The Good
Score a few for the good guys in the battle against voter suppression. "A federal judge in Milwaukee struck down Tea Party Governor Scott Walker’s voter identification bill, agreeing with opponents that it unfairly targets poor and minority voters. The long-awaited decision by United States District Judge Lynn Adelman officially invalidates the Wisconsin law....The ruling is an important step in protecting voting rights in this country. [Americans Against the Tea Party website, April 29] According to the Associated Press, "The ruling could set a precedent for similar legal challenges in Texas, North Carolina and elsewhere. There are 31 states with laws in effect requiring voters to show some form of identification, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Seven states have strict photo ID requirements similar to the one a state judge struck down in Arkansas last week; that decision has been appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court. Pennsylvania’s Voter-ID law has been put on hold because of court challenges." The Wisconsin Attorney General plans to appeal. We'd better hope that the appeal doesn't get to the democracy-challenged Roberts' court before the November elections - we already know what that conservative majority think about the need to protect voting rights.
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| Voter ID law map is from burntorangereport.com website, Nov 27, 2013 |
Not all decisions made by the Roberts' court are bad. Here's one that is actually good: the Supreme Court upheld the EPA's cross-state pollution law. As reported in the Huffington Post/AP on April 29: "On Tuesday, the court upheld a rule adopted by the EPA in 2011 that would force polluting states to reduce smokestack emissions that contaminate the air in downwind states. Power companies and several states sued to block the rule, and a federal appeals court in Washington agreed with them in 2012. The Supreme Court reversed that decision." The vote was 6-2 with two conservative justices joining in the majority decision and one recusing himself.
Our Earth Day 2014 post quoted Marc Barasch: "There are a million stories of our fellow creatures being kind to us for no good reason." Here's a recent one from the waters off New Zealand. "A group of dolphins apparently came to the aid of a British long-distance swimmer just in the nick of time. Adam Walker was on a 16-mile swim in the choppy waters of New Zealand's Cook Strait on April 22 when he spotted a great white shark beneath him, Yahoo! News reports. A pod of 10 dolphins quickly surrounded him and stayed by his side until the shark swam off." [Huffington Post, April 26 - video]
The Bad
Harassment because she wants to develop a safer gun? Yup, that was the reaction of some "gun enthusiasts" when Belinda Padilla attempted to market and sell a new .22-caliber handgun that uses a radio frequency-enabled stopwatch to identify the authorized user so no one else can fire it. From a Daily Kos post on April 28: "Someone posted her cellphone number on an online forum for gun enthusiasts....Then someone snapped pictures of the address where she has a P.O. box and put those online, too." Hunter's commentary on the Daily Kos: "Her crime was the supposition that some gun owners might want a safer gun, which is all it took for a wave of outraged 'enthusiasts' to come surging toward her house like a tsunami of stupid...If we try to make a gun that your children can't find and play with and accidentally fire into some other child's skull, we will have lost an important piece of America. If we try to make a gun for police departments that only officers can fire and not people who might be attacking them, well now that takes some of the sport out of it, doesn't it?"
Gaza's Ark is a Palestinian ship that is being rebuilt in an attempt to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The organizers (a group of Palestinian activists and international campaigners from Canada, Australia and the United States) are trying to export some Gaza-made goods to the outside world. It was scheduled to set sail in mid June. Now thanks to the attack, the trip will be delayed. Al Jazeera reported on April 29th: "An explosion has damaged a boat docked at a fishing harbour in Gaza, nearly a month and a half before it was to set sail to defy Israel's naval blockade on the Gaza Strip. The explosion happened early on Tuesday after "the guard received an anonymous call that the boat would explode in a few minutes," Mahfouz Kabariti, a spokesman for Gaza's Ark, the coalition that had funded the boat's building...After spending two years building the boat, Gaza's Ark had planned the boat's first sailing test next week.The explosion caused damage to the engine and the hull as it partly sank. Divers were sent to assess the extent of the damage." The humanitarian crisis caused by this blockade is making Gaza nearly uninhabitable. Why the nations of the world allow it to continue is beyond comprehension. It is collective punishment and, as such, a crime against international law.
The Ugly
Sarah Palin was at it again this past weekend. Speaking to a crowd of NRA supporters, she advocated torture as form of baptism: "Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists." Besides offending Christians by comparing torture to a sacrament, Palin's comments are a cause of concern for another reason. Conor Friedersdorf writes in a post on TheAtlantic.com that he wouldn't have subjected readers "to this especially inane nostalgia for Bush-era war crimes if not for what it could portend. Palin is a pandering publicity hound. She has a keen sense of what sorts of red meat the GOP base will eat up. For its part, the audience seemed receptive."
Last week Georgia's governor signed into law the worst gun-carrying legislation in the country. "Included are provisions that allow residents who have concealed carry permits to take guns into some bars, churches, school zones, government buildings and certain parts of airports." [CNN, April 23] This in a state that already ranks ninth in the country for gun homicides. So earlier this week, right in the spirit of the Georgia gun law, a gun-brandishing man showed up at a Little League game, intimidating parents and children. A Raw Story April 26 post describes the scene: "A Georgia man panicked parents and children at a local park and baseball field by randomly walking around and displaying his gun to anyone he encountered in the parking lot. According to witnesses who spoke with WSB-TV, the man wandered around the Forsythe County park last Tuesday night showing his gun to strangers, telling them “there’s nothing you can do about it.” Police report they received 22 calls to 911 reporting the man. After deputies arrived, they questioned the man who produced a permit for the handgun. According to authorities, since the man made no verbal threats or gestures, they couldn’t arrest him or ask him to leave." Not even a disorderly conduct charge? I'm pretty sure the average Georgia drunk tank resident didn't do much worse than this guy.
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