John Kasich is also an extremist

Ohio governor John Kasich has been getting some good press following his performance in the first Republican debate because he seemed to come across as somewhat moderate in his views. But Kasich appears moderate only when compared with some of the more extreme anti-gay, anti-Obamacare stances taken by his rivals. It is such a sad reflection on Republican positions that all Kasich had to say is that he attended a same-sex wedding and supported Medicare expansion to be seen as some kind of enlightened person.
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Past mass deportations

I had ridiculed Donald Trump’s call to deport all undocumented immigrants as well as their children born in the US who are, of course, US citizens. I felt that not only was it unfeasible in practice to round up and deport 11 million people, it was unthinkable and illegal in the case of the children. So I was shocked to learn on NPR today that such a mass deportation had in fact occurred in the past during the time of the Great Depression when the pressure for jobs resulted in Mexican-Americans and their US-born children being sent away.
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What to expect from Stephen Colbert’s new show

Tonight at 11:35pm is when Stephen Colbert begins his new career as a late night talk show host. From what we can see, he is not aiming to revolutionize the format but keep it broadly similar to what been done before, the new wrinkle being that his guests would cover a wider range than just celebrities from the entertainment world, also encompassing politicians, writers, scientists, and other people of interest.
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Did Kim Davis make a strategic error?

[UPDATE: Federal judge David Bunning has ordered that Davis can be released from jail since five of the six deputy clerks have been issuing licenses to all qualified people and “provided that she shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.” You can read the judge’s order here. It is not clear as yet if Davis agrees to those conditions. She is probably checking with Jesus who is wondering why the hell this woman keeps bugging him with her petty concerns.]

Rowan County clerk Kim Davis continues to be in jail for contempt for defying a federal judge’s order to issue marriage licenses. She has asked the governor of Kentucky to release her from jail so that, according to her lawyers, “she can do her job”, but he has refused to do so, which seems appropriate since not doing her job is what landed her in jail in the first place.
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Wolverton Mountain

Here’s the late great Nat King Cole with a song that showcases his velvety voice and was a huge hit back in the day, its jaunty music balancing its somewhat ominous lyrics. I had not realized until today that the Clifton Clowers mentioned in the song was an actual person who lived on Woolverton Mountain in Arkansas, though the rest of the song is fictional. His nephew wrote the song and decided to immortalize his uncle by using his name.
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As idea whose time has come?

Remember when Mitt Romney proposed the idea of self-deportations for undocumented immigrants during the 2012 election and the idea sank like a rock? Given the current climate, that now looks like one of the more humane solutions proposed by Republicans and Funny or Die has a report on how Arizona governor Jan Brewer has come up with a practical way of implementing it.
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Fallout from the Ashley Madison hack

I mentioned earlier my feeling that the hack of the Ashley Madison website and the dumping of all the information about its subscribers was not a good thing. These were the private activities of private people and there was no discernible public interest served by releasing this information. Unfortunately, people seem to have created new sites to help people use the database to make it easier to find people according to where they live.
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