Congress overturning several recent Supreme Court decisions.

Of course I was a bit shocked that I was shocked [lol] that Congress can just overide the supreme court. Silly me.

Congress Passes Bill With Protections for Disabled

By ROBERT PEAR Published: September 17, 2008
WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval on Wednesday to a major civil rights bill, expanding protections for people with disabilities and overturning several recent Supreme Court decisions.
The voice vote in the House, following Senate passage by unanimous consent last week, clears the bill for President Bush.
The White House said Mr. Bush would sign the bill, just as his father signed the original Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.
The bill expands the definition of disability and makes it easier for workers to prove discrimination. It explicitly rejects the strict standards used by the Supreme Court to determine who is disabled.
The bill declares that the court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law.
“The Supreme Court misconstrued our intent,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democratic leader. “Our intent was to be inclusive.”
In an effort to clarify the intent of Congress, the bill says, “The definition of disability in this act shall be construed in favor of broad coverage.”
Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, the principal Republican sponsor in the House, said, “Courts have focused too heavily on whether individuals are covered by the law, rather than on whether discrimination occurred.”
Bills passed with overwhelming support are often insignificant or noncontroversial, but that was not true for this bill. “This is one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation of our time,” said Representative Jim Langevin, Democrat of Rhode Island, who uses a wheelchair.
Disagreements over the bill were worked out in two years of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations that included members of both parties and people with disabilities, as well as the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce.
LeAnne Wilson, chief operating officer of the association, said the bill would help “meet the work force needs” of employers.
Lawrence Z. Lorber, a labor law specialist who represents employers, said the bill would change the outcome of “a slew of cases that were thrown out of court in the past.” Now, he said, “employees who have cancer or diabetes or learning disabilities will get their day in court and are more likely to get accommodations from employers.”
Lawmakers said that people with epilepsy, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other ailments had been improperly denied protection because their conditions could be controlled by medications or other measures. In a Texas case, for example, a federal judge said a worker with epilepsy was not disabled because he was taking medications that reduced his seizures.
In deciding whether a person is disabled, the bill says, courts should not consider the effects of “mitigating measures” like prescription drugs, hearing aids and artificial limbs. Moreover, it says, “an impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active.”
Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, the chief sponsor of the bill, said: “The Supreme Court decisions have led to a supreme absurdity, a Catch-22 situation. The more successful a person is at coping with a disability, the more likely it is the court will find that they are no longer disabled and therefore no longer covered under the A.D.A.”
Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, said the bill, by establishing more generous coverage and protection, “will make a real difference in the lives of real people.”

121 Cases since Jan 08′ alone–

The Cases
The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/01/12/us/20080113_VETS_DATABASE.html

See the above link for a series of articles, photos and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.

We sent them to training to teach them to kill — then brought them home with no down-time and decompression– AND we sent our reserves! and sent them somewhere with a lie and no safe gear. And we didn’t exactly screen the reservists well for stability to begin with.

Republicans? Democrates?– the evil twin debate

Which Do You Believe?
Republicans believe…
…that the United States were founded on the fundamental principle that individuals have certain rights and freedoms which cannot be infringed upon and may be restricted only to the degree necessary to preserve the rights of others.
Hence the Patriot Act and massive debt.
Democrats believe…
…that our Founding Fathers did not really mean what they said when they guaranteed certain constitutional rights such as the right to freedom of religious expression, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to retain the use of private property.
Democrats know exactly what the Founders meant when they talked about “no law respecting an establishment of religion.” They meant that no religious activity of any sort should ever be on the taxpayer’s dime, and nobody should ever be taxed to support someone else’s church. This means that the government must never foster religious activity, nor impede it among the citizenry. The Founders also acknowledged the right of people to have weapons for hunting and self-protection, but mandated that in return, they should make themselves available for militia duty. If you think the second amendment is absolute, ask yourself this: “Does the second amendment guarantee the right of undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenics to acquire thermonuclear weapons?” The Founders also understood that freedom mean freedom not only from government tyranny, but from economic, social and religious tyranny as well.
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…the money you earn is yours and that government in a free society has the right to take only as much as is needed to perform those limited functions, which are appropriate to it.
Hence record deficits, and the prospect of huge tax increases in the future, not for public works, but simply to finance the notes held by international banks and big brokerage houses.
Democrats believe…
…government has a right to use your money as it sees fit to redistribute wealth, establish new spending programs in times of budget surpluses, and to return to you only that portion of your money which is politically expedient.
Redistribution of wealth is the basic definition of an economy. If money is the life blood of an economy, the redistribution mechanism of government is the heart. Just as blood is useless if it is not pumped, wealth is useless if it is allowed to follow its natural course (which in the case of blood is called gravitational lividity) and accumulate with a small percentage of ultra wealthy.
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…the traditional family and the values it fosters are the foundation of American society and their preservation is essential to our Nation’s continued success.
Hence their refusal to let 10% of the population marry because they feel squeamish and think it will upset their invisible cosmic sky muffin.
Democrats believe…
…American society must redefine its values and the role of the family to fit new lifestyle concepts, which have resulted from the 60s counter-culture movement and an attitude that promotes an abrogation of individual responsibility.
A glance at the Presidential candidates in the 60s will reveal the mewling hypocrisy behind this lie. George Bush “served” in a low risk “champagne unit,” and supported a war that he himself was unwilling to join. Nearly all of his administration, and indeed much of the leadership of the Republican party, are also “chickenhawks.” In the meantime, John Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam, served with great honor, and then found the moral courage to come back and tell the American people what was really going on over there. Which strikes you as the better example of “personal responsibility”?
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…parents have the right to determine the values with which their children will be raised and to have the widest possible choice among public, private and religious schools and that competition will improve public education.
Hence the blind support of failing charter schools, and the demand that the public be forced to finance flat-earth academies that insist the earth was created in six days and the devil put dinosaur bones in the earth to fool us into incorrect thought.

Democrats believe…
…the federal government has the right to determine the values which will be taught in public schools and parents’ choice of schools must be limited to avoid exposing public schools to competitive forces which would encourage reform and increase accountability.
Parents HAVE the choice to send their children to private schools, to flat-earth academies, or keep them home and teach them that evolution is a Communist plot. They just can’t do it on the taxpayer’s dime. While some charter schools have functioned well, the majority have been failures, just more examples of what happens when you subsidize something with tax money and demand no accounting for it. It didn’t work with military contractors, it didn’t work with multinational corporations, and it doesn’t work to blindly subsidize private schools. Blind, non-accountable tax subsidies are nothing more than licences to steal.
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…that the free enterprise system is the most effective engine of economic progress.
And that tyranny is fine just so long as it’s privatized tyranny. The might of the factory owner and the banker and the priest is more beneficial than that of the people being self-governing to prevent such intrusions on their individual freedoms.
Democrats believe…
…that government regulation and federal control of economic activity can better distribute wealth and services to the American people.
Heart is to blood as government is to the economy. If profitability is the only criteria for support by the public, why keep the elderly and the infirm alive?
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…high taxes, runaway government spending, and over-regulation of business and farming punish initiative and stifle economic growth.
And thus promptly promulgate all such things in the name of empowering big business.
Democrats believe…
…penalizing achievement with higher taxes and increased government bureaucracy and spending will not stifle economic growth but instead guarantee prosperity for everyone.
And in fact, under progressive taxes and government “pump priming,” Americans – all Americans and not just the wealthiest 10% – became the richest and most productive people on earth. We cut poverty by two thirds between 1950 and 1974 and then let it double again under Republican administrations. As for bureaucracies being evils easily avoided by free market forces, try dealing with an HMO. Indeed, Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan would have cut bureaucratic paperwork by two thirds, and saved hundreds of millions.
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…that with freedom comes responsibility and that individuals must take personal responsibility for their own actions and our criminal justice system must be based on this idea.
And then elect leaders who never served to ignite wars in which their children will never serve, whilst fighting for a low-cost justice system that rejects the right of the people to redress against corporate abuses and wastes as little time as possible on determining the guilt of the accused.
Democrats believe…
…individual behavior, including criminal behavior, can be blamed on “society” and that spending on social welfare programs and improvements in prison living conditions can combat crime.
It’s indisputable that crime is a function of the economy. When times are good for the poorer people, crime drops. When times are rough, crime rises. Dostoevski believed that the character and worth of a culture could be ascertained by how it treated its prisoners. America has one of the vilest and most unnecessarily cruel justice and prison systems in the civilized world, and only a fool pretends that it is somehow producing a better class of citizens as a result. Republicans are also big on penalizing the poor for such victimless crimes as drug use and prostitution.
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…that your property is yours and you have the basic right to make use of it without unreasonable government restrictions.
Restrictions such as not dumping raw sewage into the stream for the edification of the folks down stream, not draining a swamp that not only provides natural environment but community income from hunters and other sportsmen, or restrictions that prevent truckers from belching tons of particulate matter into the air 24/7, thus denying the right of your children to a case of free market asthma.
Democrats believe…
…the government has the right to regulate the use of private property in accordance with narrow special interests without giving just compensation to owners.
The notion that a person should be reimbursed for restraining himself from poisoning his neighbors or destroying the scenic value of the land is ludicrous in the extreme, and yet this is exactly what Republicans want: legalized blackmail that permits a property owner to say, “I won’t build a plant that dumps toxins in the air, but I want you to pay me for not building it.”
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…the preservation of our rights and freedoms must be entrusted to a strong national defense and of the ability of the United States to negotiate with other nations from a position of strength.
That’s why we spend nearly half a trillion dollars a year for a military that is strapped by invading two of the weakest, most backward countries on earth and no longer has the manpower left over to deal with hurricanes in an area where hurricanes are frequent.
Democrats believe…
…we can afford to drastically weaken our military despite the threats present in an unstable, post-Cold War international environment and the United States must subjugate its interests to those of the United Nations.
We spend a half a trillion dollars on a military that is tapped by two local brush wars. They went in undermanned and underequipped, poor starving waifs who only got a half a trillion dollars a year to sustain themselves on. But I don’t blame the military for this state of affairs. The blame mostly goes to greedy and corrupt military contractors such as Halliburton, who have systematically gouged the public under the false pretenses of patriotic support of “our troops” while cheating the hell out of those very troops.
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…it is imperative today to re-affirm the traditional freedoms and values of America to preserve our great Republic.
Freedoms such as lack of redress and irresponsible and complete control of the media, and values like propaganda in lieu of debate and starting unprovoked wars against third-world countries and slaughtering the civilian populations by bombing the cities.
Democrats believe…
…that America must adopt a politically correct, multi-cultural set of values which denies common American heritage and will further divide American society.
In other words, the schoolyard bullies are whining because they aren’t allowed to call the little kids “girlie-men” and beat them up.
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…there can be differences of opinion and that such differences such result in opponents, not enemies.
And yet they are the originators of such things as “The Enemies List,” people who believe it is ok to fire employees for having a Kerry bumper sticker on their car, or who protest when vandals destroying an opponent’s yard signs are jailed, and who claim that liberals should not be given a voice in newspapers, on television, or in the news, because that would be “liberal bias.”
Democrats believe…
…that all whom oppose them are to be treated as enemies.
No, but they believe that all who oppose freedom must in turn be opposed.
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…that all of America’s citizens can enjoy the rights and freedoms of our country without diminishing the rights of others.
But that only 1% of the population are “real” citizens, and the rest are all just a bunch of whiny liberals who try to take what the priviledged elite stole fair and square.
Democrats believe…
…that some must give up a portion of their rights and freedoms that others may enjoy those same rights and freedoms.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Rights and freedoms are for EVERYONE, and not just those who can afford them, or who deal from a position of power.
—————————————-
Republicans believe…
…that public servants, particularly those whom we elect to office, must be held accountable to the highest standards of ethical conduct. “If a man cannot be trusted with the government of himself, can he be trusted with the government of others?” [Thomas Jefferson]
If only Republicans would REALLY ask themselves that question. Your party leader is a man who forced a young girl into an illegal abortion, wrangled a cushy seat in a air national guard and then flunked out because he was too intoxicated and dissolute for even that, had a succession of well-paying sinecures provided by the Saudis and other oil-rich family friends, made money only in a position in which he made no investment and did no work, stole the presidency, never worked an honest day in his life, mocked prisoners on death row, told the people lies too numerous to count, and who has destroyed the federal budget, putting the country at grave risk, and who has started two unprovoked wars, alienating nearly all of America’s friends and leaving the nation adrift. His stand for human decency came when he replaced a brutal dictator in Iraq with the man who conducted “medical experiments” in said dictator’s prisons, a man who celebrated his ascension by going into a local police station and shooting to death six prisoners at random, and who was subsequently awarded the opportunity to recite an Administration-scripted speech to a joint session of Congress.
Do you REALLY think he’s what Jefferson had in mind for America?
Democrats believe…
…that loyalty to a discredited leader is a virtue and if other office holders have committed indiscretions, a sitting office holder should not be criticized for failing to uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct.
A good way to close. I’ll just note that Clintons legacy had the cleanest [none-disclosed] administration in the 20th century, with nothing worse to show after ten years of frantic investigations at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars than some sexual indiscretions.
Putsch, in the meantime, has blundered into two pointless wars at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives, has driven the country into bankruptcy, runs the most overbearing and secretive regime in American history, and refuses to account for its actions.
Which, do you suppose, better exemplifies “ethical conduct”?

cc2004

The Palin Puzzle … and some fun

When Sarah Palin used this phrase in her acceptance :
“We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity”
Then she attributed it to “a writer”. And added: I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman. I didn’t think much more of it. But now the identity of the writer is causing quite a fuss.
The man in question was called Westbrook Pegler. And a nasty piece of work he was too, given to vitriolic attacks on his opponent.
In a strikingly silly piece in the New York Times Frank Rich takes the Governor to task for quoting Pegler. Rich says:
“Palin, who lies with ease about her own record, misrepresented Pegler’s too. He decreed America was “done for” after Truman won a full term in 1948. For his part, Truman regarded the columnist as a “guttersnipe,” and with good reason.  Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese,” he called them) were all likely Communists.”
Nonsense!
Palin did not misrepresent Pegler because she didn’t talk about him. The one thing she said about Pegler was that his quote had praised Harry Truman. And it did.  That having been said, I don’t think Pegler is a person who should be quoted.And Robert Kennedy Jr shows why in a post so short but so devastating that I will simply reproduce it in full:
“Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that “some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in pubic premises before the snow flies.”
It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/governor-palins-reading-l_b_126478.html

… and then this… lol… I love how she got a Masters!!!!!!!!! [hell after 6 colleges and an AA... I am sure the Party loves being able to say she has her Masters...lolololo]

At a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God on June 8 this year, Mrs Palin described how Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her when he visited the church as a guest preacher in late 2005, prior to her successful gubernatorial bid.
In video footage of the speech, she is seen saying: “As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he’s so bold. And he was praying “Lord make a way, Lord make a way.”
“And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m going to do, he doesn’t know what my plans are. And he’s praying not “oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor,” no, he just prayed for it. He said “Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that’s exactly what happened.”
She then adds: “So, again, very very powerful, coming from this church,” before the presiding pastor comments on the “prophetic power” of the event.
An African evangelist, Pastor Muthee has given guest sermons at the Wasilla Assembly of God on at least 10 occasions in his role as the founder of the Word of Faith Church, also known as the Prayer Cave.
Pastor Muthee founded the Prayer Cave in 1989 in Kiambu, Kenya after “God spoke” to him and his late wife Margaret and called him to the country, according to the church’s website.
The pastor speaks of his offensive against a demonic presence in the town in a trailer for the evangelical video “Transformations”, made by Sentinel Group, a Christian research and information agency.
“We prayed, we fasted, the Lord showed us a spirit of witchcraft resting over the place,” Pastor Muthee says.
After the spirit was broken, the crime rate dropped to almost zero and there was “explosive church growth” while almost every bar in the town closed down, the video says.
The full Transformations video featuring Pastor Muthee’s story has recently been removed from YouTube but the rest of the story is detailed in a 1999 article in the Christian Science Monitor, as well as on numerous evangelical websites.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, six months of fervent prayer and research identified the source of the witchcraft as a local woman called Mama Jane, who ran a “divination” centre called the Emmanuel Clinic.
Her alleged involvement in fortune-telling and the fact that she lived near the site of a number of fatal car accidents led Pastor Muthee to publicly declare her a witch responsible for the town’s ills, and order her to offer her up her soul for salvation or leave Kiambu.
Says the Monitor, “Muthee held a crusade that “brought about 200 people to Christ”.” They set up round-the-clock prayer intercession in the basement of a grocery store and eventually, says the pastor “the demonic influence – the ‘principality’ over Kiambu –was broken”, and Mama Jane fled the town.
According to accounts of the witchhunt circulated on evangelical websites such as Prayer Links Ministries, after Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots, killing a pet python which they believed to be a demon.
After Mama Jane was questioned by police – and released – she decided it was time to leave town, the account says.
Pastor Muthee has frequently referred to this witchhunt in his sermons as an example of the power of “spiritual warfare”. In October 2005, he delivered ten sermons at the Wasilla Assembly of God, the audio of which was available on the church’s website until it was removed around the time Mrs Palin’s candidacy was announced. The blog Irregular Times has listings and screen grabs of the sermons.
It was during that these sermons that Mrs Palin, who was then preparing for her gubernatorial run, was anointed by Pastor Muthee. His intercession, she says, was “awesome”.
Her June 8 speech was to mark the graduation of students from the Wasilla Assembly of God’s Masters’ Commission, which, as Pastor Ed Kalins explains, believes Alaska will be the refuge for American evangelicals upon the coming “End of Days”. After her speech, Mrs Palin was presented with an honorary Masters’ Commission diploma.

And then, let’s have some fun shall we. If Palin was your Mother, what would your name be????
Sarah Palin has picked out an All-American set of names for her children. There’s Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper.

My name turned into  Duct Idaho Palin
What’s yours???????????????

http://politsk.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah_13.html

R.I.P.

Another shameless assaination!