This video appeared last week and shows the extremism of the “Golden Dawn” movement in Greece, which is now reaching out to other European countries. As with Nazism in Germany, the movement has emerged from the economic chaos of Greece to offer hate and violence as a way to express the frustration of the people facing high unemployment and stagnant economic prospects. In the video, you can hear a Golden Dawn member repeatedly screaming “Heil Hitler” in the Greek parliament.
As the scandal over the attack on the press continues in the Associated Press investigation, another such attack has come to light. The Obama Administration in 2010 investigated Fox News correspondent Jeff Rosen and the FBI treated him as “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator” for merely speaking with a source. It was a perfectly Nixonian moment — yet another example of how Obama has adopted many of the same abuses as Richard Nixon. While journalists, public interest groups, and even Democratic members have denounced the attack on the media in the Associated Press investigation, Obama stepped forward to defend the investigation and praise the work of the Justice Department. He doubled down on those complaining about his Administration’s shocking record on whistleblowers and reporters by saying that he would make “no apologies” for the greatest attack on the media in decades.
Amid the horrific destruction of the tornados yesterday, CBS Evening News captured one of the most touching moments. While interviewing an injured elderly woman, Barbara Garcia, a noise was heard in the rubble just a few feet from where she was standing. It was her dog, which survived the devastation. She had just lamented how she lost her beloved pet.
I have previously testified and written about President Barack Obama’s use of recess appointments, which I viewed as flagrantly unconstitutional. Recently, the D.C. Circuit agreed with that view and found that the Obama Administration had violated the recess appointment powers. Now a second appellate court has joined that view, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. I have two law review articles coming out on these appointments and more broadly the abuse of recess appointment powers in modern presidencies. See Jonathan Turley, Recess Appointments in the Age of Regulation, 93 Boston University Law Review ___ (2013) and Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Adverse Possession: Recess Appointments and the Role of Historical Practice in Constitutional Interpretation, 2103 Wisconsin Law Review ___ (2013)
New York Democratic Assemblyman Vito Lopez is the latest politician to resign in a scandal, but Lopez has a curious twist. He will now run for a new office. With Antony Weiner now committed to running for mayor, it is the new version of political responsibility. You resign and then run again as a new man.
Florida student Jasmine Roberts, 12, has secured the top science prize at her science fair . . . and the disgust (and gratitude) of every adult. Roberts decided to test the cleanliness of ice at fast food restaurants and compared those findings with the toilet water in the same restaurant. She found the toilet water was cleaner.
We have been discussing the tax policies of President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government — a record that I have criticized as ruinous from an economic standpoint. A recent report indicates that for some high-earning families — more than 8,000 — the Hollande policies impose a 100% tax. It is the ultimate “eat the rich” policy. Even for those families facing a 75% rate, it is unclear why they would continue to work in the country. Many are not. France is experiencing a flight of both high earners and companies.
“Be what you would seem to be-or, if you’d like it put more simply-Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
The late Paul Weyrich is generally regarded as the principal architect of the new conservative coalition that emerged with the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan. He was a co-founder of the Heritage Foundation. He even created the phrase “moral majority” for Pat Robertson. But his most important creation was the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 1973. In the course of 30 years that body has become the most powerful force in state legislative bodies throughout the country.
Weyrich was not a fan of voting rights. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” he said in 1980. “Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Weyrich understood that voters are problematic for two reasons. First, they are fickle and unpredictable. Second, they cannot be held accountable for their decisions. In short, they cannot be controlled, making democracy an uncertain endeavor.
But Weyrich also understood that lobbying is not an effective antidote to an independent electorate. It is expensive and subject to restrictions and regulations that vary from state to state. ALEC operates in a manner that enables it to surmount those problems. Powerful corporate interests provide the funding necessary to research and draft model bills serving their interests. The approximately 2,000 state legislator members of ALEC sponsor those model bills in their respective states. And the electorate? Well, anyone is free to join and have his or her voice heard by paying an annual membership fee ranging from $7,000.00 to $25,000.00.
That free speech is under attack by the governments local and Federal should be manifestly apparent from the stories that have appeared of the last few years here at Res Ipsa Loquitur. In articles from our host, myself and my fellow guest bloggers, we’ve seen open attacks on free speech as a right proper, attacks on anonymous political free speech, the prosecution and persecution of whistleblowers and the erosion of shield laws protecting reporters and attacks on free speech and pluralism in general in the form of blasphemy laws just to name a few of the threats that have come to our attention. What is most troubling is that the Federal government has stepped up their efforts to outright infringe upon the free speech rights of citizens and the press and chill the right however possible. Free speech is critical for the function of democracy. Without dissent, there can be no debate, only the dictates of the strong over the weak which is by definition tyranny. That is one of the reasons that it was so important that the Founders protected it in the 1st Amendment. However, they felt in particular that the freedom of the press was a not just free speech, but a very special kind of free speech that merited both special mention and protection in the 1st. The 1st Amendment reads in relevant part:
Congress shall make no law [. . .] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”.
As we know, there are legitimate reasonable restrictions on free speech such as defamation, incitement and threats (particularly threats of violence). So before we look at the two present instances of the chilling of free speech – one a local story about a graduation and one the national story concerning the DOJ accessing the phone records for hundreds of reporters working for the Associated Press – let us first ask examine what is meant by the term “chilling free speech”.
Bring me a plate of whatever and something wet to drink!
A friend of mine sent me this picture. I know that apathy is a problem for a great number of our fellow citizens, but come on. Sure, it’s silly, but do you think this is clever? Is it indicative of a larger problem with the American mindset? Both? Or do you just not care?
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (Otteray Scribe), guest blogger
Dr. Isaac Ray
The relationship between mental health and the legal system is a turbulent one at best. One major problem is they speak two different languages. For example, insanity is a legal term found nowhere in any psychiatric or psychological diagnostic manual.
There are several key words used commonly by both professions, but which have quite different meanings. The words “validity” and “reliability” are part of the vocabulary of science. To a scientist, the word validity means that a test measures what it claims to measure. When a test is intended to measure depression or anxiety, the user can assume it measures depression and anxiety.
Reliability refers to the repeatability of a test or measurement. If we give the same test to the same subject several times, all the scores will fall within the standard error of measurement 95% of the time.
When an attorney uses the word validity, it means, Binding; possessing legal force or strength; legally sufficient.
The legal interpretation of the word reliability suggests the subject matter is trustworthy, and that one can rely on it. However, when a scientist says something is reliable, it means whatever is being tested will get the same results with every retest, within the Standard Error of Measurement.
An examination of the literature of both professions reminds us of the quip attributed to George Bernard Shaw, “[We] are two peoples divided by a common language.”
When I was in graduate school, a well-known attorney gave an invited lecture to the student body. The speaker made several sweeping generalizations about the mentally ill; all of them displaying a stunning ignorance of facts. Then he turned his venom on those in the mental health professions, referring to mental health professionals scornfully as, “Soul doctors.” I would like to say people like him are rare, but they are not. I have known judges who, quite literally, did not believe in mental illness. We had one of those in our area who, mercifully, retired a few years ago. People like that remind me of those misogynistic knuckle-draggers who don’t believe there is such a thing as rape.
Now, back to the stormy relationship between the legal system and mental illness.
The Obama Administration was rocked last week by two political scandals that Republicans claim makes Watergate look like a jaywalking ticket. Pious GOPers decried the lack of response to the Benghazi terrorist attacks and then blasted the Administration (as well as US Senators Chuck Schumer and Jeanne Shaheen) for sicking the IRS on their lapdog grassroots movement that’s neither grassroots nor a movement, the Tea Party. Seems the Republicans say they can do national defense better and are willing to produce quotes from doctored emails to prove it. On the home front, the knives were out for that whipping boy of the “Don’t Tax Us” crowd — the IRS. Calling for jail sentences, leading Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee member Rep. Jason Chaffetz, and 29 other Republicans who sponsored legislation to really, really, make IRS political retribution illegal (it is already) are shocked … shocked that some politically active conservative groups were scrutinized over tax exempt status when they were forced by two rogue IRS examiners to fill out long questionnaires that went public. Never mind that no group was actually denied the status despite their applications that said that these “social welfare” organization weren’t really social welfare organizations anyway but political ones, or that that “legalest” of tax dodges –501(c)(3) & (4) status — has become a bad joke used to attack the other guys politics. What mattered to leading Republicans now (Oh, yeah in less ox-gored days a year ago, Senator Minority leader Mitch McConnell blasted liberal groups for you guessed it — using tax exempt status to attack the GOP), is that they finally have something to use politically against the Administration. You can almost hear the sighs of relief coming from the parlors at the country clubs and over the lemonade and cookies in the church basements can’t you?
Scientists from Aristotle to his 21st Century successors have wondered how complex structures form in nature. Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and lead author of a paper appearing on the cover of the May 17 issue of Science, may have the clues in his beaker. Manipulating chemical gradients in liquid have produced incredible flower-like structures based on the precipitation of crystalline forms on the microscopic level. Measured in microns, the crystal flowers (such as those pictured left) can be created by changing the chemical soup causing the crystals to grow towards or away from chemical gradients as the pH of the reaction shifts back and forth. Broad leaves, thin stems, or a rosettes of petals are all determined by the chemical reactions.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, writes: “Just weeks after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, I was notified by the IRS that the Catholic League was under investigation for violating the IRS Code on political activities as it relates to 501(c)(3) organizations.” So, that would be when George W. Bush was the President. The recent media attention directed towards IRS investigations of Tea Party, 501(c)(4), organizations, was just too enticing for Donohue. For 501(c)(3) organizations, the IRS requires that the organization “may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.” It might be interesting to see how well the Catholic League upheld its commitment to this requirement.
