MICHELLE LEUNG, - Media Matter for America
Stephan: This is so vile and appalling one can hardly believe that a recognized publication would print it. But, once again, this is what the Republican Party has become. This is an example of its true beliefs. I doubt that anyone of my female readers would be unclear as to whether she was being raped.
After a week of victim-blaming and dismissing campus sexual assault statistics, the National Review Online has doubled down on dismissing sexual violence on college campuses.
In a May 19 piece, National Review Online contributor A.J. Delgado claimed that women are being “brainwash[ed] into believing they were raped.” Delgado cited a personal anecdote to make her point, arguing that, for a friend, “convincing herself she had been raped was a way of saving her dignity and avoiding the hurtful reality” of “regrettable sex.” Delgado concluded by stating that “for every legitimate, actual rape claim there may be another that was not: a girl who cried rape.”
From National Review Online (emphasis added):
Prominent scholars and activists now even define rape as including any sexual activity in which the woman is not sober, claiming that consent is never truly given if one has had a few drinks.
Admittedly, I am no scientist, but I am fairly certain that a statistically significant amount of sex — including very enjoyable sex — happens under the influence of alcohol. But by the liberal definition of my generation, I have been raped. Multiple times.
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CJ WERLEMAN, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Here is another truth no one in corporate media dare speak. Our collective failure to call out the Theocratic Right for their hate, and violence, treating these people as if their actions and words are just business as usual history will see as a grave mistake.
When Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) labeled cattle rancher and right-wing extremist Cliven Bundy a ‘domestic terrorist,” the far Right went into an apoplectic state. But the Senate majority leader may have unwittingly stumbled upon an interesting and sobering fact: that when it comes to domestic terrorism, you are far more likely to be murdered by a far Right-wing American than a Muslim American, but the term ‘terrorist” remains reserved exclusively for acts of political violence carried out by Muslims.
If terrorism is defined as violence against innocent civilians designed to advance a political cause, then all racist murders that occur in the U.S. are also acts of terrorism, because the perpetrators commit the violent act to send a political message to minority communities (i.e. intimidate them into a subordinate status.)
Arun Kundani, adjunct professor at New York University and author of The Muslims are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the War on Terror, writes: ‘The definition of terrorism is never applied consistently, because to do so would mean the condemnatory power of the term would have to be applied to our violence as much as theirs, thereby defeating the word’s usefulness.”
Violence carried out by far Right groups or individuals, which have racism as […]
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WILLIAM GREIDER, - The Nation
Stephan: This, in my view, is an excellent exegetic essay describing what the Robert's Court has done to American Jurisprudence. This change from valuing the individual to valuing the corporation is part of the decay and corruption that afflicts the United States today.
It is a measure of the abject failure of the corporate media to do their jobs that there is virtually no discussion of this new reality, or the ethically compromised positions of justices like Thomas and Scalia.
The big media talk a lot about stalemate in Congress, but they are missing the real story. While representative democracy is dysfunctional, the Supreme Court has taken over with its own reactionary power grab. In case after case, the court’s right-wing majority is making its own law-expanding the power of corporations and the very wealthy, while making it harder for ordinary citizens to fight back.
Worst of all, the Roberts Court is trying to permanently inhibit the federal government’s ability to help people cope with the country’s vast social and economic disorders.
This is not a theoretical complaint. Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the conservative Republican Court is building a barbed wire fence around the federal government-creating constitutional obstacles to progressive legislation in ways that resemble the Supreme Court’s notorious Lochner decision of 1905. That case held that property rights prevail over people and the common good.
For more than thirty years, the conservative Justices used that twisted precedent to invalidate more than 200 state and federal laws on major social and economic concerns like child labor, the minimum wage, bank regulation and union organizing. New Deal reformers were stymied by Lochner at first, and they only managed to overturn it in […]
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BRIAN TASHMAN, - Right Wing Watch
Stephan: Tony Perkins, as cretinous a man as the Theocratic Right can sport, is the most perfect modern metaphorical Pharisee. Ask yourself why is none of this covered by corporate media? Perkins feels quite comfortable saying this. Why is his hate speech considered acceptable commentary? What is that telling us?
Click through to hear the audio of him actually saying it.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins implied today that Christians who support gay rights don’t have the same religious rights as conservative Christians because ‘true religious freedom” only applies to ‘orthodox religious viewpoints.”
Last month, a group of North Carolina ministers and same-sex couples, along with the United Church of Christ denomination, filed a lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
The clergy argue that because of a law that makes it a misdemeanor for a member of the clergy to perform a marriage ceremony without a state license, the same-sex marriage ban violates the religious rights of clergy who wish to perform such ceremonies.
When a caller on Monday’s edition of ‘Washington Watch” asked Perkins about his views on the case, Perkins replied that the ministers don’t have the same religious rights as others because they aren’t real Christians and therefore aren’t protected by the ‘true religious freedoms” given to Christians.
As we know, only Tony Perkins gets to decide who is and isn’t a Christian and has religious rights under the law.
Caller: I wanted to see if I can get your response to the members of the clergy in Charlotte that are suing for the right to perform gay marriages, […]
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LINDSAY ABRAMS, Assistant Editor - Salon
Stephan: The voters of North Carolina have crippled themselves in so many ways. One would think that this would be reflected in the coming election by the wholesale defeat of Rightist politicians, but I don't believe it will happen. And soon it will be too late to correct the damage.
North Carolina, the state where all three GOP Senate candidates are competing to see who can best deny the reality of man-made climate change, faces over 3 feet of sea level rise in the coming century: a fact that, in 2012, the Republican Legislature formally voted to ignore (and which, in light of recent news, is likely an underestimation). And the hits to the coastal state’s hopes of preparing for its watery future just keep coming: A science panel put together by the Coastal Resources Commission, a committee designed to study the effects of sea level rise, is about to be overtaken by climate deniers.
Climate Progress has the scoop on nominations for the Science Panel on Coastal Hazards submitted by current member Larry Baldwin, himself a climate denier. Unsurprisingly, Baldwin’s top picks all appear to believe, as he does, that sea level rise isn’t a real problem.
Presenting the proposed all-star team:
Nicola Scafetta, a researcher with the Duke University Physics Department, who calls man’s contribution to climate change ‘significantly overestimated.”
David Burton, the science adviser for an economic development group that contends that a warming planet wouldn’t bring about accelerated sea level rise. ‘If […]
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