Dear Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona,

A funny thing happened on my way to the market...

The Backstory:

I recently posted, on Facebook, an article about a Southern justice of the peace (JOP) who refused to marry interracial couples due to his personal biases. Many of my friends reacted strongly against the behavior and some reposted the article on their own pages, with their own comments. I was glad to see a universal outcry of righteous indignation, but a little confused by some of the responses they got. Not so much because people agreed with the JOP, for the most part they didn't, but because of the muddled idea of race, race relations, multiculturalism and for some reason Obama that came out of them. I was also dismayed to find that advocacy groups are being labeled in negative ways that compromise their legitimacy, which leads to today's lesson. First though, I would like to share one conversation attached to a repost of the article. Note that I have not edited the comments other than to protect identities and clarify a reference. I've only removed comments from non-prinicpals for the sake of brevity. This, verbatim, was in response to the JOP not marrying interracial couples, which I, and most of the world, call racist:

EB: Actually, someone who is racist usually believes their race is superior to another. Not believing in mixing races is not necessarily racist. It would depend on what his reasons are for not believing in mixing races.

October 15 at 9:52pm

EB: Just for the record, I'm not saying I agree with him.

October 15 at 10:05pm

Al Rodriguez "Not mixing races" is stomach-emptyingly racist, EB. I know you don't espouse that drivel. I'm just informing you that "superiority and inferiority" is only a small part of racism.

October 16 at 1:53am

RB: The Council of La Raza is unashamedly racist in the most blatant fashion. Obama endorses, supports and even had one of its members nominated (and ultimately accepted) to the US Supreme Court. So Al, I guess your support of Obama makes you a racist by proxy.

October 16 at 8:22am

Al Rodriguez Dear RB, where do I start?

1. Your 6 degrees of Obama separation is pathetic.

2. What do you know about La Raza except the propaganda you swallowed since the Sotomayor nomination? And don' give me that, "For the race..." crap because that was an org. called Aztlan, which La Raza denounces.

3. Be careful which Latinos you call racist or 2012, when white-people concentration camps are implemented, might be a bad year for you. Frank's got his pass. So does my wife and three members of her family.

Seriously, race is still a sensitive discussion in this country. But it needs to be addressed, as you've so eagerly proved by belly-flopping into a conversation about a Jim Crow throwback (which is illegal, by the by) and our understandings of what racism is.

October 16 at 10:19am

RB: My wife clearly demonstrated that she did not agree with the judge's statement, she was merely pointing out a different aspect of the discussion that is often overlooked. What most people fail to recognize, and are all too eager to jump on the "racist" name-calling bandwagon, is that race and culture are often interchangeable in discussion.

For example, my "culture" does not support wealth redistribution, abortion, homosexuality, child sacrifice, cannibalism, extramarital sex... the list goes on and on. Many cultures support things I would never consider mixing with my culture, especially when it involves marriage.

There are clear differences in cultures, and often times, those cultures are closely related to race. Honestly, I don't care what race anyone is. I abhor the culture of Islam, but one of my heroes is a Christian American of Lebanese Muslim descent. I don't think we should be getting into race debates at all, but culture debates... absolutely!

For the record, I follow current events very closely and I knew about La Raza long before the racist Sotomayor was in the news.

October 16 at 10:43am

Al Rodriguez I think your strong sense of personal identity is awesome, BL [another commentator].

As you can see above, there are major misunderstandings of race, culture, civil rights (and groups protecting them like La Raza) and hate. I never accused EB of anything, but RB feels compelled to explain a muddled and ultimately unfounded position on race and culture, that I hope he is overstating on EB's part.

Unfortunately understanding the issues at stake in the race discussion can't happen in a church, because they are bigger than the Church. It's sad that there are more RBs than BLs who are educated in culture through their churches (and don't forget conservative media) who haven't critically challenged what they've learned and done major soul searching about issues of race. Their definitions are rock solid and unchangeable. Whereas the actual sciences that look at race and culture are constantly changing and getting better, more refined. RB, take two classes, sociology and anthropology and then get back to me.

October 16 at 11:45am

EB: RB chose to bow out of this discussion. Not because he is wrong, but probably because he is not going to argue with someone who is unwilling to hear another side. All my life I heard the saying, "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with facts." That seems to be the theme running through this thread. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks because everyone has their own perspective. RB is very knowledgable on this subject, trust me. He just has a different opinion than you. That doesn't make him wrong. I don't think he's wrong. A LOT of people don't think he's wrong. But that doesn't matter to those who have made up their minds. Therefore, I think I can speak for him as well as myself when I say that I am done with this conversation.

Sun at 12:50am

Well, EB and RB are both wrong: I am willing to hear another side; facts enlighten, not confuse; and most importantly, "race" and "culture" are not interchangeable words in this or any discussion. Also, for the record, prior to RB's belly flop, I never mentioned the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) or President Obama. No one did.

The fact that RB would define the NCLR, an advocacy group that has absolutely no history of unashamed racism (though mind you some of its membership and even boards past and present may be racist) is appalling. By RB's definition, any group that provides legal services to minorities, housing assistance to minorities, social services to minorities, etc... is racist. Never mind that the NCLR, in its height of government funding, provided services to anyone who came to them regardless of race OR culture.

Which brings us to the present:

Here is an article that flew under the radar, while I was dealing with the B. family's racist denials. It is about a four member group of U.S. Congress persons who are charging that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamic-American advocacy group, is attempting to infiltrate Congress and influence major American legislation with the eventual goal of turning the U.S. to Sharia (Islamic) law. FYI, this is exactly the goal of "Third Wave" Christianity, stated as such, and they aren't just stopping at America, but that's a WHOLE other topic.

Unfortunately, as is usually the case with Faux News, we can't always believe what we see at first pass. One might think that the four Congress members are heroes and the CAIR rep. is a smug, crafty conspirator. Fox doesn't say as much, but... c'mon.

Here's what the Fair and Balanced News doesn't tell you:

• The full title of the book is Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that's Conspiring to Islamize America ... an underworld that comprises all of two sitting Congress members, an insignificant number of interns (who'd haven't much influence anyway, and CAIR memo that hopes to, "focus on influencing congressmen responsible for policy that directly impacts the American Muslim community." The devils!

• The book is co-authored by P. David Gaubatz, a former civilian agent, working for the USAF Special Investigations who claimed to have found Saddam's WMD cache, called President Obama a "crack head," writing "a vote for Hussein Obama is a vote for Sharia Law." This unstable individual has proudly touted his report in which he maps every mosque and Islamic school in America. You know... just in case.

• The foreword was written by... Sue Myrick! Yes, one of the Congress members who held the press conference, where they call for the Sergeant at Arms to investigate Muslim Congressional interns has a writing credit in her reference material. She investigated it. She wrote about it. So it must be true.

• The Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Congress has not received a formal request to investigate neither Jack nor Squat. This, to me, is the saddest part of the deal. I can handle racism and xenophobia, because it’s no different than I’ve already experienced, even though I keep expecting not to see it any more. I can handle unhinged people writing unhinged books that blame all their kampfs on someone else. World history is littered with books that for better or worse change the social and political landscape. Shame on us were we to let this pap affect how we relate to Muslim Americans or choose our Congressional interns. But to make show of a book published by WorldNET Daily... to say the things each Congress member said in that press conference... to align yourself with ignorance and hate and not DO ANYTHING about it... that’s just fear-mongering. That’s just race baiting. That’s just playing to the passions of what you expect to be an equally uninformed and unhinged populace as you.

As far as we’ve come in race relations in this country, we have further yet to go. Some people might read this and think that religion and race aren’t interchangeable terms, like culture and race aren’t interchangeable. And they’re not. I agree with that. But we, culturally, tend to treat them the same and allow our aversions to dictate how we act towards them: race, religion and culture. Our attitudes toward race, religion and culture are shaped without much, if any, information and if either doesn’t fit a pre-described set of norms, we aren’t very nice. We need to stop turning a blind eye to racism and focus on it, removing our behaviors influenced by our biases. We need to vote jackasses like Congressmen Shadegg, Broun, Myrick and Trent Franks the hell out of office and replace them with more forward thinking people who are willing to represent ALL Americans and not just those that looks and think like they do.

The Guano Reports

The Guano Reports are a series of updates to the ever-growing list of people, politicians and other public figures, who are just lucid enough to have a conversation, but definitely live in a world of their own creation.

Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

Michele Bachmann exploded onto the Batshit Watchlist in 2008, despite having opposed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act the previous year. Her opposition was no more than regurgitated conservative talking points and was worth a blip on the radar, but not more than that. In 2008, however, Bachmann jumped to the forefront of the Guano Report and continues to deliver fresh poo to this day. First was her liberal stance on the contentious issue of choice. I’m referring of course to the choice of light bulbs. In 2008, Mrs. Bachmann introduced the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act which would:

provide for the repeal of the phase out of incandescent light bulbs unless the Comptroller General makes certain specific findings.

Damn straight! Nothing is more American than incandescent bulbs. Why, to lose them would be to lose a part of our culture. After all, wasn’t it an American (Thomas Edison) who invented the light bulb when he drew a portrait of himself having an idea?

While one kooky bill is enough to get your name on the Batshit Watchlist, full fledged Guano Reports require much more evidence. I present the following:



Please see the full interview here where she channels the grim specter of Joseph McCarthy in calling then candidate Barack Obama “anti-American.” She calls on the media to do an exposé on Congress to find out which members are “pro-America and which ones are anti-America.” Here's a hint, any liberal Democrat (or moderate Republican) would be counted as anti-America. WTF?!? How many of them are card carrying members of the Communist Party, Madame Congresswoman? To her credit, it wasn’t Michele Bachmann who said she had a list of secret socialists (that distinction goes to Bachus-and again liberal = socialist = anti-America), but holy crap!

Then there’s this gem:



With a patented politician grin on her face, Bachmann declares that not all cultures or values are equal. First, statements of cultural equivalence, or values equivalence, are absurd because we don’t score or assign merit to them. On some level, however, she has a point. I consider myself, in her terms, a multiculturalist, but I would never celebrate a cultural practice that mutilates an infant's genitalia (female or male). Neither would I celebrate values that are based in fear and radical superstition, like the Taliban or fundamentalist Christianity. But that’s not what she’s talking about. She is specifically answering a question about cultural assimilation. Her answer discusses emigration and requires immediate subordination of incoming cultures to the host. Anything less and the host culture loses its identity, as she describes happens in France. Forget for a moment that such an analysis can’t be found in any sociology textbook, but the very idea of “assimilate... resistance is futile,” is grotesquely xenophobic (on that note please submit any Mark Krikorian droppings for GR review). Not only does she misrepresent the European riots, which were about real civil issues and youths that were killed in what they thought was a police chase, she uses it to take a culture war stab at Islam. Her answer intimates that the Muslim culture is inferior to our superior American culture or to the frog culture in smelly France even. Sorry, Congresswoman, but the great American melting pot is not a smelting bin where we separate all the inferior cultural traits to extract the true American inside everyone. Our goal is to live together as one nation, not to achieve cultural homogeneity.

Bachmann’s body of work is just prolific. This blog can’t even begin to scratch the surface of her insanity, going back to her ads against gay marriage in 2004:



to her recent paranoia over the census where she boasts of breaking the law. But some things just can’t be overlooked. Like her confusion over evolution.



Nope. No controversy. Perhaps over how the mechanisms of evolution worked over time, but not about it’s truth. There are fewer, in fact, scientific thoughts that are as widely accepted as fact than evolution. Sorry, lady. You’re wrong. But Bachmann’s ignorance of science doesn’t stop at evolution. Consider this:



or this:



There is no global warming and carbon dioxide is natural and so not dangerous. Oh...kay.... Well, arsenic is natural. Hemlock is natural. Snake venom is natural. So why don’t you chug some rat poison, chow down on some spotted cowbane and party with some rattlers and see where that gets you.* She chooses, with evolution and global warming, to ignore the scientific consensus and read from her Republican Party approved talking points memo in order to affect policy. But what can you expect from the lady that RNC Michael Steele, "be da man," or who publicly raped George Bush?


That she makes no attempt to gather facts and understand her topics, that she makes no attempt to understand the words she regurgitates for the drivel they are, that she actively promotes her criminal boycott of the Constitutionally mandated Census, that she frequently uses fear, paranoia and lies to bully her constituents and the fringe of her party, the so-called based into submission makes Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN, D6) today’s Guano Report Dump of the Day.


* NOTE: That was sarcasm. Brutal yes, but sarcasm nonetheless. Please don't leave angry comments or threaten to sue me if you're Bachmann legal counsel. I am merely making a point about the dangers of scientific ignorance, which Michele displays in spades.

Firefighter Decision No Surprise so Calm Down

Before any of my conservative friends pop their favorite champagne and celebrate the defeat of notorious reverse racist Sonia Sotomayor at the hands of the Supreme Court, let’s put the Ricci v DeStefano case into perspective. From the time of her nomination, bloggers, media moguls and friends of mine that live in foreign countries have been outraged that the president used “emotion and empathy” as choice criteria and not judicial temperament (cough!). For Republican pundits, rejecting discrimination claims by a margin of 8 to 1 just isn’t impartial enough (choke!). Her nomination is nothing more than identity politics at best , otherwise outright racism (here it comes...). Her name is just... just... UNNATURAL to the English language (bleeeeaaarrrrcch!)! The Ricci case may appear to add credence to the line that Sotomayor is inexperienced or out of touch, but take a closer look and you will see both her experience and her judicial restraint clearly.

First the facts of the case:

In 2003, the New Haven, Connecticut, Fire Department sought to fill captain and lieutenant positions. Because its union contract required promotions to be based upon examinations, the City contracted with Industrial/Organizational Solutions (IOS), Inc. to develop exams given to qualifying applicants. The results of these exams would not have allowed for the promotion of any black firefighters due to their low scores. Further, black applicants’ pass rate on the lieutenant exam was half of the rate for white applicants. The city’s exam review board could not decide whether the tests were racially biased based on a representative of an IOS competitor's testimony that the results showed “adverse impact.” Another witness, an experienced firefighter, testified that the exams were comparable to those he had taken in the past. Officials were concerned that if the test results were certified, then the city could be subject to a disparate treatment suit from minority applicants who did not qualify for promotions. The results were not certified. A group of white firefighters, including one Hispanic, who scored some of the highest results on the exams, filed a Title VII suit against the city and its officials. The district court ruled that the City did not need to certify the results because doing so could subject it to litigation for violating Title VII’s disparate treatment prohibition. On appeal, the Second Circuit, showing judicial restraint, affirmed the district court’s opinion. The unanimous panel, which included Judge Sotomayor, concluded that the city could not be held liable for its failure to certify because it tried to fulfill its obligations under Title VII.

That attempt invited a suit over the selfsame law. New Haven was damned either way. Rather than go into the particulars of the case one by one, and they are complex, let’s look at the judicial history of this case as it relates to Judge Sotomayor. Sotomayor affirmed the decision of the federal district court judge. Her decision was part of a unanimous panel of three judges from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. By a 7-6 majority, the Second Circuit refused to reverse that panel's ruling. Finally, four out of the nine Supreme Court Justices, including the guy she is to replace, agreed with her.

The Supreme Court’s decision is far from surprising. Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito issued the majority opinion in favor of the petitioners; thus, overruling the lower courts’ decision. Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer sided with the lower courts. We can put questions about her experience and her judicial temperament to rest. The only reason the right has celebrate Ricci, is that of the minority of federal judges to rule in the petitioners’ favor, five of them had the final say. The right has to be careful celebrating this decision. Do so too loudly and it sounds as if they are celebrating the government favoring a white man’s right not to be discriminated against over a black man’s right not to be discriminated against.

Of her alleged racism, I have already written. Here are, however, some quotes that might lend credibility to those charges of racism:

when a case comes before me involving, let’s say, someone who is an immigrant — and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases — I can’t help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn’t that long ago when they were in that position…

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

Whoops! Wait... that was Samuel Alito three years ago.



Alito then, like Sotomayor in her 2001 speech, was alluding to the human condition of having experience factor into decision-making. He got a pass and no one challenged him for using his “emotions” or being too empathetic. In her speech, Sotomayor pointed out that while her experiences shape who she is, she has to rise above them and consider how her decisions (as the person so shaped) will affect everyday Americans in their everyday lives. This isn’t racism of any kind. It’s the human condition.

The bigger surprise in the Ricci case would have been if Kennedy had upheld the lower courts' decision instead of disregard it. Predictably, that did not happen. The Supreme Court reversing her, and her colleagues', decision has no bearing on her fit on that bench. At a 60% reversal rate, Sotomayor is the Ted Williams of appeals judges. The Supreme Court reverses about 75% of cases it hears and Alito had a reversal rate of 100%. She has the experience and the judicial temperament. Personal attacks on her intellect (second in her class at Princeton) and ethnic identity are base as well as wrong. Her empathy, like that of Sam Alito's, should be seen as an asset, not a detriment. In short, get ready America... you will have a "Hispanic chick-lady" as your next Supreme Court Justice.