NotMyBathroom.com has lost a lawsuit alleging Missoula city and county officials tried to thwart its petition to strike down the city's anti-discrimination ordinance
"Because the Petitioners reference neither the statute alleged to have been violated nor the facts which support their application ... the Petitioners' application for alternative writ of mandate is DENIED," reads the order from Missoula District Judge Douglas Harkin.
I'm no lawyer, but didn't Judge Harkin just call Tei Nash a dumb*ss?
Here are two ways in which the summer of 2010 differs from the summer of 2009: First, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., spent close to three hours here last week at a public meeting where he took questions from all comers on everything from federal spending to veterans' benefits - something he did not do last year. Second, far from the raucous town hall-style meetings of 2009 that nearly derailed the Democrats' efforts to overhaul the American health care system, Baucus, a key author of that bill, encountered a crowd that was cordial, thoughtful and probing in its questions - but certainly not hostile.
Gee, I wonder what the difference is? Could it be that the "raucous" meetings last summer were, in part, staged?
I just received a letter from Brian Schweitzer. It was in response to an e-mail message I sent him some time ago complaining about his position of the Mountain States Transmission Intertie (MSTI) project.
The second paragraph of his letter to me begins, "Montana is energy country. . . . Our world class energy resources - wind, oil and gas, biofuels, biomass, geothermal, and coal - are second to none in the United States." He then goes on to explain how MSTI and five other huge transmission lines he's pushing are needed to create thousands of jobs and even to address global warming.
Inconveniently, MSTI's draft environmental impact study estimates that it will lead to approximately 59 full-time jobs for Montanans. This from a billion dollar project!
But what especially struck me was how Schweitzer's catalog of Montana's energy sources sort of tacks coal on at the end, as though suggesting it's the least significant of the seven he lists. Since coal accounts for most of the state's energy generation, this is at least misleading. And I suspect that it's an effort to deceive.
His list of supposed benefits from MSTI and other transmission projects is also misleading and deceptive. His claim that it is to be a "green" wind-energy line ignores two facts: (1) it is to be tied to the Colstrip coal-fired generation plants, and (2) NorthWestern Energy Company, which wants to operate MSTI, has secured no contracts with wind-energy producers.
It's easy enough to see what's really being planned. And it doesn't sound very "green" to me.
The preamble to the Montana Constitution reads, "We the people of Montana, grateful to God for the quiet beauty of our state, the grandeur of our mountains, the vastness of our rolling plains, and desiring to improve the quality of life, equality of opportunity, and to secure the blessings of liberty for this and future generations, do ordain and establish this constitution."
For the governor, though, "Montana is energy country." Its grand mountains and vast rolling plains are not for beauty but for industrialization.
Brian Schweitzer is the governor. But he and his corporate friends don't get to tell us what kind of a state we live in. We can see with our own eyes what a wonderful place our state is. Just as we can imagine how horrible it will become if he gets his way.
Not much to say about the "mosque" brouhaha in New York City, other than Obama was exactly right when he said, "Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances." There's really no room for disagreement if you believe in private property rights and the First Amendment's protection of religious freedom.
So it's not surprising that many on the angry right have long opposed the rec center from being built in lower Manhattan and have been attacking Obama steadily for making those remarks, despite Mark Halperin's plea for Republican sanity:
Yes, Republicans, you can take advantage of this heated circumstance, backed by the families of the 9/11 victims, in their most emotional return to the public stage since 2001.
But please don't do it. There are a handful of good reasons to oppose allowing the Islamic center to be built so close to Ground Zero, particularly the family opposition and the availability of other, less raw locations. But what is happening now - the misinformation about the center and its supporters; the open declarations of war on Islam on talk radio, the Internet and other forums; the painful divisions propelled by all the overheated rhetoric - is not worth whatever political gain your party might achieve.
Uh, Mark? Compared to the sh*t the GOP has pulled - the Iraq war, torture, politicization of the DoJ, not to mention obstruction of health care reform and climate change legislation - this would be small change. They've already shredded the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, are talking about gutting the Fourteenth, and already have a long and stormy relationship with the First. And civility is not a strongpoint in the Republican party.
Of course, that's not to belittle the question of religious freedom in the country. I think Simon Schama's right on when he claimed that the First Amendment - the separation of church and state - enabled some of the most interesting and vibrant - and peaceful -- religious experiments the world has seen:
In the United States the Founding Fathers believed...that religious truth would best be served by keeping the state out of the business of its propagation; that the power of religious engagement would not just survive freedom of conscience but be its noblest consequence. It was a daring bet: that faith and freedom were mutually nourishing. But it paid off and it has made America uniquely qualified to fight the only battle that matters, not General Boykin's quixotic reenactment of the true god against the false idol, but the war of toleration against conformity; the war of a faith that commands obedience against a faith that promises liberty. That, actually turns out to be the big American story.
Ironically, then, Obama's principles actually enable rightwing Christian conservatism to flourish. The precedent of overriding private property rights and religious freedom would be disastrous to the same fringe elements that beat the drum against a Muslim recreation center near Ground Zero.
After all, the group whose views on the Manhattan rec center most closely resembles that of the right's is Hamas, a "co-founder" of which said the "mosque" "has to be built," seeing it in terms of religious competition. Mosques and churches and temples are the architectural equivalent of religious armies encroaching on enemy territory.
I say we turn our backs on Hamas and Pam Geller. Let the law of the land prevail.
The interim subcommittee tasked with reform of the medical marijuana system has a few suggestions, including limiting financial ties between physicians and marijuana businesses:
Another key change recommended by the panel would prohibit a doctor from being paid or soliciting pay from caregivers and dispensaries. It also would be illegal for a physician to hold an economic interest in a business if that doctor certifies the "debilitating medical condition" that allows a patient to participate in a medical marijuana program.
Sands said statistics show that many physicians have authorized medical marijuana cards for a small number of patients. However, she said there are a handful of doctors who have approved medical marijuana cards for many, many people.
Frankly, I think this is a good idea, but it is also one that would be wisely imposed on all sorts of business relationships that many doctors have.
If a doctor has a financial incentive to overprescribe marijuana, my hunch is that the worst that happens is too many pot smokers have a quasi-legal way of smoking pot. Conversely, when physicians have financial incentives to order additional tests and drum up business for hospitals and their own practice, we see insane health care inflation.
If there is a place where we need to be least worried about this sort of abuse, it is probably in the medical marijuana world. At least, that's what I think. Of course, I'm down to legalize, regulate, and tax, so my position on this may not mesh with everyone. But there are far more serious problems facing this state.
Man...I don't know what to say. Is anybody surprised about this?
Gallup, a pollster, reckons that a mere 28% of Democrats are "very enthusiastic" about voting, compared to 44% of Republicans. By the same token the Pew Research Centre found in June that only 37% of liberal Democrats were "more enthusiastic than usual" about going to the polls, compared with 59% of conservative Republicans. And according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll the same month, the categories of voters whose interest in elections has dimmed the most since the last one are liberals and those who voted for Mr Obama (see chart). "You can't deny the level of disappointment," says Raul Grijalva, a Democratic representative from Arizona and head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Not me. I'm not surprised by Republicans' low approval ratings, either. I guess that's what happens when your party starts a couple of wars it couldn't finish, tanks the economy, and brings torture to the United States.
Still, it looks like it's the Democratic party that will suffer losses this November, largely because of the "enthusiasm gap" - the Democratic base just isn't fired up to vote.
And it's not like we couldn't see it coming. My prediction last year when the unenthusiastic Democrats started surfacing:
{Blogger Steve} Benen says the solution to Democratic woes is for party leaders to pursue an aggressive reform policy in health-care, climate change, union legislation, etc & co, that will reawaken the base. Don't expect that, however. Expect the news that Democratic voters are dropping out to spur politicians to again tack to the right to woo the voters that are planning to go to the polls. That is, of course, more in line with the actual record of many politicos.
Nailed it. The odd thing is that it appears Democrats ascribe their failures to being too liberal. No, it's because voters see them as ineffective:
Americans are growing more pessimistic about the economy and the war in Afghanistan, and are losing faith that Democrats have better solutions than Republicans, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
Underpinning the gloom: Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the economy has yet to hit bottom, a sharply higher percentage than the 53% who felt that way in January.
IMHO, Democrats needed to pursue an aggressively progressive agenda, all the while stumping on the principles of progressivism. Americans like principled politicians. Instead, Democrats are leaping for cover and hoping this resurgent anti-incumbency doesn't push them out of office, and the media has again internalized rightwing spin and ascribe Democratic failures to a conservative electorate...which is simply not true.
Don't believe me? Check out the rapidly moving poll numbers on Americans' view towards gay marriage. It's an issue that's been in the public eye for two decades, and the public debate surrounding it has allowed gay rights' activists and marriage proponents to continually hammer on their core principles of equality and civil rights, and - pretty quickly! - views of Americans have shifted towards favoring gay marriage, especially those of young people. That is, if you fight for what you believe in and provide good, compelling arguments that embody American principles, you will move the nation.
The irony here is that, on the other core issues surrounding this Congressional session, progressive positions started out popular. A majority of Americans favored the public option. A majority of Americans want climate change legislation. Talk about a missed opportunity...
In short, Democrats deserve to lose seats this election. Only I suspect they won't learn the lesson that those results will serve up. Instead, expect a further rightward shift and shying away from the principles that got them there in the first place...
Travis Kavulla - candidate for PSC! - over at ECW has a bee in his bonnet. To wit:
"It's not the religion. It's the people who are fundamentalists. Religion is not violent."
How many times have you heard that or some variation thereof?
These days, the line usually serves as a moral equivocation about Islamic fundamentalists' suicidal and murderous proclivities.
I'm happy to agree that Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, even Buddhism have martial beliefs which can serve to foster violence. But it's foolish to assume that each fundamentalism of each religion is somehow equal. Each faith is backed up by a different set of scripture and associated theological texts. Religions are different: They say different things about the role of women; about when war is just; about what you can eat; about who and how you can marry; and about a lot else besides....
It stands to reason that, if religions have different scripture, different role models, and different theological readings flavored by local histories, their position on the use of violence for proselytism would each be different. (And, again, a caveat: I concede Christianity has a rich history of proselytism by force, although I would argue it is rooted more in Christianity's theological and historical emanations, while the same coercive proselytism is, in the Koran, more embedded within the text of scripture itself.)
For starters, I agree with Kavulla that religions aren't all some amorphous blob that all act in the same way. But, still, the shorter Kavulla is this: Islam is bad, Christianity is teh awesome.
Which is probably neat consolation for the folks who, over the years, have been stoned, flogged, tortured, drowned, burned, strangled, and gassed for not being Christian. Oh, wait! I forgot! That's about "historical and theological emanations," not Christianity itself! In short, Christian violence is result of erroneous and egregious misreading of scripture.
We need a phrase that is more exact than "Islamic terror". These acts may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate essential Islamic principles. The Qur'an prohibits aggressive warfare, permits war only in self-defence and insists that the true Islamic values are peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. It also states firmly that there must be no coercion in religious matters, and for centuries Islam had a much better record of religious tolerance than Christianity.
Like the Bible, the Qur'an has its share of aggressive texts, but like all the great religions, its main thrust is towards kindliness and compassion. Islamic law outlaws war against any country in which Muslims are allowed to practice their religion freely, and forbids the use of fire, the destruction of buildings and the killing of innocent civilians in a military campaign. So although Muslims, like Christians or Jews, have all too often failed to live up to their ideals, it is not because of the religion per se.
Armstrong notes that bin Laden - as is "almost every fundamentalist movement in Sunni Islam" - was inspired "by the writings of the Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb," not mainstream Islamic thought, so "there is good cause for calling the violence...'Qutbian terrorism.'" It's kind of like pointing to the Westboro Baptists, Leviticus 20:13, and d*mning all of Christianity for it. Armstrong also notes that Qutb formed his radical and violent teachings during a 15-year stint in an Egyptian concentration camp, so it's hard to separate his views from the social and political events of the time. That is, the "historical and theological emanations" of the twentieth century.
The irony here is this: it's the secular advances of religious tolerance, democracy, the concept of individual liberty, the tradition of Western law, etc & co, that form the elements of Western civilization that we find agreeable, not Christianity. We know Christianity didn't produce those things: we have ample evidence that Christianity provided the intellectual basis for irrationality, intolerance, and violence. That's not to say that Christianity - combined with social and political "emanations" - didn't abet or even enable the rise of these secular values; I suspect religions' texts defining the structure of religious authority does influence the movement or evolution of ideas. Still, it's a bit disingenuous, even dangerous, to go about proclaiming the natural and universal superiority of your favorite religious text.
Essentially what we have here is Kavulla trying to create universal reasons why his particular and personal beliefs are true. Personally, I don't get into ideas of "universal law." I believe in principles that communities create (and that I create), but I also recognize that people and principles change, evolve. Isn't that why we should constantly question ourselves? Isn't that why we should always strive to learn, to remain curious and open-minded?
Okay, so Dennis Rehberg votes against a federal aid package that would bring Montana $68 million in state aid, "with more than $30 million going to school districts" and the rest to help with pay the state's Medicare bills.
Really? Really? Denying Montana federal money in a recession?
Quote of the day from Dennis McDonald: "You can lead a congressman to Washington, but you can't make him think."
Seriously, Rehberg is looking pretty bad this summer.
Every 15 minutes of a senator's waking life in Washington is fully scheduled with meetings, hearings and votes, and much of the rest is devoted to a frantic search for money to fuel the next campaign. "Of any free time you have, I would say 50 percent, maybe even more," is spent on fund-raising, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa told the New Yorker recently in a scathing portrait of an overstressed and utterly ineffective legislative body, one that measures acts of real significance in the single digits per term.
So it was refreshing to hear how Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat of Montana, is spending his summer vacation. While other senators drove the campaign trail, dialed for dollars or lounged on a beach somewhere, Mr. Tester went home to his farm and harvested wheat....
If more members had a life outside of campaigning and lawmaking, it might help put petty political disputes in a little perspective. Sit high up in the cab of a combine, stare out at an endless vista of swaying grain, worry about wheat futures and drought - your opponent a leaf-eating insect - and, suddenly, it should seem a little ridiculous to block an important piece of legislation back in Washington just because it would give the other party a victory.
First, while I've certainly had my legislative and ideological differences with Montana's junior Senator, there's no doubt he's the real deal. He's exactly what he seems: a farmer from Big Sandy. That's why we elected him.
Second, I'm glad the Times likes that Jon has a farm to put legislating in perspective. But as an advocacy strategy for Senate reform, wishing for more Senate farmers is a bit unrealistic. For starters, as my economic-obsessed friends might phrase it, all the incentives encourage a different kind of Senator. Senate campaigns are expensive, and growing more expensive all the time.
But it's not just the money: the inside-the-Beltway crowd - including the Times' talking heads - don't take blue collar candidates seriously. Remember, Jon wasn't favored to win his primary. The Beltway crowd liked the other John. And the state of politics - the incredible divisiveness brought on by the political right since the 60s and 70s - demands a different kind of Senator, one that's obsessed by the daily message, the political squabbling, the 5-second sound byte. You can blame the media for that too, rags like The Hill supplanting coverage by DC-based local reporters.
Robert Gibbs punched DFHs in an interview with The Hill that appeared today:
During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.
"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy."
The press secretary dismissed the "professional left" in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, "They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."
Funny, isn't it? At least it wasn't an "anonymous White House source," as usual. As Melissa McEwan points out, the president's and democratic party's political agenda has been essentially derailed by conservative obstructionism and the media's glamorization of an elderly fringe conservative movement, and Obama finally lashes out! At liberals.
Talk about adopting Right Wing memes. So the President is going to be out there "politicking," trying to energize the base, and his Press Secretary is going to be taking right wing potshots at the base? Does anyone know how to play this game? Gibbs was a great campaign spokesman for the Obama campaign, but he's been a pretty lousy Press Secretary. No discipline.
It's not really my business - I'm a distinctly amateur member of the left, and I don't think Obama's done a terrible job...he's been decent, given the circumstances. That said, I suspect folks a little closer to home probably feel a similar anger towards local lefties, so...let's examine at the rage.
New York Magazine channels the inside-the-Beltway resentment, offering a glimpse of why there's anger:
Obama has managed, despite the unprecedented permanent threat of a filibuster in the Senate, to pass health-care reform, financial reform, and legislation mandating equal pay for women. He's pulling out of Iraq like he said he would, and is in the process of ending "don't ask, don't tell." Oh, and he saved the auto industry from collapse and prevented the economy from a full depression.
And yet the liberals complain: Health care didn't have a public option! The stimulus wasn't big enough! The repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" is moving too slowly! Your position on gay marriage is confusing! Obama probably feels like Russell Crowe in Gladiator: "Are you not entertained!?!"
But instead of throwing a sword into the balcony where the professional left is sitting, startling them and knocking over their goblets of wine, he's having Press Secretary Robert Gibbs question their sobriety, and sanity.
Obama has done a decent job of setting an agenda and getting bills passed. But just passing legislation isn't enough. The laws probably should be good, too. Even Obama's cheerleaders admit most of this is a "good start" - especially on healthcare. But that begs the question, when do we finish up? To be fair, most of the blame falls on the shoulders of the Senate. But that doesn't mean Obama's continuation and expansion of Bush terror policies is excusable. An assassination program against American citizens without due process of law? I mean, come on!
The key problem here is that the administration - and especially the Senate - has been unwilling or unable to challenge political institutions, no matter how dysfunctional or destructive they are. But how do you reverse the recession, stop the growing divide between rich and everyone else, reinvigorate stagnant wages, halt irresponsible and economy-ruining Wall Street speculation, extract ourselves from Asia, slow rising healthcare costs, combat climate change, and reinstitute the value of the rule of law without challenging political institutions?
Here's a clue: not by devoting most of your time to tinkering with the Alternative Minimum Tax.
