Below is my column on the rather transparent calls for ethics investigations of Roy Moore and Al Franken despite the limited scope of potential discipline and the checkered history of congressional ethics.
Here is the column:
Continue reading “FOR ROY MOORE AND AL FRANKEN, HISTORY AND THE LAW IS ON THEIR SIDE”
Wes Goodman is the Republican state legislator for Ohio who ran on a religious right agenda of opposing LGBT rights and same sex marriage. His career ended last week after the discovery of Goodman having sex with a man in his office. Things that makes this legislator less of a good man is not his apparent homosexuality but his dishonesty and hypocrisy. He is not only married to a woman but has been a leading voice against homosexuals.
Jim Bakker was last seen by most people after his sex scandal and then sentencing for fraud. Now he is back and he will totting pancake mix. Bakker is shilling for people to call a 1-888 phone number to give him $60 (plus shipping) for a bucket of pancake mix. The alternative appears to be starving your children and handing them over to the Biblical Beast.
Continue reading “Rev. Jim Bakker: Buy My Pancake Mix Or Make Flapjacks In Hell?”
We have been discussing the dropping of mascots and team names due to claims of cultural appropriation and insensitivity. The latest school to do so is Marist College which is dropping the upstate New York school’s longtime mascot “Shooter the Fox.” Marist Athletic Director Tim Murray said that “Unfortunately, in our culture today, there is a negative stigma to that term ‘shooter.’ And I just didn’t think it was appropriate for us at this time to perpetuate that term.” However, Shooter would often appear at basketball games to “shoot” baskets. Now “Shooter the Fox” will be called “Frankie the Fox.” Does this mean that we will change the lexicon of basketball to drop references to “shoots?” Marist students can now be described as taking a Frankie for a basket.Continue reading “Marist College Drops Mascot “Shooter The Fox” Due To Violent Connotation”
A Dallas County assistant district attorney Jody Warner is out of a job after berating and striking an Uber driver in an intoxicated rant. The Dallas County District Attorney fired her after the driver Shaun Platt, 26, posted an account of the encounter on Facebook.
Continue reading “Texas Prosecutor Fired After Posting Of Drunken Abuse of Uber Driver”
Just when you thought allegations could not get worse for GOP Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, it does. New allegations have surfaced that Moore was not only widely known to be someone who hit on young girls in Gadsden, Alabama but he was allegedly put on a watch list for the local mall to be kept away from young girls due to predatory behavior. Despite virtually universal calls in Washington and the GOP for Moore to withdraw, he is refusing to do so even as his campaign is buried in allegations from an ever widening array of alleged victims, neighbors, former colleagues, and now mall workers. Even with the Senate majority at stake, the GOP majority leader Michael McConnell has said that he would prefer to lose the seat and possibly the Senate rather than have to seat the likes of Roy Moore. In the meantime, Moore went to a Baptist revival to reaffirm yesterday that he is not dropping out and that this is a “spiritual” battle for all faithful Alabamans.Continue reading “Mall Menace? Moore Allegations Mount As GOP Tries To Force His Withdrawal”
San Diego State has long rallied about its mascot The Aztecs, but may soon join other schools in changing its symbol to avoid objections over cultural insensitivity. We previously discussed the controversial decisions to drop the “Fighting Sioux” and “Chief Illini.” This decisions and polls show Native Americans largely supportive of team names referencing National American icons or tribes.
The controversy continues to grow at Rutgers University after the school hired Mazen Adi as a lecturer in its Political Science Department. Adi’s former position was a spokesman for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Despite his work for this bloodsoaked mass violator of international law and human rights, Rutgers insisted that Adi’s expertise was in the areas of “international law and diplomacy.”
On Monday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit restored the latest travel ban imposed by President Donald Trump. I previously criticized (here and here) the challenges to the travel ban and I believe that the Ninth Circuit is on solid ground in ruling the government can bar entry of people from six Muslim-majority countries with no connections to the United States. In my view, the injunction issued in Hawaii ignored the significance of not only critical differences in the third travel order but also the prior decision of the Supreme Court to vacate the prior injunction.
Continue reading “Ninth Circuit Reverses Lower Court Injunction And Restores Most Of Travel Ban”
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the ongoing jury deliberations over the alleged crimes of Senator Robert Menendez (D, N.J.). An alternate juror has said that she would have voted to acquit. It is a surprising result given the significant gifts showered on Menendez. The best witness against Menendez might have been Menendez himself.
Here is the column:
In the ongoing controversy over the anthem protests by NFL players, today is likely to be one of the most stressful. On Veteran’s Day weekend, many fans are planning to step up their own counterprotest by boycotting the games. The NFL has pledged not to change its policy in allowing the protests. ESPN and the networks been working with the NFL to shield the game from such counterprotests by not showing the anthem or the NFL players kneeling (or commenting on the large number of empty seats at many games). It has resulted in much criticism over the relationship of ESPN and the networks to the NFL as well as their uncertain role as journalists/commentators. In the meantime, the California NAACP has proposed a simple solution: get rid of the anthem. No anthem, no protests. It could bring new meaning to the anthem’s reference to “in dread silence reposes.”
Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore has long been controversial and I will readily admit to being one of his most vocal critics over his defiance of legal authority and extremist views. However, he is now perfectly radioactive after allegations that he initiated sexual contact with a 14-year-old when he was in his 30s. Perhaps the strangest defense came from Alabama state auditor Jim Ziegler (right) told the Washington Examiner that, if Moore did engage in pedophilia, it was “much ado about nothing.”: “Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.” In the meantime, Moore has called his multiple accusers as people engaging in “intentional defamation.” What is clear is someone is lying. If Moore is telling the truth, the next step would presumably be a defamation lawsuit. The same can be said for these four women who have now been called liars. This is a time when a little litigation would go a long way.
Donna Brazile’s disclosure of an agreement between the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Campaign has recreated a firestorm in confirming widely held views that the primary was rigged to guaranty Clinton the nomination. Even before the disclosure, many of us had reached that conclusion after debates schedules and other conditions during the primary seemed to uniformly favor Clinton. Brazile however is now insisting that she never said the primary was “rigged,” though she stands by her disclosure of the agreement as well as her statement that the Clinton campaign was “cult-like.” It was a classic Brazile moment — reminiscent of her prior false statements to the media about leaking questions to Clinton before the debate and even suggesting that her emails were altered. Now Brazile is caught in her own Clintonian “meaning of is” distinction on what she wrote in her book.
We recently discussed the growing concerns over academics using “progressive stacking” where teachers like Stephanie McKellop avoid calling on white males in class. One of the most cited supporters of progressive stacking is Professor Jessie Daniels at the City University of New York’s Hunter College. Daniels is back in the news with highly disturbing comments about white people and their families.
Continue reading “Hunter College Prof: White Families Foster White Supremacy”
Two universities this month were embroiled in alleged racist incidents that led to campus alerts and national controversy. It turns out however that the “victims” at both the Air Force Academy and Kent State were actually the aggressors in the creation of racist hoaxes. The incident at the Air Force Academy led to an angry speech by Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, who ordered all 4000 cadets to stand at attention as he railed on the racist or racists in their ranks.