Society

During Netroots Nation, a conservative blogger was arrested for harrassing a couple of women because they were wearing Muslim hijabs (headscarves). From Minnesota Public Radio:

A St. Paul blogger faces misdemeanor charges after he allegedly harassed two Muslim women last week in downtown Minneapolis.

Minneapolis police say John Hugh Gilmore, 52, who writes a blog called Minnesota Conservatives, caused a scene Thursday night on Nicollet Mall. Sgt. Bill Palmer, a police spokesman, said Gilmore appeared to be drunk when he confronted the two women wearing the Muslim headscarf known as the hijab.

"Mr. Gilmore made some comments that he didn't believe the women should be in the United States, and that he thought that they were ruining America," Palmer said.

One of the women, University of Minnesota student Jamila Boudlali, said she's lived in Minnesota her entire life and has never been hassled about her religion.

John Aravosis, who was at the convention, has a great rundown, including this response from the prominent right-wing PJ TV:

Suddenly, a man from "PJ TV" stuck a microphone in front of the lead woman and started to question her. He got increasingly upset, and basically charged her, and me, with lying about the incident with the GOP blogger the other night, simply beacuse the woman couldn't recall the name of the GOP blogger who had been arrested. You can watch the beginning of the woman's statement, and the GOP "reporter" getting more and more upset with the woman, and with me.

Every year this country dumps $15 billion into the war on drugs. This number has continued to grow every year, yet the drug "problem" in the United States continues to grow.

So while we are talking about trimming the fat from the budget, how about we start with this huge waste? It seems a lot of world leaders are thinking the same thing:

It isn't working. It never has worked. And so long as it continues to be fought in its current form, the "war on drugs" will do little to curb the spread of illegal narcotics or prevent hundreds of thousands of people from continuing to lose their lives each year as a result of the international drug trade.

So says a panel of world leaders who called yesterday for the biggest shake-up of drug laws in half a century. "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world," declared the Global Commission on Drug Policy. "Fundamental reforms... are urgently needed."

Now that makes sense, but not as much as what they are recommending as an alternative:

The Commission, which counts the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan along with former presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia as members, believes governments must now experiment with "legal regulation of drugs." "This recommendation applies especially to cannabis," reads a major report it published in New York yesterday. "But we would also encourage other experiments in decriminalisation."

Once the Republicans took control of the state, the craziness came out.

The Ohio House of Representatives approved two bills on Wednesday that would give Ohioans more rights to carry concealed weapons, including one that allows people to carry a gun into a bar.

The latter bill allows Ohioans who have a concealed-carry permit to carry a gun into a bar, restaurant or "open air arena" such as a sports stadium that serves alcohol. The bill prohibits the person carrying the gun from drinking alcohol at the same time.

Republican Representative Danny Bubp, a sponsor of the legislation, said the bill is necessary to make sure law abiding citizens have equal footing with criminals.

The bill is seeing strong opposition by bar and restaurant owners, as well as cities in Ohio. Even members of the NRA are opposed to such bills, and rightfully so. This type of legislation can lead to more gun violence, which in turn can lead to a public outcry for greater gun control.

But some of the reasons for this measure are what really gets me:

State Sen. Jimmy Stewart, R-Athens, voted in favor of the bill in the Senate, where it was approved in May.

The House Republicans are determined to expand the role of the IRS:

Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. And one tax expert says that the measure could even lead to questions on tax forms: Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?

In testimony to a House taxation subcommittee on Wednesday, Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans' "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, they'd have to detemine, from evidence provided by the taxpayer, whether any tax benefit had been inappropriately used to pay for an abortion.

I wonder how this is going to fix the deficit or create jobs? Well it might to do the latter:

"Were this to become law, people could end up in an audit, the subject of which could be abortion, rape, and incest," says Christopher Bergin, the head of Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit tax policy group. "If you pass the law like this, the IRS would be required to enforce it."

Yeah we would need more IRS auditors, but of course that would cost more money.

Today’s earthquake is another stark reminder that government regulations do save lives:

From seawalls that line stretches of Japan’s coastline, to skyscrapers that sway to absorb earthquakes, to building codes that are among the world’s most rigorous, no country may be better prepared to withstand earthquakes than Japan.

Had any other populous country suffered the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that shook Japan on Friday, tens of thousands of people might already be counted among the dead. So far, Japan’s death toll is in the hundreds, although it is certain to rise somewhat.

Ironically, it was just over a year ago that I posted something along the same lines. That was following the Chilean earthquake, where the loss of life was minimal. In terms of regulations, Chile ranks right up there with Japan.

I really hate turning devastation, like we are seeing right now, into political debate, but this is life and death we are talking about. Every time I hear some Republican or Tea Partier talking about “government controlling our lives through regulation”, I got to wonder how dense they really are. I know I want to make sure my family is in buildings that can sustain whatever mother nature, or any other disaster, might throw its way. I don’t trust corporations to “do the right thing” and neither should you, because when you find out that they did lie, or cut a few corners, it’s usually too late.

Rasmussen, who has tried everything to slant polls in regards to collective bargaining, is out with new results showing big support for collective bargaining and rapidly fading support for Gov. Scott Walker. Of course that won’t change what Walker and the GOP is doing because they are “listening to the people” and by people, I mean their own special interests.

Colin Powell is wanting answers:

Ex-secretary of state Colin Powell called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain how he was given unreliable information which proved key to the US case for invading Iraq, the Guardian reported Wednesday.

Powell's landmark speech to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, cited intelligence about Iraq leader Saddam Hussein's bioweapons programme gained from a defector, codenamed Curveball.

But he has now admitted that he lied to topple the dictator, in an interview with the Guardian.

"It has been known for several years that the source called Curveball was totally unreliable," Powell told the British newspaper.

"The question should be put to the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) as to why this wasn't known before the false information was put into the (report) sent to Congress, the president's state of the union address and my 5 February presentation to the UN."

The entire world deserves answers to this, especially the soldiers and the families of those that died in a war based on lies. This is the greatest intelligence failure our nation and the world has ever seen, not Leon Panetta getting it wrong on when Mubarak would step down, as the right wants you to believe. This lie has cost our nation trillions of dollars and countless lives, yet our leaders are just shrugging their shoulders. W

e need a full investigation into the lies and even prosecutions. Yeah I’m pissed at George Bush and company for buying this lie, but I’m equally pissed at President Obama and his administration for not demanding answers. The blood of the fallen lies on the hands of those who bought the lies and those who ignore them. Let’s get the investigations started.

FOX News has an article questioning the violence of video games and how they can affect people:

In the new video game Bulletstorm due February 22, players are rewarded for shooting enemies in the private parts (such as the buttocks). There’s an excess of profanity, of course, including frequent use of F-words. And Bulletstorm is particularly gruesome, with body parts that explode all over the screen.

But that's not the worst part.

The in-game awards system, called Skill Shots, ties the ugly, graphic violence into explicit sex acts: "topless" means cutting a player in half, while a "gang bang" means killing multiple enemies. And with kids as young as 9 playing such games, the experts FoxNews.com spoke with were nearly universally worried that video game violence may be reaching a fever pitch.

I find the timing of this article very interesting. Just a month ago we had the Tucson shooting, in which people (including myself) questioned the violent rhetoric of our political discourse being a contributing factor. The shooter is only 22, so he has spent all of his adult life hearing this violent rhetoric from our leaders. That really makes me question this:

“If a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm's explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant,” Dr. Jerry Weichman, a clinical psychologist at the Hoag Neurosciences Institute in Southern California, told FoxNews.com.

It’s funny when you watch FOX and they quickly dismiss any connection to violence rhetoric in our political and media dialog and the increase in gun violence. Anyone remember Jim David Adkission?