Home add your blog Archives Search Book Reviews Forum Contact RSS FEED

This site is an rss/xml news reader containing our favorite feeds. All articles are the copyrighted material of the blogs that wrote them.

Louisiana justice who refused marriage license to
interracial couple resigns.

post from Think Progress on 03 November 2009 06:44:00 PM. © Think Progress

Last month, Louisiana justice of the peace Keith Bardwell stirred controversy when he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple because he believes that such marriages don?t usually last very long. “I don?t do interracial marriages because I don?t want to put children in a situation they didn?t bring on themselves,? Bardwell said. Now, the Louisiana secretary of state’s office says that Bardwell has resigned:

A Louisiana justice of the peace who drew criticism for refusing to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple has resigned, the secretary of state’s office said Tuesday.
Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward, was widely criticized after he refused to grant a marriage license to Beth McKay and Terence McKay, an interracial couple who ultimately got a marriage license from another justice of the peace in the same parish.
The McKays hired an attorney and protested the justice’s actions.
Despite a national uproar and a call by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for him to lose his license, Bardwell, 56, said in October that he had no regrets. “It’s kind of hard to apologize for something that you really and truly feel down in your heart you haven’t done wrong,” he told CNN affiliate WAFB.

Civil rights organizations had called for Bardwell to resign while Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) had called for him to be dismissed. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), on the other hand, would only go so far as to say that Bardwell “should follow the law as written.”

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/03/louisiana-judge-resigns/

Digg this

NY-23: The Failure Of Blue Dogging

post from Firedoglake on 03 November 2009 06:35:08 PM. © Firedoglake

A win by ultra-rightwing Doug Hoffman in NY-23 should challenge the notion held by some Democrats that winning right-wing districts requires a move towards the center-right.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/11/03/ny-23rd-the-failure-of-blue-dogging/

Digg this

Live Election ResultsRight Here

post from Talking Points Memo on 03 November 2009 06:35:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

As you can see by the scoreboard to the right, we'll be counting down your live election results right here tonight.7 PM VA8 PM NJ, Maine9 PM NY[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/3uoKpileZTo/live_election_r
esultsright_here.php

Digg this

Late afternoon/early evening open thread

post from Daily Kos on 03 November 2009 06:34:03 PM. © Daily Kos

Take a trip back to the magical evening that was Election Day, 2008 when Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States of America.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/tHDis_vG_Rk/-Late-afternoon-early-
evening-open-thread

Digg this

Rape victim confronts Senator Vitter

post from Where's the Outrage? on 03 November 2009 06:20:33 PM. © Where's the Outrage?

Now, this is getting something from a blog that got something from another blog and now, I’m[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.whereistheoutrage.net/wordpress/2009/11/03/rape-victim-confronts-senat
or-vitter/

Digg this

Election Night Overview

post from FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right on 03 November 2009 06:20:00 PM. © FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right

Here are the seven races that we'll be making at least some effort to track for you tonight:

Polling averages are from Pollster.com, except for CA-10 and Referendum 71 where there's only one recent independent poll available and I'm just listing that verbatim. Our previews of the races can be found at the links below:
Virginia
Maine Question 1
New Jersey
NYC
NY-23: (original; revised; re-revised)
CA-10
Washington Referendum 71

Consider this your 'homethread' for the night. There will of course be frequent updates, although some of the shorter stuff I'm going to post to the sleeping giant that we call the 538 Twitter feed. You don't have to go offsite to see the tweets as they're also contained in the box in the top RH side of the page.

I will be on WNYC periodically throughout the night, and on Morning Meeting (MSNBC) again tomorrow from 9-11 AM.

Have fun and play nice -- this is turning out to be a much more interesting election night than it looked like it would be even a few weeks ago.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/its-election-night.html

Digg this

Wierd Crayon in a World Sized Box of Crayolas

post from The Francis L. Holland Blog on 03 November 2009 06:10:00 PM. © The Francis L. Holland Blog

Since this was too long to post as a comment at the blog named above, I'm posting it as an article here.

I sometimes wish I had chosen a relative or friend of the family and asked them to take responsibility for me when I was a child, because it just wasn?t working out in my dysfunctional home.

I'm sorry that being adopted and people ideation, emotion and behavior with regard to your being adopted has been so troubling.

I can certainly imagine how maddening it is for you when people give credit to your adoptive mother for having adopted a Black girl, as if this courageous and admirable. If it was courageous and admirable, it was not because of who YOU were but rather because of the oppressively color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior.

And yet the difference between a brown girl and a Black girl is the awareness of your circumstance with respect to our relationship with white people, with other Black and brown people, and with ourselves.

I really can no longer countenance the term ?race? because biologically "race" has been proved not to exist, while sociologically race is the redlining of the human mind. We learn, as you said, by the age of eight, that we live in a system of apartheid whose central concept is that our ?race? divides us and that the only way we can ever learn to get along with each other is to bridge the chasm between the "races."

The truth is that there is no chasm between ?races? based on biology. There is a chasm between people of different skin colors, socio-economic heritages, political positions, cultures . . . But all of this has nothing whatsoever to do with biology, except with respect to the 0.01 percent of our DNA that determines the color of our skin and skin-color-associated physical characteristics.

We really let white people of the hook when we allow them to say they can?t bridge differences of ?race?. What they refuse to get over is, quite simply, our skin color. Blacks, unfortunately, live under the same illusion. We believe that we have a ?race? that is different from that of whites, rather than understand that only color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior separate us. It?s a cognitive behavioral problem, not a genetic one.

The idea that ?races? are divisible by skin color is just as arbitrary as it would be to insist that tall and short people are from different ?races?. And to insist that when parents have tall and short children who are siblings, these siblings are born into different ?races?, of which their height is the marker. This is not based on science or reality, but represents a determined and neurotic flight from science and reality.

I believe we Blacks do ourselves a world of hurt by enabling white people as they exaggerate skin color into ?race?. We legitimize the obsessive Jim Crow insanities that separated people of different skin colors in the past and that continue to serve the basis of a peculiar form of American apartheid even today, in various aspects of our lives. (How many Black head coaches are there in football? Why are Black people 13% of the population and 50% of those in prison?)

The problem was not that you were different, although obviously your sociological and political and cultural heritage were different. The problem is that white people insisted on treating you as if you were different on the basis of your skin color. If you were taller than your adoptive mother, rather than darker, would white people have doted over her in the same ?great white hope? manner?

It?s that insistence upon the existence of ?race? that divides us, and yet it has nothing whatever to do with biology, except to a lesser degree than our height inevitably distinguishes us and separates us from one another. Science is not arbitrary and capricious, but ?race? is not part of science, and so the cognitive behavioral problem of ?race? is able to continue to be arbitrary and constitute caprice in the minds of Blacks as well as whites.

To study the continued belief in ?race,? we don?t need geneticists. We need psychiatrists.

Since the concept of ?race? is an unscientific delusion, we also need to ask ourselves whether Blacks or whites or both benefit from believing in ?race?. Is it possible that whites created a false biological hypothesis, at the same time as slavery was beginning, and their hypothesis helps Blacks as much as it does whites?

The simple fact that whites invented the false hypothesis of ?race? is strong circumstantial evidence that the disproved hypothesis is more advantageous to them than it is to us. When they invented shackles for the slave ships, they certainly didn?t invent these iron shackles with the idea of helping Blacks as much as themselves.

The first step to overcoming problems associated with the belief in ?race? is to acknowledge the scientific evidence that race does not exist today any more than weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, and race never did existed. Only the propaganda on behalf of ?race? and the belief in the existence existed.

I believe that ?race? is a yoke around the neck and shoulders of Black people. We will not be free until we challenge white people with their own Human Genome Project evidence and insist that they stop using the word ?race? to separate us from them. But we cannot do that with respect to them until we reject the and term and concept of ?race? itself.

Now, a number of people will stand up and insist indignantly that ?race? is the name we have given to our social-economic problem and that ?race? is essential to our understanding of who we are. (And coincidentally ?race? is also essential to whites? understanding of who they are and who we are.) And yet people who insist that this is true are unable to explain why the term ?skin color group? ?Black people? is not much more useful than the ?black race?.

We?ve made some progress in terms of desegregating our nation. Now we need to take an additional step forward by ending the redlining and beginning desegregating our minds.

Read The Full Article:
http://francislholland.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-sometimes-wish-i-had-chosen-relativ
e.html

Digg this

ACORN: We're Not Even Working In New Jersey

post from TPMMuckraker on 03 November 2009 06:09:00 PM. © TPMMuckraker

OK, here's what should be the nail in the coffin for conservative claims that ACORN is poised to steal the New Jersey governor's race through rampant voter fraud.

Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, tells TPMmuckraker that the much-maligned group has conducted absolutely no political or voter registration activity in the state during the 2009 cycle. And Kettenring added that ACORN had done very little such work during the 2008 cycle.

In a column published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, John Fund sounded the alarm about the threat from ACORN -- but a close look reveals that even here he was forced to rely on guilt by association to make the case.

"Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state," Fund wrote.

Further down, he explained:

After repeated election-related scandals, Acorn has become toxic for many candidates who once relied on the group. But Acorn's longtime allies, the Service Employee International Union and New York's Working Families Party, have both moved into New Jersey. Peter Colavito, Acorn's former political director in New York and a board member of the Working Families Party, is now the political director of SEIU Local 32BJ, which is heavily involved in New Jersey's election.

In other words, a major labor union and a political party, both of whom are ACORN "allies," are involved in the New Jersey race. But as for ACORN itself, not so much.

Fund also wrote:

Elsewhere, an investigation is being conducted into a report that people wearing Acorn T-shirts entered an East Orange hospital near Newark carrying blank absentee ballots and left with completed ballots.

This "report" was in fact an email sent by the husband of a hospital worker, claiming that his wife had seen the ACORN workers in the hospital. And the hospital has denied it.

Not that the right is letting any of this get in the way of the vote fraud storyline. Conservative activist Patrick Ruffini tweets: "The fix may be in in NJ." If it is -- and there's not a a single piece of credible evidence for that -- it looks like it won't be thanks to ACORN.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TPMmuckraker/~3/kWGmCQzwFr0/acorn_were_not_even_wo
rking_in_new_jersey.php

Digg this

Tuesday Afternoon Open Thread

I'm going to share my thoughts with you on something almost none of you care about -- should Joe Girardi have started A.J. Burnett on short rest last night? I actually told my father before the game that I would have held Burnett back for Game 6 because he was better at Yankee Stadium than on the road (Burnett had a good history starting with 3 days rest.) So I am doing an "I told you so" now? No. Thinking about it, I was wrong and Girardi was right.

Why? Because A.J. Burnett was more than capable of giving up 6 runs in 2+ innings on regular rest, with extra rest, with no rest, on the road, at Yankee Stadium, etc. In short, you never have a clue what Burnett will do in any particular start. Girardi was right to use him against Cliff Lee. If Burnett had one of his good nights, then you would have a chance against a sharp Lee. If Lee was off, then a good Burnett would beat him. You were going to start Burnett in one of the last 3 anyway and a Burnett start was always going to be a roll of the dice. Might as well roll them in Game 5 against Cliff Lee. Now you have Andy Petitte, who will almost certainly give you a chance to win in Game 6, and C.C. Sabathia, who will almost certainly give you a chance to win a Game 7. Not pitching Burnett in Game 5 would have meant Gaudin vs. Lee, an improbable matchup for the Yankees, Burnett in Game 6, a crap shoot, and Sabathia in Game 7. Girardi made the right decision.

This is an Open Thread.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TalkleftThePoliticsOfCrime/~3/BmxTpFgBu2o/9980

Digg this

The Loophole is Closed

The Governor signed a law making prostitution illegal in Rhode Island, indoors or outdoors. I opposed this, but I hope I was wrong. I hope that Rep. Giannini and Prof. Donna Hughes and all those who conflated trafficking and prostitution are vindicated in their belief that this is the way to end the harm done to women and children by pimps and johns. I hope I’m wrong in my fear that this will drive the trade underground and drive the most desperate people further from help.

It all depends on how the law is used. So all of you who said your goal was to stop abuse–your work has just begun.

Providence Journal coverage here.