Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)
Ed Brayton is a participant in the Center for Independent Media New Journalism Program. However, all of the statements, opinions, policies, and views expressed on this site are solely Ed Brayton's. This web site is not a production of the Center, and the Center does not support or endorse any of the contents on this site.
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After a two week break for the holidays, Declaring Independence is back on the air tonight. The first guest will be Daphne Eviatar of the Washington Independent, who will be talking about prosecuting the underwear bomber and many other things.
The second guest will be Robin Goldstein, author of The Wine Trials 2010. This is a really interesting book about the false market for high-end wine and how it is created and maintained by aspirational marketing.
As always, you can listen by clicking here between 6 and 7 pm EST.
Andrew Sullivan has a very interesting post on his blog about the proto-fascism coming from the right on a range of issues. I think it's almost entirely accurate until the very end. here's the part I agree with:
As you may know by now, President Obama has made the first executive appointment of a transgendered person, naming Amanda Simpson as a senior adviser to the Commerce Department, where she will work on military technology. As a former test pilot who spent 30 years working for defense contractors in advanced technology development -- and, quite literally, a rocket scientist -- she certainly seems qualified for the job.
Naturally, this has the wingnuts all verklempt. They seem to be concerned about anything other than whether this person is qualified. The Worldnutdaily's top of the page "exclusive" article Wednesday morning screamed "breaking news" and included the headline:
Tis the time for end-of-year lists and this one may be my favorite: the top ten "anti-Christian attacks of 2009" put out by the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. The list is supposed to be examples of "anti-Christian defamation, bigotry and discrimination" over the past year. My favorite one of the top ten is this one:
7. The overt homosexual participation in Obama's presidential inaugural events by "Bishop" Vickie Eugene Robinson, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington D. C., and a homosexual marching band.
Glenn Greenwald, as usual, hits the nail right on the head with this post about how fear, and the exploitation of that fear, undermines the constitution. It's a long quote, so I'll put it below the fold.
There is one overriding reason for last week's dismissal of charges against five Blackwater guards who opened fire in a public square in Baghdad, killing 17 people and wounding at least 20 more: They were granted immunity almost immediately following the incident. And the DOJ lawyers who later decided to pursue criminal charges knew this was going to be a problem, according to the New York Times:
To her supporters, it really doesn't matter whether Palin has a 20-point plan for this or that or a strategic foreign policy vision because the bond to her is emotional rather than intellectual.
I'm not sure whether to be happy or disappointed about this. Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, the case that was to decide whether prosecutors had total immunity from civil suits even if it could be proven that they deliberately created false evidence to convict an innocent person, has been settled -- and dismissed without a ruling from the Supreme Court.
My colleague Lynda Waddington at the Iowa Independent reports that the two sides reached an agreement to settle the suit for $12 million - even after the Supreme Court had already heard oral arguments and may have been close to issuing a ruling. The Christian Science Monitor notes the dismissal of the case:
I think we've found John Freshwater's doppleganger in New York, where a science teacher has been reprimanded for selling and loaning a book to sixth graders on how to identify which of their friends is under the control of Satan.
A Brooklyn principal has reprimanded a sixth-grade teacher for selling students a book that tells how to "recognize those serving Satan and bring them to Jesus."
Steven Arizmendi sold "He Came to Set the Captives Free" to four of his students at Junior High School 220 in Sunset Park for $5 apiece. The science teacher also loaned copies of the evangelical novel to eight students.
I've written for years about the Texas State Board of Education and the damage they do to education not just in that state but all over the country by virtue of the fact that they are such a huge customer for publishers that when they demand nonsense in their textbooks, it finds its way into everyone's textbooks. Mariah Blake at the Washington Monthly shows why this has never been more true than right now:
As a result, the Lone Star State has outsized influence over the reading material used in classrooms nationwide, since publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers. As one senior industry executive told me, "Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list."
Until recently, Texas's influence was balanced to some degree by the more-liberal pull of California, the nation's largest textbook market. But its economy is in such shambles that California has put off buying new books until at least 2014. This means that McLeroy and his ultraconservative crew have unparalleled power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.
A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, including at least one judge who has frequently been mentioned as a potential Obama Supreme Court nominee (Judge Kim Wardlaw), has delivered an important ruling on the use of tasers by police officers. You can see the full ruling here (PDF), which allows a lawsuit against a police officer for excessive force to go forward.
We've talked a lot on this blog about prosecutorial immunity, which is virtually absolute. Police officers are granted a more limited version called qualified immunity, which says in essence that you cannot sue a police officer for actions taken in the course of carrying out their duties unless you can show that those actions violated a clearly established right.
Glenn Beck, somehow finding a tiny morsel of near-sanity floating around in his largely aqueous cranium, has now managed to piss off one wing of the wingnut brigade -- the birthers.
"There's always games being played behind the scenes at a talk radio show," Beck said. "Rush has always called them seminar callers. But instead of being coy with the seminar callers or with you, I'm just going to expose the game that is going on. Today there is a concerted effort on all radio stations to get birthers on the air."
"I have to tell you, are you working for the Barack Obama administration?" Beck scoffed. "I mean, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
The New York Times had a story on Monday about the role a group of American anti-gay evangelists played in spurring on the anti-gay legislation in Uganda that has gotten so much attention. The organizers of a conference that brought three of them to Uganda to rail against the evils of homosexuality and how easy it was to stop being gay helped write that bill.
"The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith," said Hume. "He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of redemption and forgiveness offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger is, 'Tiger turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."
Allegany County, Maryland is undergoing a very unusual fight over a monument on public property and one of the people involved in that fight has earned himself a Robert O'Brien trophy for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty. A group there has applied for, and the county board of commissioners has accepted, a permit to put up a monument to the U.S. Constitution on the county courthouse grounds. The monument would go next to already existing monuments to George Washington and to the Ten Commandments.
Edward Taylor is the head of a local group called the Cumberland Historic Cemetery Organization and he is demanding that the monument not be allowed - not because of anything it says, but merely because the plaque on the monument has the name of the group that donated the monument - and their name contains a word he doesn't like.
I'm really not much of a joiner, but the last thing in the world I would join is a homeowners association. I am way too much of an individualist to voluntarily give my neighbors control over what I do on my own property. And here's a story that illustrates just how bad they can get. Just watch this video:
The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court ruling that puts another nail in the coffin of the 4th amendment, due process and attorney/client privilege. The case involves a group of attorneys who have represented detainees at Guantanamo Bay, who filed FOIA requests to find out whether they had been the targets of wiretaps and other types of surveillance on their communications with their clients.
As the government has with anyone else who has sought to find out if they were illegally wiretapped, the NSA refused to confirm whether the plaintiffs were the target of such interceptions. In FOIA cases, this is known as a Glomar response, where the agency simply refuses to say whether it has the requested documents. The appeals court agreed that the government could continue to do so. See the full ruling here (PDF).
Actually, I don't have to because Jon Perr has already done it at Crooks and Liars. Virtually everything being said by the Republicans about the Christmas Day attempted terrorist bombing and Obama's response to it has been hypocritical because every argument applies better to Bush's handling of the shoe bomber incident -- and not one of them uttered a peep about that. They've criticized Obama for not canceling his vacation and not speaking out quickly enough about the incident.
As I noted a few months ago, Ireland now has a law punishing blasphemy and a group of atheists in Ireland is challenging that law by posting blasphemous quotations to its website. The first one, ironically, is from Jesus:
1. Jesus Christ, when asked if he was the son of God, in Matthew 26:64: "Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." According to the Christian Bible, the Jewish chief priests and elders and council deemed this statement by Jesus to be blasphemous, and they sentenced Jesus to death for saying it.
Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
