Glenn Greenwald writes:

Evidently undeterred by last year’s Supreme Court ruling that the First Amendment guarantees the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to protest at funerals, President Obama yesterday signed a new law “enacting new restrictions on protests of service member funerals,” hailing his own act as the fulfillment of a “moral sacred duty.” Apparently, holding a protest outside of a funeral is a moral atrocity, but bombing a funeral and killing the mourners in attendance is a noble act in defending freedom.

[Update at 1638]

President Barack Hussein Obama…?

Obama opposes Boy Scouts ban on gays

Thank you President Obama. However:

In a follow-up email, [White House spokesperson Shin] Inouye said Obama won’t resign or relinquish his position as honorary president of the Boy Scouts as result of this position.

I’m OK with that, but I would like to know your reasons, Mr. President.

Previously…

Boy Scout Moms For Equality…

Many well-meaning people counter that the BSA is a private organization, and as such should be able to keep whomever they want out. This is of course the same justification used to prevent minorities from eating in restaurants during the Jim Crow years. And where an organization as revered and national in scope as the Scouts maintains and defends such a policy, it sends the wrong message to our youth, many of whom already are struggling with their own sexual identity–an identity which has nothing whatsoever to do with their “morality,” but everything to do with their self-esteem and happiness. Thus, while the BSA may have the “legal” right to continue to discriminate–a question I believe should be revisited–I and others have the same “legal” right to protest the policy, till our last breaths if necessary, as blatantly discriminatory and against everything that equality in America stands for. ~George Takei

Massachusetts Councils: Reject the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policy

The Girl Scouts, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the 4H Club, even the Scouts of Britain (from whom we originate) do not find it necessary to exclude people based on sexual orientation. With a growing national awareness of the dangers of bullying and teen suicide, I find it ethically untenable for an organization working for the good of our sons to endorse a policy of exclusion. Our great state owes much to its diversity, and as such we feel it essential to our very identity to defend civil rights for ALL our residents.

Michelangelo Signorile writes:

[T]he Boy Scouts of America has decided to continue sending a devastating and dangerous message to young people across America: keep gays away because they are not like the rest of us.

It’s devastating and dangerous because it comes at a time when we’ve seen escalating reports of young people, some as young as 7, taking their own lives, suicides by gay kids often victimized and brutalized by bullies. The bullies do it because they’ve been told that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are worthless and should be shunned.

Previously…

Glenn Greenwald writes:

In sum, David Plouffe — who has spent his entire career working in Washington as a political operative — has become a very rich man by converting into large piles of cash the only real asset he has: his influence in and access to the Obama White House and the Democratic Party. Every political operative and official in Washington — from both parties — knows that they can be similarly enriched by serving these same interests

Today is a particularly bad (good?) day for me, Twitter and Facebook because my very limited list of friends have linked to/featured the following stories that are just interesting enough to suck me down the rabbit hole.

Here’s the list:

Boy Scout Moms for Equality 1024-1039 (This will show up later todaty in an omnibus post.)

Tom’s Kitchen: Raw Kale Salad, With Hat Tips to Brooklyn and Caesar 1039-1047

This gets made this weekend. I love anchovies (so much so that I have a container of the olive oil from my cans of anchovies that I keep in my refrigerator) so I’ll use a whole can, not just 2, 3 or 4 fillets. I don’t own a mortar and pestle, but this recipe may finally give me the impetuous to buy a set.

Massachusetts Councils: Reject the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policy 1048-1053 (This will show up later todaty in an omnibus post.)

How Do You Find Creative Identity? An Essay by James Navé 1053-1118

They never worried about playing the songs perfectly. They didn’t think about going pro, nor did they play for money. “Creative Block” was not a term you’d find in their vocabulary. They played music. They did it all the time. They were musicians.

Regardless of the creative form you work in, like the musicians, when you show up and do the work (play if you will) your creative identity will find you more than you will find it.

His imagery very much reminds me of this.

(Navé’s poetry is pretty awesome too:

I dropped my moleskin reporter’s
notebook into the sink. Soaked
pages became beds of blue flowers.
Who needs a story when you have
ginger tea and woodpeckers?

Spielberg Leaves Boy Scout Board 1118-1129

Spielberg, who was once a Boy Scout, said he would return on one condition: “Once scouting opens its doors to all who desire the same experience that so fully enriched me as a young person, I will be happy to reconsider a role on the advisory board.”

Interview With the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Candidate for Organizer in Chief1129-1143

[Our campaign] is about bringing the fight that’s going on at the grassroots level, for our homes, for jobs, for affordable healthcare, to have tuitions that a student can afford. These fights are actively going on in our communities, but they are not currently represented in electoral politics. They are not on the horizon of two major parties, they are busy talking about Mitt Romney’s tax forms or latest gaffes, anything but the real problems that Americans are struggling with and how we are going to fix them. Bringing the grassroots struggle into electoral politics and challenging the hijack of our electoral system and Wall Street gives me the liberty to talk about what we need and how we are going to fix these things.

Point after point, as I read this, makes me want to do a fist pump and shout, “Fuck Yeah!” but the final question and answer ought nail the message:

YK: As we get closer and closer to the election, the pressure for progressives to vote for Obama is going to increase. What would you like to say to potential voters?

JS: It’s really important to see where this politics of fear has gotten us. George Bush bailed out Wall Street, Barack Obama bailed our Wall Street. That didn’t get better. George Bush deported a lot of immigrants, Obama deported a whole lot more immigrants. Because we were quiet our civil liberties have been trashed even more. It’s really important to say that under the democrats the ship won’t go down quite as fast, but a sinking ship is still a sinking ship. Your objective is not to get onto another ship which is going down a little bit less quickly, this doesn’t get us out of there alive. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are offering strategies for the crisis we are in, none of them have an exit strategy and yet Democrats are asking us won’t we please use our votes as weapons against ourselves? Our successes historically have always come from a social movement on the ground. It’s time to stand with the politics of courage, not fear, and take our political life back from our political abusers.

Breaking for lunch at 1143; back from lunch (chopped salad made from ingredients from my Geauga Family Farms weekly allotment dressed with an olive oil and fresh lemon juice dressing) at 1247. Facebook and Twitter checked and shut back down.

Boy Scouts’ Dangerous Message to Young Americans: Gay Kids Don’t Measure Up 1247-1252 (This will show up later todaty in an omnibus post.)

Mustafa’s Space Drive: An Egyptian Student’s Quantum Physics Invention 1252-1258

I can’t begin to evaluate Mustafas work, but I’ve passed the story along to Mano Singham, a real theoretical physicist, and asked him for an evaluation.

I’ll keep you posted. And, as promised:

Hi Jeff,

There is not enough information in the article to really tell but the idea of using the vacuum energy as a form of propulsion seems highly dubious and, at least on the surface, would seem to violate the second law of thermodynamics.

The solar sail example and the Pioneer deflections mentioned in the article have little to do with what is being suggested here except that they are very small effects. But they do not violate any laws and are quite straightforward.

Cheers,

Mano

Ah, those pesky Laws of Thermodyamics

Mosques, Temples, and Theaters: We Need to Change the Script 1258-1342

A group of Sikhs shot by a white man? A white supremacist. A group of (mostly) white Americans shot by a white man in the Midwest? In a theater? A loner. In a high school by two white boys/men? Troubled loners. By a man of East Asian origin on a college campus? A deranged loner. An Army base shot up by a Palestinian-American (US Army psychiatrist)? A terrorist (by definition deranged and ideologically zealous). A black man is repeatedly run over by two white boys in a truck? So strange; racism is gone. We have a black president. A black boy gets shot by a white man? Random and probably deserved. Black men on death row for crimes they didn’t commit? Justice prevails. So say the governors who allow them to be executed, and so follow our media.

These scripts are pulled out so neatly, one marvels at the level of organization that allow them to be read out so easily. And yet, like most scripts, they are edited to provide a clear, easy-to-follow narrative that appeals to the audience’s most intimately held beliefs. Those beliefs are drawn out, and impressed again to memorize what our irrational sides fear…

In large part, the shooters and arsonists who are behind many, if not most of these events in America, are white men. [Not mentioned by Falguni A. Sheth in his piece, but including our own Scott A. Smith.]

Clearly the FBI, along with all other law enforcement agencies, needs to immediately implement a Stop-And-Frisk policy for all short-haired white males between the ages of 18 and 40 for the sake of public saftey.

The Rhetoric of Singleness… 1342-1354/1542-1554

The contemporary individual is not lonely, just single—but this is not culturally recognized.

[1354: I’ve been up and working since 0300, time for a nap, back in 90 minutes or so… Back at 1542 after a nap, shower and afternoon mediation.]

and therefore: not much. this article was essentially a waste of time. I’m hoping the next one, suggested by Adam, is better.

…and (curse you Adam Harvey) How to be alone 1554-1606

Nope. Nothing happening there either (I evenread through the first page of comments). I’m voting for how you feel about being alone is a genetic brain chemistry issue. I like being alone, in most cases I prefer being alone. And when I don’t want to be alone, the last place I want to be alone is anywhere there are more than 10 people that I’m interacting with. (I hate sporting events where I’m a spectator, large family gatherings, conferences, &c.)

Returned Eagles 1606-1620

What may be the most official document recording those of us who have returned our Eagle awards now lists 175 brothers.

And those are just the tabs I opened and didn’t read immediately.

So, here’s my brief experiment for the morning: just how much time will I need to invest to satisfactorily read these 11 12 links?

I’ll report back later this morning afternoon.

Logged out of Facebook at 0948; logged out of Twitter at 0949; closed my email reader at 0952; began reading my morning dozen at 1024 and finished at 1620.

So, how do you deal with your Facebook and Twitter problem?

Expect shell casings everywhere…

Zero Dark Thirty is a really, really bad idea…

And out just in time for the holidays too.. [facepalm]Feck![/facepalm]

0913: The danger of having guns in even skilled hands

Mano’s readers have engaged in one of the more intelligent conversations on guns in the United States.

I would draw your particular attention to the musings of kyoseki

You have to stop people wanting guns before you can ban them, that’s the fundamental issue here and I haven’t the first goddamned clue how you go about it.

Marcus Ranum:

The obvious answer to those who are concerned with gun rights is to strengthen the separation between the executive branch and the command of the national guard. Maintain the guard with military weaponry that is comparable to the standing army and downsize the standing military. Then if someone wants to be a gun nut, they can join the guard and shoot real machine guns and laser guided missiles and drive tanks and whatnot – at the taxpayers’ expense.

If the idea is to prevent a putsch, having a rabble in arms is not going to seriously inconvenience a modern military. Revolutions (or counter-revolutions) almost entirely hinge on whether or not the standing army gets involved and on which side they get involved. Insurgencies of peasants are very very very expensive in terms of the lives of the peasants. It’s much better to try to head off putsches using political compartmentalization so that, in effect, there is no single army that can be turned against the state.

rork:

… in the U.S. I sense a tradition of self-protection is more at work in the minds of most people than the possibility of fighting the government. Reading Teddy Roosevelt’s older books for example – it’s clear those ranchers needed guns cause the threat of violence was the only method of not being molested. The police powers were entirely unable to stop outlaws. That tradition continues out west. They won’t stand for “go ahead and kill me – the authorities will get you later” as a solution.

Not comprehensive by any means, but a much better conversation on the issue than I’ve found elsewhere.

Clearly, Michael Leisner was never an Eagle Scout…

Previously…

Glenn Greenwald writes:

Regardless of where one falls on the ideological spectrum, we must all join together to condemn the sin of moral relativism: therefore, the same act that is the hallmark of repulsive savagery when done by Al Qaeda, Assad, and the Hutaree militia is transformed into a moral and noble act when done by the Government of the United States of America. As U.S. political discourse has long taught, the crime of “moral relativism” is committed by holding everyone to the same standards – that’s “moral relativism.” One can avoid that pitfall only by exempting oneself and one’s own country from the moral dictates one imposes on everyone else.

At our Socrates Café gathering in July we invested 90 minutes in examing the question: Is all morality relative?

That evening I said no, that there were two absolutes that I could hold to: I will not murder. I will not rape. Every other case I could think of is subject to higher standards. The most common example is the moral stance against lying. Generally, we hold that lying is to be avoided, but if placed in a position where telling the truth results in injury or death to an innocent, then we lie.

Isaac Asimov neatly laid all of this out in his Three (later Four) Rules of Robotics:

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Before his death from HIV-related complications in 1992 (he contracted HIV from a contaminated blood tranfusion during surgery in 1983) Asimov added a fourth, higher law, to the original three in Foundation And Earth. Central to that story, and ultimately Asimov’s Future Histroy, was the formulation of the

Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Asimove recognized the complexity of such a law, as revelaed in this exchange between the human Golan Trevoize and the robot Daneel Olivaw:

Trevize frowned. “How do you decide what is injurious, or not injurious, to humanity as a whole?”

“Precisely, sir,” said Daneel. “In theory, the Zeroth Law was the answer to our problems. In practice, we could never decide. A human being is a concrete object. Injury to a person can be estimated and judged. Humanity is an abstraction.”

Ah, abstractions.

When you want to pretend that might someday be rich enough to join the 1 Percent (or at least obtain enough of the trappings of the 1 Percent to give the impression you have), when you place value above values, when you have too much at stake to walkaway, you’ve been suborned.

When the organization you are part of holds one set of values while supporting clients who do not, you’ve been suborned.

As Brant Parker and Johnny Hart famously cartooned above, “Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.”

This is the deepest flaw in our society.

Previously…

Louisiana School Forcing Pregnancy Tests on Students

Return My Eagle…

Previously…

[Update at 1320: Westlake police confirm Scott A. Smith took gun, knives into Regal Cinemas at Crocker Park.]

[Update at 0927: nearly nine hours later the Plain Dealer (with a significant typo my apology to Michael Sangiacomo and the PD copy desk) runs the story.]

[Update at 0805: Eight hours later and still the WKYC story is the only mention I can find. Does no one else find this odd?]

[Update at 0954: I should have suggested this when I wrote the post. Compare this story with one from yesterday.]

Glenn Greenwald writes:

This sort of influence-peddling — in which former or future Washington officials become personally enriched by the very corporations most invested in public policy — is, needless to say, par for the course in Washington. Recall how Larry Summers — in the year before he became Obama’s top economic policy adviser — was paid ”more than $2.7 million in speaking fees by several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations,” including $45,000 for a November 12 Merrill Lynch appearance (8 days after Obama was elected and 10 days before Summers was named to the top economics post), as well as a $135,000 payment for a single-day visit to Goldman Sachs on April 16, 2008.

Or recall how Obama’s Office of Management and Budget Chief, Peter Orszag, left his government job that had vast influence over corporate and banking policy and ran into the loving and grateful arms of Citigroup, which rewarded him with a multi-million-dollar compensation package. Chris Dodd, after unequivocally vowing not to lobby when he finished his 36-year-career in the Senate, ran to become Hollywood’s chief lobbyist, where he receives millions of dollars to use his Washington influence on behalf of the entertainment industry. The Iranian terror group MeK has shuffled large sums of money in the form of “speaking fees” to a long bipartisan list of former Washington officials – including numerous GOP officials who made their name crusading against Terrorism – who then promptly became vocal and loyal advocates for the Terror group’s cause.

The implications of all this extends far beyond mere corporate influence-buying. That’s not even the most consequential aspect of this dynamic. The more insidious impact is cultural. What this does is it ensures that our highest political officials — regardless of party or ideology — maintain supreme fealty to those who can afford to personally enrich them. It converts almost every politician with any real influence in Washington into an entrenched and loyal member of the oligarchical class — or, more accurately, a well-paid servant of oligarchs. That’s what makes Plouffe’s case so instructive.

I have no idea, none, nada, zip, on how to fix this, short of some kind of life-time non-disclosure agreement for all politicians, without stomping on the First Amendment.

Suggestions please.

Via Eagle Scouts For Equality:

We must remember that BSA is not the only battle that the gay community is challenging discrimination on, nor is “civil” discrimination their only obstacle. The gay community must, in some areas, literally live in fear of their health or even their lives.

We MUST help slam the brakes on this for the sake of future generations of children and Scouts. This is our generation’s civil rights movement. The BSA is a large organisation, but each of you has fulfilled the creed you believed in as Scouts by standing up against hatred and intolerance and earned the respect of many in doing so.

We know that it is hard to part with your medals, badges, or rank, especially as a form of symbolic speech with no immediate effect. We know what these things mean to all of you. But the impact of your decision to choose the side of freedom, dignity, fairness, kindness, justice, equality, and compassion, proves that you deserve the medals you earned, even if you’re physically letting go of them.

Previously…

0536 They did it!

And Google found a wonderful way to commemorate the event (I wonder if the choice of the javelin competition was intentional?)

From USA Today:

An 11-member panel concluded that exclusion is “absolutely the best policy” for the more than century-old organization.

Talk about out of step.

The 2.7-million member BSA preaches kindness, loyalty and bravery, and its oath urges Scouts “to help other people at all times.” Yet intolerance of gays and lesbians apparently overrides these values.

This isn’t a legal issue. The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that, as a private organization, the Scouts have a constitutional right to exclude openly gay people. Freedom of association, the court said, plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate.

But just because an organization can do something doesn’t mean it should. Groups such as the Girl Scouts, Jaycees, Rotary and 4-H Club have all successfully adopted non-discrimination policies. That leaves the Boy Scouts as an outlier.

Previously…

Asim Rehman writes:

Scouting taught me that even if we are each a little different, there is a place for us on the team, and we can work together to meet our goals. Unfortunately, the Boy Scouts of America believes that these truly American principles do not extend to everyone.

Scouting, and my brother Eagles, are bigger than those small, narrow-minded men who prefer exclusion and prejudice to embracing diversity and basic humanity.

Previously…