Actually, the french ban on religious symbols is a little more pointed than most people think. A quote from Jacques Chirac, who started the ban
"Discreet signs," such as a small cross or star of David, will be allowed, the French president added. "But conspicuous signs, which are obvious, which immediately indicate religious affiliation, cannot be admitted."
Because clearly a small cross or star of David are unconspicuous and unobvious signs which in no way suggest religious affiliation, except for the christian or jewish thing. Islam is clearly not discreet.
My response to all this is colored by having a chasidic friend at work who used to have to field all kinds of really impertinent comments about not wearing pants from people who really didn't know her well enough to be commenting on her appearance at all.
That said, the picture of female dress which bothered me the most this weekend was this.
Because three is not too early to start distorting the bones of your feet.
My concern is one I've seen here in other contexts - if you can still be accepted in civilized discourse if you're a sufficiently clever bully, what incentive do damaged clever people have to behave? And more importantly, what argument is there for the people they've bullied to engage?
The bedrock assumption of bullying is that bullying behavior is realistic and inevitable and a sign of the high status of the bully, and that the bullied in some way either deserve the way they've been treated or aren't important enough to be treated well or don't deserve to be protected from it, even by disapproval.
There's no more effective way of making absolutely sure that people won't speak than telling them that it's OK with the community for high-status people to use them as toilet paper, and I can't imagine a better incentive to develop a sociopathic persona if you want to win.
I suspect if I'd been the target of a SLAPP suit, I'd be good and happy to dance on its grave.
Just saying.
I'm thrilled to pieces for you guys.
I hope he ends up writing you large checks.
OK, I'm a cynical beast, and anyone who knows me knows that.
But that said, my read on this is that Terri Schiavo worked out dismally for the wingnut branch of the Republicans, but they're still convinced it's a winning issue. The guy who organized the effort by the then-ruling party and their putative leader, Bill "my surgical skill acts as a faith-based encephalograph" Frist, to turn around the midterm elections by nailing Ms Schiavo to the cross moved on to be the the point man on defeating (or at least tarring) Sonia Sotomayor (spotlight quote: "Hispanic polls, Hispanic surveys, indicate that Hispanics think just like everyone else. We’re not like African-Americans.") Granted, he failed at that too, but at least he still gets the good assignments, which means they're happy with how his campaign played with his base.
I suspect that the end of life issue is another where capital gains tax cuts are the end game in trying to make americans picture some soulless government apparatchik slaughtering grandma.
But then, like I said, I'm cynical.
My Sins Make Me the Star of a Cosmic Drama
Well, in fairness, mine do too, in the little universe inside my head that revolves around me, so I kind of feel him on that. I'd certainly prefer to think whatever contrition I've been able to scratch up goes a fair distance towards getting me off the cosmic hook.
Sadly for him, though, Sanford's Governor in a less-personal universe, where the consequence of not doing your job and using company funds for gold-plated accommodations on your naughty weekends is frequently getting fired even if everybody forgives you a really lot.
After all, Mehmet Agca's still in jail, and he was forgiven by a real pro.
Scott @ 16
No reason at all. He's got a long history of making people with troublesome theologies disappear. It was actually his previous job, which is why conservative Catholics were so thrilled that he got in.
I don't expect anyone actually believes it. It's what Patrick said, trash talk from the executive cafeteria.
Can somebody explain to me why The Pope would do such a thing?
Perfectly simple. He needs the Pope to have done that because, unlike back in the day (when the National Review published the groundbreaking Mater, Si, Magistra, No asserting the right of conservatives to ignore the Pope if he said anything which suggested that they should let God stuff get in the way of crushing the workers because the Pope should totally stick to his knitting, which is to say uterus patrol and propping up the rotting corpse of Pinochet), conservatives have decided that the road to the working class catholic vote (now, with more hispanics!) is paved with communion wafers, and more specifically who's allowed to have them.
So it'd be a little difficult for them to ramp up a big frothy head of righteous indignation about Joe Biden taking communion while being pro-choice if Catholics are actually allowed the free use of their conscience. This ceases to be a problem if God doesn't really care all that much about stuff the Pope only said to be nice.
As opposed, say, to because he's come to the logical conclusion that making endless new little Catholics doesn't do you much good if you let them starve to death afterwards.
CHip @ 116: What do you see as their hit on her?
Keith S @ 84/87
...what's really slimy about this whole situation is that this group was saying that someone was unfit for a position of power because she was racist, and then, when someone in their own organization aiming at a position of power behaved in an ugly and demonstrably racist way, they're pretending that it's no big deal
The grand irony here is that the one person in this situation young Epstein could count on to stand behind his right to be a (nonviolent) racist in private life is Sonia Sotomayor
Thomas Pappas had worked in the New York City Police Department since January, 1982, primarily in the Management Information Systems Division. In August 1999, he was fired by then commissioner Howard Safir after it was discovered that he had mailed more than 200 pieces of racially insensitive and anti-Semitic material from his home to various political groups who had been soliciting him for donations. Among the more than 200 or so pieces of literature Pappas had sent out were pamphlets from the National Association for the Advancement of White People.
A member and chairman of the Populist Party of the Town of North Hempstead, whose platform included repealing the federal income tax and abolishing the IRS, Pappas sued Safir and New York City's Mayor Rudy Giuliani on grounds that they had violated his First Amendment rights. In October 2000, U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ruled that the NYPD had operated within the rule of law.
The case was appealed and in 2002 it found its way to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The three-judge panel, which included Sotomayor, considered two main components of the case: Whether Pappas's "speech" was of public concern and whether it had "interfered with" the NYPD's activities. Two of the three judges upheld the district court decision that it didn't matter that Pappas had sent these mailings anonymously from his private home. "Although Pappas tried to conceal his identity as speaker," they ruled, "he took the risk that the effort would fail."
While finding the speech "offensive, hateful and insulting," Sotomayor dissented. Her basis was the precedent established by Rankin v. McPherson, in which the Supreme Court held that a public employee in Texas who cheered the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in a conversation with a fellow worker had not interfered with the office's operations, because her job did not require public contact. But Sotomayor also did not shy away from the constitutional implications of the Pappas case.
"I of course do not dispute the majority's premise that a public employee's free speech interest is often subordinated to the effective functioning of a government employer," Sotomayor's dissent read. "I also agree that it is appropriate to consider the agency's mission in relation to the nature of the speech, and I appreciate the enormous importance of race relations to the operation of the NYPD. These facts alone, however, do not support the constitutionality of the NYPD's termination of Pappas. The well-established case law of the Supreme Court and this Court requires a more searching inquiry."
albatross @ 79
Under the same circumstances, I'd expect Obama to fire the staffer.
Of course, I expected him to fire this guy. I have a naive streak.
'As you Know' Bob @ 51:
It's probably relevant here that Bay Buchanan's brother Pat also has a history of street-fighting.
Pat should only be that family's worst impulse-control problem
The older brother of presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan is facing a charge of assault with a dangerous weapon after allegedly brandishing a gun at a Northwest Washington home owned by a relative of a top State Department official, relatives said yesterday.
Hank Buchanan, 61, is expected to surrender to police within a few days, his brother Tom Buchanan, 45, a lawyer, said last night. Tom Buchanan added that he understood that a warrant had been issued for his brother's arrest.
Hank Buchanan, who family members said is a manic depressive, checked into Sibley Memorial Hospital in Northwest Washington this week for treatment of mental illness, Tom Buchanan said.
The allegation stems from an incident Sunday in which an intruder broke into the garage of Cody Shearer, a freelance journalist and brother-in-law of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Buchanan's relatives confirmed.
The intruder slashed the car tires and, when confronted by two house guests, "brandished a handgun" before fleeing to a parked car, according to a statement issued by Shearer's attorney, William J. Murphy. Shearer turned the license plate number over to police.
Last week, cable TV show host Chris Matthews suggested on his "Hardball" program that Shearer intimidated Kathleen Willey -- who has accused President Clinton of groping her in the Oval Office -- outside her Richmond home in January 1998. Through his attorney, Shearer denied the allegations and said he was in California during the period in question. Matthews apologized Monday on
Cognitive dysfunction seems to appear in oddly specific ways in that circle.
Actually, for a Buchanan writing in Human Events, this is a comparatively reasoned discussion of race, at least compared to Pat's Imus was flogged, like, with a whip for ten days and then, literally, lynched, despite the existence of Al Sharpton and black people are morally crippled thugs because they're not grateful enough for the boon America bestowed upon them by enslaving their ancestors
Bay is, as is her wont, full of crap here. Pat, Bay and Tancredo are paying a "heritage enthusiast" with a mental illness that manifests as racial hate crime to run the groups they started to deal with the not all americans being northern european white folks problem..
That they are doing this while they make the rounds trying to derail the Sotomayor nomination because being of puerto rican descent and having a heritage makes you a racist and that's a very bad thing is lagniappe.
Pfui, Bay.
The beleaguered husband and I think you've adopted a teenager. The teenager thinks you've adopted an art student.
Sorry about Hiro.
You can succeed by emulating the purported behavior of successful people
This is the key to the cargo cult. To enjoy the success of another, just mimic the rituals he claims to follow. Your idol gets the blame if things don’t work out, not you.
You would be amazed how many of the most annoying excesses of the self-appointed parenting police are down to this one. If you don't model yourself on whatever they've decided is The Thing You Must and Shall Do, you're implicitly suggesting that they don't have the magic ritual, and worse, that they don't actually have a deal with God.
There should really be an official correllary of Godwin's Law for breastfeeding.
It's not so much the plot points that reminded me of the Jungle Book. The way the language was put together just reminded me a little of the way Kipling used words in his children's stories. Puck of Pook's Hill is kind of similar, only with a bit less of the stalwart man of empire orientalism.
It's a very different voice than his poems.
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