Motley Moose – Archive

Father’s day has come and gone again for this year but the myths and memes about black fathers live on. We know how black women are portrayed as welfare queens and grifters. We know young black men are cast as thugs and young black women as promiscuous.  There is push-back against all of those stereotypes from those of us on the left but it’s important to do some myth-busting about the group that rarely garners respect – outside our own community.

Black fathers.

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

SCOTUS Watch …

For the rest of the month of June, the Supreme Court will be releasing opinions on Monday and Thursday mornings. SCOTUSblog will liveblog here today starting at 9:15 Eastern.

SCOTUSblog: October 2013 Term, major cases pending

McCullen v. Coakley, No. 12-1168 [Arg: 1.15.2014 Trans./Aud.]

Issue(s): (1) Whether the First Circuit erred in upholding Massachusetts’s selective exclusion law – which makes it a crime for speakers other than clinic “employees or agents . . . acting within the scope of their employment” to “enter or remain on a public way or sidewalk” within thirty-five feet of an entrance, exit, or driveway of “a reproductive health care facility” – under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, on its face and as applied to petitioners; (2) whether, if Hill v. Colorado permits enforcement of this law, Hill should be limited or overruled.

~

National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, No. 12-1281 [Arg: 1.13.2014 Trans./Aud.]

Issue(s): (1) Whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised during a recess that occurs within a session of the Senate, or is instead limited to recesses that occur between enumerated sessions of the Senate; (2) whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised to fill vacancies that exist during a recess, or is instead limited to vacancies that first arose during that recess; and (3) whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised when the Senate is convening every three days in pro forma sessions.

~

Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, No. 13-356 [Arg: 3.25.2014 Trans./Aud.]

Issue(s): Whether the religious owners of a family business, or their closely held, for-profit corporation, have free exercise rights that are violated by the application of the contraceptive-coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, No. 13-354 [Arg: 3.25.2014 Trans.]

Issue(s): Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb et seq., which provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest, allows a for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by federal law, based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners.

~

Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, No. 13-193 [Arg: 4.22.2014 Trans./Aud.]

Issue(s): (1) Whether, to challenge a speech-suppressive law, a party whose speech is arguably proscribed must prove that authorities would certainly and successfully prosecute him, as the Sixth Circuit holds, or should the court presume that a credible threat of prosecution exists absent desuetude or a firm commitment by prosecutors not to enforce the law, as seven other Circuits hold; and (2) whether the Sixth Circuit erred by holding, in direct conflict with the Eighth Circuit, that state laws proscribing “false” political speech are not subject to pre-enforcement First Amendment review so long as the speaker maintains that its speech is true, even if others who enforce the law manifestly disagree.

~

Riley v. California, No. 13-132 [Arg: 4.29.2014 Trans.]

Issue(s): Whether evidence admitted at petitioner’s trial was obtained in a search of petitioner’s cell phone that violated petitioner’s Fourth Amendment rights.

More news …

  Good morning Motley Meese! Hope your weekend was lovely.

   

I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in “Cheers & Jeers”.

OK, you’ve been warned – here is this week’s tomfoolery material that I posted.

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

President Obama delivers remarks at the Cannon Ball Flag Day Celebration at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We love you, Obama!

THE PRESIDENT:  I love you back!

~snip~

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We love Michelle, too!

THE PRESIDENT:  Of course you love Michelle.  Who doesn’t love Michelle?

Full transcript below …

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

A look at a memorable May, 1968 night in Boston – and the three men whose actions forty-six years ago helped that city avert a night of violence that afflicted many other US cities, after the jump ………….

Found on the Internets …

Fareed Zakaria: Who lost Iraq? The Iraqis did, with an assist from George W. Bush

But how did Maliki come to be prime minister of Iraq? He was the product of a series of momentous decisions made by the Bush administration. Having invaded Iraq with a small force – what the expert Tom Ricks called “the worst war plan in American history” – the administration needed to find local allies. It quickly decided to destroy Iraq’s Sunni ruling establishment and empower the hard-line Shiite religious parties that had opposed Saddam Hussein. This meant that a structure of Sunni power that had been in the area for centuries collapsed. These moves – to disband the army, dismantle the bureaucracy and purge Sunnis in general – might have been more consequential than the invasion itself.

How Iraq Turns Into Vietnam Before Our Very Eyes

And what happened to The Future Of Iraq Project which, whatever you might think of its ambition and the assumptions on which it was built, one of which is the now self-evident proposition that we pretty much suck at nation-building, at least was an attempt to construct a future beyond candy-and-flowers, and which at least had as its fundamental principle that, having wrecked Iraq, we had something of an obligation to fix it for the Iraqis? Donald Rumsfeld happened to it. Dick Cheney happened to it. The utter incompetence of the administration of C-Plus Augustus happened to it.[…]

Who-Lost-Iraq? sadly will become an issue in the midterm elections that are upcoming in the fall, and that it will do so before the country has been honest with itself in answering the question, “Why Iraq At All?”

Sunk Cost

A sunk cost is a cost that an entity has incurred, and which it can no longer recover by any means. Sunk costs should not be considered when making the decision to continue investing in an ongoing project, since you cannot recover the cost.

Sweep up the shards, shed some tears … and move on.

More news …