Nick Little has a post analyzing the Hobby Lobby ruling at the CFI blog. This is good, because I was wishing I could hear from him or Eddie Tabash or both. I talked to the two of them for a few minutes at Women in Secularism and the conversation was all about SCOTUS and Hobby Lobby and Kennedy (“it’s Justice Kennedy’s world and we all live in it”). I like lawyers’ shop talk when it’s about subjects of general interest. (Patent law and the like, not so much.)

Standing

According to the majority, for-profit corporations now have religious freedom rights. Commentators have been quick to point out that Alito sought to restrict this to closely held companies (which includes some of America’s largest corporations, such as Koch Industries and Bechtel); in the opinion the only thing he says regarding publicly traded corporations is he doesn’t think they will apply for such exemptions.

Oddly enough this doesn’t fill me with a great degree of confidence. The problem is, every piece of legislative history, and there is plenty of it, makes clear that RFRA was not intended to cover for-profit corporations. But the majority decided to play its textualist reindeer games, and subvert the clear intention of Congress (the elected branch) and instead impose its own view on the country, and elevate corporations to the same level, if not higher than, real people.

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Slate has a frightening analysis of the Hobby Lobby ruling.

For the first time, the court has interpreted a federal statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (or RFRA), as affording more protection for religion than has ever been provided under the First Amendment. While some have read Hobby Lobby as a narrow statutory ruling, it is much more than that. The court has eviscerated decades of case law and, having done that, invites a new generation of challenges to federal laws, including those designed to protect civil rights. [Read more…]

Via WPLR New Haven:

Nested ironies in Georgia.

On the first day of the new Georgia Safe Carry Protection Act, a misunderstanding between two armed men in a convenience store Tuesday led to a drawn firearm and a man’s arrest.

What’s even funnier is what the misunderstanding was about.

A man carrying a holstered firearm entered the store to make a purchase. Another customer, also with a holstered firearm, approached him and demanded to see his identification and firearms license, according to the Valdosta Police Department report.
The customer making demands for ID pulled his firearm from its holster but never pointed it at the other customer, who said he was not obligated to show any permits or identification.
He demanded the man’s ID again. Undeterred by the drawn gun, the man paid for his items, left the store and called for police.

But at least everyone in the store felt much safer. Surely.

Yes, still. I guess it went so well last time, with the whole “if I told Hitler ‘stop killing people you cunt’ then people would scold me for sexism” caper. This time it’s cruelty to animals instead of Hitler. It’s a public post on Facebook.

Ricky Gervais

I did a tweet once calling those who skin dogs alive, cunts and someone actually bothered to comment on my language, not the inhumane torture.

25,508 Likes  764 Shares

First comment:

And those who complained are cunts.

587 Likes

There was a little time between the screen grab and now – half an hour or so. There are now 27,882 Likes on Gervais’s post and 633 on the first comment.

Imagine if the word had been “nigger”. Would Gervais say that? If he did say it would he be getting all these Likes?

There’s just nothing hipper or funnier than vomiting on women. Nothing.

Janelle Assellin on Wonder Woman and the new team writing and drawing her.

DC has a Wonder Woman problem. Or perhaps more accurately, Wonder Woman has a DC problem. The idea of Wonder Woman as a feminist icon is so imprinted in her history, and in analysis of the character, that separating her from feminism should be near impossible. But that hasn’t stopped people trying.

Much has been written over the years about the ebb and flow of feminism in the Wonder Woman comics, the relative feminism of her appearances on the small screen, and her role as an icon for the movement. A recent interview with the new Wonder Woman creative team of Meredith Finch and David Finch has brought the topic back into focus.

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Sarah Posner reported on this back in August 2012.

Rcent disclosures by the Department of Justice reveal that the Obama administration has continued a policy, first put in place by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Justice Department, of granting faith-based recipients of taxpayer dollars certificates of exemption from federal laws prohibiting religious discrimination in employment by such organizations receiving federal funds.  

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The Washington Post reports on That Letter. (Yes I’m going to run this to death. You bet I am. Those smug sanctimonious pieces of shit – we need to push back.)

Fourteen prominent faith leaders — including some of President Obama’s closest advisers — want the White House to create a religious exemption from his planned executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against gays and lesbians in hiring.

A letter to the White House, sent Tuesday and made public Wednesday, includes the signatures of Michael Wear, faith director for Obama’s 2012 campaign; Stephen Schneck, a leader of Catholic outreach in 2012; and Florida megapastor Joel Hunter, whom Obama has described as a close spiritual counselor.

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The letter from the “faith leaders” to Obama is full of the usual oily empty bafflegab to dress up the fact that they’re asking him to let them discriminate against a set of people for no good reason.

Americans have always disagreed on important issues, but our ability to live with our diversity is part of what makes this country great, and it continues to be essential even in this 21st century. This ability is essential in light of our national conversation on political and cultural issues related to sexuality. We have and will continue to communicate on these broader issues to our congregations, our policymakers and our nation, but we focus here on the importance of a religious exemption in your planned executive order disqualifying organizations that do not hire LGBT Americans from receiving federal contracts. This religious exemption would be comparable to what was included in the Senate version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which passed the Senate with a strong, bipartisan vote. [Read more…]

Well of course they have.

Just one day after the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 14 faith leaders have written a letter to President Obama, asking him to include a religious exemption in his planned executive order barring hiring discrimination based on sexual orientation by federal contractors.  

That’s Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches.

The Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein reports that a group of faith leaders — including a former staffer on President Obama’s campaign and in his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships — have asked Obama to create a religious exemption so that “an extension of protection for one group not come at the expense of faith communities whose religious identities and beliefs motivate them to serve those in need.”

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