Police with too much time on their hands in Cary, North Carolina announce crackdown on graffiti with the word “booger” in it.
Amanda Marcotte drops some science on that whole women-are-just-brainwashed-into-saying-they’ve-been-raped thing.
Late last night I flagged a nugget of news in a Politico story about how the House GOP had decided that a pilot program tied to the school lunch program should now only be available to “rural” kids and not ones in urban areas and ask, WTF? Sahil Kapur spent the day getting to the bottom of it and here’s his report.
Some give the last full measure of their devotion for their country. Others toss their lives away to break into a decrepit dying woman’s room in an old folks home in a dooftastic scheme to send the latest clown show Tea Partier to the US Senate. (Because of course that would seal the deal, right?) Meet “Constitutional Clayton” Kelly, the guy who broke into the nursing home of Thad Cochrane’s wife (reportedly in a deep vegetative state) to photograph her because somehow this was going to get Chris McDaniel elected. Give it a read. I think you’ll actually end up feeling sorry for the guy – a seemingly otherwise decent enough guy with a family nevertheless encased in a polycarbonate bubble of derp and fanaticism where the all crazy about the progressive Kristallnacht and the KKK Democrats comes to settle. Meet Clayton Kelly.
On the heels of a poll that shows Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tied with his Democratic opponent, Robin Marty wonders if it could it be his anti-women policies that could cost him re-election.
Two more arrests in that bizarro scheme to photograph the dementia-suffering wife of Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) in her nursing home bed. One of the new arrests: the vice chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party.
As you can see, the story of “Constitutional Clayton” Kelly and his break-in at a nursing home where Sen. Thad Cochran’s ailing wife lives got a lot more complicated today. No fewer than three additional people – one a board member of the area Tea Party group – have been charged as co-conspirators in Kelly’s crime. You can find some imbecile who thinks it’s a good idea to do almost anything. It’s a little harder to imagine how you get four grown men, all apparently sane, to think something so crazy was going to be a good idea. But a number of you have asked me: Quite apart from the morality of it, just how did they think this was a good idea? What were they even trying to accomplish?
So, let me strap on my night-vision crazy goggles and join me after the jump for an explanation.
In the debate around the possibility of including “trigger warnings” on content in college courses, it’s worth reading the words of Jade E. Davis over at Cafe, who teaches at UNC-Chapel Hill:
There was a day in a course where we were discussing race, media, popular culture, and educational attainment. There were black students in the classroom. I was at the front of the class, and in the middle of class discussion, a student said, “Well, all the black students are here because of affirmative action.”
Never mind that we were at one of the best public universities in the country, a school that can pick and choose who they admit from a group of top candidates across ethnicities. The assumption was still that those students — and even I — did not belong in the classroom space. There was no warning. The trigger was pulled. This is the experience the New York Times piece missed.
There is still an experience of race, of poverty, of out of place-ness for so many students that come up in classes all the time without any warning.
Mitch McConnell says he’s definitely going to repeal Obamacare. But Kentucky’s extremely successful Obamacare health insurance exchange? McConnell now says that isn’t connected to Obamacare.
Sahil Kapur has a fascinating look at how social conservatives are struggling to come to grips with what appears to be their inevitable defeat on gay marriage and likely gay equality in general. One scholar at Heritage is reduced to arguing for what amounts to an anti-gay marriage ‘surge’, to win the hearts and minds of Americans before traditional America is overrun and social conservatives are fighting for seats on the last copters out of Sodom.