By Kyle Smith. If the Rodney King riots in LA in 1992 had a caption, it was, “Can’t we all just get along?”
At the Baltimore riots of 2015, the words that will echo long afterward are, “You want to be out here doing this dumb s - - t?”
The Mom of the Year award must go to the Baltimore woman captured on amateur video yesterday who responded to the mayhem in the streets — as embodied by the young man who one supposes must be her son — like a parenting superhero. (The hashtag #momoftheyear is trending on social media.)
She didn’t ask him to share his feelings, give him space to “blow off steam” or chant “No justice, no peace.” No, she took the no-excuses route, screaming some sense at the startled youngster while slapping him repeatedly in the face. Hard. (Read more from “Watch: Baltimore Riot Mom Is Mother of the Year” HERE)
Baltimore Quiets Down as Most Residents Obey Curfew
By FoxNews.com. The streets of Baltimore were eerily quiet Tuesday night into early Wednesday as residents obeyed an all-night curfew enforced by 3,000 police and National Guardsmen, a day after riots engulfed the city.
The 10 p.m. curfew got off to a not-so promising start as 200 protesters initially defied the warnings of police and pleas from activists to disperse.
Some people in the crowd threw water bottles or lay on the ground as a line of police behind riot shields hurled gas canisters and fired pepper balls to push the crowd back. Demonstrators picked up the canisters and hurled them back at officers, but the crowd would rapidly disperse and was just down to a few dozen people within minutes.
The clash came after a day of high tension but relative peace and calm in Baltimore, which was rocked by looting and widespread arson Monday in the city’s worst outbreak of rioting since 1968.
Police, political leaders and many residents condemned the violence and hundreds of volunteers showed up Tuesday to sweep the streets of glass and other debris. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-29 03:06:352015-04-29 03:06:35Watch: Baltimore Riot Mom Is Mother of the Year
The 800-mile San Andreas Fault, which runs from northern California to Mexico, has been the source of the state’s biggest earthquakes. Known as the ‘sleeping giant’, it is one of more than 350 faults that are found across the state.
Scientists now predict that the risk of a mega quake in the next 30 years is higher than was previously thought.
The Third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF3), published in March, includes newly discovered fault zones and accounts for the possibility of an earthquake jumping between them. This could result in multiple faults shaking in a simultaneous mega quake (magnitude-8), releasing enough energy to cause massive destruction.
The report says that, while there is a lower likelihood of moderate-sized earthquakes, the odds of a mega quake occurring in the next 30 years have increased from 4.7 per cent to 7 per cent.
Earthquakes are nothing new for Californians. The state experiences 1,000 quakes a year, but most are too small to be felt. While the San Andreas Fault has experienced massive earthquakes in the central and northern segments — Fort Tejon in 1857 and San Francisco in 1906 — the southern section has not had a large quake for more than 300 years. (Read more from “California Prepares for the Next ‘Big One'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-29 03:06:052015-04-29 03:06:05California Prepares for the Next ‘Big One’; Risk Almost 50% Higher than Previously Thought
By FRC. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released the following statement after today’s oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges – the case considering whether the federal Constitution requires the states to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples:
“After today, we are more hopeful the Court will get it right, but I do know that regardless of what their decision is, it will not settle this issue.
“Today, parties came before the Supreme Court asking the Justices to redefine marriage, and to impose that redefinition on all 50 states. Simply put, the plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to take the extraordinary step of departing from all of recorded human history and forcing a redefinition of civilization’s most fundamental human relationship upon an unwilling nation.
“There is no broad social consensus, and there is no global consensus that society would be better served by redefining marriage to include same-sex couples. To the contrary, America remains deeply divided over this issue and if the Supreme Court forces a redefinition it will only further divide the nation.
“History has shown us that something so deeply rooted in nature itself cannot be erased by legal action. I can say with certainty that a very large portion of the American population will not accept a redefinition of marriage imposed by the Court. The Court was unable to ‘resolve’ the issue of abortion for the nation in its Roe v. Wade decision, and the Court will not resolve this issue either.
“In 1973, the Court supercharged the abortion issue and 42 years later it is an issue in every election from President on down. A decision demanding the redefinition of marriage will be even more divisive as the freedom to live your life according to your beliefs is put in jeopardy for millions of Americans.
“The states must be left free by the U.S. Supreme Court to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman,” concluded Mr. Perkins.
Decide yourself whether Americans will not accept redefinition of marriage by reviewing the results of the WPA Opinion Research survey on the Supreme Court deciding marriage here: https://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF15B71.pdf
Gay Marriage Arguments Divide Supreme Court Justices
By Adam Liptak. The Supreme Court on Tuesday was deeply divided over one of the great civil rights issues of the age, same-sex marriage. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose vote is probably crucial, gave gay rights advocates reasons for optimism based on the tone and substance of his questions.
In two and a half hours of arguments over whether the Constitution guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry, Justice Kennedy sent conflicting signals. At some points, he seemed wary of moving too fast and torn about what to do. But his demeanor was more emotional and emphatic when he made the case that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry. He is also the author of three landmark opinions expanding the rights of gay Americans.
The other justices for the most part played to type, clashing over what they saw as the right answer in the case and also over how to reach it. The questioning illuminated their conflicting views on history, tradition, biology, constitutional interpretation, the democratic process and the role of the courts in prodding social change. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-29 03:05:532015-04-29 03:05:53Family Research Council on Supreme Court Oral Arguments: American People Will Not Accept Redefinition of Marriage
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in cases involving the freedom of states to make marriage policy, thousands gathered Saturday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the third annual March for Marriage.
The event’s largest crowd to date called on the Court to respect the voice of the American people, urging the justices not to impose a redefinition of marriage on the entire country.
More than 50 million Americans have voted for laws affirming the definition of marriage as one man and one woman (representing more than 60 percent of those voting on the matter). But courts have not respected the constitutional authority of the American people and our elected representatives to make marriage policy.
Only 11 states have redefined marriage democratically. In the 37 states that currently recognize same-sex marriage, 26 have been forced to do so by courts.
Photo Credit: The Daily Signal
The diverse crowd from across the nation at the March for Marriage made its voice heard loud and clear this weekend. Now the action moves to the Supreme Court, as it considers whether the American people will be free to make marriage policy recognizing marriage as being between one man and one woman. (Read more from “You’ll Never Guess How Many People Voted for Traditional Marriage” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-29 03:04:362015-04-29 03:04:36You’ll Never Guess How Many People in the U.S. Voted for Traditional Marriage
Last week I asked: Are opponents of same-sex marriage just rehearsing the same kind of bad arguments used in past decades to oppose interracial marriage? Are Christians who defend biblical sexual ethics relying on dogma or irrational prejudice? Are we engaged in hate speech when we argue the following?
What we mean by “marriage” includes by its very nature the union of a male and female. Same-sex marriage is simply impossible.
Raising same-sex unions to the same level as real marriage amounts to a legal fiction.
Forcing citizens to recognize and even participate in such weddings violates their civil and religious rights.
Destabilizing the very nature of an already fragile institution, the family, harms the most vulnerable members of society, helpless children and the poor.
Destabilizing the very nature of an already fragile institution, the family, harms the most vulnerable members of society, helpless children and the poor.
Does saying all this put us in the same moral sewer as racists who claimed that interracial marriage was unnatural, unhealthy and bad for society? If so, we deserve to lose. We deserve to face the choice that NY Times columnist Frank Bruni wants to impose on Christians: Change your doctrine, or go out into the wilderness with what’s left of the white supremacists. Your institutions will have to comply with the new status quo, or you will have to go rogue — lose legal protections, face fines and even jail time, lose tax exemptions and accreditation, and be treated by your country with less respect and tolerance than we grant Islamist imams who favor sharia law.
So let’s examine those old, bad arguments against interracial marriage, and contrast them with the reasons offered by defenders of natural marriage.
In the scholarly paper, “Miscegenation, Eugenics, and Racism: Historical Footnotes to Loving v. Virginia,” Paul A. Lombardo collected representative legal rulings issued by highly educated judges in support of bans on interracial marriage. They make for bracing, painful reading. While it’s often amusing to troll the exploded scientific and political ideas of the past, there’s nothing funny about the widespread acceptance of pseudo-scientific and pseudo-Christian racism. Such superstitions helped white supremacists such as the Klan keep in place unjust laws against interracial marriage, and gave eugenicists such as Margaret Sanger ammunition in imposing forced sterilization in a dozen U.S. states.
Advocates of same-sex marriage claim that our arguments against it are no better grounded, no morally different from these. Well, let’s gather them up and explain exactly why these racist arguments fall flat, and compare with them the reasons for defending natural marriage. Shall we? Below I’ll just give representative fragments of the larger arguments, which you can read for yourself in Lombardo’s paper.
Racist Argument #1
“[T]he off-spring of these unnatural connections are generally sickly and effeminate, and … they are inferior in physical development and strength, to the full-blood of either race.” (Scott v. Georgia, 1869.)
There is simply no evidence for this. In fact, it was the practice of inbreeding — whereby aristocratic white southern families preferred to marry close relations, even first cousins — that produced genetic defects. Anyone who has ever paid the vet bills for a pure-bred dog knows this much nowadays. Biologists speak of “hybrid” vigor, of the genetic advantages of “exogamy,” of crossing different strains within a species.
By contrast, same-sex marriage produces no offspring, not because of any medical problem among the partners, but by its very nature. It is not and cannot be fertile. So in one key respect, the biological, the verdict of science is clear: Interracial marriage is natural, and same-sex marriage is not.
Racist Argument #2
“The laws of civilization demand that the races be kept apart in this country.” (Doc. Lonas v. State of Tennessee, 1871.)
This is simply an unsupported assertion. Whose “laws” and whose “civilization”? Many flourishing civilizations allowed for intimate contact among different races. The Roman Empire, various vast and wealthy Muslim kingdoms, the Spanish and Portuguese empires — while they were often unjust in many respects — allowed for the free intermingling of people of different races, and extensive intermarriage. In fact, the idea of identifying “races” and keeping them “pure” is quite a modern one, dating back no earlier than the English conquest of North America.
By contrast, every human society of which we have any record regards the union of man and woman as the primary unit of society. None, not one, has ever recognized same-sex unions as the equivalent of marriage — no, not even ancient Greece.
Racist Argument #3
“[W]hom God hath joined together by indelible peculiarities, which declare that He has made the two races distinct.” (Green v. State of Alabama, 1877.)
In other words, God intended to create distinct races, and forbade them to interbreed. In support of this assertion, some Christians cited Old Testament passages that prohibited the Israelites from mixing their seed with the Gentiles’. But the Old Testament itself makes it perfectly clear that the difference between Jews and Gentiles was religious, not biological. Jews were not to marry pagans who worshiped idols and practiced human sacrifice. Pagans who converted to the worship of God were welcomed in, and no barriers whatsoever were placed to their intermarriage with the children of Abraham. For this reason, the Catholic church always declared that interracial marriage was perfectly moral — though in certain social conditions, it might attract persecution and therefore be inadvisable.
By contrast, both the Old and New Testaments unambiguously condemn erotic activity between people of the same sex. No Christian church or Jewish synagogue accepted same-sex unions until the 1980s, and those that changed their positions didn’t do it because of new “scholarly” discoveries, but because they were adjusting their doctrine to follow secular mores.
Racist Argument #4
“The purity of public morals, the moral and physical development of both races, and the highest advancement of our cherished southern civilization require that [the races] should be kept distinct and separate. …” (Kinney v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 1878.)
This is mostly empty rhetoric, contradicted by the facts. Cruel laws that forbade slaves from even marrying each other, and the practice of breaking up families and selling off wives and children, helped shatter the black family in North America — while in South America, awful as slavery was, slave marriages were conducted in church and families couldn’t legally be split. Nor were public morals improved by the intrusion of laws that required racial segregation — serving as constant temptations to cruelty on the part of whites, and resentment among oppressed blacks.
By contrast, heterosexual marriage is based entirely on the encounter with the other, on the need to accept, accommodate and learn from the profound differences between the sexes. It is now primarily social conservatives who insist that the sexes are real, grounded in humans as among other animals in the facts of mammalian biology. Many advocates of same-sex marriage, on the other hand, have accepted the unhinged assertions of “Gender Theory,” which pretends that one’s gender is a social and psychological figment, an empty construct. That’s why, at last count, gender theorists claimed to have discovered some different 50 genders — you can pick any one of them now on Facebook.
Racist Argument #5
“[I]f the issue of a black man and a white woman, and a white man and a black woman, intermarry, they cannot possibly have any progeny. …” (State of Missouri v. Jackson, 1883.)
The judge here had read some crank scientific opinion asserting that people of mixed race had fertility problems, and therefore mixed marriages should be banned. There was no real evidence for this.
By contrast, no defender of natural marriage wants to ban unions of older people, or sterile people. Nevertheless, we recognize that marriage exists first and foremost for the sake of children. Protecting their well-being is the main reason the state has an interest in regulating marriage. And solid psychological evidence suggests that same-sex marriage in fact hurts kids, that “emotional problems are more than twice as prevalent for children with same-sex parents than for children with opposite-sex parents.”
So there is no resemblance at all between objections to same-sex marriage and those to “miscegenation.” In fact, the people relying on cultural prejudice, ideology and outright pseudo-science are all on one side of this issue: the pro-same-sex marriage side . . .
Journalists and transparency activists across the country have done a phenomenal job of shining light on how local law enforcement agencies use emerging technologies to surveil everyday people on a massive scale. It’s often like playing Whac-A-Mole and Go Fish at the same time. One day, the question may be whether police are using drones. The next, automatic license plate readers. After that, facial recognition or IMSI catchers (i.e. Stingrays) or Rapid DNA analyzers.
So many technical terms, so many acronyms. Unfortunately, we need to put yet another one your radar: Automated Vehicle Occupancy Detection, also known as Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection or Automated Vehicle Occupancy Verification.
For years, government agencies have chased technologies that would make it easier to ensure that vehicles in carpool lanes are actually carrying multiple passengers. Perhaps the only reason these systems haven’t garnered much attention is that they haven’t been particularly effective or accurate, as UC Berkeley researchers noted in a 2011 report.
Now, an agency in San Diego, Calif. believes it may have found the answer: the Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection system developed by Xerox. . .
Documents obtained by CBS 8 reporter David Gotfredson show that Xerox’s system uses two cameras to capture the front and side views of a car’s interior. Then “video analytics” and “geometric algorithms” are used to detect whether the seats are occupied. (Read more from “Emerging Privacy Threat: Automated Vehicle Occupancy Detection” HERE)
U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said this week that, despite the federal government’s best efforts to “stay ahead of the bad guys,” the nation’s energy infrastructure remains “a major target of cyberattacks.”
“The energy infrastructure is a major target of cyberattacks. That is increasing in frequency and perhaps source,” Moniz, said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
According to Moniz, U.S. natural gas pipelines represent a particularly weak link in the infrastructure chain.
“The natural gas system, the distribution pipes, are a big issue,” he said. “About half of the distribution pipes in the country are 50 years old or older, so that’s a very obvious area.”
According to the energy official, small gas distribution pipelines that carry fuel to gas customers are aging and at capacity. Some high-volume pipelines, meanwhile, remain “underutilized” despite the U.S. shale boom of the past decade. (Read more from “Energy Official: Cyberattack Could Bring U.S. Grid Down” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-29 03:03:462015-04-29 03:03:46Energy Official: Cyberattack Could Bring U.S. Grid Down
More than 10,000 people are now known to have been injured in Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude quake, home ministry national disaster management division chief Rameshwor Dangal told AFP.
Helicopters crisscrossed the mountains above the remote district of Ranachour Tuesday near the epicenter of the weekend earthquake, ferrying the injured to clinics and taking emergency supplies back to villages cut off by landslides.
Meanwhile, some 250 people were believed to be missing following a mudslide and avalanche in Ghodatabela, an isolated village not far from the epicenter of Saturday’s powerful earthquake.
District official Gautam Rimal said heavy snow had been falling Tuesday near the village. He said officials received initial reports of the disaster by phone but then lost contact.
The village, about a 12-hour walk from the nearest town, is along a popular trekking route, but it was not clear if the missing included trekkers. (Read more from “Nepal Death Toll Tops 5,000 as Rescuers Reach Hard-Hit Rural Areas” HERE)
Young women and girls take captive and used as sex slaves by Islamic State militants are now having secret abortions to avoid being alienated by their communities, a new report has revealed.
In September, ISIS militants abducted between 1,500 and 4,000 women and children from the Christian and Yazidi community, according to the Human Rights Watch. Because they viewed the females as “spoils of war,” the fighters reportedly felt entitled to use them as sex slaves.
“When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled,” said Christian author and Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer.
“[However] Islam avoids the appearance of impropriety, declaring that the taking of these sex slaves does not constitute adultery if the women are already married, for their marriages are ended at the moment of their capture,” he added.
According to the Sunday Times, some Kurdish doctors are now performing illegal abortions and hymen surgeries on girls who have been able to escape in an attempt to reverse signs of sexual abuse. One Yazidi business man, who is helping to “re-kidnap” captured girls and bring them back to their homes, revealed that many victims, some as young as eight, feel deeply ashamed about the rape they have undergone. (Read more from “Escaped Yazidi Girls Ashamed to Return Home After ISIS Used Them as Sex Slaves, Undergo Secret Abortion” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-29 03:03:142015-04-29 03:03:14Escaped Yazidi Girls Ashamed to Return Home After ISIS Used Them as Sex Slaves
Today, the Alaska Legislature is being held over by the governor in an attempt to force our representatives to address two of his “pet projects.”
These are (1) Medicaid expansion, and (2) increased educational funding.
Regarding Medicaid funding:
At this point, Alaska has approximately 160,000 citizens who are receiving Medicaid services. The current system is inculcated with fraud and abuse throughout. One example of this abuse is at ANMC where travel expenses are covered by Medicaid reimbursement. Last year alone there were 5900+ “no shows” for medical appointments even when travel was validated and expenses were paid. This is just one example of the fraud and abuse. The system is filled with these examples.
Medicaid reimbursement is paid at a higher rate than Medicare for the elderly and Tricare for veterans. Elderly citizens have been paying into Medicare their entire employed life, and veterans have paid with their service. Medicaid recipients have paid nothing for their coverage. Why should the elderly and veterans get in line behind single, young individuals fit for work who have paid nothing?
Additionally, within 2 years, the State of Alaska will be on the hook for 10% of the cost of Medicaid expansion. Where are we going to get the additional funds for the expansion of this program when the current budget is approximately $4 billion in the red? Within 2 years, we will have depleted our entire budget reserve and will be looking at various revenue enhancement sources to maintain the largess of government. It is extremely unwise to expand a program which will force us to incorporate additional taxes and fees to maintain this expansion.
Regarding Educational funding:
Alaska currently spends more than any state in the country for educational services and certainly more than most anywhere in the world. Currently we rank 39th overall in the nation. One must ask why we are not getting a better result. For many years, the Alaska legislature’s response was to simply throw more money at the educational system with the idea that more money would surely encourage a better outcome. It has not. Currently the overhead, to include a top heavy administration is over 52% of the total cost. One would think the bulk of money expended should go directly into the classroom. This is not the case.
Today, considerable pressure is being applied to the legislature through the Alaska Democrat Party and their support associations like Great Alaskan Schools to simply advance more money to fix the “broken window” instead of evaluating the root cause for the broken window of education.
NEA and the monopoly of Public Education has a substantial stranglehold on the educational services of Alaska even when other states all over the country are developing a variety of educational options which will give Alaskan students an even more difficult time competing with students of other states. Unfortunately, this monopoly is not for the advancement of educational excellence, but simply for force and control.
The system is generating one idea that in order to fix the discrepancy of education competition, we must throw more money at the existing system and develop a robust pre-school program. At some point in time, advocates of this concept will be recruiting their future students in the maternity wards in all the hospitals. It is as if children should have limited contact with their parent units in order to progress in their new “educational model.”
What to do? Please take the time to write all your legislators immediately that they “stop the excessive bleeding.” At some point in time we must say enough is certainly enough. I would suggest that this time has come as we are OUT OF MONEY!
Michael Chambers is a political activist who is the Chair of the Alaska Libertarian Party and the Chair of United for Liberty which is the largest umbrella organization for liberty and less government citizens in Alaska.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-28 23:59:592015-04-28 23:59:59Alaska Legislature Being Held Over by Governor in an Attempt to Address ‘Pet Projects’
