Right Wing talk radio host Tom Becka leaves Fargo, will return to Omaha

KOIL

Talkers.com reports a return to Omaha by Tom Becka, who got a gig at KRWK in Fargo after Clear Channel fired him from KFAB in Omaha following a "business analysis" by one of its major shareholders, Bain Capital.
     Becka has been phoning in his new Omaha program from North Dakota but will quit his show there and move back to Nebraska to begin an expanded 2-6 PM KOIL show on January 2.

Operations manager Jeff Lynn says Becka’s program on KOIL has grown significantly on the station – the adults 35-64 demo is up 26% during the 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm slot in which his show is currently airing.

Previously on AKSARBENT: The Tom Becka "three people off the top of your head" litmus test of class discrimination and Tom Becka feigns ignorance of homophobia, Ben Gray hangs up on him, then Becka asks the dial tone, 'What'd I do wrong?'

Leno helps gay couple decorate for Christmas and hurl snowballs at a Chik-fil-A

Elsewhere on AKSARBENT:  
Sir Paul McCartney gets owned by 55-year-old Four Lads record
     Crystal Dixon firing upheld: Nebraska Family Council falsely exploited case as religious liberty / freedom of speech issue in order to attack Lincoln LGBT law.

Leno: Look at this place. There's no lights. There's nothing on the lawn. These people need our help.

Leno: ...Why so gloomy?
Victims: You know it's just the way we were brought up, I guess.

Leno: Are you guys a couple?
Victims: We've been together 14 years.
Leno: So it's just become kind of... the excitement's gone!

Victims: When it comes to taste or fashion, the closest thing we have is our wagon wheel chandelier in the kitchen.
Leno: OK, these are not real gay people.

Skip to 1:37 below.


Later on Friday's show, Leno and former NFL quarterback Terry Bradshaw exhibited their cake-eating tendencies.

2012: Paul McCartney gets owned by 55-year-old Four Lads recording

From Stirred Straight Up:
Before striking it big on their own, Canadian harmony group The Four Lads
sang backup for Johnnie Ray. We assume it's from Mr. Ray that the Lads
learned the pleasures of lounging, bottoms up, whilst studying makeup ads.

You're on your own, pal, if you think you can cover Barbra Streisand's People or Andy William's Moon River or even Dean Martin's Let It Snow better than they did.
     Same goes for the 1957 claim that the Four Lads made on Frank Loesser's More I Cannot Wish You from Pal Joey. AKSARBENT loved the Beatles, but Jesus Christ, Sir Paul.

Crystal Dixon firing upheld: Nebraska Family Council falsely exploited case as religious liberty / freedom of speech issue in order to attack Lincoln LGBT law

Crystal Dixon

From the Philidelphia Edge comes this:

     A federal appeals court has upheld the University of Toledo’s decision to fire the college’s vice president of human resources who was canned in 2008 after writing an article in a local newspaper where she condemned gay rights, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. The University of Toledo is a public municipal university.
About four years ago, the Northwestern Ohio university fired Crystal Dixon over concerns about a column she wrote for the Toledo Free Press, where she said gays and lesbians have no claim to the civil rights movement...
     When her lawsuit went to court, U.S. District Judge David Katz ruled against her and dismissed the case.
     "The balance of [Dixon’s] interest in making a comment of public concern is clearly outweighed by the University’s interest as her employer in carrying out its own objectives," the judge wrote in an opinion. "Therefore, [Dixon] has failed to establish that her speech was protected. [Dixon] also claims that she was fired for violating an impermissibly vague speech policy. However, the damage she did to her ability to perform her job and to the University provide ample justification for her termination."
     After appealing Katz’s ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled on Monday that Dixon’s column "contradicted the very policies she was charged with creating, promoting, and enforcing," and her defense of being a private citizen does not excuse her from her remarks against LGBT rights. The panel supported Katz’s decision and dismissed the case once again.

Nebraska Family Council's
Al Riskowski

     The Dixon case has been falsely cited by antigay organizations like the Nebraska Family Council, which referred to the case as a consequence of LGBT antidiscrimination ordinances both on NFC's website and before the Lincoln City Council.
     In fact, the ruling clearly shows that Dixon's termination had nothing to do with antidiscrimination ordinances, freedom of speech or religious liberty. Dixon publicly contradicted her employer's policies, which she was charged with implementing. Courts have long ruled that employers have no obligation to employ people who publicly subvert their lawful policies.
     Links to news articles about the case appear on NFC's website under the following introduction:

Below: NFC's Hannah Buell begins her brazen falsehood at about the 1:20 mark: "...She [Dixon] was fired for exercising her first amendment rights to write a column to a newspaper and in that column she was writing as a private citizen, but she expressed disagreement with a bill, an ordinance similar to this and expressed her disagreement in that form. She was fired for this."



Contrary to Hannah Buell's untruthful testimony to the Lincoln City Council, Dixon's letter did NOT mention any LGBT ordinances at all — either similar or dissimilar to the one under consideration by Lincoln's City Council. You may read the letter that the Nebraska Family Council misrepresented below.
     The Nebraska Family Council also distorted another case involving the boycott by gay patrons of a restaurant in West Hollywood after they found out that the Christian manager who posed as a friend to their community was secretly donating money to the Prop 8 effort to reverse marriage equality in California.

---

I read with great interest Michael Miller's April 6 column, "Gay Rights and Wrongs."
I respectfully submit a different perspective for Miller and Toledo Free Press readers to consider. First, human beings, regardless of their choices in life, are of ultimate value to God and should be viewed the same by others. At the same time, one's personal choices lead to outcomes either positive or negative. As a Black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of Toledo's Graduate School, an employee and business owner, I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are "civil rights victims." Here's why. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. I am genetically and biologically a Black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended. The reference to the alleged benefits disparity at the University of Toledo was rather misleading. When the University of Toledo and former Medical University of Ohio merged, both entities had multiple contracts for different benefit plans at substantially different employee cost sharing levels. To suggest that homosexual employees on one campus are being denied benefits avoids the fact that ALL employees across the two campuses regardless of their sexual orientation, have different benefit plans. The university is working diligently to address this issue in a reasonable and cost-efficient manner, for all employees, not just one segment. My final and most important point. There is a divine order. God created human kind male and female (Genesis 1:27). God created humans with an inalienable right to choose. There are consequences for each of our choices, including those who violate God's divine order. It is base human nature to revolt and become indignant when the world or even God Himself, disagrees with our choice that violates His divine order. Jesus Christ loves the sinner but hates the sin (John 8:1-11.)

Gary, IN photographer Terrell Smith, 25, shot to death during probable robbery; took two bullets

Kate Sosin of the Windy City Times reports that Terrell Smith, a young gay man who was active in Chicago LGBT organizing, was shot to death December 16th in Gary. Smith had been a member of Chicago-based LGBTQ organization National Youth Pride Services (NYPS).      In a remembrance posted on the NYPS website, the organization recalled Smith's enthusiasm for community activism.      "The world may never know that Terrell did work on the national level for the next generation, not just in Chicago and Gary," a post at the LGBTQ organization's website says. "His work with us impacted young people from California to Florida and we will remember his efforts always."      Smith came out as gay his Sophomore year of high school, said Elesia Davis, a longtime close friend. His family had been supportive, she said, and Smith was open about who he was and what he believed in. Smith cared deeply about gay marriage, Davis said.

Pepé Le Pew Wayne LaPierre holds disastrous press conference; a flashpoint for assault weapon opponents

National Rifle Association idiotically tells reporters from all over the world, who don't understand why US allows civilian sales of assault weapons, the following: "Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonized gun owners."

Israel Firsters, LGBT groups, target anticipated nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense

Conservative Hagel, right, with younger, liberal
brother Tom, the only known American siblings
to serve in the same infantry squad in Vietnam.

Update: Today, an aide to Hagel relayed the following to Politico:

My comments 14 years ago in 1998 were insensitive. They do not reflect my views or the totality of my public record, and I apologize to Ambassador Hormel and any LGBT Americans who may question my commitment to their civil rights. I am fully supportive of ‘open service’ and committed to LGBT military families.”

Conservative groups have been critical of the prospect of a Chuck Hagel nomination for Secretary of Defense because they see Hagel, who almost died for his country in Vietnam, as insufficiently supportive of Israel — which sent no troops either to Vietnam or, as dozens of other countries did, to Kuwait during the Gulf War in the early 1990s.
     Yesterday, Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said Hagel's “consistent anti-LGBT” record” in the Senate raise serious questions about where he stands today and that “The next secretary of defense must be supportive of open service as well as equal benefits for lesbian and gay military families, and Sen. Hagel must address these issues immediately. Whomever is selected to be the next secretary ... needs to understand there are clear expectations for progress.”
     Griffin's remarks were distributed to the Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets but were not available today in the News Releases page of HRC's website or anywhere else there that AKSARBENT looked.
     OutServe-SLDN Executive Director Allyson Robinson also issued a statement: "At OutServe-SLDN, we expect that anyone being considered by the President for the Secretary of Defense post would embrace one of the signature accomplishments of this administration — the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' — and would be prepared to demonstrate his or her firm commitment to fairness and equality for our nation's men and women in uniform," Robinson said.
     In 1999, Hagel told the New York Times said he opposed repealing DADT, saying “the U.S. armed forces aren’t some social experiment.”
     In respect of President Clinton's nominee for ambassador to Luxembourg, gay meat scion James Hormel, Hegal told the Omaha World-Herald: “They [ambassadors] are representing America. They are representing our lifestyle, our values, our standards. And I think it is an inhibiting factor to be gay — openly, aggressively gay like Mr. Hormel — to do an effective job.”

Hagel said in the article that he had a good chat with Hormel and described him as a “nice fellow.” The GOP senator also made clear that he was not opposed to appointing a gay ambassador.
     He and others took issue with Hormel’s openness and advocacy on gay-rights issues.
     Hagel pointed to a documentary film that Hormel helped fund that showed teachers how they could teach children about homosexuality. Hagel also cited a separate clip showing Hormel at what Hagel described as an anti-Catholic event in San Francisco that featured a group of drag queens known as the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.”
     “It is very clear on this tape that he’s laughing and enjoying the antics of an anti-Catholic gay group in this gay parade,” Hagel said at the time, citing the majority status of Catholics in Luxembourg. “I think it’s wise for the president not to go forward with this nomination.”

     Today, Hagel supporters were in full damage control mode in the pages of an even-handed World-Herald treatment of the story.

     The former Nebraska Senator's defenders pointed out that the senator did not stand in the way of Hormel’s appointment advancing through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which he was a member.
     Nor did Hagel organize opposition to Hormel. Hagel never had a chance to vote up or down on the Senate floor because the Republican leadership never allowed a vote. Clinton ultimately gave Hormel the job through a recess appointment.
     Deb Fiddelke, who was Hagel’s communications director in 1998, came to Hagel’s defense on Thursday.
     “Any group can take any quote out of context and try and create a larger issue and because of the situation, Sen. Hagel can’t speak back right now and defend himself,” Fiddelke told The World-Herald in a front page story today by Joseph Morton and Roseann Moring.

     For years HRC awarded Hagel goose-egg ratings for his hostility to legislation addressing fairer treatment of LGBT folk, but in 2005, Hagel, who opposed marriage equality, also opposed a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

“I’m a conservative. I believe the sanctity of the Constitution of the United States is very important,” he said. “I don’t think you need a constitutional amendment defining marriage.

Kansas NRA stooge, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, helped gun lobby suppress federal gun crime info you paid for

Todd Tiarht in 2011

Former Kansas Rep. Todd Tiarht is best known for his series of amend­­ments introduced to prevent you from knowing certain facts highly inconvenient to the NRA and gunmakers about which guns are involved in what crimes, even though your taxes pay for gathering that information.
     Tiarht accomplished this by introducing legislation to cut funding to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (and the CDC) for releasing even aggregate statistics about, for example, assault rifles used in crimes.
     Below, Tiarht recently criticized President Obama in a tweet for hiding information about the Fast and Furious campaign. What he didn't mention is that the restrictions he introduced in Congress "blocked Congressional oversight of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Explosives & Firearms (ATF) and its controversial 'Operation Fast & Furious.' " by preventing the ATF from releasing trace data connected to Fast & Furious, forcing Congress to request the data from the Mexican Government.
     Mayors against Illegal Guns has, in effect, politely called the former representative a serial liar in a five-page compilation of his misrepresentations about his own Tiahrt Amendments.

Here's an excerpt from yesterday's Fresh Aire in which Tom Diaz explained how Tiarht and the NRA were able to censor the release of government information about guns and crime:

Teri Gross: Is there any research on how these semiautomatic weapons are being used? ...Are people using these [assault weapons] as hunting rifles?
Tom Diaz: ...The direct answer to your question is, because the gun industry and the National Rifle Association have been so very successful in shutting down federal sources of data, for example from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and basically shutting down cogent research from the Centers for Disease Control... we don't really know the extent of the use of these guns in crime because we cannot get even the generic aggregate data. It's been shut down. What we learn from are simply, for example at the Violence Policy Center, we do a lot of anecdotal research.
     I, for example, did a study about assault weapons a couple years ago, but I had to rely entirely on what I could derive from news reports and other public sources. You cannot get that information from government sources because of something called the Tiardt Amendment which has basically shut down ATF from releasing data.
Gross: So, this amendment prevents the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from releasing information about what guns have been used in crimes? Do I have that right?
Diaz: You have that exactly right.

     When Todd Tiarht was in congress, he did nothing to restrict sales to civilians of 50-caliber armor-piercing rifles used in war zones to take down airplanes and helicopters near landing fields and helicopters.
     Such weapons may now be purchased by disgruntled 18-year-olds anywhere in America, and represent an alarming threat to general and commercial aviation. Every commercial airliner is a potential fuel-bomb, whether in the air, on the tarmac or flying into a skyscaper.
     Today, amazingly, Tiarht works as an "aviation consultant" in Wichita. Among his clients are Boeing, Hawker Beechcraft and Textron (maker of Cessnas).

Teri Gross of Fresh Aire interviews Violence Policy Center's Tom Diaz

Tom Diaz's new book, The Last Gun, picks up where his previous expose, Making a Killing, left off. The first effort turned out to be the most effective antigun book ever written, invariably cited in gun control initiatives after its publication. Diaz was interviewed by Teri Gross on Fresh Aire yesterday. 

From the Violence Prevention Center:

“Your grandfather’s shotgun has no place in today’s civilian gun market,” says the author of Militarization of the U.S. Civilian Firearms Market," VPC Senior Policy Analyst Tom Diaz. “The gun industry has created a unique American civilian firearms bazaar which arms thousands of criminals, dangerous extremists, and drug traffickers throughout the world. If Congress wants to find the real causes of the gun traffic to Mexico, it needs to look upstream to the gun industry’s callous transformation of the American gun market into one more suited to warfare than sport. The world’s bad guys come here for their guns because they are cheap and plentiful.”

     The study describes how, plagued by declining gun ownership and the explosion of recreational alternatives such as electronic games, the faltering gun industry has relied on creating demand by designing and selling increasingly lethal military-style firepower.

Spencer Cox tribute

Cox, who died of AIDS-related causes, died Tuesday. An Atlanta native, he was the remarkable son of two accountants, Jerry and Beverly, and a Theatre Major at Bennington College who discovered that he was HIV+ shortly after moving to New York City.
     He joined ACT UP in 1989 at 20. By 1992 he had helped form TAG, the Treatment Action Group. There he and his colleagues learned the science of AIDS, drug trial protocols, and the govern­ment approval process.
      Cox was seen in the documentary about ACT UP, How to Survive a Plague.

“You can’t understand how incredibly scary it was for him to sit down at the table of the F.D.A. Anti-Viral Advisory Committee as the ‘P.W.A. representative’ and take on the scientific establishment,” David Barr, an original TAG member, wrote in a Facebook post about Mr. Cox. He added: “It took incredible courage and a whole lot of arrogance. You need to understand how lonely it was to sit at those tables, how much you felt like a complete fraud, yet also right and right to be there.”

      In 1995, when antiretroviral drugs known as protease inhibitors began to show promise for treating AIDS patients, Mr. Cox designed a human drug trial for one of the earliest, ritonavir, which was being developed by Abbott Laboratories.

      “Spencer pushed for data-driven decisions,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview on Wednesday. “He wanted the facts and was always very meticulous about getting good data rather than just screaming for getting something approved. It’s a great loss. He was part of a historic group of people.”

      Methamphetamine brought Cox down. Mark Harrington, the executive director of TAG, told the New York Times, "a despairing Mr. Cox had apparently stopped taking his medication" some months ago.

Celebrity runts

Click picture to enlarge. Source.

This Celebuzz 'infographic' (ah, chart?) is the source. A much longer list is here, and includes women. Biggest surprise: Mikhail Baryshnikov is only 5'6". We always thought he had a large head, but it turns out he just has a small body.
     There's a gay bar in New York which offers drink specials weekly on Runt Night, but you can't be over 5'8, which means Jason Statham wouldn't make the cut, not that he would ever have to pay for anything in a gay bar.
     Mark Walberg, 5'7", is on the list. He started out as a model, even though it's almost impossible for a male shorter than six feet to break into the field. Calvin Klein must really have seen some exceptional attributes in Wahlberg. Boy, he sure can spot talent, can't he!
     Scott Cahn, son of James, pictured left wearing only a cowboy hat in Varsity Blues, is 5'5". In the movie, he pretended to fellate James Van Der Beek from a football locker room bench as a joke. On Hawaii Five-O, he only gets to shoot people; the only fellatio in sight is performed by CBS on cops, the military and small arms manufacturers.

     James Cahn, Scott's dad, is pictured here having a well-deserved smoke break after the famous toll booth assassination scene in Godfather I. Getting ripped by automatic weapons fire obviously can take a lot out of you. Caan, Sr., a former (or current for all we know) smoker, is now in his 80s.

Neil Patrick Harris, playful puppet perv

Gosh, Harris watches Chris Hansen, host of To Catch a Predator in bed too!

Outsource your outing to George Takei, Andy Richter

Very affordable. And with the option of also engaging Dion Cole, a standup comedian and Team Coco comedy writer.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a 'flat out, unreconstructed bigot' — Barney Frank

Barney Frank got straight to the point on Michael Signorelli's show, articulating his satisfaction that Antonin Scalia is no longer a closet bigot for whom excuses can be offered to deflection accusations of homophobia.

“I was glad that he made clear what’s been obvious, that he’s just a flat out bigot,” Frank said. “I’d previously said he was a homophobe. And Fox and the rightwing said, ‘Oh just because he’s not for same-sex marriage? And I said, ‘No, let me be very clear. That’s not it. This is a man who has said you should go to prison for having sex.’ It was an extraordinarily abusive sentiment and it was dead wrong. And, by the way, for a guy who is supposed to be so smart -- quite stupid.This young man said to him, ‘Why do you compare sodomy to murder?’ And he said, ‘Well because I have a right to say if I think something is immoral.’ Well the question wasn’t about his right. The question was, By what morality is expressing your love for someone in a physical way equivalent to killing that person? It makes it clear that the man is an unreconstructed bigot, and given that you have a bigot on the Supreme Court like that, it is useful to know.”

NRA now hiding its Facebook page

Go to the URL below and you'll be instantly bounced to Facebook's home page.

www.facebook.com/nationalrifleassociation

So we'll just embed former Senator Bob Kerrey's 1994 reelection ad, which is just as relevant today as it was almost 20 years ago. Kerrey was recently defeated in a comeback bid for a third term in the Senate by NRA sweetheart Deb Fischer, who hasn't had much to say about firearms in the last few days. Nor have any other GOP congressmen from Nebraska.

Why one must never take one's cat on the subway

Coyotes. And yes, this is why we need easy access to assault weapons. Because you never know when you will be called upon to defend your cat. (To be fair, however, AKSARBENT does understand why the coyote is not amused. We rode a subway once.)

Gun-lobby puppet Deb Fischer won't talk about firearms in wake of Sandy Hook shootings

Photo: Nati Harnik

In October, according to the Lincoln Journal-Star, the NRA endorsed then-senate-candidate Deb Fischer because, according to Chris Cox, chairman of the NRA's political action committee, her "strong dedication and voting record in the state Senate have earned her an A rating." "Deb Fischer opposes any anti-gun nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court," the NRA said.
     No wonder senator-elect Fischer, along with all the rest of the 31 pro-gun-lobby senators, refused to appear on Meet The Press to discuss gun control or anything else. Since she parrots the language of the NRA, it doesn't surprise us that she is in the same lockdown mode as her benefactor, which has shut down its Facebook page and isn't answering any press inquiries.
     In case you've forgotten, here are some of the radical positions of the organization whose talking points Deb Fischer stuck to during her Senate race against Bob Kerrey:

1. Wanted people on the terrorist watch list to be legally able to acquire guns.
2. Opposed required background checks on every gun sale.
3. Lobbied to allow warlords to get arms on the international market.
4. Wanted to prevent the public from accessing information about where guns come from.
5. Pushed to keep guns in bars.
6. Supported forcing all business owners to allow guns on their property.

Stephen Hawking, et al., write a letter to The Telegraph urging the UK to forgive Alan Turing's conviction

Turing statue by Stephen Kettle at
Bletchley Park, commissioned by the
American philanthropist Sidney Frank
(Source: Wikipedia)

Alan Turing, a renowned British mathematician who improved and automated the Polish crack of Nazi message encrypting machines and is credited by many for paving the way for Allied Victory, was arrested for "Gross Indecency" with a 19-year-old — Arnold Murray — after Turing went to the police following a series of petty thefts in which Murray and a confederate were involved.
     Turing underwent "chemical castration" (estrogen injections) for a year, after which he died from cyanide poisoning, either as a suicide from a suspected tainted apple he ate (never tested) or from inadvertently from experiments he was conducting.
     Not everyone agrees with Hawking. Martin Robbins, in a blog hosted by the Manchester Guardian wrote:

...I'm not sure that the British government have earned the right to pardon Alan Turing. Not as long as the attitudes that led to his persecution are still very much with us, and entrenched in that very same government.The language of Hawking et al's letter is remarkably clumsy; its plea that the government should 'forgive' Turing carelessly implying that he did something to be forgiven for.

John Graham-Cuming, who was behing a 2009 campaign resulting in a government apology to Turing, is against a pardon:

...Secondly, even if a pardon is appropriate, a pardon for simply Turing would be unjust to the other gay men who suffered under the law. There were many, many others. And there are men alive today living in Britain with a criminal record because of offenses committed during the time the laws were in force. I could get behind a petition for a pardon for all those people, especially since living people are still hurt by that law, but not just for Turing. Pardoning him doesn't help the living.       But even that's unnecessary. Subsequent to the 2009 apology campaign the UK government introduced legislation that actually does roll back the criminal convictions of gay men. The Protection of Freedoms bill has already passed all stages in the House of Commons, two readings in the House of Lords and enters (this coming Monday) committee stage. That means it's close to being law.

Here is the Hawking letter:

SIR – We write in support of a posthumous pardon for Alan Turing, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the modern era. He lead the team of Enigma codebreakers at Bletchley Park, which most historians agree shortened the Second World War. Yet successive governments seem incapable of forgiving his conviction for the then crime of being a homosexual, which led to his suicide, aged 41.
     We urge the Prime Minister formally to forgive this British hero, to whom we owe so much as a nation, and whose pioneering contribution to computer sciences remains relevant even today. To those who seek to block attempts to secure a pardon with the argument that this would set a precedent, we would answer that Turing’s achievements are sui generis. It is time his reputation was unblemished.
Lord Currie of Marylebone
Lord Grade of Yarmouth
Lord Faulkner or Worcester
Lord Rees of Ludlow
Astronomer Royal
Lord Sharkey
Lord Smith of Finsbury
Baroness Trumpington
Sir Timothy Gowers
Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge University
Dr Douglas Gurr
Chairman, Science Museum Group
Professor Stephen Hawking
Sir Paul Nurse
President, the Royal Society

When Ewan McGregor shut down George Stephanopoulos

Some years ago Stephanopolous shut down George Will when he defended the Ancient Order of Hibernia's refusal to let a gay contingent march in New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade because of their "agenda." Stephanopolous shot him a look and said, "Saying who you are is not an agenda, George." A couple years ago, Stephanapolous got a bit of his own when Ewan McGregor turned the tables on him, as seen in the YouTube clip below posted here and noticed on Reddit recently.

Second biggest US gun lobby, NSSF, is a couple miles from Sandy Hook school massacre, and isn't talking to press

Like the National Rifle Association, the National Shooting
Sports Foundation (lower left in this map of Newton, CT)
is stonewalling press inquiries about this week's assault
rifle massacre at nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School
(top right)

From Time:

The NSSF [National Shooting Sports Foundation] helps write firearms safety and instruction standards and promotes shooting sports, such as hunting, skeet and trap, and target shooting. But the organization is also a powerful lobby that advocates for specific positions on gun control issues. They have faced off against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempts to crack down on guns in New York City, have made the case that banning high-capacity magazines is an ineffective policy and have published fact sheets arguing that the term “assault weapon” is an erroneous term for a semi-automatic modern sporting rifle.
“The term ‘assault weapon’ was conjured up by anti-gun legislators to scare voters into thinking these firearms are something out of a horror movie,” the NSSF wrote in its fact sheet. “In fact, the Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, both labeled ‘assault weapons,’ are the rifles most often used for marksmanship competitions in the United States. And their cartridges are standard hunting calibers, useful for game up to and including deer.”

Which senators voted to kill renewal of 2004 ban on assault weapons?

Which senators voted (90-8) to kill a renewal of the ban on high-capacity assault weapon clips that killed or wounded 70+ Batman fans in CO Springs? You'd be surprised. Lots of Democrats voted to kill renewing the ban on supersized clips and assault weapons, including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy and Diane Feinstein.
     Background: on March 2, 2004, the US Senate voted down a bill (Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act) to protect gun makers from liability suits (which passed anyway in 2005 after the NRA took out some southern Democrats).
     The NRA's Wayne LaPierre lobbied to kill the 2004 bill because an amendment to renew a 1994 ban on assault weapons (and high capacity clips) was also in the bill.

Tea Party tool Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)
at CPAC Chicago

     Last weekend on Fox News Sunday, GOP Senator Ron Johnson, said that restricting high-capacity magazines would infringe on a basic right. “When you try and do it, you restrict our freedom,” he said.
    The following senators who voted 'nay' killed the 2004 bill to renew the 1994 ban on assault weapons and high capacity clips, both of which killed and maimed 70+ people at the Batman premiere in Aurora, CO:

Nebraska GOP: the NRA's staunchest patsies

Earlier this year, KETV aired a summary of GOP primary Senate candidates on gun control. Deb Fischer won the primary and the general election against former Nebraska Governor and Senator Bob Kerrey, who stood up to the NRA in the following ad during his second successful Senate campaign in 1994. This is one of several reasons why Nebraskans elected the wrong candidate for US Senate.

Lee Terry and Adrian Smith got a 92% from the NRA; Nebraska's assault rifle massacre enablers

Nebraska congressman Lee Terry (top left) and Adrian Smith (top right) with the type of
assault weapon (top centre) used to kill all 20 Sandy Hook children,
14 of whom you see above.

On December 5, 2007, before the Aurora, Colorado "Dark Knight" shootings and before last week's Sandy Hook grade school killings, but three days after the Omaha World-Herald gratuitously revisited the Charles Starkweather spree killings of 1958, Robert Hawkins took his dad's commercial copy of an AK-47 to Von Maur, in Omaha's Westroads Mall, and gunned down 13 people (eight of whom died) before shooting himself.
     You might think that another Nebraska massacre (this time with a military and not a hunting rifle or shotgun) might have given the state's congressional delegation pause about the 2004 lapse of the assault rifle ban. Nah. Here's what the Omaha World-Herald said at the time:

After the Westroads shootings, Nebraska Reps. Lee Terry, Jeff Fortenberry and Adrian Smith, all Republicans, made speeches in the House to address the tragedy and offer condolences to the victims and their families. None said anything about changing gun laws.
     Smith said he opposes the assault weapons ban legislation because "gun control doesn't work." "Someone wishing to cause harm, if they can't acquire it (a gun) legally, they acquire it illegally," he said.
     Terry declined a request for an interview on the subject. He released a statement saying he had heard of "absolutely no plan" to debate the assault rifle ban.

Here's what Kyle Michaelis at New Nebraska Net said then, in a piece called The Politics Of Gun Control in a Post-Westroads Nebraska:

Mayor Fahey and Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren support reinstating a 10-year federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004...But not a single member of Nebraska's congressional delegation did.
     No doubt, what Lee Terry doesn't want to talk about is the role he's played over the last 9 years weakening our nation's gun control laws.  In particular, Terry probably doesn't want to answer questions about his relationship to the NRA. That shouldn't come as a surprise when, in 2004 - the year the Assault Weapons Ban lapsed in Congress - Terry was one of the top 20 recipients of the NRA's lucrative campaign contributions.  In fact, since he was first elected to Congress in 1998, Terry has taken more than $37,000 from the NRA. [Update: Terry has now taken almost $60,000 from the NRA and is currently #4 on their list of tools.]
     Meanwhile, Smith's pre-emptive pandering on this issue - ignorantly declaring that "gun control doesn't work" - probably rates him as even more contemptible.  The Westroads shooting has been Smith's first real opportunity to earn his keep as an NRA-lackey, and it seems he's more than risen to the occasion.   In just his first term in Congress, Smith has already taken $8,150 in NRA campaign contributions.  His eager reliance on outlandish right-wing talking points suggests Smith should be cashing-in in an even bigger way in no time.
     Of course, Terry and Smith may be the most culpable and the most offensive in their respective positions towards gun control, but the fact remains that Jeff Fortenberry, Chuck Hagel, and Ben Nelson have also taken substantial sums from the NRA and also stand opposed to renewing the assault weapons ban.

Gun nuts immediately blame gun control advocates for Connecticut mass killing of school kids

Larry Pratt in 2011

ThinkProgress published the statement by Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, blaming the death toll on gun regulations, arguing that had weapons been permitted on school grounds, the murders could have been avoided:

“Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to insure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones. The only thing accomplished by gun free zones is to insure that mass murderers can slay more before they are finally confronted by someone with a gun.

 From Wikipedia:

In October 1992, at Estes Park, Colorado, Pratt addressed a three-day meeting of neo-Nazis and Christian Identity adherents organized by Pete Peters in the wake of the Ruby Ridge incident. Pratt shared the stage with Richard Butler and Louis Beam. In 1994, Pratt unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Nevada State Assembly as a Libertarian, winning 27% of the vote.
     In the 1996 U.S. presidential election, Pratt served as a co-chairman of Pat Buchanan's campaign. In February 1996, the liberal Center for Public Integrity issued a report that claimed Pratt spoke at meetings organized by white supremacist and militia leaders. Pratt denied any tie to racism, calling the report a smear aimed at hurting Buchanan before the New Hampshire primary election. However, Pratt was forced to resign his position with the Buchanan campaign

The seven countries in which atheists can be put to death — and the seven US states which prohibit them from holding office

Abbie Ohlheiser of Slate ticks off some interesting facts you might want to turn into talking points the next time one of God's Bullies attempts to con you or a television reporter into thinking his or her religious freedom is being assaulted. As usual, Slate's between-the-lines message is how bad the countries which surround Israel are, but there's grist here for calling out Christian evangelicals, if you read far enough to cover the last paragraph:

A new report from the International Humanist and Ethical Union names the seven countries in which atheists can be executed for their beliefs: Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.
     The sobering report was presented to the U.N. on Monday. It takes a broad look at the state of freedom of expression worldwide for nonbelievers. As Reuters notes, Islamic countries overwhelmingly account for some of the most brutal anti-"unbeliever" criminalization and discrimination documented in the report. The big offenders tend to be laws pertaining to apostasy, blasphemy, compulsory religious registration, religious tests for citizenship or participation in civic life, and religious control of family law and public education. For example, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, and Jordan all ban or strictly limit the publication of atheist views.

...this year saw prosecutions for allegedly atheist comments on Facebook and Twitter in Bangladesh, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey. In some of these cases, the governments even threatened to prosecute those who commented on, or “liked”, or re-tweeted, the offending comments.

Seven US states—Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—have constitutional provisions banning atheists from holding public office.

Evil, but funny...

 ...is this comment on Amy Davidson's New Yorker's article, The Animus of Antonin Scalia:

The Justice should be happy we have gays. Here in San Francisco, they're model citizens. I've never read one bad thing about them in the newspaper. Never a murder, a theft, car-boost, drug bust, driving-under or domestic quarrel. Not a single crime, ever. They don't even take bad photographs - always smiling and happy, save a few nudists recently. Don't see how they could engender any animus. They make the rest of us look like crap.

Posted 12/13/2012, 7:58:42pm by Teller

Evidence of undocumented deaths at shut Florida School for Boys — 31 crosses at school cemetery, but 50 grave shafts; 98 died between 1911 and 1973

The Dozier Home for Boys in Marianna opened as the Florida State Reform School on Jan. 1, 1900, operating until June 30, 2011, when the state Department of Juvenile Justice shut it down after years of controversy over physical and sexual abuse of its charges.

Men who were incarcerated there described being whipped with a metal-lined leather strap, sometimes leading to unconsciousness. Some said they were taken to the “rape room,” where they said officers sodomized boys of their choosing.
     Biennial reports to state lawmakers early in the 20th century “often listed fewer deaths than what is listed in the school ledgers,” the report said.
     Changes in state law and policy that allowed “incorrigible” children and even orphans to be sent to the reform school, and required longer sentences for inmates, suggest “that financial incentives were underlying motivating factors” for the youth prison’s operation, the report said. In 1906, for example, a superintendent complained he lacked adequate prisoners to harvest the corn crop.
     Children put out to work were overseen by local labor bosses, who were given broad authority to punish the children as they saw fit, said Kimmerle.

There may be even more victims because privacy laws have limited access to records after 1960 and overgrowth on the grounds has hindered full searches.

• Seven boys are believed to have died following escape attempts, according to the report.
• Among the children who were overlooked was a white boy named Thomas Curry, who died of blunt head trauma. Records claimed he died away from the campus after he escaped.
• The school records claim that boys who escaped happened to meet a violent death, including two who died of gunshot wounds to the chest or head.

Short takes: CIA torture, GOP DOMA subterfuge, Gov. Jerry Brown's cancer, cops loot Rivera crash site

Sir Ian Mckellen's agent says that the British actor doesn't have prostate cancer after all.

However, California Gov. Jerry Brown does.

Below: Stephen Colbert mocks Judge Shrubb's delay in implementation of law to outlaw so-called "conversion therapy" for minors in California.

Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin: My Mini Cooper against your VW Cabriolet. Anytime. Anywhere.

The man who changed how you shop is dead at 91. His invention is used 5 billion times a day.

European court of human rights unanimously ruled that CIA agents beat, shackled and sodomized a German citizen as Macedonian state police watched.

House Republicans hid budget increases to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act, even though the Supreme Court has yet to rule whether they even have standing to do so, as the White House has stopped legal defense of the law (but not, as some Republicans falsely claim, its enforcement.) House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is not amused at John Boehner's subterfuge and has issued a blistering statement.

Two Mexican cops, 23 and 24, have been arrested for stealing items from the Jenni Rivera crash site.

Antonin Scalia's son Paul, a priest, is chaplain to a Catholic group which denies gay identity.

Roger Ebert ruminates on vampire heternormative­ness, er, heteronormalness, er, hetero­normality. Whatever

Source

Saith the Chi-town God of the aisle seat: 

You have to give me credit. I may not have used the term, but I was right on top of the heteronormativeness of the first of the movies, "Twilight" (2008). 

On Prom Night, on the stage of the not especially private gazebo in the public gardens, he teeters right on the brink of a fang job, and then brings all of her trembling to a dead stand-still."
      ...Imagine, if you will, Bella and Edward having passionate sex. The mind recoils. They are more ideals than real people: Beautiful, perfect, young, idealistic. We have no desire to have the image besmirched by rumpy-pumpy.
     ...The argument is made in some studies of the Stephanie Meyer's work that she embeds her own Mormon or Christian beliefs about heteronormative behavior. Chief among them is chastity before marriage. But doesn't "Breaking Dawn" make an equally compelling argument against sex after marriage? Edward was right and they should never have gotten married in the first place. The film, in fact, makes a good case for gay, lesbian, transsexual and other vampires, in that they cannot be expected to reproduce. I don't know if Stephanie Meyer thought this through, but there you have it.

Postscript 10 a.m. Nov. 21: I continue to muse about the word "heteronormative." If you take it apart it seems to reduce to "normal heterosexual." Somehow the scientific nomenclature transforms that into a negative. I understand the reasons why non-hetero minorities feel discriminated against, and sympathize with them. But doesn't "heteronormative" apply the same process of blanket discrimination?

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan opens up about privacy, judicial diversity and public opinion

Elena Kagan in High School

Tal Kopan of Politico reported on Kagan's Yitzhak Rabin Memorial lecture and her answers to subsequent questions.

I don’t think any of us make our decisions by reading polls,” Kagan said. “One’s sense of what to do as a judge is bounded in some way by the society in which one lives” and the political process of getting appointed, she said.
     Still, the justice said, “One does think long and hard as a judge -- and I’m not sure I’ve ever been in this position --… before you do something that you think is required by law that would be incredibly disruptive to society, and that’s where great wisdom is called for.”
     One issue Kagan did cite as increasingly likely to come before the court is privacy, especially in a changing world.
     Praising her predecessor Louis Brandeis for his prescience on the issue, Kagan said he “understood how new technologies interfere with privacy, which I think will be one of the most important issues before the court in the decades to come.”

     Kagan conceded that “there are a lot of ways the court is not very diverse.” Every Supreme Court Justice is either Catholic or Jewish and a graduate of either Harvard or Yale. Four are from New York City; Justice Kennedy is the only judge from the West Coast.
     Kagan also categorized what she considers the two types of dissent and revealed that she spent three days this fall in Wyoming hunting with Justice Scalia. AKSARBENT doesn't think this is a good idea and neither does Wonkette. We think Scalia should stick to hunting with Dick Cheney.