Supreme Court

More On Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

If people in the US agree on so much, why isn't anything getting done? This is a continuation of yesterday's $pecial Interest Government Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things. The stats are in Majorities of people in the US, Democrat, Republican, and Independent, agree to commons sense gun control (85%) and climate change action (including 65% who blame human activity). The majority object to a tax system supporting income inequality (60% want higher taxes for the rich and 82% want corporations to pay their fair share in taxes) and an economy rigged in favor of corporations (more than 70%). Including 80% ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

$pecial Interest Government is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Despite much hand-wringing by presidential candidates bemoaning a divided US, we the people are in agreement on many issues, including what is undermining our democracy. Frances Moore Lappé and Giulio Caperchi, writing for BillMoyers.com outline it for us based on a 2014 study covering both blue and red states. Climate change. Americans’ concern about global warming is at an eight-year high, with a record 65 percent of us now blaming human activity for rising temperatures. Gun control. Eighty-five percent of Americans — including large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats — favor closing gun-sale loopholes by ...

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in Campaigns / Dan Massey / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Let the Good News Flow

Flickr/creativecommons

Just yesterday, I noted a trifecta of good news, and today two more actions by the US Supreme Court immediately followed: The justices refused to entertain an appeal by pharmacists to use religious exemptions in their refusal to fill birth control prescriptions; and they finally ended the quest of county clerks like Kim Davis in Kentucky, all of whom are government employees, from refusing marriage licenses based on their religious beliefs. Sometimes, more and more frequently these days, we see more good news, more progress towards that better world we can envision. Our manifesto describes the mechanics ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Stupid Is As Stupid Does For The Religious Right

Steve Shives

"I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over non religion." -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

It's hard to know where to begin to start in cataloging the elected officials and judges who by their own words and actions belie their true allegiance to something other than our Constitution -- an allegiance that supersedes any oaths of office they have taken. The seeds of their allegiance to a power greater than the Constitution ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The Religious Right’s Last Stand

Editorial Cartoon by Joe Wolf Flickr/creative commons

Back now from a few days meditation on the shifting political sands brought about by recent Supreme Court rulings (healthcare, marriage, and against gerrymandering) and other intersecting events, such as  President Obama's Eulogy for Clementa Pickney. I've been soaking in all that has been written about this extraordinary week and how it relates to the future fortunes of the religious right. You can catch up with the last few weeks of my posts which have focused exclusively on the religious right, and in particular the dominionist, political-religious philosophy that ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Scalia Just Outed Himself as Secret Dominionist

Poster of Justice Antonin Scalia by Mike Licht, yesterday Flickr/creative commons

In his dissenting opinion to today's Supreme Court decision that has made marriage equality the law of the land, Justice Antonin Scalia was very emotional and just as dissembled as he was yesterday after the American Care Act was upheld, and many days before. But his few court-published words this morning in particular make them tower in importance because they are so succinctly self-incriminating (something I like to call self-repudiation). "Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court." I recently posited that ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 1 comments

The Christian Fundamentalist’s Erotic Dream

by Chicago Man Flickr/creative commons

"[T]he erotic dream of Amreican fundamentalism: a restoration of chivalry, a cleansing of impurity, a nation without sin, an empire of the personal as political." From Jeff Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (2009)

This dream is especially important to understand, particularly as we await the pending Supreme Court decision that is likely to authorize federal same-sex marriage without interference from the states. Either way the court goes, this singular decision promises to further divide the christian right from everyone else. This dream, this sexual fantasy, helps explain the root of the intense, ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Counting on what is good

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By everyone's estimation, last week was bad, in fact we are having many bad weeks piling up for sometime now. But, these horrible events distract us from all the good that is emerging at the same time. It's not Pollyanna-like to see that this cauldron of world-wide strife is now bubbling over for all to see and evaluate and soundly reject.  Universal human rights, environmental protection, and self-determination, and all that they convey, will prevail, not just because of their rightness but because they represent survival. Science-denying, theocratic fundamentalists, here and abroad, simply have no future. Previously I have ...

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in Key Issues / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Arrow’s Paradox Dismembers Supreme Court Illogic

Kenneth Arrow

A few years ago around July 4, we wrote about the fallacy of the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in the Citizen's United v Federal Communications Commission case opened the door to giving personal rights to corporations by prohibiting the government from restricting political expenditures. These same fallacies underpin the recent ruling in Burwell v Hobby Lobby  newly bestows on corporations the right to assert religious freedom when considering their employees birth control. Neither were good decisions. They were irrational and false because they are devoid of any valid national vision. As Congress waves its arms trying to rectify ...

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in Key Issues / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

What? Science? Who Needs Science?

Flickr/creative commons

On Monday, we wrote our analysis of the disastrous 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Burwell v Hobby Lobby, which gives greater religious freedom rights to closely held for-profit corporations and less religious freedom rights to natural persons (their words). We also urged you to express your dissent byRead More›

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments