beat back multiple attempts to include hip-hop as an example of a significant cultural movement.

Numerous attempts to add the names or references to important Hispanics throughout history also were denied, inducing one amendment that would specify that Tejanos died at the Alamo alongside Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Another amendment deleted a requirement that sociology students "explain how institutional racism is evident in American society."

Democrats did score a victory by deleting a portion of an amendment by Republican Don McLeroy suggesting that the civil rights movement led to "unrealistic expectations for equal outcomes."

Fort Worth Republican Pat Hardy, a longtime teacher, voted for the new standards, but said she wished the board could work with a more cooperative spirit.

"What we've done is we've taken a document that by nature is too long to begin with and then we've lengthened it some more," Hardy said, shortly after the vote. "Those long lists of names that we've put in there ... it's just too long.

"I just think we failed to keep that in mind, it's hard for teachers to get through it all."

It's fun to follow the trajectory of Orwell's first prescient, then trite and now again prophetic observation, in 1984, that those who control the present control the past; and those who control the past control the future: we have always been at war with South Florida...

It is also important to reiterate that textbooks in Murkin schools are more or less designed on the anticipation that they will be the only books the students will EVER read. The cruelest thing Murkin schools do is to turn reading into a 'duty' or to make it "work." And they do it nowadays almost infallibly.

Put Up, or Shut the Fuck UP: Regulating the Banksters!

Richard (RJ) Eskow, of the Campaign for America's Future, posted a lovely little pipe-dream on HuffPost yesterday, where he calls for "up-and-down" votes on proposed regulations to rein in the future predations by the cannibalistic thugs of the banking "industry." Senate Finance Committee "chair" (resident corporat stooge) has of course NO interest in that particular job, which would cost him millions in future income when he was denied the cushy lobbying and board of directors' positions for pissing off his "once and future" bosses.
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Fuck "bipartisanship." It only ever means that the Party of Property has enough political cover to enforce total discipline. So Chris Dodd, who is retiring from Congress and COULD use his electoral invulnerability to pursue REAL regulation, will opt to obey the commands of his future employers--the same people he's been supposed to be regulating for the last 20 years. You can NEVER underestimate the venality of the average Congresscritter, and the Senate is worse than the House...

Too many important policies have been traded away in the Senate in the name of a bipartisanship that never appears. Democrats aren't just failing to deliver the right policies; they're losing on the politics too. They're ceding these to their opponents by refusing to make those opponents -- or their own party members, for that matter - take a public stand.