This is where you end up when defending Trump administration policies

If you work in the Donald Trump administration, you will find yourself steadily violating any ethical principles you might have started with until at some point, you end up not having even a shred of decency. That point was reached on Tuesday for Sarah Fabian, the justice department lawyer arguing before a US Appeals Court that the appalling conditions under which detained migrant children taken into custody at the US-Mexico border were being treated, such as keeping them in freezing cages where they had to sleep on the floor, were justified.

Fabian claimed that these children are not entitled to what most people would consider the most basic sanitary necessities. This was in a court case where the administration was sued that they were not complying with the requirements laid down under the earlier Flores guidelines for how children should be treated. (Incidentally, cases are always referred to by the names of the party or parties involved though Donald Trump, genius that he is, thought that Flores was the name of the judge who made the ruling and because it was a Hispanic name, concluded that it meant he was a biased judge.)
[Read more…]

What women clergy hear from male clergy and congregants

In their college course evaluations, female faculty get a lot more comments about their appearance (some highly sexual) than male faculty members. It appears that the situation is the same for female clergy. In this video, male clergy were asked to read the comments made to their female colleagues. They had not been told the comments ahead of time.
[Read more…]

The case against war with Iran

On the public radio program 1A this morning Vali Nasr, Dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, discussed what the shooting down of a US surveillance drone by Iran might lead to and it is well worth listening to. He made the point that Iran might just be fed up with the US essentially trying to strangle that nation’s economy with its sanctions policy. He argues that the deal that was signed between Iran on one hand and the US, Russia, China, France, UK, and Germany on the other required that the earlier sanctions should be eased in return for commitments made by Iran regarding its nuclear program. He said that while Iran has kept its end of the bargain, the other nations have not and the promised sanctions relief has not come about.
[Read more…]

Supreme Court rules that the Bladensburg cross can remain

The large cross that was on public land in a busy intersection in Bladensburg, Maryland and is maintained at taxpayer expense has been the target of litigation for some time. Its continued presence had been challenged by the American Humanist Association, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the Center for Inquiry. A US District Court judge had initially ruled that the cross did not violate the Establishment Clause but the First Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling overturned that ruling and said it had to come down.

But today the US Supreme Court reversed that decision yet again so the cross can stay. You can read the 7-2 majority opinion by justice Samuel Alito and the dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor here.
[Read more…]

UN report says that bin Salman should be investigated for Khashoggi murder

It has long been clear that the brutal murder and dismemberment in a Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was working for the Washington Post had to have been ordered at the very highest levels of the Saudi government. That crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was likely to have been involved was also apparent though he denied it and placed the blame on that familiar scapegoat ‘rogue elements’. The amount of high-level support that these murderers had in carrying out this crime makes that claim laughable. The only purpose of that claim was to provide Donald Trump and his family with a fig leaf to not disassociate themselves from bin Salman.
[Read more…]

Film review: Salt of the Earth (1954)

I recently watched this powerful film that I heard about on a podcast on Latino USA. It reminds us, if we needed it, how much we owe to the unions who fought hard to get the benefits and working conditions that so many of us now take for granted. The film also brings to the fore the major but often unrecognized role that women played in these struggles by keeping things from falling apart by maintaining homes and raising children under very difficult conditions. This film, though, shows an occasion when women actually took the lead role.
[Read more…]

Cat filters

I kept seeing news report headlines that a speech by a leading Pakistani politician Shaukat Yousafzai had been passed through a ‘cat filter’. I was not sure what that was and, because I am an old out-of-touch fogey, had the vague impression that he had used a physical filter like a surgical mask designed to catch cat dander to prevent his allergies triggering. It was only when I saw this video that I learned what this cat filter did.

The filter had apparently been turned on by accident by Yousafzai’s social media team when they live-streamed the event on social media. Yousafzai has apparently taken the mistake with good humor, which is nice to hear in these days when some prominent people are so full of their sense of self-importance and so sensitive to their image that they react furiously against any aide who even inadvertently does something that makes them look foolish.

Incidentally, did anyone else feel that the voiceover for that video sounded like it was computer-generated? It had a curiously flat affect.