The Weekend Wrap: The Tiller Assassination
Saturday, June 6, 2009
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PDF The Dish was all over yesterday's big story - the assassination of George Tiller by a crazed Christianist. We traced O'Reilly's troubling rhetoric here, here, and here, and readers checked my reaction here. We chronicled the disturbing role of Operation Rescue here, here, and here, and commentary from the far right here, here, here. A noteworthy voice on the far-right was Robert P. George, who struck the perfect chord. We also aired personal accounts of abortion here and here.
A traumatic Sunday, to say the least. For the right approach to religion, listen to Bob Wright.
The Weekend Wrap: The Tiller Assassination
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
The Weekend Wrap: The Tiller Assassination
[Source: International News]
The Weekend Wrap: The Tiller Assassination
[Source: Stock News]
The Weekend Wrap: The Tiller Assassination
[Source: Boston News]
posted by 77767 @ 11:56 AM,
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Conservatives launch Sotomayor attack
PrintEmailPDF Prominent Republicans and conservative interest groups seek to portray Sonia Sotomayor as racist and un-American
Prominent Republicans and conservative interest groups have unleashed a campaign to portray President Barack Obama's supreme court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, as racist for suggesting that white men don't always make the best judges and un-American for using a Spanish pronunciation of her name.
What Obama has portrayed as Sotomayor's strength as an American of Puerto Rican descent raised in the Bronx who made it to Princeton and Yale, bringing areas of experience and understanding not immediately evident among the white male majority on the supreme court, is being played by her opponents as evidence that she was nominated because she has a racial agenda.
Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the house of representatives, and Karl Rove, George Bush's chief strategist, have both called Sotomayor "racist" and said she should withdraw as a nominee over comments she made in 2001. In a talk at the University of California, she offered the view that a female Hispanic judge would better understand certain issues around race and gender than a white male.
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," she said. "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
To some Americans, Sotomayor's comments appear self-evident. They point to the personal experience that Thurgood Marshall brought as a black man elevated to the supreme court during the civil rights era. But conservatives said her comments are evidence that she will be biased against whites and men.
Gingrich, in a Twitter feed to more than 340,000 followers, said she should resign. "Imagine a judicial nominee said, 'My experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.' New racism is no better than old racism," wrote Gingrich.
He sent a second tweet a few minutes later saying: "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw."
Rove and two Republican members of congress also called Sotomayor racist.
The White House warned the Republicans to be "exceedingly careful" about such language. Some Republican strategists said the tactic could backfire if it alienates large numbers of Hispanics who support the party.
But other conservatives took up the cudgel.
Rush Limbaugh, the country's most popular talk radio host with millions of listeners, said the party should press the issue.
"If the GOP [Republican party] allows itself to be trapped in the false premise that it's racist and sexist and must show the world that it isn't, then the GOP is extinct," he said.
Critics are also using Sotomayor's pronunciation of her own name as a stick to beat her. The judge, whose parents hail from the Spanish-speaking US territory of Puerto Rico, uses a Hispanic pronunciation. Some critics have taken up a call by a prominent conservative magazine, the National Review, arguing that she should Anglicise it. The writer, Mark Krikorian, said that "there ought to be limits" to the demands made on English-speakers to try and pronounce foreign names.
While the accusations of racism are considered extreme among many Americans, they are likely to shape the challenges to Sotomayor when she faces her congressional confirmation hearing.
Obama sees Sotomayor's background as reflecting the "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient" he said he wants to see in the next supreme court justice.
But that experience and understanding is being interpreted by some Republicans as bias. Senator Orrin Hatch, a member of the judiciary committee, portrayed Obama's desire for empathy in a supreme court justice as "a code word for an activist judge".
Hatch, said that while he is keeping an open mind, the judge will have to answer for her 2001 comments. He said he will not support her if she intends to use the law to implement social policy.
"I will focus on determining whether Judge Sotomayor is committed to deciding cases based only on the law as made by the people and their elected representatives, not on personal feelings or politics," Hatch said in a statement.
Critics have also latched on to Sotomayor's history of legal activism in the 1980s when she served on the board of a legal group tackling discrimination against minorities in New York and cases involving alleged racism involved in police brutality and the imposition of the death penalty.
The group won cases that redrew constituency boundaries to increase the number of Hispanic elected officials. It also launched a defamation case, and lost, against a former Reagan administration official for claiming that most Puerto Ricans in the city were on food stamps.
guardian.co.uk � Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Conservatives launch Sotomayor attack
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Conservatives launch Sotomayor attack
[Source: News 2]
posted by 77767 @ 11:24 AM,
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Queen Elizabeth's D-Day anniversary snub, and a Tomasky blog contest
PrintEmailPDF What do you make of this story? Either Robert Gibbs misspoke in raising this Queen business, or someone in the Obama White House was supposed to handle this chore and didn't get around to it. Weird.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that Obama has some kind of thing about poor Gordon Brown. He doesn't really like the guy. Maybe it's just that Brown is very unpopular, and Obama is suspicious that Brown would try to bask in Obama's refracted glow. But that wouldn't explain non-watchable DVDs.
The more chilling possibility, of course, is that it isn't really about Brown and that Obama just doesn't like England that much. Could this be possible?
When Barack and I were growing up -- we're about the same age -- Britain was the coolest thing going. The Beatles, the Stones, everything that came after -- I would have killed to have a British accent when I was young. I doubt he was immune to this. Usually these emotional impulses, the ones that get implanted into your DNA when you're very young. But maybe he was immune to it. Strange.
Hence, the contest: Since Obama gave Brown DVDs about America, what DVDs about Britain would you suggest he see in order that he get a better, fuller, more nuanced picture of your great nation? I don't necessarily mean patriotic or happy-talk movies, just great movies that are very British. My list: This Happy Breed; Brief Encounter; The Entertainer; The Four Feathers; A Hard Day's Night; Last Orders (very underappreciated); Look Back in Anger; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; something by Hitchcock, and something by Powell and Pressburger, though I'm not sure what.
Queen Elizabeth's D-Day anniversary snub, and a Tomasky blog contest
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Queen Elizabeth's D-Day anniversary snub, and a Tomasky blog contest
[Source: Nascar News]
posted by 77767 @ 9:59 AM,
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