if republicans passed a law in congress declaring america a christian state, would that make it true?

would it withstand a court challenge?

i understand the underlying debate about jewishness v. democracy, and i understand that israel is going through a phase of racist nationalism. but, i have a hard time believing that this kind of anti-palestinian racism is easily abstracted to explicit support for jewishness, and everything that means.

israel is not a jewish state, but a modern secular society with some severe racial identity problems.

and, i suspect that this may backfire badly.

i don't see how a declaration of this sort would have any meaningful legal ramifications, either.

supreme court judges are not supposed to arbitrarily overturn precedent. they're supposed to actually have a good reason - a miscarriage of justice.

so, it's going to be harder to reverse roe v. wade than you think.

they're either going to have to come up with an argument as to why the ruling was wrong, which is going to be hard given that it clearly wasn't, or they're going to have to come up with something that somehow lets the state overturn a right to choose - some kind of trump card over personal autonomy. it's hard to imagine what that is.

in theory, it would be easier to legislate an end to it, and then let the court uphold the new legislation. but, if such a thing were plausible, it would be done by now.

how much money would the republicans lose in fundraising if they could actually pull this off? how many votes would drift elsewhere? it's kind of at the centre of their party.

i don't want to say you shouldn't remain vigilant, because you should. i just hardly think you should get apocalyptic about it...

we should send the refugees back to rebuild.

who else is going to do it?

and, why don't they want to?

the french and polish didn't stay in britain. they wanted to go home.

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/8xbqx3/raqqa-residents-blame-the-us-for-neglecting-the-citys-recovery

and, why does it take the fucking atheist to tell you to respect your goddamned elders?

again: russophobia is a very old term, at least as old as the victorian era, but apparently tied to the western european fear of being overrun by mongolian hordes, as a consequence of the very real mongolian invasions of the middle ages.

i first encountered the term in the 90s, when i was reading up on the great game.

and, the term "islamophobia" may very well be actually etymologically derived from it.

it seems like some people don't know who stephen cohen is.

stephen cohen is the country's leading russian-american scholar.

country's.

leading.

scholar.

and, the fact is that if you've never heard of stephen cohen, you have no business saying anything about russia at all.

(& tucker carlson is a jerk.)

you can tell me that that could have happened anywhere, and you're right, but it hasn't.

if the ndp are going to start accusing people of racism, they need to make sure their arguments are grounded, otherwise it's going to backfire. it's one thing to accuse somebody of racism when they're being racist - that will resonate. it's another to accuse somebody of being racist when they're not being racist - that will backfire. we've all been in a room with the airhead activist that thinks everything is racist - that's an experience we can all draw on, and instantly identify with. horwath wants to strenuously avoid being typecast that way.

the empirical fact is that the jane & finch area is dangerous, and that it is reasonable to take precautions before entering it. we can have a discussion about root causes and whatnot, but it's just daft to live in denial of the reality of it - or to accuse the facts of being racist.

i've only been near there once, and i was assumed to be a prostitute and nearly assaulted while hitch-hiking up wilson, near jane. the reality is that i didn't know where i was. i didn't see any signs indicating i was on jane street, and i was off it before i realized it. but, had i known where i was, i would have immediately gotten away from the area - because i would have realized that it's not a safe place for a lightish-skinned trans girl to walk around by herself.

which is what i learned, quite quickly.

as mentioned repeatedly, i don't think of marijuana as something i want to do to relax by myself; that actually strikes me as kind of absurd, as smoking pot by yourself all the time is going to make you paranoid and anti-social.

it's something that should be done infrequently, and with people.

and it doesn't reduce anxiety or cure cancer.

the only clinical evidence that exists on the topic actually suggests that marijuana makes anxiety worse.

sorry.

it's absolute, utter bullshit....

sometimes, if you want to be at the right meetings to get the right information to further your research, you need to compromise a little.

and, that's what happens when you open up research dollars to private funding - the most powerful lobbyists stand in between academics and their research, and are able to extract concessions in exchange for access.

it's fundamentally incompatible with a free society. but, if america was anything approaching a free society in the past, it hasn't been in a long time.

if you listen to what joe is saying, you might be tempted to believe that there's some kind of vast right wing conspiracy or something...

glenn makes a good point, but i'm not sure if he realized the depth of it. despite record arms deals, the saudis just got their asses handed to them by the russians in syria - and saudi money talks through talking heads in washington.

i think that if you want to understand the surreal and bizarre positions that democrats are taking right now, saudi money coming through think tanks and foundations, like clinton's, probably has a lot to do with it.