Politics '11: Keeping up with the Xornses

[Grefter]

You did it wrong.   You should have linked it like this

Bill O'Reilly starts funding the Westbro Baptist Church[/ur] because then you get to actually kind of give the guy the credit (what little there is) that he deserves and still be sarcastic.

Yeah, that whole article honestly pours a bit too much praise on anti-intellectualism.

Look at Canada, which has a functional right wing.  And it's true--the right wing is not composed of Political Science University professors.  The right wing is composed of successful businessmen, economists, and stuff like that.

Being anti-academia in your politicians I can understand--academia does have a political agenda.  Given a choice between funding for cancer research, and a tax break, academics will generally choose to fund research.  On the other hand...being anti-smart in your politicians...is dumb; I don't see the benefit.

In the case of Sarah Palin specifically, it's not even that she's stupid.  It's more that she has a history of improper political dealings; using state funds to bring her kids to New York.  Using $150k in RNC funds on her wardrobe alone.  Taking govenor housing money even though she was still living in the same house.  And then there's some strange moves, like walking away from office early.

Met is right.  Palin isn't purely like Reagan.  She has some Nixon in her as well.  That is a real winner right there.  Can you imagine it?  The Devil and The Beast mixed into one?  Glorious.  Edit - Warning, Hyperbole about everyone other than Reagan.

[Dhyerwolf]

I'm not sure why the court would overturn a verdict of guilty of causing emotional distress because of free speech laws. Free speech isn't (or at least shouldn't be) license to do something that you purposefully know could torment someone.

[Grefter]

Oh and I never thought I would say it like this, but man I miss the 60's where soldiers would have just shot the demonstrators who were demonstrating in an orderly fashion.

[metroid composite]

http://www.gallup.com/poll/politics.aspx

So, a few weeks after healthcare reform passes it looks like Obama's popularity numbers are back where they were before the whole thing started (still down 4% from his all-time high, back before he actually became president or did anything). Not all good news for Democrats, though, since a generic ballot question (Generic Democrat vs. Generic Republican vs. Generic Independent) has started coming back in favor of generic Republican.

That's the most depressing thing I've ever heard. Modern Generic Republicans are literally the worst thing.

No, this is literally the worst thing.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/03/30/westboro.baptist.snyder/index.html?hpt=T2

You know what?  I never thought I'd say this without sarcasm, but... Bill O'Reilly to the rescue...?

http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/oreilly-marine-funeral-protesters/2010/03/30/id/354287

Nobody's paying attention to Bill O'Riley any more since Glenn Beck started out-crazying him.  He had to do SOMETHING to get attention.  I remember a Daily Show episode making the comment "Bill O'Riley: you've become the voice of reason on Fox News..."

[Luther Lansfeld]

Thumbs up to O'Reilly.

[NotMiki]

I'm not sure why the court would overturn a verdict of guilty of causing emotional distress because of free speech laws. Free speech isn't (or at least shouldn't be) license to do something that you purposefully know could torment someone.

Free speech should definitely include the right to say things in public that torment people.  If free speech didn't include the right to, say, protest outside the white house chanting "Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today," despite the emotional distress it caused Lady Bird Johnson, I don't think it would mean much.  Or say you want to protest outside the Westboro Baptist Church, with signs that say God loves everyone.  That message, you know full well, is very upsetting to the Westboro Baptists.  Should you have to risk paying them money for their emotional distress?  I think the answer should be no.

So as a general rule, I think free speech should protect protesters from this kind of liability.  But there are two reasons, taken together, why I think the protest at a funeral should not be protected.  First, the family of the marine did nothing to put themselves in the public sphere, and they were attending an event that, though in a public place, is private in nature.  Second, the signs were directed specifically at them, criticizing their behavior personally.  Free speech should protect unpopular political opinions, no matter how repugnant, to the ends of the earth, but it need not extend to protecting what amounts to an attack specifically directed at a private individual in a private place.

[metroid composite]

Would there be a problem with a short-term suspension of free-speech, though?  Like...funerals get a 24 hour black-out period?

This still allows comedians to make fun of funerals the next day, and for slanted news sources to say "thank god that politician was assassinated" the next day.  Just...stops the day-of protesters.

[BaconForTheSoul]

Can't people just piss all over their church and claim that it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't God's will?  From my understanding of their beliefs, there is no free will and everything is pre-determined by God, so it's not like people have to hold themselves accountable for their own actions.

[NotMiki]

Would there be a problem with a short-term suspension of free-speech, though?  Like...funerals get a 24 hour black-out period?

This still allows comedians to make fun of funerals the next day, and for slanted news sources to say "thank god that politician was assassinated" the next day.  Just...stops the day-of protesters.

If the supreme court decides this in the marine's family's favor, it will probably because they hold that a funeral is something that is so private that the substantive due process right to privacy negates the right to free speech.  They'd be saying that protesting in front of a funeral is like protesting in someone's living room, more or less.  So something like what you propose may happen.

Politicians, by the way, are public figures, and have much less of a right to privacy than private figures do.  Picketing a politician's funeral would probably fall under the ambit of free speech no matter what, because the politician voluntarily put him/herself into the limelight (not by dying, but by being so visible in life).

http://volokh.com/2010/03/08/funeral-picketing-intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress-case-going-to-the-supreme-court/
Look at the comments to this post if you want to get a better idea of the legal issues at hand here.

[Taishyr]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/world/europe/03church.html?hp

so hey saying that the argument against the Catholic Church is like the Holocaust on Good Friday

that's that's not horribly crude timing at all, nor is it an incredibly poor analogy nope, not at all

o wate

...In all seriousness, I just... wow. I really just have to wonder if any of this is being intentionally done since the amount of damage they're doing to their own reputation just in their reactions to this shit is immense, and stuff like this I'd think they'd be trying to avoid. Yes, he says he's not trying to blame the Jewish faith for anything - good! - but... trying to compare what you're going through to the history of Jewish persecution? Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah no that's just completely assholish. Period. Wow this is just wow.

[Cotigo]

In Germany, you have to tell the government when you adopt a new religion.  The number of people switching from Catholicism in Bavaria (the German province with the highest concentration of Catholics) because of the fallout of this has tripled.

Hah!

[Taishyr]

http://nems360.com/view/full_story/6946554/article-UPDATE--McMillen-attends-sparse-Itawamba-prom?instance=home_news_1st_left <-- so, for one, Constance attended the private prom!...

...except the actual event was held somewhere else, apparently, and she was clearly not invited to it, according to this. Woo!

and then there's...

http://nmisscommentor.com/2010/04/05/malicious-mischief-alert-suspicious-package-at-itawamba-school-5-lb-bag-of-sugar/ <--- this. This is just getting to be maddening.

[Cotigo]

http://collateralmurder.com/

Wikileaks leaks a video of civilians being killed from an Apache helicopter.  Two of the casualties were Reuters reporters. 

Honestly, War is hell and this isn't that bad (stomach churning comments made by the US soldiers aside).  What's absolutely disgusting is that Reuters had been unsuccessfully trying to obtain this since the attack via the Freedom of Information act and the Department of Defense has been covering it (among other videos that Wikileaks apparently plans to disclose) up.  This really sheds a whole new light on Wikileaks recently being called a "threat to the US Army" (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/wikileaks-army/).

Followup links:
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/bmu2d/saw_the_video_wikileaks_posted_heres_a_measured/ - A soldier's commentary on the video

There are other (unedited, longer) videos that I can't seem to find right now and will post if I find them sometime after waking up tomorrow.

[NotMiki]

I don't know if I can agree with that.  Certainly civilians die in wars as the results of mistakes of this sort, but keep in mind that after the initial shootings, the men who went to the bodies were also shot then and there.  Even that in and of itself is not some kind of smoking gun of misconduct, but add to that the idea that US soldiers will almost never be punished for killing Iraqis and you start to see a broader picture that is permissive about when US soldiers can kill people to put it politely, or allows US soldiers to kill Iraqis with impunity, encouraging them to do so by never holding them accountable to put it frankly, and what looked like a tragic mistake at first glance now looks like the predictable result of a US policy that is indifferent to the lives of people on the ground.

Take a look at this and you start to see the bigger picture.  NATO blatantly lies about a killing, and it's reported as fact.  How often does this happen?  More often than we know, one would imagine.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/05/afghanistan/index.html

[metroid composite]

I remember about 7-8 years back in Afghanistan, the Americans bombed their Canadian allies, killing a bunch of Canadian soldiers.  At least these people had the potential to be the enemy....

[Grefter]

Combine the above with things you find out about the use of Stimulants in the military and if you branch out that far into Military Psychology and the lengths of shifts and whatnot and you start to see a big picture that is horrifying and entirely expected.  The reality of modern warfare is that it has not changed a great deal since Vietnam.

[Cotigo]

I guess what I meant is that the actions of the soldiers themselves isn't that bad--if nothing else, it speaks to the need for a larger reliance on ground troops to have a better idea of what's going on on the ground.  It may put more American lives at risk but fuck it--they signed up for it, and visual confirmation on the ground would have made it more clear that the so-called RPG was a fucking CAMERA. 

Otherwise I agree completely.  The coverup is absolutely disgusting and I'm really glad that we have an organization like Wikileaks out there getting this sort of information out in the open.  The cover up itself is a part of the whole Americans-will-never-be-punished deal that certainly isn't helping us "win the hearts and minds" of the Iraqis, and, y'know, make the insurgents a whole lot less eager to attack the invaders and try to get them out of their country.

[Xeroma]

And now for something of a different nature. I'm not really sure where to put this honestly, but since it had to do with a court decision....

http://kotaku.com/5510695/net-neutrality-dealt-a-severe-blow-as-comcast-wins-fcc-appeal


FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

[metroid composite]

Wait, what?

The governing body designed to regulate this kind of stuff...was ruled in court to not have the authority to regulate this kind of stuff?  WTF?

[superaielman]

http://article.nationalreview.com/430412/go-quietly-michael-steele/mona-charen

A nice summary of Steele's ineptness. He really does need to go. When you are trying to align your party as one of fiscal responsability and do things like this:

Roll Call reported that Steele spent $18,500 to redecorate his dark-paneled office. “This is going to sound weird,” he explained, but “it’s too male for me.” Actually, more than anything, it sounds vain and self-indulgent. Among the new accoutrements — a Bowflex machine.

You perhaps have lost perspective.

[Xeroma]

Wait, what?

The governing body designed to regulate this kind of stuff...was ruled in court to not have the authority to regulate this kind of stuff?  WTF?

All I know is that I'm probably going to move out of my apartment sooner than I expected, and that I am never getting Comcast ever ever again.

[Cmdr_King]

Wait, what?

The governing body designed to regulate this kind of stuff...was ruled in court to not have the authority to regulate this kind of stuff?  WTF?

It's America, you forget.  So when the liberal crazies grumble about the slow slide to hardcore corporotocracy, it's less exaggeration than you want to believe.

[BaconForTheSoul]

Wait, what?

The governing body designed to regulate this kind of stuff...was ruled in court to not have the authority to regulate this kind of stuff?  WTF?

Comcast is the most powerful entity of all of Oregon.  Microsoft and Nike be damned!

[Pyro]

Justice Stevens to retire from the Supreme Court. This could end up having fairly major implications as far as executive power rulings go.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/politics/10stevens.html

[Dunefar]

I'm surprised it took him this long to retire. I figured he'd drop as soon as Obama was sworn in.