“No intentional misconduct”

PZ Myers says that we should just put aside any controversy over Hillary Clinton’s private email server, since the FBI probe announced there was “no intentional misconduct” on the part of the former Secretary of State. It was “sloppy,” he says, “not criminal.”

What he glosses over there is the fact that “sloppy” is criminal, as a number of others have found. There’s also evidence that her testimony contained a number of false statements regarding her use of an unsecured email server for transmitting classified information, and that at least some of the evidence has been not only deleted from the hard drive, but scrubbed clean with special forensics-defying tools designed to prevent even the FBI from recovering the information.

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ADF recruits artists in quest for anti-gay discrimination

AZCentral.com (“part of the USAToday network”), has published a propaganda piece entitled, “Phoenix artists sue rather than create art for same sex weddings.”

Brush & Nib is an upscale hand-painting, hand-lettering and calligraphy company that creates and sells customized art, including for weddings.

Brush & Nib reflects who Joanna and Breanna are and what they believe — only creating art consistent with their Christian beliefs.

And since the Bible very clearly states, “Thou Shalt Not produce hand-lettered invitations for gay couples announcing their impending wedding,” they should have a Constitutional right to discriminate against any potential clients who happen to be gay, amirite?

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Different, thus dangerous

According to a report on NPR, almost a dozen states have joined together to file a lawsuit seeking to protect bigotry and privilege against an onslaught of justice and equal rights for minorities.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, says the federal government has “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

Yes, a “massive social experiment.” Those evil government officials, with their bubbling test tubes and unstable nuclear reactors, rubbing their rubber-gloved hands together and gleefully cackling, “Let’s take a bunch of innocent, harmless people and see what happens if we mind our own business and leave them alone, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

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A martyr for “clarity”

Poor, persecuted Roy Moore. As you may have heard, he’s been suspended (with pay!) pending the outcome of proceedings against him in the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. The suspension follows a complaint filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center after Moore’s refusal to comply with the Supreme Court decision upholding the right to gay marriage. But according to the Christian Post, this is all just a big misunderstanding. Moore wasn’t trying to obstruct justice. Not at all! He just was a little confused about a few things.

Travis S. Weber, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Washington, DC-based Family Research Council, told The Christian Post that while the Supreme Court decision is clear, Alabama’s high court has not contemplated the full impact of this decision on all pending orders. Chief Justice Moore was simply stating that fact.

“Chief Justice Moore has merely pointed out this lack of clarity, and noted that until the state’s high court rules with finality, the administrative order to probate judges from last March remains in effect,” said Weber.

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MAKE ’em fly it

A lot of people are calling for South Carolina and other southern states to quit flying the Confederate flag outside of government buildings. I’m not. I say make ’em fly it.

Make ’em fly it until they redraw their voting districts so that black votes have as much weight as white votes.

Make ’em fly it until black applicants are as likely to be hired as white, for jobs that white applicants want.

Make ’em fly it until the police are no more likely to stop and frisk a person of color than to do the same to a white person.

Make ’em fly it until schools with mostly black students are as well-funded as schools with mostly white students.

Make ’em fly it until they end the practice of railroading young black men into prisons under the pretext of a so-called “war on drugs,” release everyone unjustly imprisoned by this sham, and expunge their records so they can vote and hold decent jobs and live normal lives.

Make ’em fly it until they quit pretending not to be racists, and actually produce substantial, substantive improvements in civil rights and racial equality.

It’s a shameful, ugly, disgusting symbol for a host of shameful, ugly injustices. Fix the injustices, and then we can talk about removing the shameful symbols.

A reminder to believers

Since the Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments regarding gay marriage, I thought it would be a good time to remind believers of a very important moral principle that’s relevant to this particular case. That principle is as follows:

You always have the option of not doing harm to those who have done no harm.

That’s it. That’s all that gay rights advocates are asking for. Just don’t do harm to gays and gay couples, who have done no harm to you or to anyone else. Don’t slander them or discriminate against them or attack them physically or interfere in their personal relationships or do anything to them that you would not want done to yourself. Every major religious or moral system in the world gives you that option. It is allowed, and morally acceptable, to refrain from doing harm to those who have done no harm.

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Ban the Ten Commandments

Judge Roy Moore has been in the news recently, agitatin’ and rabble-rousin’ and insisting that judges in Alabama resist any federal policy on gay marriage, and uphold only the Alabama state constitution. And you know, that’s not entirely a bad idea, now that the state has amended its constitution to explicitly forbid relying on any foreign law to decide court cases. As astute political observers may have noticed, the ancient theocracy of Israel, which produced the Commandments known as the Law of Moses, is not part of the United States. Alabama, technically, has banned the Ten Commandments.

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Thanksgiving deferred

I was upset when a friend of mine re-posted the I Am Darren Wilson meme. My first impulse was to give her a hard time about it in the comments, but I refrained because I wanted to make her think instead of just making her mad, and I wasn’t sure how best to do that. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized she is exactly right. She is Darren Wilson, and so am I, and so are most of my neighbors. We’re all part of a corrupt, self-perpetuating conspiracy to exploit people, subverting justice for the sake of maintaining our own privilege. We’re the bad guys.

I’m still trying to figure out what I will do about that. But in the meantime, I can’t celebrate Thanksgiving right now. When I look at all the privileges that I’d normally be thankful for, and realize the price other people are being forced to pay to preserve them, I cannot in good conscience be happy about it. This is not a time for thanksgiving, it’s a time for anger, outrage, sorrow, and repentance. I’ll be thankful the day I can live in a nation that not only promises “liberty and justice for all,” but actually delivers it. Until then, I’m in mourning.