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[UofMfan]

Send a message to Rush Limbaugh's advertisers: Tell them it's time to stop supporting his anti-woman hate speech.

Click here and sign the petition.

[Toughy]

Then I came across this article on the Daily Kos:

My condolences to Andrew Breitbart's family on the news of his unexpected and untimely death this morning. He devoted his life to making that of others a living hell, so I think he would expect some of the incredibly vile things being said about his death.

That being said, I won't participate in the little schadenfreude fest, as I don't like speaking ill of the deceased. Remember how you felt when conservatives rejoiced over the death of Ted Kennedy...although Breitbart was nowhere in the same universe as Ted Kennedy, he was still a pretty big icon to conservatives. Don't get even, get moral.

On virtually every count our views were 100% polar opposite, but that makes him my political opponent, and I don't wish harm or ill on my political opponents like he did his. I advise you to take a page out of Shirley Sherrod's book of class, a woman who had every right to hate Mr. Breitbart.

I will say that I wish he'd had a chance to calm down and learn to live life less angrily than he did, but he made his choices and died seemingly doing what he loved the most: arguing. He seemed to have had his demons that haunted him on a daily basis.

May you rest in the peace you couldn't make with yourself in life, Andrew.

And may the rest of us find the civility Breitbart couldn't.

Seems to me there is plenty of 'speaking ill of the deceased' in this article....

Since when does god advocate his followers practice relentless cruelty and a spectacularly astounding lack of compassion and good will.

Have you read the Old Testament?

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Toughy

Seems to me there is plenty of 'speaking ill of the deceased' in this article....

Considering he's talking about someone who spoke so ill of the dead as to tweet upon hearing of Ted Kennedy's death that he was "a special pile of human excrement" , I think it was quite restrained.

Have you read the Old Testament?

If I were god I would fire (either literally or figuratively depending on how god rolls) whoever got me hooked up with the bible. Then I'd get a PR firm to help me separate myself from that disturbing piece of literature.

[Cin]

Since Cebull initiated the misconduct review himself, I don't imagine he has much to concern himself over. Besides he plans to send the president a formal apology. That should cover it.


Federal Judge's Racist Email May Have Violated US Ethics Code
Richard Cebull's offensive email disparaging President Obama appears to run afoul of rules for federal judges.

—By Mark Follman

A racist email sent around by Richard Cebull, the chief US district court judge in Montana, not only showed blatant disrespect for the president of the United States but also may have broken federal ethics rules. Cebull, who was appointed to the court by George W. Bush in 2001 and became chief judge in 2008, appears to have violated the US Code of Judicial Conduct on at least one count with his behavior, legal experts say.

Cebull sent the nasty email about President Obama on February 20 to six of his "old buddies," as he put it. The subject line read: "A MOM'S MEMORY." He used his official court email account, according to the Great Falls Tribune, which first exposed the email on Wednesday. "Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these," he wrote, "but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine." The enclosed "joke"—suggesting that the racially mixed president is the spawn of a dog—read:

"A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?'

"His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"

Cebull denies he's a racist, and says that the email wasn't intended to be public. But on Wednesday he admitted publicly that the email was both racist and motivated by partisan politics. "The only reason I can explain it to you is I am not a fan of our president, but this goes beyond not being a fan," he said. "I didn't send it as racist, although that's what it is. I sent it out because it's anti-Obama."
"Cebull's circulation of such a disgusting message makes one wonder if he is competent to serve as a judge."

The US Code of Judicial Conduct mandates that a judge "should personally observe high standards of conduct so that the integrity and independence of the Judiciary are preserved." It also says that a judge "should avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities"—which applies to both professional and personal conduct. With regard to politics, it says judges "should refrain from partisan political activity" and "should not publicly endorse or oppose a partisan political organization or candidate."

Where to draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate speech by judges is a complicated matter, says Jeffrey M. Shaman, a judicial-ethics expert at DePaul University College of Law. But there seems to be little doubt that Cebull crossed over the line. "Offensive, racist speech such as this clearly diminishes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary, and therefore should be considered a violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct," Shaman told me. "Judge Cebull ought to know better, and his circulation of such a disgusting message makes one wonder if he is competent to serve as a judge."

What might the consequences be for Cebull?

"While I certainly see why this type of joke raises serious and legitimate concerns, I am not convinced that it warrants punishment beyond the current (and justified) public criticism," wrote George Washington University legal scholar Jonathan Turley on Thursday. "The judge is claiming that he thought he was sending this to a handful of friends. It would be akin to a bad joke at a party being repeated later."

Turley notes that in 2009 a judicial council cleared Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th US Circuit Court of wrongdoing after an investigation into sexually explicit materials (involving farm animals) found on the judge's personal website. But the council did officially find that Kozinski had acted with "carelessness" and was "judicially imprudent."

In Cebull's case, Turley concedes that the Montana judge clearly failed to adhere to a tenet of the Code of Judicial Ethics, that a judge "must expect to be the subject of constant public scrutiny and accept freely and willingly restrictions that might be viewed as burdensome by the ordinary citizen."

Shaman sees a serious offense. "It is very difficult to predict what sanctions a reviewing authority will apply in any given case," he says. "But I certainly think that at least a reprimand is appropriate here."

Update, 3 p.m. PST: AP reported that the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals will carry out a judicial misconduct review. The complaint process apparently was initiated by Cebull himself, who says he also plans to send President Obama a formal apology.

[Cin]

10 Worst Moments of Disrespect Towards President Obama



"I would not disrespect the president" claims Brewer

[Tommi]

Dear Supporter of Equality:

American Foundation for Equal Rights is presenting a Streaming Webcast of the play ’8′ LIVE tonight at 7:45pm (pre-show AT 7:30pm) With Brad Pitt as Judge Walker. http://www.youtube.com/AmericanEqualRights

The play, written by Dustin Lance Black and directed by Rob Reiner, is an account of the Federal District Court trial to overturn Proposition 8, based on transcripts of the trial as well as interviews.

Brad Pitt is the newest addition to the cast, which already includes George Clooney, Martin Sheen, Christine Lahti, Jamie Lee Curtis, Matthew Morrison, Matt Bomer, Kevin Bacon, Jane Lynch, John C. Reilly, Campbell Brown, Chris Colfer, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Cleve Jones, Rory O’Malley, George Takei, Yeardley Smith, Vanessa Garcia, Jansen Panatierre, James Pickens, Jr. and Bridger Zadina.

Streaming webcast starts 7:45pm (pre-show at 7:30pm) tonight, Saturday here: www.youtube.com/AmericanEqualRights

Or

www.afer.com

Detailed story at: ual http://lgbtpov.frontiersla.com/2012/...-judge-walker/
__._,_.___
Enjoy!

Live on YouTube or on www.afer.com

VISIT THE OFFICIAL “8” WEBSITE HERE: www.8theplay.com

WATCH SATURDAY’S PERFORMANCE LIVE HERE AT 7:45 P.M. PST: www.youtube.com/AmericanEqualRights

Link is here ~~Detailed story at: ual http://lgbtpov.frontiersla.com/2012/...-judge-walker/
AFER Webcasting the play "8" account of Federal court trial to overturn Prop 8] LIVE, tonight, Saturday at 7:45pm, with pre-show at 7:30pm

[UofMfan]

Seriously!

[MsDemeanor]

Here's a great PSA that aired during the Sunday Bruins/Rangers game http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/0...y-?via=siderec

[LeftWriteFemme]

Santorum and the Sexual Revolution


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/op...n.html?_r=1&hp

[UofMfan]

A 7th advertiser pulls out of Limbaugh's show

[Tommi]

Check it out, Rob Reiner and supporters of gay marriage are hoping to get a million hits in support of the play on YouTube.

In case you missed the live broadcast last night, a recording of the Play “8” is now available for viewing online at http://www.youtube.com/AmericanEqualRights Click on Skip Ahead
It’s about 1h 32min in length. It will make you laugh and cry. It’s terrifically well done. Although the play is a reading, and the actors hold transcripts ffrom the trial, the performance is indistinguishable from a full production.
The play, written by Dustin Lance Black and directed by Rob Reiner, is an account of the Federal District Court trial to overturn Proposition 8, based on transcripts of the trial as well as interviews.

The cast includes Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Martin Sheen, Christine Lahti, Jamie Lee Curtis, Matthew Morrison, Matt Bomer, Kevin Bacon, Jane Lynch, John C. Reilly, Campbell Brown, Chris Colfer, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Cleve Jones, Rory O’Malley, George Takei, Yeardley Smith, Vanessa Garcia, Jansen Panatierre, James Pickens, Jr. and Bridger Zadina.

Detailed story at: http://lgbtpov.frontiersla.com/2012/...-judge-walker/
__._,_.___
Enjoy!

[SoNotHer]

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2...ontest/100255/

[UofMfan]

NHL Stars Support LGBT Athletes, Combat Homophobia With 'You Can Play' Project

[UofMfan]

AOL Suspends Advertising On Rush Limbaugh's Show

[UofMfan]

UPDATE: 12 ADVERTISERS DROP RUSH

[Cin]

As the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United clearly showed, corporations and political spending are protected by the First Amendment right to free speech but apparently the First Amendment does not protect the right of actual people to protest.

Congress Votes to End Protest

Last week, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would severely limit the First Amendment rights of protesters.

Now known as the “anti-Occupy law,” H.R. 347 makes it a federal offense to “enter or remain” in an area designated as “restricted.”

As RT.com (via the ACLU blog) put it:

Under the act, the government is also given the power to bring charges against Americans engaged in political protest anywhere in the country. The new legislation allows prosecutors to charge anyone who enters a building without permission or with the intent to disrupt a government function with a federal offense if Secret Service is on the scene…

It also restricts access to buildings or grounds that are connected to a “special event of national significance,” or a National Special Security Event, which are so categorized by a simple stroke of the pen by the Department of Homeland Security.

The Daily Paul, a blog dedicated to Ron Paul, who was one of only THREE congressional members to vote against the measure, was so alarmed they simply asked: “Is this real?”

If President Obama signs the bill into law, it means that any person protesting a Romney or Santorum event (since they enjoy Secret Service protection) could potentially be arrested, fined, and incarcerated for a year.

It means that protest of national or global summits could be punishable under federal law. It means that government workers striking outside of government buildings or ‘special events’ could be thrown in jail. And it means that certain Occupy gatherings would be expressly forbidden.

H.R. 347 is the definition of authoritarianism. It is a serious and blatant violation of the First Amendment rights of every American citizen. And it should be repealed immediately.

Update: Conveniently, this bill would also undermine protest efforts at the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Congressmen Justin Amash (R-MI), one of the few to oppose the bill, has published this on his FB page:

Current law makes it illegal to enter or remain in an area where certain government officials (more particularly, those with Secret Service protection) will be visiting temporarily if and only if the person knows it’s illegal to enter the restricted area but does so anyway. The bill expands current law to make it a crime to enter or remain in an area where an official is visiting even if the person does not know it’s illegal to be in that area and has no reason to suspect it’s illegal. (It expands the law by changing “willfully and knowingly” to just “knowingly” with respect to the mental state required to be charged with a crime.)

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews...o_end_protest/

[UofMfan]

Rush Limbaugh Advertisers Keep Leaving Show In Wake Of Sandra Fluke Comments

[Corkey]

According to Ed Schults it's up to 33

http://thinkprogress.org/media/2012/...ey-drops-rush/

[Cin]

Doing Biden’s Bidding
by LAURA CARLSEN

Vice President Joe Biden landed in Mexico City last night and he’s left little doubt about his mission—to lock in the regional drug war. His visit comes at a time of mounting calls to end prohibitionist laws and the drug war model.

Biden will be in Mexico City all day Monday meeting with President Felipe Calderon and presidential candidates, then in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Tuesday, where he’ll meet with President Porfirio Lobo and have a “working lunch” with Central American presidents.

On a March 1 call with the press, a reporter asked whether the drug war would be on the agenda at the meeting with Central American presidents. Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Dan Restrepo, replied,

“The Obama administration has been quite clear in our opposition to decriminalization or legalization of illicit drugs. At the same time, we’ve also been very open–the President has said it on numerous occasions, in meetings with leaders and publicly–of our willingness, our interest, in engaging in a robust dialogue with our partners to determine how we can be most effective in confronting the transnational criminal organizations, and, in this case in Central America, the gangs that are adversely affecting people’s daily lives and daily routines.”

His message is that the administration that presides over the nation with the largest illegal drug market in the world and actively funds a global war to enforce ineffective prohibition policies will not consider any form of legalization. But it supports “dialogue.”

Can that position really qualify as dialogue? A dialogue on how to “be most effective in confronting transnational criminal organizations” must start from the recognition that the current U.S. strategy has increased violence, done nothing to reduce crime or illicit drug flows and had a devastating impact on “people’s daily lives and daily routines” in Mexico and Central America.

A real discussion on effective strategies has to include the option of legalization. The Obama administration seems determined to block that option, despite a growing number of calls for discussion on legalization that include former presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia and current presidents Santos of Colombia and Perez Molina of Guatemala.

Biden is just the latest envoy in U.S. diplomatic offensive to bolster the drug war. On Feb. 27, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was in Guatemala with the same message. “The United States does not view decriminalization as a viable way to deal with the narcotics problem,” she told Perez Molina.

Pérez Molina recently called for decriminalization in the region and he reiterated his position at the meeting with Napolitano. “We are calling for a discussion, a debate. And we continue to insist… We want to open a debate to find a more effective way to fight drug trafficking.” The Guatemalan government has begun to lobby other Central American countries on the issue in anticipation of the meeting this week. Biden appears to have been charged on this trip with deterring any move toward legalization in the region and aligning nations in the war on drugs.

He has a tough road ahead of him. Latin American citizens and government leaders are openly protesting a model where their nations pay in blood and lives to fill U.S. defense contractor’s pockets and spread the Pentagon’s global reach–with few, if any, positive results. In Mexico, thousands filled the Central Plaza to draw the outlines of 60,000 dead in the drug war on the large esplanade in front of the National Palace and the citizen Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity is planning a summer caravan through the United States to protest U.S. aid for the drug war through the Merida Initiative.

The Mexican daily La Jornada published an editorial Feb. 24 calling for debate on decriminalization and commenting on a statement by Sec. of Foreign Relations, Patricia Espinosa, that the Mexican government is against decriminalization but would consider debate. It concluded:

“Perhaps if the debate on the decriminalization of drugs had been begun before adopting the present course regarding public security, the country would have saved countless lives, widespread social suffering, grave processes of institutional breakdown and astronomical monetary resources. In whatever form, it is urgent and impossible to postpone the analysis of alternatives to the failure of a drug policy that is one only of the police, the military and the judiciary. In that sense anyone who takes this position–though it may be late and contradictory–is welcome.”

Despite the praise that has been and will be lavished on Calderon for his drug war, for other countries, Mexico has become the example of why NOT to pursue a drug war strategy. When I asked President Perez Molina and President Lobo how they felt about winding up like Mexico, both sought to distance themselves from the Mexican experience. I had the opportunity to ask as part of a fact-finding mission on violence against women led by the Nobel Women’s Initiative and JASS that showed a huge increase in violence against women as militarization under the drug war has escalated.

Perez Molina answered that his country was in a different position: “Drug trafficking in Guatemala is different than in Mexico. We don’t see a war situation. The cartels have to maintain control of territory in Mexico but here it’s traffic, there isn’t occupation or control of territory. Here I don’t see the army in a war against the narco…” In other interviews he has also been reticent about allowing the level of U.S. intervention that the Mexican government has permitted.

Lobo recognized the risks and failures of the model but dodged the question of alternatives. “I don’t have the answer, people are dying, [drug-trafficking] pollutes us, and there is violence. There’s an increase in drug trafficking. The problem is, what’s the solution? Colombia put up a major fight and drugs keep flowing out. They have arms from the US and the money keeps flowing. In this we have to find a solution so this won’t end up being a war without end.”

Instead of sitting down with its neighbors to find a peaceful solution and truly assess whether the current strategy is working for anybody, the White House is sending a strong message to hold the line on the drug war. And Biden brings much more than his personal power of persuasion to the mostly closed-door conversations

It’s disturbing to see that the Obama administration has taken such a hard line against opening up debate on alternatives to the drug war. From here in Mexico, we see the costs so painfully close that the expected endorsements from Biden and company, far from being support, are a stubborn denial of reality. We can’t know what will happen in the private meetings, but statements before Biden’s trip emphasize support for the Calderon drug war and the commitment to continue the present model of security cooperation until the last day of his administration.

One wonders what will be said at the separate meetings with the presidential candidates. If the stated purpose is to repeat the U.S. commitment to respecting the electoral process and results, why not simply announce that publicly to all? Will Biden pressure the candidates to do the U.S.’ bidding on security policy, bringing to bear U.S. political and economic clout to assure continuance of the drug war?

Lopez Obrador announced he will deliver a letter to Biden stating, “We do not want to continue to favor military cooperation in the relationship with the United States, but instead place cooperation for development at the center.”

The U.S. has tremendous influence over Mexico and Central America, historically through aid and military presence, and even more now that free trade agreements have created even higher levels of economic dependence.

To use that influence to suppress debate on innovative and very possibly effective alternatives to the bloody drug war is bad politics and the opposite of the kind of “equal partnership and mutual respect” the Obama administration promised at the Trinidad and Tobago Summit in 2009. Part of the purpose of Biden’s trip is to prepare for the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena in April. At that summit, the hemisphere’s nations will be able to judge whether Obama’s presidency changed relations as promised three years ago.

If Biden’s trip focuses on locking in policies of drug war militarization and discouraging independent regional initiatives, the Obama administration will arrive in Cartagena having broken those promises and dashed hopes of a more just realignment of relations in the hemisphere.

[Cin]

03.06.12 - 10:34 AM
On Stealing School and Other "Crimes"

by Abby Zimet

The sad and surreal cautionary tale of Tonya McDowell, 34, a single homeless unemployed Connecticut mother convicted last week of "stealing" $15,000 worth of education in 2011 by enrolling her son in a good school he wasn't technically supposed to go to, and subsequently convicted of selling drugs to undercover officers who started to investigate her after she was arrested on the school charge - or, essentially, convicted of being the wrong color, class and gender in the wrong place, and lacking the external or internal resources required to overcome the many strikes against her. She was sentenced to 12 years in prison, reduced with a plea deal to serving five years. She will join over six million people - many incarcerated for non-violent crimes, the majority black men, including 50,000 in solitary confinement every day - under "correctional supervision" in America. The New Yorker takes a scathing look at the largely unexamined "storm that wretches suffer in," defying humanity and common sense, that is our prison system.

“You shouldn’t be arrested for stealing a free education. It's just wrong.” - McDowell

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2012/03/06-0