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They say that technology is always at least one step ahead of legislation, but the time has finally come for Connecticut's laws catch up.

Thursday, October 1 marks the beautiful day in history that Connecticut has put some restrictions on the use of e-cigarettes, according to a report from WFSB. What kinds of restrictions? Well, you know, most of the same ones on regular cigarettes since they're both pretty terrible for the people who use one and anyone who is near someone using one.

That includes: No e-cigarettes near or in state buildings. No e-cigarettes near or in schools. No e-cigarettes near or in health facilities.

That's all well and good, but businesses that serve alcohol are not on the list of places to ban smoking, which is absolutely ridiculous. If we've learned anything from Walter White and Breaking Bad, it's that there should be "no more half measures."

I'll tell you, as a non-smoker, e-cigarettes in a bar are just as bad as the real thing. I'm not fully educated on all the differences between cigarettes and e-cigarettes, but they both seem pretty obnoxious and not good for you. I've been to trivia nights at bars where one minute you're enjoying a beer and testing your knowledge of world history and the next you're in a cloud of somebody's second-hand smoke.

Electronic or not, that's pretty damn gross, and the fact that we're still allowing it is a travesty. Being in a bar does not mean we're consenting to inhale addictive or dangerous vapors. Bars should do their best to ban e-cigarettes on the own and hopefully the law will develop into a full-measure eventually.

It's anti e-cig garbage, but this is worse than usual. Not only does the guy admit to not doing the research on the topic in the first place, but his biggest reason for wanting them banned is...he just doesn't like them.

After the shooting the other day he made his speech.

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Biggest fail:
"How can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer? We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don't work or just will make it harder for law abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not born out by the evidence."

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We're going to Mars – eventually. The quest to reach the dusty red planet is our version of Manifest Destiny, the 19th-century philosophy that saw Americans spread across their content with the thought and consideration of a chilly lover stealing the duvet in their sleep. There were a lot of different versions of it, but the main themes, as summarised by Wikipedia, should sound quite familiar:

    The special virtues of the American people and their institutions;
    America's mission to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America;
    An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty.

So 150 years later, Elon Musk (of Tesla and SpaceX) is arguably the most visible example of Manifest Destiny in the space age. He's the de facto leader of a western "liberal technocratic" consensus that harbours a long-term ambition to put humans on the red planet. Not because they can, but because they feel we must. Phil Plait banged his hammer on this particular nail in a recent article for Slate in which he describes a tour of the SpaceX factory:

"[A] feeling I couldn't put my finger on before suddenly came into focus. The attitude of the people I saw wasn't just a general pride, as strong as it was, in doing something cool. It was that they were doing something important. And again, not just important in some vague, general way, but critical and quite specific in its endgame: making humans citizens of more than one world. A multiplanet species."

Manifest Destiny. But historically, this kind of attitude has come with two big problems.
Firstly, destiny is rarely great for the people already at the destination. When Africans moved north to colonise Europe they obliterated the Neanderthals. When Europeans seized the New World, its cultures were virtually extinguished. Luckily the only population on Mars that we know of is a handful of rovers, but no doubt we'll start a war anyway, before dragging them into some form of slavery or oppression. It's just what we do.

Second, whose destiny is it anyway? Who gets to go? D N Lee wrote a fascinating deconstruction of this in Scientific American where she makes a number of interesting points. Not least, how little attention this question has been given in the rather white and male race to conquer Mars.
The first objection she raises is to the idea that we're "stuck" on Earth. "Stuck?! Why would we be stuck on Earth? Stuck implies left behind in a bad situation." This is one bit I disagree with. As long as we're on one planet, however good it is, we're a single freak event away from joining the dinosaurs. Self-sufficient colonies elsewhere make for a good insurance policy. Her next point is critical though:

"I'm nagged by frames or narratives that are presented as universally attractive and necessary and heroic where the protagonists seem to mostly reflect Hollywood action movie casts and plots. *eye rolls*
"I began to question, first in my mind then out loud – whose version of humanity is being targeted for saving?"

To paraphrase Douglas Adams: "Space is white. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly white it is." It's also very male and European. Women in space-colony fiction have generally been presented as sexy walking vaginas, whose main purpose is to provide the male astronauts with a place to dock their penis at night. This being necessary in order to "ensure the survival of the species".
If you think that attitude doesn't exist in the real world, it's worth recalling the comments of Prof Anatoly Grigoryev, a doctor and key figure in the Russian space programme. "Women are fragile and delicate creatures; that is why men should lead the way to distant planets and carry women there in their strong hands."
No wonder Lee says, "I see only a very narrow invitation to this lifeboat."

The problem with Lee's argument is that she's fighting against possibly the most pernicious space myth in existence, a myth far worse than moon landing conspiracy theories. It's a myth almost universally believed, that sits at the core of liberal technocratic thought, and has been embedded in practically every other work of speculative fiction for the last half century.
You can sum it up like this: "When we go into space, we will all magically become nice."
We see this in coverage of the space programme, with its endless propaganda about "cooperation" between nations, and promotion of the idea that clever people in tough situations produce the best humanity has to offer. It's rampant in fiction, where shows like Star Trek assume that three centuries of civil rights progress will inevitably turn us all into morally-centered middle-class rationalists.
And it's there, unspoken and unchallenged, at the heart of our current aspirations for space. There's no room for discussion about social justice or equality when it comes to planning our future Mars colonies because we all just assume that decent educated scientists and engineers – the "right kind" of people – won't have any problem with that sort of thing.
Except every available single scrap of historical experience tells us that this is an incredibly naive and dangerous assumption to make. Colonies and outposts are portrayed as lights in the darkness; hot spots of progress, ingenuity and adventure. That may be true to some extent, but they've also been places of crime, vigilante justice, tyrants, rape, pillaging, abuse and war. It's true that when things get hard we can see the best in people, but oftentimes we see the worst too.
In fact we've already seen this in a Mars mission simulation that took place in 1999 and ended in chaos, as summarised by Helen Lewis in New Statesman:

"...the Russian captain forcibly kissed the only female crew member, a 32-year-old Canadian health specialist called Judith Lapierre. "We should try kissing, I haven't been smoking for six months," he reportedly told her. "Then we can kiss after the mission and compare it. Let's do the experiment now." Two of her Russian crew mates then had a fight so violent that it left blood splattered on the walls, prompting another member of the team, a Japanese man, to quit. Lapierre stayed only after the astronauts were allowed to put locks on their bedroom doors."

The first woman to be raped in space has probably already been born. And if that last sentence makes you howl with protest or insist that such a thing just wouldn't happen, then I'd stop a second and ask yourself why.
I'm a fan of SpaceX, after some initial scepticism. I think it's usually better to do something, however imperfect, than nothing, and I admire people like Elon Musk who take on the hard challenges, and make progress in spite of naysayers. I think Lee is absolutely right though when she says:

"When we look around and see a homogenous group of individuals discussing these issues – issues that command insane budgets, we should pause. Why aren't other voices and perspectives at the table? How much is this conversation being controlled (framed, initiated, directed, routed) by capitalist and political interests of the (few) people at the table?"

It's early days, but if we really want to create a progressive new world then issues like these should be at the hearts of our efforts from the very start. I hope Musk and his peers open up that discussion sooner rather than later, and I hope that people like Lee can take part in it. The last thing we need is to wake up in 50 years and find that a bunch of #gamergate nobheads are running Mars.

The fact that this pile of tripe was in the Science department of The Guardian is a fucking mockery of science.

Not sure who plays Terraria on here, but we have a server and we're letting people in. It's limited though, so first come first serve.

Message me on Skype if you want in and I'll give you the log in information.

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Illinois public schools have gained worrisome new powers over their students: A new law combats cyber-bullying by giving administrators the right to demand access to students' social media accounts—even if the online activities took place outside of school.

Previously, administrators could only ask students for their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram passwords if the kids were using these services to bully each other during school hours, according to KTVI. But the new policy gives administrators nearly unlimited authority to violate students' privacy "if a  school has a reasonable cause to believe that a student's account  on a social network contains evidence that a student has violated a schools disciplinary rule of policy."

While school officials should make sure that no student is being subjected to physical harm or threats, efforts to prevent bullying often cross the line into invasion of privacy and violation of free speech. After-school disputes between kids are best handled by their parents, or by the police, if they are truly criminal in nature. And since instances of "bullying" are rarely as crystal clear as these laws assume—many kids occasionally treat others poorly, and are also mistreated by others at the same time—nobody benefits when prying administrators are granted license to police students' personal, non-school internet activity. Nor should school officials be generally trusted to apply this policy in a manner that is consistent with students' First and Fourth Amendment rights.

One more thing: the law, which took effect on January 1st, technically applies to university students as well. But I'm sure no university personnel would ever use such a law for nefarious purposes.

Yeah, because this isn't illegal or anything. Not only does this violent user agreements, but this could arguably be a 4th and 5th amendment issue.

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The first time I wrote about Alstory Simon, then a Milwaukee north sider, was in 1999, right after he confessed to a double murder in Chicago.

Simon's shocking admission — not to police but to an investigator working for Northwestern University's Innocence Project — led to the release and pardon of a man on death row for the crime, and ultimately to the death penalty being abolished in Illinois.

Two years later, I wrote about Simon again. This time he had reached out to me from prison to say the confession and subsequent guilty plea were involuntary. He insisted he was innocent, as do most inmates who send letters to reporters from prison.

My column was not sympathetic. His confession was right there on videotape for everyone to see, including the detail that he had "busted off about six rounds."

Last week, Simon walked out of prison a free man after Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez announced that her office, after a yearlong investigation, was vacating the charges against him and ending his 37-year sentence.

The investigation by the Innocence Project, she said, "involved a series of alarming tactics that were not only coercive and absolutely unacceptable by law enforcement standards, they were potentially in violation of Mr. Simon's constitutionally protected rights."

The truth took 15 years to come out. That's 15 years that Simon, now 64, spent behind bars.

"Believe me, it is mentally painful to walk around every day, locked up for something that you know you didn't do," Simon told Shawn Rech, whose film about the case, "A Murder in the Park" now has an ending. It premieres at a film festival in New York on Nov. 17.

Simon, who moved to Milwaukee from Chicago in the 1980s to find work, is not granting interviews, his attorney, Terry Ekl, told me. But Ekl echoed Alvarez's criticism of former Northwestern journalism professor David Protess, who led the Innocence Project, and the investigator on the team, Paul Ciolino.

"In my opinion, Northwestern, Protess and Ciolino framed Simon so that they could secure the release of (Anthony) Porter and make him into the poster boy for the anti-death penalty movement," he said.

Identified by several eye witnesses, Porter was sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green at a south side Chicago park in 1982. He was just two days from a lethal chemical injection when he was freed in February 1999 following Simon's confession.

Then-Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and Illinois abolished capital punishment in 2011.

But that neat and clean narrative unraveled with the discovery of how the confession by Simon was obtained. Protess discovered that Green's mother had mentioned Simon was with Green and Hillard at the park the day of the murders, so Protess went after Simon in an effort to clear Porter.

Protess and two of his journalism students came to Simon's home in the 200 block of E. Wright St. in Milwaukee and told him they were working on a book about unsolved murders. According to Simon, Protess told him, "We know you did it."

Then Simon received a visit from Ciolino and another man. They had guns and badges and claimed to be Chicago police officers. They said they knew he had killed Green and Hillard, so he better confess if he hoped to avoid the death penalty.

They showed him a video of his ex-wife, Inez Jackson, implicating him for the crime — a claim she recanted on her death bed in 2005 — and another video of a supposed witness to the crime who turned out to be an actor.

They coached Simon through a videotaped confession, promising him a light sentence and money from book and movie deals on the case. Simon, admittedly on a three-day crack cocaine bender, struggled to understand what was going on.

Perhaps worst of all, they hooked up Simon with a free lawyer to represent him, Jack Rimland, without telling him that Rimland was a friend of Ciolino and Protess and in on their plan to free Porter.

At Rimland's urging, Simon pleaded guilty to the crime and even offered what sounded like a sincere apology to Green's family in court. As added leverage to make him cooperate, Rimland had told Simon he was suspected in a Milwaukee murder, though nothing ever came of it.

"Bob told me to get rid of this attorney...I should have listened to him," Simon says in the film, referring to Bob Braun, a West Allis man best known around here for protesting against abortion, same-sex marriage, pornography and other issues. The two men are friends.

Braun said he never doubted Simon's innocence. The two men wrote back and forth regularly during Simon's incarceration, and Braun visited him there twice. After 15 years in prison, Simon told Braun the most noticeable change is that everyone carries a phone, and there are no more pay phones.

When his abuses came to light, Protess was suspended by Northwestern and has since retired from there. He isn't talking, but he is now president of the Chicago Innocence Project which investigates wrongful convictions. Ciolino put out a statement saying Simon also had confessed to a Milwaukee TV reporter, his lawyer and others. "You explain that," he said.

We know now that the explanation was that Simon was snared in a trap set by people who wanted to end the death penalty, no matter what the cost. Once they convinced Simon it was for his own good, he was all in.

And now, finally, he's out and back in Chicago. Simon enjoyed a lobster dinner on his first day of freedom. Ekl said he doesn't think Simon has family still in Milwaukee, and is not planning to return here. Too many painful memories.

Simon's mother died while he was in prison. He told the filmmaker he's eager to reconnect with his daughter and see his grandchild for the first time.

"I thank God," he said, "that he shined down on me."

This is not a BBE I ever wanted to see, but considering all the fucked up shit they did in this case, basically everything they've complained about when it came to prosecutors, no one else can come close to taking that title.

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"The white folks had sure brought their white to work with them that morning." — Chester Himes

On Shouting White Racial Slurs in Public

I am a white, middle-class male professor at a big, public university, and every year I get up in front of 150 to 200 undergraduates in a class on the history of race in America and I ask them to shout white racial slurs at me.

The results are usually disappointing.

First of all, everyone knows that saying anything overtly racist in front of strangers is totally taboo. Even so, most of these kids are not new to conversations about race; the majority of them are students of color, including loads of junior college transfers, student parents, vets, and a smattering of white kids, mostly freshmen. Of course some are just scared of speaking in front of so many people, no matter what the topic.

So I cajole a few of them into "cracker" and "redneck." We can usually get to "hillbilly" or "trailer trash" or "white trash," possibly even "peckerwood," before folks recognize the "Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel" pattern of class discrimination here. And being that we are at a top ranked West Coast university, not only do we all share basic middle-class aspirations, but we can feel pretty safe in the fact that there are no "rednecks" here to insult.

The '60s era black nationalist terms come out next, usually from one of the all too few black male students in the room, sometime from a student athlete. "Honky!" This gets a chuckle from the class. After all, it is a funny word to say out loud. "Whitey" and its weak hip hop variant "wigger" are voiced to more giggles. The black power aggression of "look out whitey" and "white devils" is only a memory of a failed black militancy.

Hispanic students find their way to "gringo," just as a student perhaps from Atlanta or Houston offers "Yankee." Students from further away give their own regional variant insult for white imperialists and tourists — such as "haole." From this we learn that race is defined by place, and that where you are white matters.

It is either a sign of their ongoing potency or proof of the decline in the category of ethnicity, but the old racial slurs for Italians, Irish, Greek, Jewish, Catholic, German, Polish, etc., never get spoken aloud. Is this silence because these groups are or are not white? Maybe these kids have never heard someone use the word "dago" or "wop" or "mick" before, apart from that Jewish movie guy in The Godfather?

The point of this sanctioned spewing of hate speech is that none of these words can hurt me. Because I am an individual. I can choose to not be offended. White racial slurs are not common in our colorblind age because they don't work on people who posses white privilege. When they do work, like "redneck" or "cracker," it's a matter of class politics.

But rich white men enjoy the invisible power of being just people. Normal. Basic Humanity. Everyone else gets some version of discrimination.

The nonwhite racial slurs hurt because they both smear with dirt and deny human diversity. They reduce all members of a race to the same hated and debased categorization. Your skin, your blood and body are all that matters, the words say, and I hate you for it.

This is about when I run out of time and have to end class. As I am unplugging, a few of those white kids creep up to ask: So what should we do? If we want to be more than just not racist, if we want to be actually anti-racist, then how should we act? How do we deal with the burden of a privilege we did not earn?

Now I gotta get to another class half-way across campus, so I don't have time to tell them that so-called "liberal guilt" is not the answer and that empathy and solidarity are. I don't have time to explain that learning to share anger at injustice is the start of a common conversation, and that they can learn how to recognize where privilege resides in their own lives by reading about and listening to the experiences of others who do not have it. I gotta run, so I just say to them: "It's a long argument, and an endless series of principled choices, but the short version is simply: Don't be a douchebag."

A Useless, Sexist Tool

This may sound like shallow, even flip advice. But it's a hard-won and well-tested insight using the multicultural classroom as laboratory. It came to me a few years back, at the end of the standard exercise in class.

"What about douchebag?" I asked the students, experimentally.

"Have any of you ever called some one black or brown or Asian a douchebag?... How 'bout women or gay folks?" The students had no recognizable response to the initial suggestion. But with each refining question—"Ever call a poor person a douchebag?"—their widening eyes became knowing nods, nods became spoken agreement, and the scattered "yes" gathered into a room of collectively blown minds. Including mine. Yes, it turns out, only rich, white heterosexist men are douchebags.

We had just contradicted the point of the racial slurs discussion, but that was lost in the rush of discovery. Here, hiding in plain view, was a viable white racial slur. Because while "cracker" and "honky" don't hurt me, I would totally be offended if someone called me a douchebag. And I would need some sort of definition against which to launch my personal defense.

So why had none of us recognized this before? Why did this slur actually work? What does the human douchebag really look like? Why do we call him that and what do we hate about the douchebag?

The douchebag is someone—overwhelmingly white, rich, heterosexual males—who insists upon, nay, demands his white male privilege in every possible set and setting. The douchebag is equally douchey (that's the adjectival version of the term) in public and in private. He is a douchebag waiting in line for coffee as well as in the bedroom.

There are plausible objections to "douchebag". It feels like an overused insult. And its origins lie in the male insult culture that identifies women's bodies as the object of contempt. But even as such, it's an accidental monument to male blindness. An actual douchebag isn't feminine; it's a quite literally useless, sexist tool. It's alienated from women.

And with that particular understanding, I believe the term "douchebag" is the white racial slur we have all be waiting for.

We have only to realize this, for it has been there all along. In fact, it is white privilege itself that has blinded us to the true nature of the douchebag's identity. In the same way that white hetrosexist males are thought of as an unmarked category, regular people, the douchebag has—at least until now—been similarly unmarked. It's insult that refers to ordinary men. Who happen to be white. Whiteness' inability to see whiteness has so far blinded us all to implications of the douchebag. But no longer.

The precise race, class, and gender position of the douchebag marks this identity as a specific subset of the asshole, another identity on the rise in the twenty-first century. The asshole—as brilliantly defined by Ta-Nehisi Coates—is someone who insists that all social encounters occur on their terms, as in, "Hey that person over there with the Google Glass is an asshole!" (Glasshole! Get it?)

While anyone can be an asshole, though, the douchebag is always a white guy—and so much more than that. The douchebag is the demanding 1 percent, and the far more numerous class of white, heterosexist men who ape and aspire to be them. Wall Street guys are douchebags to be sure, but so is anyone looking to cash in on his own white male privilege.

This narrowness of categorization—perhaps unique in the history of America's rich history of racial and sexual slurs—is what makes the word douchebag such a potentially useful political tool.

There is a history of the douchebag as a white racial slur, stretching from when the word was first flung across a D&D game in 1982's ET to the recent, and all too premature, assessment by Gawker and Jezebel that the term has "jumped the shark." Before the douchebag there was the suburban "collar popping" preppy and the urban yuppie. Now there is the frat boy, the mansplainer, the pick-up artist, the dude, the bro, and most of the men in Las Vegas. But really, they are all just douchebags.

Douchebag Politics

So it turns out that the term douchebag is a great deal more, and a great deal more precise, than what Dan Harmon considers merely "a more potent way to call someone a jerk."

Adam Levine, like Ryan Lochte before him, is so commonly labeled as a douchebag in social media that in a recent GQ celebrity profile he offered up his own multi-part definition of the douchebag, coupled by a point by point rebuttal as to why he should not be counted amongst the category he so defined.

Of course, playing douchebag / not a douchebag is one of social media's most favorite games, so let's try it with our new definition based on white privilege:

Gordon " greed is good" Gecko is lord high douchebag, and Charlie Sheen is his firstborn and crowned prince douchebag.

There are billionaire CEO douchebags like Larry Ellison and Donald Trump, and wage slave douchebags who work as lifeguards, bartenders and in sporting good stores but aspire to be billionaires. Tech, finance, and consulting douchebags predominate , but there are also high concentrations of douchebags in real estate, mid-level management, fitness, video games, and television entertainment.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are both douchebags, which is part of why they lost. Joe Biden and Bill de Blasio are not douchebags, which is part of why they won.

Wall Street and Wolf of Wall Street are the best movies about the douchebag. Steven Colbert and his entitled, uninformed, self-promoting, and colorblind persona is its most thorough parody. Fox News offers us the spectacle of an entire television network composed of douchebags pushing a douchebag's world view.

Pro sports is a dense field of douchebaggery. Lance Armstrong, Roger Goodell, the Washington Redskins, and Cristiano Ronaldo are douchebags, but Leo Messi and FC Barcelona are not.

Sam Spade is not a douchebag but John Wayne certainly was. Captain Kirk is a douchebag, but Spock, Picard, and Riker are not (though Riker sometimes wants to be). Peter Parker is not a douchebag, neither is Clark Kent. But Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark sure are. Cyclops is a douchebag whereas Magneto is not. Hal Jordan is a douchebag, but Captain America (perhaps surprisingly) is not.

And if we needed further proof that the douchebag is a social construction, and a set of personal choices, rather than some form of white male essentialism, I give you the paradox of Michael J. Fox: Alex P. Keaton is a douchebag, but Marty McFly is not.

Beware the Killer Douchebag

But this is not all fun and games. Douchebags can be deadly, especially to women. And learning to recognize them and avoid them can be a word of advice to save a life.

At their most extreme, the douchebag can be someone like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho; a psychotic killer who uses the mask of white male wealth and privilege to seduce victims and elude detection. But this type does not just exist in fiction.

On college campuses, white (i.e. segregated) frats are pestilential breeding grounds for alcohol poisoning, drug abuse, sexual assault, and white male privilege, and if they cannot be dismantled or removed from university campuses, then they should be strenuously avoided by all but campus police and "Take Back the Night" marches.

There have been dangerous douchebags throughout history. Thomas Jefferson, when he slipped into the slave quarters at night for his dose of brown sugar, became our nation's douchebag founding father. The Southern plantation aristocracy were probably the most powerful douchebags in American history, and the Civil War was fought to suppress them and win human rights for the enslaved. Over the next century and a half these defeated douchebags transformed themselves into the Redneck / Douchebag coalition that runs the Republican party today.

"Some Emotional Need": The Medical History of the Douchebag

But there is a history beyond this history, a medical history that provides the unlikely background to this character type.

In surveying the medical literature, one finds that the douchebag—a vulcanized rubber appliance like a hot-water bottle attached to a rubber tube or hose—had a wide range of useful applications for doctors and nurses. In a field hospital, a douchebag can be used to wash out wounds, and in 1943, the American Journal of Nursing gave the best ever reason to use a douchebag: to wash out one's eyes in the event of a gas attack.

"Douchebag" simultaneously appears in the linguistics literature in 1946 as military slang for a misfit, someone "maladjusted to military life." Maybe this failed soldier just needed to wash out his eyes?

In 1956, Dr. Oscar Bourgeault wrote on the "Feminine Hygiene Question" in the American Journal of Nursing, telling nurses to advise their patients that if they think they need to douche, the answer "usually is don't." Dr Bourgeault's advice grew out of a felt need for medical professionals to challenge the widespread advertisements in the era of the Feminie Mystique threatening women with what one add called the loss of "the precious air of romance" with their husbands "for lack of the intimate daintiness dependent on effective douching." The advertiser's solution was—believe it or not—douching with Lysol disinfectant to "destroy germs and odors, to give a fresh, clean and wholesome feeling" and "restore every woman's confidence in her power to please."

Dr. Bourgeault couldn't't agree with this nonsense. Douching was part of the medical profession for years, he explains, but it only developed a mass usage beginning in 1900 when a Boston physician claimed that vaginal douching was a good form of birth control. As Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman learned the hard way, discussing birth control in public was a crime in this era, and this particular doctor was hounded out of the profession for violating public decency. Nevertheless, the rumor of an accessible and discrete form of birth control, especially for middle class women, set off a popular wave of usage as word spread "via the grape vine, back fence and sewing circle."

Not only is douching ineffective as a method of birth control, but, Dr. Bourgault concluded, "douches are unnecessary for women—maiden, wife or mother." He added that women who feel "unclean" without their daily douche are trying to serve some "emotional need."

If disgust and ignorance about the functioning of your own reproductive organs counts as an "emotional need" then the anti-feminist logic of the device should be apparent to us. So too does it reveal how the origins of the term "douchebag" as an insult stems from not just contemptuousness towards women's anatomy and sexual health, but misunderstanding.

Of course, in today's medical advice world the "usually" in the "usually don't" claim has been unequivocally removed. Writing in 2004, Dr. Mary Ann Iannachione states it clearly: "douching is unnecessary and carries inherent risks... leaving women at greater risk of upper and lower vaginal tract infections." Herein we find the link between the medical appliance, the outdated practice of feminine hygiene, and the white men we recognize today as "douchebags." They are both, it bears repeating, useless sexist tools.

Conclusion: "Don't Be a Douchebag"

What should you do if you know or even care about someone who is douchebag? Well, apart from some kind of systemic forced re-education, I suggest you follow the rules established for Schmidt, the resident comic douchebag on the TV show New Girl. Every time Schmidt demands his First World privilege, his roommates cry foul and order him to stuff cash in the "douche jar," thereby collecting a punitive tax on the rich and douchey that can be used to subsidizes the house beer fund. Perhaps there is a lesson for social policy in this gag?

Of course there is! Our policy attack on social douchebaggery can begin with with taxes on yachts, Segways, private planes and vacation homes. Are you a single dude with more than one car? Pay up. Do you ride to work on the Google bus? You should pay taxes to San Francisco for the roads and bus stops your privatized mass transportation relies upon. Best of all, we can stop calling the threat to raise taxes on the rich "class warfare" and just start calling it the "douchebag tax." That's a ballot measure we can all get behind!

Of course, some of you are thinking, do we really need a white racial slur? Is not the vision of equality that we should aspire towards a world without the N-word or douchebag? Maybe. Maybe it is. But as everyone who is not colorblind can plainly see, this is not yet that day.

For the time being, this is the vernacular critique of whiteness that we've always needed, and its been right before our eyes all along. The term douchebag, again used as we already use it, has the power to name white ruling class power and white sexist privilege as noxious, selfish, toxic, foolish, and above all, dangerous.

Since the coming of colorblindness as the official ideology of neoliberal racism, we have needed a precise term with which to recognize and ridicule white privilege when we see it. So we here it is. Use it, and give the douchebags the thing they are always imagining anyways: reverse discrimination.

Michael Mark Cohen works as a professor of American

This was PAINFUL to read.

[Don't argue with me, don't call me names, don't tell me that I can't stop you, don't say I'm a racist pig, don't threaten that you'll sue me and take away my badge. Don't scream at me that you pay my salary, and don't even think of aggressively walking towards me.]

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A teenager is fatally shot by a police officer; the police are accused of being bloodthirsty, trigger-happy murderers; riots erupt. This, we are led to believe, is the way of things in America.

It is also a terrible calumny; cops are not murderers. No officer goes out in the field wishing to shoot anyone, armed or unarmed. And while they're unlikely to defend it quite as loudly during a time of national angst like this one, people who work in law enforcement know they are legally vested with the authority to detain suspects — an authority that must sometimes be enforced. Regardless of what happened with Mike Brown, in the overwhelming majority of cases it is not the cops, but the people they stop, who can prevent detentions from turning into tragedies.

Working the street, I can't even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my safety zone, and outright challenges to my authority. In the vast majority of such encounters, I was able to peacefully resolve the situation without using force. Cops deploy their training and their intuition creatively, and I wielded every trick in my arsenal, including verbal judo, humor, warnings and ostentatious displays of the lethal (and nonlethal) hardware resting in my duty belt. One time, for instance, my partner and I faced a belligerent man who had doused his car with gallons of gas and was about to create a firebomb at a busy mall filled with holiday shoppers. The potential for serious harm to the bystanders would have justified deadly force. Instead, I distracted him with a hook about his family and loved ones, and he disengaged without hurting anyone. Every day cops show similar restraint and resolve incidents that could easily end up in serious injuries or worse.

Sometimes, though, no amount of persuasion or warnings work on a belligerent person; that's when cops have to use force, and the results can be tragic. We are still learning what transpired between Officer Darren Wilson and Brown, but in most cases it's less ambiguous — and officers are rarely at fault. When they use force, they are defending their, or the public's, safety.

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don't want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don't argue with me, don't call me names, don't tell me that I can't stop you, don't say I'm a racist pig, don't threaten that you'll sue me and take away my badge. Don't scream at me that you pay my salary, and don't even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

Don't argue with me, don't call me names, don't tell me that I can't stop you, don't say I'm a racist pig, don't threaten that you'll sue me and take away my badge. Don't scream at me that you pay my salary, and don't even think of aggressively walking towards me.

I know it is scary for people to be stopped by cops. I also understand the anger and frustration if people believe they have been stopped unjustly or without a reason. I am aware that corrupt and bully cops exist. When it comes to police misconduct, I side with the ACLU: Having worked as an internal affairs investigator, I know that some officers engage in unprofessional and arrogant behavior; sometimes they behave like criminals themselves. I also believe every cop should use a body camera to record interactions with the community at all times. Every police car should have a video recorder. (This will prevent a situation like Mike Brown's shooting, about which conflicting and self-serving statements allow people to believe what they want.) And you don't have to submit to an illegal stop or search. You can refuse consent to search your car or home if there's no warrant (though a pat-down is still allowed if there is cause for suspicion). Always ask the officer whether you are under detention or are free to leave. Unless the officer has a legal basis to stop and search you, he or she must let you go. Finally, cops are legally prohibited from using excessive force: The moment a suspect submits and stops resisting, the officers must cease use of force.

But if you believe (or know) that the cop stopping you is violating your rights or is acting like a bully, I guarantee that the situation will not become easier if you show your anger and resentment. Worse, initiating a physical confrontation is a sure recipe for getting hurt. Police are legally permitted to use deadly force when they assess a serious threat to their or someone else's life. Save your anger for later, and channel it appropriately. Do what the officer tells you to and it will end safely for both of you. We have a justice system in which you are presumed innocent; if a cop can do his or her job unmolested, that system can run its course. Later, you can ask for a supervisor, lodge a complaint or contact civil rights organizations if you believe your rights were violated. Feel free to sue the police! Just don't challenge a cop during a stop.

An average person cannot comprehend the risks and has no true understanding of a cop's job. Hollywood and television stereotypes of the police are cartoons in which fearless super cops singlehandedly defeat dozens of thugs, shooting guns out of their hands. Real life is different. An average cop is always concerned with his or her safety and tries to control every encounter. That is how we are trained. While most citizens are courteous and law abiding, the subset of people we generally interact with everyday are not the genteel types. You don't know what is in my mind when I stop you. Did I just get a radio call of a shooting moments ago? Am I looking for a murderer or an armed fugitive? For you, this might be a "simple" traffic stop, for me each traffic stop is a potentially dangerous encounter. Show some empathy for an officer's safety concerns. Don't make our job more difficult than it already is.

Community members deserve courtesy, respect and professionalism from their officers. Every person stopped by a cop should feel safe instead of feeling that their wellbeing is in jeopardy. Shouldn't the community members extend the same courtesy to their officers and project that the officer's safety is not threatened by their actions?

FUCK THIS GUY! FUCK THIS GUY RIGHT IN THE FUCKING NECK!

Idiot Extraordinaire isn't even enough for this. This guy's a fucking sociopath piece of shit who needs to be decked right in the fucking jaw!

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Imagine you are in recovery from labor, lying in bed, holding your infant. In your arms you cradle a stunningly beautiful, perfect little being. Completely innocent and totally vulnerable, your baby is entirely dependent on you to make all the choices that will define their life for many years to come. They are wholly unaware (at least, for now) that you would do anything and everything in your power to protect them from harm and keep them safe. You are calm, at peace.

Suddenly, the doctor comes in. He looks at you sternly, gloved hands reaching for your baby insistently. "It's time for your child's treatment," he explains from beneath a white breathing mask, shattering your calm. Clutching your baby protectively, you eye the doctor with suspicion.

You ask him what it's for.

"Oh, just standard practice. It will help him or her be recognized and get along more easily with others who've already received the same treatment. The chance of side effects is extremely small." This raises the hairs on the back of your neck, and your protective instinct kicks your alarm response up a notch.

"Side effects?"

The doctor waves his hand dismissively. "Oh, in 1 or 2 percent of cases, we see long-term negative reactions to this," he says with a hint of distaste. "It leads to depression, social ostracism, difficulty finding or keeping a job. Those with negative reactions often become subject to intense discrimination in society. Suicide is not uncommon." At your look of alarm, he smiles again, reassuringly. "But as I said, this happens in very few cases. The overwhelming likelihood," he says as he cracks his knuckles, "is that this will make life simpler and more comfortable for your child to interact with others." He tries to assuage your concerns, but cold equations, percentage points, and population counts dance in your mind.

"Is it really necessary? If we don't take the treatment, will my baby get sick?"

The doctor flashes a paternalistic smile. "No, no ... but your child would lose the social advantage this treatment offers. If you choose not to take it, others who have may not accept your child as easily. Virtually every child receives it, so it would be very unusual not to," he says matter-of-factly. "This is a standard practice. People just wouldn't understand why you didn't go along with it," he says, casting a judgmental glance.

Would you consent to this treatment for your child? A good chance for improved social privilege, with a comparatively tiny risk of negative (albeit potentially catastrophic) consequences? Or would the stakes be too high: Russian roulette with your baby's life?

It's a strange hypothetical scenario to imagine. Pressure to accept a medical treatment, no tangible proof of its necessity, its only benefits conferred by the fact that everyone else already has it, and coming at a terrible expense to those 1 or 2 percent who have a bad reaction. It seems unlikely that doctors, hospitals, parents, or society in general would tolerate a standard practice like this.

Except they already do. The imaginary treatment I described above is real. Obstetricians, doctors, and midwives commit this procedure on infants every single day, in every single country. In reality, this treatment is performed almost universally without even asking for the parents' consent, making this practice all the more insidious. It's called infant gender assignment: When the doctor holds your child up to the harsh light of the delivery room, looks between its legs, and declares his opinion: It's a boy or a girl, based on nothing more than a cursory assessment of your offspring's genitals.

We tell our children, "You can be anything you want to be." We say, "A girl can be a doctor, a boy can be a nurse," but why in the first place must this person be a boy and that person be a girl? Your infant is an infant. Your baby knows nothing of dresses and ties, of makeup and aftershave, of the contemporary social implications of pink and blue. As a newborn, your child's potential is limitless. The world is full of possibilities that every person deserves to be able to explore freely, receiving equal respect and human dignity while maximizing happiness through individual expression.

With infant gender assignment, in a single moment your baby's life is instantly and brutally reduced from such infinite potentials down to one concrete set of expectations and stereotypes, and any behavioral deviation from that will be severely punished—both intentionally through bigotry, and unintentionally through ignorance. That doctor (and the power structure behind him) plays a pivotal role in imposing those limits on helpless infants, without their consent, and without your informed consent as a parent. This issue deserves serious consideration by every parent, because no matter what gender identity your child ultimately adopts, infant gender assignment has effects that will last through their whole life.

We see more and more and more high-profile stories about transgender people in the news. The shame and the mysticism surrounding them is fading at an exponential rate, as public consciousness matures from the depths of exploiting puerile stereotypes and bigoted joke depictions of the trans experience into a more complex awareness of, and sensitivity to, the humanity and emotions of non-cis people. Every parent today knows there is a chance their child might be transgender. A small chance, perhaps, but a chance higher than zero.

If a child of any minority status (be it sexual, racial, ability, religious, etc.) is subjected to slurs or physical harassment at school, we do not view the emotional and physical injuries as the unfortunate but inevitable result of that child's minority status. Rather, we correctly lay the blame where it belongs, on the wrong actions of hateful bullies whose wilful decisions were responsible for causing the pain.

Only a cruel parent would punish their son by making him wear a dress in public, or punish their daughter by shaving her head. That's psychological abuse. But for gender nonconforming kids, that's the everyday reality of their lives. We know transgender people are far more likely to be depressed, with a heartbreaking 41 percent rate of suicide attempts, nearly nine times the social average. That's not evidence of mental illness, it's evidence of trauma and distress. They're not miserable because they're transgender, they're miserable as the result of being assigned the wrong gender at birth.

Infant gender assignment is a wilful decision, and as a maturing society we need to judge whether it might be a wrong action. Why must we force this on kids at birth? What is achieved, besides reinforcing tradition? What could be the harm in letting a child wait to declare for themself who they are, once they're old enough (which is generally believed to happen around age 2 or 3)? Clearly, most children will still turn out like we'd expect, but it's unlikely the extra freedom would harm them. On the other hand, we do know the massive harm caused to some children by the removal of that freedom.

As a parent or potential parent, would you love your children less if they are transgender? Would you love them more if they aren't? If you answered those questions with the decency and compassion that go hand-in-hand with unconditional parental love, then I ask you to please take that thought process one step further and consider the intense psychological harm it might cause your child before you allow the doctor to decide for both of you whether your baby will be a boy or a girl. Sure, it usually works out for the best—but sometimes, it goes horribly wrong. Just because an infant may survive being left alone in a car on a hot day, while the parent runs to the store, doesn't mean that parent made the right decision—in fact, they made a dangerous decision and just got lucky with the outcome.

Is it better to play the odds, or play it safe? Think carefully. Infant gender assignment might just be Russian roulette with your baby's life.

Christin Scarlett Milloy is a human rights activist, writer, and web developer based in Toronto, Canada.

Apparently basic fucking anatomy is sexist/cis scum.

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Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee argued Wednesday the Republican effort to sue President Obama is nothing but a veiled attempt to impeach him — something Democrats never did to President George W. Bush:

I ask my colleagues to oppose this resolution for it is in fact a veiled attempt at impeachment and it undermines the law that allows a president to do his job. A historical fact: President Bush pushed this nation into a war that had little to do with apprehending terrorists. We did not seek an impeachment of President Bush, because as an executive, he had his authority. President Obama has the authority.

Except former Rep. Dennis Kucinich did actually introduce a bill to impeach Bush in 2008 — and Jackson Lee actually was a co-sponsor to the legislation.

What a lying sack of shit. Then again, that's what politicians do.

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The Hartford state's attorney has rejected an arrest warrant submitted by Enfield police to charge one of their own officers with third-degree assault and fabricating evidence.

The seven-page arrest warrant application submitted by Lt. Lawrence Curtis concluded that Officer Matthew Worden hit suspect Mark Maher with punches that "were neither necessary nor needed" during an arrest on April 1.

Hartford State's Attorney Gail Hardy rejected the arrest warrant application late last week, concluding that although Worden's actions might violate police department rules they did not rise to the level of criminal prosecution.

"Although striking Maher may have violated Enfield Police Department's use of force policies, Worden's conduct seemed to be aimed at an attempt to restrain Maher who was resisting officers' attempts to handcuff him, rather than an intention to inflict physical harm," Hardy concluded.

Curtis based his conclusion on interviews with four officers who responded to the town boat launch on the report of suspicious activity, a taped interview with Maher and a review of the video camera footage from two cruisers.

According to the arrest warrant application, Worden told Curtis that he hit Maher twice in the shoulder area because he was resisting arrest and that Maher was "tensing his arm" and "clenching his fists" while Worden was patting him down on the hood of a cruiser.

Worden told Curtis that he delivered two closed fist punches aimed at Maher's upper right arm "to disrupt the nerves and incapacitate the muscles so the arms could be controlled." Worden said Maher was thrashing on the ground after officers took him down and that "this thrashing caused one of the punches to hit Maher in the right side of his forehead above the eye," the application states.

The application states Curtis concluded that the video did not show Maher resisting arrest and that at one point it shows Worden, while Maher is on the ground with one arm pinned behind him, stopping to adjust the glove on his right hand before delivering two of the four punches he threw.

In her letter rejecting the arrest warrant Hardy said the video "depicts many moving parts where it is extremely difficult to keep up with everything that is going on with all parties."

Hardy said the video shows another person "slip" something to Maher which could be seen by the officers as threatening. The officers searched the other person and then Maher. Hardy said that as Maher was facing the hood Worden was trying to pat him down and at that point Maher was taken to the ground and there was a "pile-up."

Hardy said the video shows Maher clearly continuing to resist arrest. Hardy acknowledges that Worden can be seen throwing punches but that the fact Worden claims he threw only two when the video shows he threw four is "factually insignificant."

Hardy also concluded that it would be difficult for the state to prove that Worden intended to cause physical harm to Maher.

"Although the strikes could be considered unnecessary the use of force in this regard, was not more than that necessary and reasonable to bring Maher (who continued moving about while on the ground) into compliance," Hardy wrote.

Hardy also rejected the fabricating evidence claim, saying Curtis' analysis of the video is clearly "erroneous." Hardy concluded that the discrepancy in how many times Worden said he hit Maher and where he said he hit him weren't significant.

Hardy said Worden wrote in his report that he hit Maher, called for medical attention and stayed while he was treated.

Enfield Police Chief Carl Sferrazza said his department did its job in thoroughly investigating the incident as a potential crime.

"We conducted our own criminal investigation and reviewed all of the statements and evidence and believed we had probable cause to submit an arrest warrant," Sferrazza said. "Once we submitted the arrest warrant we did our job."

Sferrazza said the internal affairs investigation of Worden has resumed. That investigation was placed on hold a few months ago when police sent an unsigned copy of the arrest warrant application to the Hartford state's attorney's office. A signed copy of the warrant was submitted to Hardy on July 10 and was rejected six days later.

Maher was charged with resisting arrest. His attorney has asked the court to dismiss the charges because of the investigation into Worden's conduct. A hearing is scheduled in Superior Court in Enfield for Aug. 18.

I know we're not doing BBE this week, but maybe next week this should be covered.

Even when good cops try to stop bad cops, they're stopped by the higher ups.

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BANTAM >> A Thomaston man is accused of stabbing a watermelon with a butcher knife and leaving it in the kitchen for a woman to see, in what police describe as a "passive aggressive" swipe that landed him in custody. She was unnerved by what she perceived to be a menacing gesture directed at her and reported it to police.

On Monday, Carmine Cervellino, 49, of 126 Hickory Hill Road, was arraigned in Bantam Superior Court on charges of second-degree threatening and disorderly conduct. He is at liberty after posting a $500 bond and had his case referred to Family Services.

The woman said she felt Cervellino was resorting to "passive aggressive" tactics to "intimidate her because he is angry at her," Thomaston Officer Keith Koval wrote in a report.

Initially, the woman came to police headquarters the morning of July 4 to report finding a plastic bag of marijuana and a pill container — with her name — which had Percocet and an unidentified blue pill inside. It was hidden in Cervellino's tool box, she told police.

She snatched them up, took pictures with a cell phone camera and stowed them away in her room. Later, when the woman returned home, she found the drugs missing, she claims, but she showed police the photos. Cervillino is not facing any drug charges.

The woman returned a second time and was greeted by the sight of a watermelon, pierced by Cervillino's large butcher knife, sitting on the kitchen counter top, police said.

Cervillino walked in seconds later, and without saying anything, began slicing pieces of the watermelon. The woman snapped a picture of the knife and turned it over to police.

Connecticut never ceases to disappoint me. Seriously.

[These three amazing children are going to die.]

So, my friend Matt is doing work for a charity and I figured I'd help him out. I'm going to copy/paste what he's spreading around, and I'm hoping that even if this doesn't bring in the donations, it might at least help spread the word around so others can spread the word.

So this is something very personal to me and I feel the need to share it. Today I'm writing about three fantastic boys. Archie, George, and Isaac. They are incredibly adorable and they can light up a room with smiles just by their presence alone. Archie is a man of 1000 questions and will not hesitate to ask them all at once. George and Isaac, the twins, on the other hand would rather trap you in a room and refuse to let you out until you give them money (this happened to me yesterday lol).

These three amazing children are going to die.

All 3 brothers suffer from a disease known as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. It is a genetic disease that currently has a 100% fatality rate. When a child is diagnosed with his disease it means that their muscles do not produce a certain protein that is used for them to function properly. As a result the muscles in their bodies will slowly begin to shut down. Usually around age 10 they are no longer able to walk. A few years later they lose the ability to use their arms and before long they are paralyzed from the neck down. They'll be hooked up to machines to help them breathe but before long, usually before the age of 20, the most important muscle in the human body: the heart, stops working.

There is no cure. There is no treatment. Every day the parents of these children wake up and go upstairs uncertain that their children will still be alive. A heart attack can happen at any time because of this disease.

Join Our Boys is a Charitable Trust that has been set up to fund research to people who are 99% certain that they hold the key to unlocking and curing this disease. However governments and other bodies are not providing the funds for this research. Join Our Boys was created in Roscommon, Ireland where the reaction has been utterly breathtaking. Back on May 1st, the twins birthday, the entire town was turned Orange (all 3 of the boy's favorite color) and there was a massive concert including local acts and Jedward (if you don't know who they are, look them up). At one point #joinourboys was the #2 trend on Twitter WORLDWIDE.

One of the other goals of the trust is to build a house that is designed for families with children who are suffering from DMD. The house is estimated to cost €1.2 Million and so far over €450,000 has been raised in support of this family and all other families that are battling this monster of a disease.

Last night, July 19th, Paula and Padraic were on a National Irish TV show called Saturday Night with Miriam where they were able to tell their story to the entire country of Ireland. But that won't be enough. This needs to go global and I know that the internet is the fastest way to do this.

I'm not going to beg for donations or anything I would just really appreciate if everyone could use social media and just spread the word about this horrible illness and this tragic story.

Learn more about these kids and the horrible disease they have at www.joinourboys.org
"Like" The Facebook Page
"Like" The Facebook Events Page (Fundraising Events are possible to happen around the world!)
Follow the Twitter Account
Follow the Instagram Account

I'll end this with the tagline that Paula uses for all of her JOB posts

Keep Moving
Keep Marching

A 30 minute interview with the Parents of the children
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Like I said, even if you guys can't actually donate, hopefully we can spread the word. I really want to help him out as much as I can and hey, maybe it's a good chance to prove that libertarians care about charity.

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A well-known Israeli politician and parliament member has branded  Palestinians as terrorists, saying mothers of all Palestinians should also be killed during the ongoing Israeli assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, Daily Sabah reported.

Ayelet Shaked of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to "little snakes."

"They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists," Shaked said, adding, "They are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists."

The remarks are considered as a call for genocide as she declared that all Palestinians are Israel's enemies and must be killed.

On Monday (July 7) Shaked quoted this on her Facebook page:

"Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there."

The development comes as many officials from various countries have slammed Israel's  airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. The Turkish prime minister is the latest to condemn the offensive, accusing Israel of massacring the Palestinians.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lashed out at Israel, saying it is committing state terrorism against the Palestinians in the region. Speaking in parliament, he also questioned the world's silence toward Tel Aviv's ongoing atrocities.

Reacting to Shaked's remarks, the Turkish premier said Israel's policy in Gaza is no different than Hitler's mentality.

"An Israeli woman said Palestinian mothers should be killed, too. And she's a member of the Israeli parliament. What is the difference between this mentality and Hitler's?" Erdogan asked.

The developments come as the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has recently said women and children make up a sizeable number of Palestinian fatalities caused by Israeli attacks on the besieged region.

Ayelet Shaked represents the far-right Jewish Home party in the Knesset.

This woman is a vile fucking savage.

I don't give a fuck what your opinion is on the Israel/Palestine conflict, this shit is unacceptable in the civilized world and is equal to the mentality of someone like Adolf Hitler.

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[yt]WOekY4FiGjU[/yt]

He blames the anti-cop mentality on "young black men growing up without fathers."

I've heard some dumb shit before, but this might take the cake.

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(CNN) -- Chicago's police superintendent lashed out at what he called lax state and federal gun laws after a violent Fourth of July weekend that saw more than 60 people shot and nine killed in a city already known for frequent shootings.

"There has to come a tipping point where this changes," Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said Monday of the violence. "The illogical nature of what's happening here -- that government can intercede and prevent this from happening is overwhelming. And I refuse to think otherwise in a great country like America that we can continue to allow this to happen -- not just on a state, but on a federal level."

McCarthy, reciting the criminal histories of several of the suspects in this weekend's violence, noted gang members face tougher consequences for losing their guns from their gangs than from authorities.

"Possession of a loaded firearm -- it's not even considered a violent felony in the state of Illinois for sentencing purposes -- which is why you see the revolving door," he said.

Among the suspects: a man wanted in connection with a murder who has 21 prior arrests, and another with six previous arrests, including one this year for aggravated assault for discharging a weapon.

"How this individual is out on bond is beyond me," McCarthy said.

The incidents include eight times in which police fired guns at suspects or were fired on, McCarthy told reporters. In two of those incidents, police shot and killed the suspects, both of whom were 16.

McCarthy said the violence unraveled a string of successes by police in suppressing gun violence this year. The city saw 21 shooting incidents on Sunday alone, he said, although three of them may have been self-inflicted.

Marlin Williams' niece Tonya Gunn was among the nine victims, killed in a drive-by shooting Sunday night while she was cooking food on the grill. Her 11-year-old daughter witnessed the shooting.

"I feel hurt," Williams said Monday. "I will never be able to see my niece again."
Reports: Dozens shot in Chicago

In 2013, 12 people died and 75 were injured during the four-day Independence Day holiday, according to CNN affiliate WLS.

The holiday shootings follow a week in which Chicago had 52 shooting incidents, according to Police Department statistics. This year, as of June 29, Chicago police had recorded 880 shooting incidents, an average of nearly five a day.

McCarthy said Monday, "It's Groundhog Day here in Chicago."

Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the violence "simply unacceptable" and said the city needs to go beyond policing and provide youths "alternatives to the street."

McCarthy said police will continue a summer program to flood high-violence areas with police, but he said that without stronger gun laws, police will continue to face an uphill battle.

"These offenders need to be held fully accountable for violent behavior to prevent them from ending up back on the street too soon," he said, adding, "There's too many guns coming in and too little punishment going out."

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For two groups who share a strong antipathy toward the current president, libertarians and conservatives sure don't agree on much when it comes to Barack Obama.

On foreign policy, neoconservatives tend to think Obama is an appeasement-addicted driver of America's perilous withdrawal from the world, while libertarians portray him as essentially serving out the third and fourth terms of George W. Bush. When the president announced in May that U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan would be reduced to 9,800, Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol called the plan "unbelievably irresponsible" and "totally crazy," while reason's own Nick Gillespie lamented that "Obama gives 10,000 men opportunity to be last man to die for our mistake."

Depending on how you view the world, the president is alternately prostrating himself before Vladimir Putin, as in a recent National Review cover illustration, or engaging in a campaign of "subvert and overthrow," as at Antiwar.com. He is waging a "foreign policy of retreat" if you ask Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, or one of "bellicose interventionism" if you're listening to the Ron Paul Institute's Daniel McAdams. He is imperiously refusing to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, or he is recklessly releasing Gitmo prisoners into the wild.

This interpretative disconnect does not stop at the water's edge. Obama has been a profound disappointment to civil libertarians who hate the drug war (see reason's October 2011 cover: "Bummer"), and an active encourager of marijuana culture, according to Sean Hannity's recent "Stoned in America" series on Fox News. Fiscal hawks condemn the president as a profligate promise-breaker when it comes to the national purse; New York Times columnist David Brooks counters that Obama is "the most realistic and reasonable major player in Washington," and that "if he had some support" on long-term debt reduction issues, "he'd do the right thing."

It's always a healthy exercise to check your premises and examine whether the people you disagree with may be onto something. But even if you're 100 percent secure in your assessment of the commander in chief, here's a potentially awful scenario to consider: What if Barack Obama turns out to be the most libertarian president of the post-Cold War era?

Before you go screaming for the exits, let me quickly stress that "most libertarian" within a small group of people does not equal "libertarian"—just as being the tallest kindergartner does not mean you can dunk a basketball.

Which is kind of the point: The default stance of the modern president is to be profoundly interventionist at home and abroad. Given a political world in which it's plausible that either Hillary Clinton or someone like Jeb Bush might take residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2017, it's sobering to reflect that Obama's record on a few key issues-or at least America's record, while Obama held office-may end up looking comparatively less interventionist than most.

Take foreign policy. Libertarian critics are right to point out that the president acted illegally in bombing Libya in 2011, was clearly ready to repeat the mistake in Syria in 2013, and surged troop levels in Afghanistan to no long-lasting effect except for the U.S. soldiers maimed or killed. In a May 28 commencement speech at West Point, the president unveiled what was billed as a "doctrine," but was more properly received as an irritating, incoherent series of rhetorical attacks against strawman isolationists and ultra-interventionists. "President Obama succeeded where all his previous efforts had failed," Patrick Buchanan cracked afterward in his syndicated column. "He brought us together. Nobody seems to have liked the speech."

But surely the message fell flat in part because American ears are unused to hearing about the messy, patriotically unsatisfying business of winding down unpopular wars.

"Since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences," Obama said, accurately. "Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans."

George H.W. Bush led the Gulf War. Bill Clinton patrolled its aftermath, initiated a series of small interventions around the globe, and used American force to cement the breakup of Yugoslavia and the eventual dethroning of Slobodan Milosevic. George W. Bush made the fateful decision to invade Iraq, to nation-build in both Baghdad and Kabul, and to launch a vague war on terror that will not end until Congress repeals the September 14, 2001, Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

Obama, by comparison, helped wind down the two occupations he inherited, pricked Libya exclusively with bombs, and bowed down when public opinion came out heavily against his plans to bomb Syria. Yes, he expanded his predecessor's dirty wars and took the unprecedented step of droning Americans to death without due process, but he still might come out looking like the least interventionist of the bunch.

This is especially true when you consider the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton is the most hawkish Democrat since Joe Lieberman left the party, and she rues the day the president blinked on Syria. Of the putative Republican establishment hopefuls, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is a chest-thumper who complains that Obama "doesn't seem to understand that we are still at war," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is campaigning against what he calls a "dangerous…strain of libertarianism," and Jeb Bush is warning people about "American passivity" and GOP "neo-isolationism." The only exception to business-as-usual Republican bellicosity is coming from Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.); if he doesn't win the nomination, the GOP is almost sure to elect someone more hawkish than Obama.

What about domestic civil liberties? Yes, Obama's Justice Department raided more medical marijuana dispensaries than Bush's ever dreamed of, while the president himself literally laughed out loud at the prospect of legalization for recreational use. Yet the beginning of the drug war's end is happening on his watch, thanks in part to his sporadically benign neglect. The federal government could have launched a foolhardy new crackdown after Colorado and Washington state legalized pot, but did not. Attorney General Eric Holder has at least begun talking about the need for legal pot businesses to be able to access the normal banking system without constant fear of federal sanction. And after an extremely slow start using his clemency powers, the president has issued criteria for jailed nonviolent drug offenders to be eligible. More than 18,000 prisoners have applied, but the Republican-led House of Representatives passed an amendment in May preventing the use of federal funds for screening applications.

Again, the president's most likely successors not named Rand Paul are virtually certain to be worse. Hillary Clinton has said that the U.S. can't legalize drugs "because there is just too much money in it," and spent her time as secretary of state warning Latin American countries that the best approach to their drug policy problems is more state violence. Chris Christie is one of the bigger opponents of medical marijuana in the country. Marco Rubio said in a May interview, "I don't think there is a responsible way to recreationally use marijuana." And Jeb Bush was an ardent drug warrior as Florida governor.

Even federal spending may end up going up less overall under Obama than under his predecessor, though it should be stressed that a) George W. Bush's spending record was truly awful, b) much of "Obama's" post-2009 spending restraint originated with opposition Republicans, and c) he is leaving some future massive balloon payments in the forms of Obamacare and money-sucking entitlement systems that he failed to tackle.

In many important ways-especially on Obamacare, domestic surveillance, and Keynesian economics-Barack Obama will rightly go down as a solidly anti-libertarian president. It's a pathetic statement about contemporary American politics that a few short years from now, libertarians may start to feel nostalgic for the guy.

Obama the most libertarian president since the Cold War?

I find that a little hard to believe.

Source

A California Highway Patrol (CHP) program aimed at identifying drug users has been using the homeless as subjects in training exercises for officers. The program has been ongoing for several years, but those who have participated claim that they have exchanged participation for freedom from arrest.

The Drug Recognition Evaluator Program (DRE), for which the CHP is the statewide coordinator, is a training process designed to teach officers to identify what substance a person is on—meth, heroin, marijuana, or just alcohol. Ordinarily people learn this by being college students, but the CHP has seen fit to come up with a formal program.

"What makes the class very effective and in a lot of ways unique is that not only is it comprised of a classroom portion, but there is also a clinical side," said Sergeant Gilbert Peirsol, the DRE instructor in Fresno, CA. "They actually have hands-on training in evaluating people under the influences of controlled substances."

Under the police's discretion, and provided there's probable cause, DRE officers will pull up to someone who is perhaps walking too close to the highway, carrying an open container, or seemingly under the influence. Thanks to a new city ordinance, officers in Fresno can also stop someone for having a shopping cart on the grounds of probable theft.

Calvin Utley, 25, a "scrapper" who frequents a recycling center near the CHP office, says people are given the option of either participating in the testing, or getting booked in jail downtown. He said they pick up stragglers around the freeway. "They tend to get an ultimatum, whether they want to go to jail or go get tested," he told me.

Peirsol says Fresno is a prime area for the certification process, and the DRE program as a whole has set the precedent for various agencies from around the world. Trainees come to the CHP to learn the steps involved in drug recognition and identification at a few different sites throughout California.

It begins with a week-long classroom instruction, followed by field testing. This is where the residents, homeless, transients, or anyone suspected of being under the influence are used in the DRE program. Trainees don't have to go far to find them.

A block north of the CHP office is Motel Drive, a desolate strip of motels, homeless encampments, and liquor stores that run parallel to Highway 99. "The area that surrounds our office is historically known for drug activity," said Peirsol.

Within the community around Motel Drive, there are some backers of the DRE program, but it's a divisive issue.

Forty-one-year-old Shannon Downey, a homeless woman who resides in the area, told me, "I've been asked to do this, and I refused, because I wasn't on parole or probation. Nor was I high or holding any drugs."

Downey believes that the process of picking up people for the DRE program could potentially be useful, but that police officers are exploiting the often powerless homeless population.

"It's a free pass if you're out here being stupid, but it's kind of cheap labor in a way, to use people they know have to say yes. So it goes both ways," said Downey, referring to the same ultimatum Utley described. Many homeless mention being given this option, but. Peirsol asserts that it's not the case, that regardless of their participation, those in question are charged and prosecuted.

"We don't do a lot of bartering," Peirsol said. "It's illegal. What we're arresting the folks for is illegal. Health and safety codes say you can't be under the influence. If I see signs and symptoms of drug influence, you can be arrested," he added.

Charlotte Ward, who has been homeless off and on for the past 20 years, was not given an option. One day while working part-time doing yard work for a local motel, she was picked up and taken to the CHP facility where they do the DRE testing.

"They just pulled up like Dukes of Hazzard and was like, 'I think you're high, and I'm gonna test you' and stuff like that. I told them I was at work, and they didn't even get me a chance," said Ward.

Ward said she had to leave all of her work tools behind, and couldn't tell her boss that she was leaving. But if she explained why she was being picked up, that would have caused another set of problems. "I was humiliated because I was at work. I could have lost the job due to them."

She added, "I felt like I was under their shoe, like some gum."

Letting people choose to be either booked or suddenly included in a training program sounds like a devil's bargain, but the leniency could help out with overcrowding in the California's prison system, which leads the nation in locking up drug offenders. Combined with the recent California measure to reduce sentences for those committing non\violent crimes, which are often drug-related, the effort could be a step away from hard-line positions left over from the heyday of the war on drugs.

Utley remains ambivalent. He described the experiences of some acquaintances and told me, "They feel it's better than going to jail. But also they feel their rights are kind of being violated, you know?" He added, "I feel like they should be put in front of the judge before all that."

The sooner California slides into the ocean and becomes Atlantis 2, the better.

Seriously, fuck California.

Source

Atlanta-based left-wing radical talk show host Mike Malloy says that if he sees a long gun open carrier, he's going to do everything in his power to cause a panicked and potentially deadly police response:

I guess what I'll do if I'm ever in that situation and I see one of these half-witted yahoos walking in with a weapon, high-caliber rifle like that, I'll just put on a berserk act.I will just start screaming Gun! Gun! Gun! Watch out, everybody hit the deck! Guns! Guns! Everybody! And then dial 911 and I will say, shots fired, which will bring every g**-damned cop within 15 miles. And then the half-wits with the long guns are going to panic and they're going to run out of the store and if that rifle isn't shouldered properly, the cop is going to take a look at that and put a bullet right in their forehead.

Make sure you follow the link (above) to NewsBusters where they have the audio of Malloy's rant. He's... something else.

It's quite apparent in the segment that Malloy takes great delight in facilitating a situation where gun owners (whom he hates) will die at the hands of law enforcement officers (whom he apparently hates more).

What Malloy is talking about is akin to "SWATing." SWATing is when someone spoofs a 911 call from a location and claims that someone inside has committed some act of violence—typically murder—in order to draw a massive police response to that location.

Amped-up law enforcement officers (including SWAT/ERT tactical teams, which is how the practice earned its name) then respond with everything they have, expecting to face an armed madman who has already killed. In most instances of SWATing, the police respond to find either an empty home, or a clueless (and unarmed) victim, who is quickly released once the location is cleared and the officers realize that they've been fooled, at which point they go after the SWATer with a vengeance.

It's shockingly easy to do, and many people, from journalists to celebrities, have been victims of SWATing. To date, I'm unaware of anyone being injured or killed by officers over-reacting to a SWATing call... but Malloy's sick idea, broadcast to literally dozens of his fans, amplifies the possibility of violence by calling police to a location where he knows someone is armed, is something far more deadly.

Malloy's plot is to intentionally incite a public panic, then a false report to police of shots being fired.  He's setting up a situation where  responding officers are assured of finding someone with a weapon. His plan ramps up the panic levels of the public, the open carrier, and the responding police to the breaking point. One  mistake, one misinterpreted move, could lead to poorly-trained, heavily-armed officers gunning down not just a frightened open carrier who only intended to make a political statement, but innocent bystanders downrange.

Sympathetic fire is a real and commonly phenomenon. If one officer in a tactical unit opens fire, it is common for surrounding officers to impulsively follow the first officer's lead, even if it was a mistake. The hundreds of rounds fired in two separate instances during the debacle that was the Boston Marathon bomber hunt is a perfect example of this sort incident, but is not unusual.

That Malloy open fantasizes about an open carrier being gunned down in a crisis of his making is very disturbing. It amazes me that a man championing such violence has a syndicated radio show, and perhaps that says much about both the terrestrial and satellite radio stations carrying his message, and a progressive Malloy audience apparently drawn to the idea of tricking law enforcement officers in murdering those that hold differing political views.

A gun control nut who wants to have men with guns kill people who believe everyone should be allowed to carry a gun.

Yeah, I don't think anyone else can even remotely qualify for IE compared to this fucking psychopath.

Basically, the opposite of the "things that piss me off" thread. As libertarians, we tend to get pissed off a lot, so how about some positivity? Doesn't have to be anything serious at all. With that said, I'll start.

You know what makes me happy? Having a cup of Italian ice. Italian ice is delicious.