First let's check in with the crazy yet dangerous Religious Right and their war on abortion and homsexuality and any policy or view they brand as liberal or secular humanists.
Religious Right leader Lou Engle of The Call compares the fight against abortion to the Cofederacy standing its ground to defend slavery???
Does he intend to say there is a moral equivalency between stopping abortion and defending the institution of slavery.
Is he claiming for instance that the abolitionists were being guided by dark forces and so called principalities ie demons???
This is especially noteworthy (and idiotic and plain stupid) when the US has a Black man as president.
Lou Engle Calls for Religious Right to Channel Confederate Generals to 'Restrain' the 'Homosexual Agenda'by Brian Tashman at Rightwing Watch.org, May 4,2012
During his speech at the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “Week of Prayer” yesterday, Lou Engle asked for support of his upcoming The Call: Virginia prayer rally, saying that Virginia should fight back against Washington D.C., just as Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson did during the Civil War. General Lee “had an anointing or something,” Engle said, “he was able to restrain Washington, he took his stand and held back those force.” Engle also pointed to Stonewall Jackson for “rallying the Virginians” against the Union as a model to fight the “homosexual agenda” and the demonic “principalities and powers” behind homosexuality. Engle said, “Raise up a stonewall to restrain the agenda that is coming out of D.C.”
In another bizarre comparison the right wing compares those who believe in Global Warming to mass murderers and psychopaths
Heartland Institute Compares Climate Science Believers and Reporters to Mass 'Murderers And Madmen' by Joe Romm via Alternet.org from Climate Progress, May 4, 2012
The Heartland Institute has launched one of the most offensive billboard campaigns in U.S. history. The Chicago-based anti-science think tank is comparing all those who accept climate science — and the journalists who report on it accurately — to Charles Manson, the Unabomber, and Osama Bin Laden.
This far-beyond-the-pale ad campaign to promote their Chicago conference later this month is a moment of truth for both the think tank and the broader community of disinformers and their enablers.
Will confirmed speakers like Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Czech President Vasclav Klaus, Joe Bastardi, Pat Michaels, Fred Singer, or former NASA astronauts show up at the conference, thereby endorsing this beyond-extremist message? Will leading deniers denounce these offensive ads — or will they implicitly endorse this kind of hate speech? Will media outlets like PBS keep quoting Heartland ‘experts’ as if they were a legitimate source of information?
GM ended their financial support of Heartland earlier this month, as has AT&T, but why are State Farm and Microsoft still supporting it? Many other public corporations have donated money or provided resources to Heartland, including Eli Lilly & Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Nucor, Pfizer, and Time Warner Cable. Will they cut ties or implicitly endorse these extreme ads?
The UK Guardian, which broke the story this morning, calls this “possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.
And thanks to US perverse Justice System and Obama's appeasing the GOP Bush Regime's war criminals go free.
According to these legal experts John Yoo and others involved in the defense of the Bush Regime's questionable and disturbing use of torture are not accountable for their actions because now wait for it -Waterboarding and other interrogation techniques were not deemed as torture by American legal experts. Since there was some doubt raised about whether these techniques were in fact torture the legal defense or veneer offered up by John Yoo can not be considered as amounting to a war crime or unjustifiable.
Ninth Circuit Court Rules That John Yoo Is Protected From Torture Lawsuit By Ben Armbruster via Think Progress.org, May 2, 2012
In 2008, convicted terrorist Jose Padilla sued former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo for writing controversial Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos justifying the use of torture. The suit said Yoo’s memos, which were signed by OLC head Jay Bybee, provided the legal justifications for what the suit said was Padilla’s unconstitutional confinement and “gross physical and psychological abuse.”Federal Judge Threatens Sanctions Against Oakland Police For ‘Military-Type Response’ To Occupy Protests | AlterNet
Today, the 9th Circuit Court, of which Jay Bybee is a member, ruled that Yoo is protected from the lawsuit, claiming that the law defining torture and the treatment of enemy combatants was unsettled when Yoo wrote the memos:
We therefore hold that Yoo must be granted qualified immunity, and accordingly reverse the decision of the district court.
As we explain below, we reach this conclusion for two reasons. First, although during Yoo’s tenure at OLC the constitutional rights of convicted prisoners and persons subject to ordinary criminal process were, in many respects, clearly established, it was not “beyond debate” at that time that Padilla — who was not a convicted prisoner or criminal defendant, but a suspected terrorist designated an enemy combatant and confined to military detention by order of the President — was entitled to the same constitutional protections as an ordinary convicted prisoner or accused criminal. Id. Second, although it has been clearly established for decades that torture of an American citizen violates the Constitution, and we assume without deciding that Padilla’s alleged treatment rose to the level of torture, that such treatment was torture was not clearly established in 2001-03.
Running down the list of torture memos Bybee signed, Marcy Wheeler writes of the 9th Circuit’s decision, “Oh good. We don’t have to question the competence of anyone on the 9th Circuit now, given that the 9th Circuit has judged that it was not beyond debate that Inquisition torture methods were torture when now-9th Circuit judges were signing off on claims they weren’t.”
Meanwhile NYPD using similar tactics aswe have seen in Bahrain-going tothe homes of people involved in peaceful protest. In Bahrain people became fearful of the police and army and so would do all they could to protect their neighborhoods or village or towns against whar seem to be an invading army with cruel intentions.
What It's Like When the NYPD Raids Your Apartment At Dawn-- Because Your Roommate is in Occupy by Sarah Seltzer at Alternet.org
I chatted briefly with musician Justin Remer, whose Brooklyn apartment was raided by the NYPD on Monday morning in an incident that was first reported on Gawker and sure looks from all angles like a pre May Day intimidation tactic. I was curious about how the experience felt.
“At around six-fifteen I was woken up. I sleep in a lofted bed, and there's a police officer standing in my bedroom shining a flashlight in my face. He woke me up and said ‘get down in the living room," he said. Remer dressed, grabbed his ID as requested, and joined his housemates in the living room.
He said the officers--about six of them--took the residents' identification and began trying to match them with a list of warrants.
Meanwhile Obama administration and FBI want to extend surveillance to websites and blogs and Social Media.
FBI Wants to Force Internet Companies to Make Their Sites Surveillance-Ready by Adrian Covert at Gizmodo, May 4,2012
If you are paranoid about the rise of a police state, it's time to pull out your metaphorical tin foil hat: according to Cnet, the FBI is attempting to strong-arm companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft into making their websites and services "wiretap-friendly."
As if CISPA and SOPA weren't already bad enough, Cnet says that, if permitted, this proposal would be amended to the 18-year-old CALEA legislature, which requires telecommunications companies to make their communication lines accessible for wiretaps.
"If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding," a person who has reviewed the FBI's draft legislation told CNET. The requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded, according to a second person briefed on it.
And it's not just the FBI pushing for this either; the FCC is also pushing to make any voice or video chat service on the internet fall under the scope CALEA. The thought of this happening is terrifying, especially when you consider that many of us are required—for work, school, etc—to use these major services. And along with all the work the NSA is putting into their shiny new data center out in the middle of Utah, the government would basically have all the tools necessary to keep tabs on virtually all of us all the time. Yikes. [Cnet]
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