June 29, 2015

Rand Paul: Perhaps Government Should No Longer Recognize Marriage

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Sunday finally commented on the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, suggesting that the government simply stop recognizing marriage altogether.

In an op-ed published Sunday in Time Magazine, Paul acknowledged that he believes Americans have the right to enter into contracts, but he questioned whether the government should be able to define marriage.

"I acknowledge the right to contract in all economic and personal spheres, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a danger that a government that involves itself in every nook and cranny of our lives won’t now enforce definitions that conflict with sincerely felt religious convictions of others," Paul wrote. "The government should not prevent people from making contracts but that does not mean that the government must confer a special imprimatur upon a new definition of marriage."

"Perhaps the time has come to examine whether or not governmental recognition of marriage is a good idea, for either party," he continued. Paul referenced counties in Alabama that stopped issuing marriage licenses altogether when faced with the legalization of gay marriage in the state.

The senator and presidential candidate also vowed to protect religious liberties in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision. "I for one will stand ready to resist any intrusion of government into the religious sphere," he wrote.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rand-paul-supreme-court-gay-marriage

June 29, 2015

Meet the South’s biggest idiot: “I feel very much like the Jews must have felt in the very beginning

Meet the South’s biggest idiot: “I feel very much like the Jews must have felt in the very beginning of the Nazi Germany takeover”

A pro-Confederate flag rally in Alabama is the worst of the worst

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Confederate flags returned to the cradle of the Confederacy on Saturday as hundreds of flag supporters arrived at Alabama’s Capitol to protest the removal of four rebel flags from a Confederate monument next to the building where the Confederacy was formed.

Standing at the bottom of the Capitol’s steps, where 50 years ago Martin Luther King Jr. led a march for civil rights, Tim Steadman said it wasn’t right to remove the flags.

“Right now, this past week with everything that is going on, I feel very much like the Jews must have felt in the very beginning of the Nazi Germany takeover,” he said. “I mean I do feel that way, like there is a concerted effort to wipe people like me out, to wipe out my heritage and to erase the truths of history.”

Days earlier, Gov. Robert Bentley had ordered the flags taken down from the 1898 monument amid national controversy about whether Confederate symbols should be displayed on state grounds.

Standing next to Steadman was Ronnie Simmons, who wore a t-shirt with the face of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis, who was elected as the first and only Confederate president inside the historic Alabama Senate chamber inside the Capitol in 1861, once lived a block away in the First White House of the Confederacy while Montgomery was briefly the capital.

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/29/meet_the_souths_biggest_idiot_i_feel_very_much_like_the_jews_must_have_felt_in_the_very_beginning_of_the_nazi_germany_takeover/

June 29, 2015

Bristol Palin defends herself against ‘giddy a$$holes': ‘I meant to get pregnant — so deal with it’

Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaskan half-term Governor Sarah Palin, pushed back at critics who mocked her second unwed pregnancy, calling them “giddy a$$hole(s)” and saying her latest pregnancy was planned.

Last week, Palin glumly reported that she was — once again — pregnant, coming just weeks after her planned marriage to Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer fell apart.

In her original blog post announcing the latest pregnancy, she wrote, “Honestly, I’ve been trying my hardest to keep my chin up on this one,” before adding, “I know this has been, and will be, a huge disappointment to my family, to my close friends, and to many of you.”

Writing on her blog on Sunday, Palin seemed to disregard the tone of her announcement, stating: “I made a mistake, but it’s not the mistake all these giddy a$$holes have loved to assume. This pregnancy was actually planned.”

“Everyone knows I wanted more kids, to have a bigger family. Believing I was heading that way, I got ahead of myself,” she wrote. “Things didn’t go as planned, but life keeps going. Life moves on.”

Palin also defended herself against critics who mocked her earlier career spent at an sexual abstinence “spokesperson,” quizzically using the mission statement from her former employer — the abstinence promoting Candie’s Foundation — as a defense. “In other words, they are a teen pregnancy prevention non-profit and I worked for them when I was 18 and 19 — when I could share first hand the challenges of being a teen mother,” she wrote.

However in a 2009 interview with In Touch magazine, Palin said, “I’m not going to have sex until I’m married, I can guarantee it.”

-snip-

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/bristol-palin-defends-herself-against-giddy-aholes-i-meant-to-get-pregnant-so-deal-with-it/

June 28, 2015

Rick Santorum: Redirect global warming effort to fighting gay marriage ‘for the survival of our...

Rick Santorum: Redirect global warming effort to fighting gay marriage ‘for the survival of our country

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum argued over the weekend that President Barack Obama should redirect the energy that he has been putting into fighting climate change into promoting heterosexual marriages “for the survival of our county.”

In an interview on Sunday, Santorum told the hosts of Fox & Friends that the U.S. Congress should pass laws to require Supreme Court justices to face elections and to force them to “take all appeals” because of their ruling that effectively legalized marriage for same-sex couples.

“The better solution if you’re going to put effort into try to control the judiciary is by doing things that limits their jurisdiction or requires, for example, the Supreme Court to take all appeals,” he explained.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson wondered what Santorum would do to stop the institution of marriage from “collapsing” after Friday’s Supreme Court ruling.

“The most important power that a president has — and obviously I’m running for president — the most important power the president has is the power of the bully pulpit,” Santorum opined. “Can you imagine if instead of if the president spent all his time talking about global warming, if he talked about the importance of marriage and fathers and mothers taking responsibility for raising this children in healthy homes?”

more
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/rick-santorum-redirect-global-warming-effort-to-fighting-gay-marriage-for-the-survival-of-our-country/

June 28, 2015

Obama Sets Sizzling Pace for Climate Actions

“The White House has churned out about 40 new measures to fight carbon pollution just since the start of 2015, stepping up the pace ahead of critical talks for a global climate change deal,” the Guardian reports.

“Two years after Barack Obama’s sweeping promise to fight climate change on 25 June 2013, the president has used his executive powers to spit out new climate events or announcements at a dizzying rate of one every 4.5 days this year, according to the running tally kept by the White House.”

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http://politicalwire.com/2015/06/28/obama-sets-sizzling-pace-for-climate-actions/

June 28, 2015

White supremacist who inspired Dylann Roof calls Charleston ‘a preview of coming attractions’

SAM THIELMAN, THE GUARDIAN
28 JUN 2015 AT 08:51 ET

Dylann Roof refers to Harold Covington’s white separatist group, the Northwest Front, in his alleged manifesto. The rightwing sci-fi writer distances himself from the shooting, but his followers speculate if his work influenced Roof’s actions

One of the shadowy figures who appears to have influenced alleged Charleston killer Dylann Roof is Harold Covington, the founder of a white separatist movement and, within supremacist circles, an influential sci-fi author. Covington, the latest in a long line of rightwing sci-fi writers, has been linked to racist crimes in the past and this week called the massacre “a preview of coming attractions”.

The racist manifesto and photos apparently posted by Roof makes mention of the Northwest Front, created by Covington, a former member of the American Nazi party who traveled to South Africa and Rhodesia in order to agitate for white power. In the accompanying photos, Roof wore patches with Rhodesian and apartheid-era South African flags on them.

Covington, if you believe his website, runs a growing enclave of white supremacists near Seattle called the Northwest Front. The non-profit group is reflected in a series of sci-fi novels, authored by Covington, about a dystopian future in which a white nation is the only answer to US economic and racial woes.

American science fiction has long had a rightward tilt, from the contemporary strain of small-press sci-fi Tea Party fantasias swarming the Hugo Awards nominations all the way back to libertarian deity Ayn Rand. But Covington’s novels are a breed apart.

His followers see conspiracy in Covington’s connections to Roof. “And why did this young man have a flight jacket with flag patches from the old White ruled southern African countries, which is where HAC spent part of his early days in the Cause, hmmm,” wrote a commenter called Wingnut under a recent podcast on the Northwest website. “Wonder if they’ll ‘find’ a pile of NF-HAC stuff in this young man’s home? Then they can pull one of those ‘the devil made me do it’ numbers on HAC.”

more
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/white-supremacist-who-inspired-dylann-roof-calls-charleston-a-preview-of-coming-attractions/

June 28, 2015

Jindal, cynical charlatan: How a one-time GOP star turned into another scheming religious wingnut

Bobby Jindal, cynical charlatan: How a one-time GOP star turned into another scheming religious wingnut

The Rhodes scholar seemed likely to run for president on policy. Instead, he's pushing religion and intolerance

ROBERT MANN

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who declared his candidacy for president last Wednesday, is passionate about what he calls “religious freedom.” In speech after speech over recent years, the Indian-American governor – a convert from Hinduism to Catholicism in his teens – warns Christian evangelical audiences that liberals are hell-bent on squelching religious speech.

On Friday, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling affirming same-sex marriage rights, Jindal reacted with predictable outrage. He cast the ruling as an assault on Christian values.

“This decision will pave the way for an all out assault against the religious freedom rights of Christians who disagree with this decision,” Jindal said in his statement. “This ruling must not be used as pretext by Washington to erode our right to religious liberty.

“The government should not force those who have sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage to participate in these ceremonies,” Jindal added, previewing a struggle over whether businesses may deny services to same-sex couples. “That would be a clear violation of America’s long held commitment to religious liberty as protected in the First Amendment.”

Long before he declared his candidacy, some political observers pegged Jindal as the presidential hopeful most likely to rely on his policy chops to win support for a White House bid (he ran the University of Louisiana System, served as the state’s secretary of Health and Hospitals and was an assistant secretary of George W. Bush’s Department of Health and Human Services).

Instead, the former Rhodes scholar has emerged as the candidate most eager to cash in on his religious faith.

Jindal routinely speaks at churches and religious gatherings in early primary and caucus states. He delivered the spring 2014 commencement speech at Virginia’s Liberty University, asking the graduates, “What happens when our government decides it no longer needs a ‘moral and religious people?’”

This is how Jindal answered his question: “It is a war – a silent war — against religious liberty. This war is waged in our courts and in the halls of political power. It is pursued with grim and relentless determination by a group of like-minded elites, determined to transform the country from a land sustained by faith — into a land where faith is silenced, privatized, and circumscribed.”

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/28/bobby_jindal_cynical_charlatan_how_a_one_time_gop_star_turned_into_another_scheming_religious_wingnut/

June 28, 2015

In Charleston, We Saw Christianity at its Best

Keli Goff

Although young people are deserting Christianity in waves, the faith and humanity of the families of the Charleston Nine could be an inspiration.

When President Obama eulogized Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of nine victims murdered at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., he called him a “model for his faith.” The same could be said for the eight other victims, Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Susie Jackson, Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., Myra Thompson, and their families. The kindness the victims allegedly showed their killer before he took their lives, and the grace and forgiveness their families have shown him in the aftermath, represent Christian values at their best. When we eventually look back on the impact of the Charleston tragedy on our nation, in addition to recalling our heartbreak, we may end up remembering it as a turning point in the conversation about the role of faith in American culture.
Just months before the shooting, a widely covered study confirmed what many Americans already knew: Christianity had an image problem.

The Pew Research Center found the number of Americans who identify as Christians is shrinking, with the shift particularly pronounced among Americans in their thirties and younger, who are increasingly less likely to identify with a particular religion.

It is not hard to understand why many younger Americans are fleeing the church, particularly those whose formative years were defined by the media saturated culture wars of the ’80s and ’90s. The ’80s were dominated by two major media images of Christians. They were either high profile hypocrites or charlatans. (Here’s looking at you Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.) Or they tried to leverage their popularity with people of faith into political power. (Hello Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson!)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/28/in-charleston-we-saw-christianity-at-its-best.html

June 28, 2015

The 10 Days That Changed This Country Forever

June 27, 2015 By Allen Clifton


I’ve dedicated a good portion of my life to following politics. In just over two years I’ve written well over 2,000 articles on the topic, and dedicated countless hours to discussions, debates and diatribes from pissed off conservatives. In that time I’ve experienced great victories, crushing defeats, moments of pure jubilation and moments of tremendous sorrow. As someone who cares about politics and policies, it’s a subject that can truly keep you on an emotional rollercoaster. There are moments where I’ve never been more proud to do what I do and days where I literally have to keep from throwing my laptop into the wall.

But I’m not sure if I’ve ever witnessed anything like we’ve seen in this country over the last 10 or so days.

Sadly, it started with a horrific tragedy on June 17 when nine African-Americans were brutally gunned down by a racist animal in what was one of the worst racially charged acts of violence we’ve seen in this country in a very long time. But even from that we saw something truly amazing that one might not expect to see so soon: Forgiveness.

Some of the families of those slain by this coward forgave him in a moment that gave many goosebumps. Instead of giving this racist domestic terrorist what he wanted, they took that power away from him and those like him. They weren’t going to help feed the hate and anger that had consumed him and those who share his views.

Read more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/10-days-changed-country-forever/?

June 28, 2015

As Left Wins Culture Battles, G.O.P. Gains Opportunity to Pivot for 2016

WASHINGTON — A cascade of events suggests that 2015 could be remembered as a Liberal Spring: the moment when deeply divisive and consuming questions of race, sexuality and broadened access to health care were settled in quick succession, and social tolerance was cemented as a cornerstone of American public life.

Yet what appears, in headlines and celebrations across the country, to represent an unalloyed victory for Democrats, in which lawmakers and judges alike seemed to give in to the leftward shift of public opinion, may contain an opening for the Republican Party to move beyond losing battles and seemingly lost causes.

Conservatives have, in short order, endured a series of setbacks on ideas that, for some on the right, are definitional: that marriage is between a man and a woman, that Southern heritage and its symbols are to be unambivalently revered and that the federal government should play a limited role in the lives of Americans.

Remarkably, some of these verities have been challenged not by liberals but by figures from the right.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/politics/as-left-wins-culture-battles-gop-gains-opportunity-to-pivot-for-2016.html?