Saturday, June 29, 2013
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Idiotocrates of the Day: Justice Scalia
What? Him again? Yes, he just keeps on being himself: grandiose, obtuse, reactionary, and, here, self-pitying because he can't get his way. As Paul Waldman writes at "The American Prospect":
Scalia is outraged at the majority's contention that the core purpose of DOMA was to discriminate against gay people, and this, he asserts, means that they're calling everyone who supports it a monster. "To defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution," he writes.
His overreach is breathtaking: he surely ignores what happened in Congress at the time of DOMA's passage, the intentions behind the bill, and the atmosphere of America at the time. Because the Court has acknowledged that, and declared singling out a group of people for special animus and discrimination is unconstitutional, it is somehow being massively unfair to those who took that action then and still support it. Thus, Scalia enunciates the "victim" mentality which animates so much of the right-wing nowadays: because we cannot get our way, and discriminate at will and force others to bend to our demands, we are being discriminated against! Boo-hoo...poor us! This is resentment raised to the level of sociopathy.
Waldman concludes:
After all, this is a guy who, in a decision delivered just yesterday, helped gut the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress and one that was reauthorized in 2006 by votes of 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate, yet spends two-thirds of this very dissent arguing that the Supreme Court is a bunch of black-robed tyrants when they invalidate a law passed by Congress. In other words, despite his carefully cultivated reputation as a principled "originalist," the only principle that guides Antonin Scalia is "what he can get away with." For him, it's the outcome that matters. The justification comes after. Is that true of the Court's liberals as well? Maybe. But it's a little rich to make that charge when your own hypocrisy is on such obvious display.
Scalia must be the least self-aware person on the planet when he declares that this decision "demeans this court."
Monday, June 24, 2013
Military Sexual Assault Mostly Male-on-Male
Who woulda thunk it? Well, reasonable people:
Slate reports:
In its latest report on sexual assault, the Pentagon estimated that 26,000 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012, up from 19,000 in 2010. Of those cases, the Pentagon says, 53 percent involved attacks on men, mostly by other men.
Part of the reason for this is that women are still a small minority in the military, representing only about 15 percent of service members. But what this astonishing number demonstrates is the truth of what feminists have been saying about sexual assault all along: It is not caused by an overabundance of sexual desire, but is an act of violence perpetrated by people who want to hurt and humiliate the victim, using sex as a weapon.
And lest you think this male-on-male crime is the result of the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Dao shows otherwise. As one male victim told Dao, “The people who perpetrated these crimes on me identify as heterosexual males,” which is frequently true of male-on-male rape.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
June 22, 1633 and Galileo
On this date in 1633, Galileo was forced by the Roman Catholic Inquisition to recant his scientific discovery that the earth spins on its axis and revolves around the sun, which remains fixed. As Ronald Bruce Meyer writes at freethoughtalmanac.com:
What seems obvious to us today was unscriptural, and therefore by definition untrue, in Galileo’s day. The ecclesiastical notion that the earth was the center of the universe was supported by passages from Joshua, Psalms and Ecclesiastes. Galileo was supported only by his observations and calculations...
He remained under clerical supervision the rest of his life. It wasn’t so much that Galileo sought confrontation with the doctrines of the Church; instead, he discovered facts which contradicted what the Church taught. What to do? Profess to believe what he no longer could? The one thing Galileo chose not to do was to stay silent – and to allow truth to approach superstition on its knees – until he was forced to profess what he did not believe. Galileo’s recantation on this date in 1633, if it demonstrates anything, demonstrates that you cannot choose what you believe, or be compelled to believe. You can be compelled to lie, to everyone but yourself, but the story of Galileo shows that you can believe only what you must.
It is well for us to remember this date because it brings to mind the need of adhering to the truth as reason and experience reveals it to us, and not to depend on or bow before the "revealed" truths of organized religion. There are still those in this modern age who would try to force everyone to live by the superstitions of revealed religion, using any and all means to do so. They must be confronted and their views called out at every opportunity. Galileo remains one of the icons in this ongoing struggle for freedom of thought and his story worth remembering.
btw: it took the Catholic Church 500 years to admit it was wrong.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Saturday, June 1, 2013
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